In the early hours of the morning the tocsins had sounded all over Paris and this had been a sign for the Catholics to emerge and slaughter every Huguenot to be found. The slaughter was horrific. The streets of Paris were running with blood; the Seine was full of mutilated bodies and the slaughter continued. The great Massacre of St. Bartholomew had begun and the cry of “kill” was taken up throughout the provincial towns of France.

The effect of the massacre reverberated throughout England. In Plymouth people stood about on street corners discussing what would happen next. A rumor was in circulation that the French and Spanish were in league together with the Pope, and they planned to murder Protestants throughout the world as they had in France.

Many were saying that it was time we gave the Catholics in this country some of the medicine they meted out to others. “Let’s give them a little Paris justice,” they cried.

We heard that Lord Burleigh, who had been in the country, had hurried back to London. He feared chaos in the Capital and that there would be a repetition of the massacre in London—though in reverse. There it would be the Protestants taking their revenge on Catholics. The Queen appeared in public dressed in mourning and Lord Burleigh said, “This is the greatest crime since the Crucifixion.”

There was no doubt of the effect this terrible event must have on our lives. Such momentous happenings stirred the world and none of us could ignore the rumblings of impending tragedies.

Anger against the Catholics was increased. I knew that they would be hunted out with greater severity in Protestant lands, and in those which were manifestly Catholic the persecution would intensify. Increasing numbers would be taken to the torture chambers of the Inquisition; there would be more agonizing cries as the flames consumed the bodies of martyrs.

Jake came home the following year. His homecoming was similar to the last. There was feasting and we had the mummers in to entertain us.

He took scarcely any notice of Linnet although she was a beautiful child and amazingly like him; he was amused by Romilly’s fall from grace and showed a little interest in the boy. He was pleased to see Carlos and Jacko, though; and he was patient with them when they plied him with questions about his voyage. He would sit in the garden while they sprawled at his feet looking up at him admiringly, while he told them of his exploits on the high seas.

If Jake could have had a legitimate son he would have been a proud and happy man; as it was he was often brooding and resentful. I would often notice him as he glared at Roberto and his anger that I could have a son by Felipe and not by him infuriated him to such an extent that sometimes I felt he hated me.

It was after his return from his next voyage that the first of the strange events took place.

I had always followed the practice of visiting the poor of our neighborhood personally. Some women in my position would send their servants with nourishing things to eat and warm clothing, but my mother had always gone herself and I had often accompanied her. She had said that we wanted these people not to look upon the gifts we bestowed as charity but those of one friend to another.

One morning when I was about to go into the garden one of the maids came to me and told me that Mary Lee had asked specially that I should visit her.

She was an old woman who had had three sons, all of whom had been lost at sea. I used to visit her regularly. Jake was pleased about this, for he always liked the families of sailors to be cared for. Mary was in her sixties, crippled with rheumatism; she used to sit at her window and look out when she was expecting me.

I gathered together some food into a basket and set out that afternoon, but when I reached her cottage I was surprised that she was not at the window waiting for me.

Her cottage was one of those which had been built in a night, for it was custom here that if any could put up a cottage in a night the land on which it stood could be counted as theirs. It consisted of one room only.

The door was ajar. I pushed it open and said: “Mary. Are you there?”

I saw her then. She was lying on a pallet. The light was so dim that I did not at first see her face.

“Mary, are you all right?”

She spoke in gasps.

“Go, Mistress,” she whispered.

I went forward. I knelt beside her. “What is wrong, Mary?”

“Go. Go. ’Tis the sweat.”

I looked down at her. I could see now the fearful signs on her face.

I put down the basket and hurried out of the house.

I saw Jake in the courtyard. I wondered afterward if he was waiting for me.

I said: “I have been to Mary Lee’s cottage. She has the sweat.”

“God’s Death!” he cried. “You have been in the cottage?”

“Yes.”

“Go to your room. I’ll call a doctor. You may have caught it. He can see too if anything can be done for Mary Lee.”

I went up to my room and I kept thinking of that other occasion when I had pretended to have this fearsome disease to keep Jake away.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I had been close to Mary Lee. The disease was highly infectious. Perhaps already by now…

“Oh, God,” I prayed, “save me from that.”

I knew then how much I wanted to go on living, and in this house to see my children grow into women, to have grandchildren. Perhaps one of them would give Jake a grandson. Would that serve as well as a son?

Mary Lee had died three days after I had gone to her cottage, but the disease did not sweep through country towns as it did in crowded London.

For a week I waited in trepidation for some sign that I may have been infected, but there was none.

Jake said: “It would have served you right. Once you pretended to have it to flout me.” He laughed at me. “You really must have been determined to avoid me.”

“What good sense I had.”

“If I’d taken you and carried you off to sea with me you might have had my son instead of the Spanish bastard.”

“Don’t dare speak of my son in that way.”

“I’ll speak how I will.”

“Not of my son.”

“Stop harping on the fact that you got a son by that Spanish Don or I’ll do you a mischief. You goad me too far.”

“I know it well,” I retaliated. “Perhaps it was a pity I didn’t catch the sweat and die of it. Then you could have found a wife who would give you sons.”

He looked as though he had been struck in the face. At the time I thought the look meant he was horrified at the thought of losing me. Later—much later—I was to remember and wonder whether I had hit on the truth.

Jake was busily engaged in preparing for his next voyage. Sometimes he would stay on board until the early hours of the morning. Carlos and Jacko worked with him. He had promised them that they should accompany him on his next voyage.

It was on such a night that I awoke suddenly, and for a few seconds wondered what had startled me. Then I saw—or thought I saw—the door close slowly as though someone were determined to shut it with the minimum of noise.

Someone had been in the room.

I leaped out of bed and as I did so I was aware of the crackle at my feet. I looked down. The hangings about the bed were smoldering and some of the rushes were alight. At any moment they would burst into a blaze.

I picked up the heavy bedcover and beat out the flames until they were smoldering. I needed help so I rushed to the door calling that the room was on fire. By this time smoke was beginning to drift around the room and out into the corridor.

There were shouts throughout the house and in a short time servants appeared with buckets of water which they threw over the smoldering hangings and rushes. The smoke was becoming uncomfortable but the fire was out.

I heard Jake’s voice. “What’s going on?”

And there he was, his eyes a brilliant deeper color than usual.