“We’ve had a fire,” said Carlos.

“In our room?” said Jake and there was a strange note in his voice. He came to me and put his arm through mine.

“What happened?”

“Something awakened me,” I said.

“It’s not much,” said Carlos. “It could have been though.”

Jake ordered that another room be prepared and that wine be brought.

I felt a little better after taking that. Then he led me to that other room and held me gently in his arms.

The next morning I was anxious to discover how the fire could have started.

“Someone was careless with a candle,” said Jake. “You left it burning while you were asleep. It toppled over and then there was the blaze.”

“I did no such thing. Some noise awakened me.”

“Yes, the falling of the candlestick. Have done. It will teach you to be careful in future.” He laughed at me. “Have you got a charmed life, Cat? ’Tis but a short time you went near the sweat. And now your bedroom catches fire and you wake just in time to catch it.”

A charmed life, I thought. It would seem so.

I sent for Jennet.

“Jennet,” I said, “who told you that Mary Lee wanted to see me?”

She looked puzzled. “Why, Mistress, I don’t rightly remember. Much have happened since then. The fire and all.”

“Try to remember, Jennet.”

“I can’t rightly say. I was in a rush at the time. Someone called it down the stairs, maybe. Yes, that was it.”

“You’d know whose voice it was.”

She wrinkled her brows.

“It was one of the servants, was it?” I persisted.

She reckoned it must have been. I could get nothing out of her.

But the seeds of suspicion were sown.

I could not get a son. If he had married someone else he could have had his son perhaps. Was that the way he was thinking? I knew that once he had wanted me as he had wanted no other woman. But I was no longer fresh to him, no longer a challenge. His desire for me may have faded, but that for a son was as fierce as ever.

I tried to remember exactly what had happened. He could have told one of the servants to tell Jennet that Mary Lee wished to see me. It was possible. And the fire? Who had quietly shut the door? Whoever it was must have been in the room a few moments before.

What had come over me? It was too absurd.

Did he want to be rid of me? Was it possible that he had tried and failed?

If this were true while he was away I was safe.

Soon after that he sailed away. Carlos and Jacko went with him, though not in the Rampant Lion. They were to serve under one of his captains in another of the ships.

It was some three months later when Jennet rushed into my room to tell me that the ships were back. I gave orders for a feast to be prepared and went down to the Hoe.

But I could not see the Rampant Lion. The two ships which had accompanied the Rampant Lion were home, but where was their leader?

The story Carlos and Jacko had to tell filled me with apprehension. Attacked by four Spanish ships, they had given a good account of themselves and driven them off. Jake in the Rampant Lion had ordered the others to stay and fight while he pursued the biggest of the galleons which was attempting to escape. That was the last they had seen of him and the ship.

They had been unable to search for her, suffering much damage themselves, and so they had returned to Plymouth, expecting to find the Rampant Lion already there.

After that we watched continuously, but she did not come.

The Long Absence

TWO YEARS HAD PASSED, yet still we looked for the Rampant Lion. Day after day I would awaken with a feeling of expectancy upon me and each day when the sun went down I would feel a heavy despondency.

Not today, I would ask myself. Perhaps tomorrow.

And still he did not come back.

Every day we talked of him. We speculated where he might be. When ships came in we would go down to the Hoe to discover if there was any news of the Rampant Lion.

And gradually as the months slipped by, I was afraid.

What could have happened to Jake? It was impossible to imagine him as captive in enemy hands. Yet nothing but that would keep him away so long. Unless he was dead. That was even more impossible. I couldn’t believe that. I had never known anyone so alive as Jake.

Sometimes a terrible sadness settled on me. I used to think: If he is dead, is my life over? Can it really be that I shall never see him again?

Then some certainty would remind me that he was indestructible and I would watch the horizon with new hope.

“Let him come back,” I prayed. “Let us fight as we did. Even let him try to kill me. But let him come back.”

Had it taken this to teach me what he meant to me? For years I had let myself brood on Carey. Oh, yes, I had loved Carey with a girlish passion, but had I loved him more when he was lost to me than I had when I believed he was mine? I knew that I had loved Felipe more after he was dead than when he lived. Was it my nature to do this?

And now Jake!

There is no one for me but Jake, I thought. Oh, Jake, come back.

But the months passed and still he did not come.

Linnet was my great solace. She was lively and remarkably like Jake. She had the same startling blue eyes and coloring; more than that there was the same stubborn line to her jaw when she was crossed. I used to think: If Jake could see her now—he who so longed to see himself reproduced would realize that this had taken place in his daughter. She was more like him than either Carlos or Jacko.

We were constantly hearing tales of the rich treasures which our seamen were bringing to England—captured Spanish gold—so much of it. The rivalries between the two countries were being intensified as the years passed.

Every time I heard these stories I thought of Jake. I imagined him in all kinds of adventures. But I knew something terrible must have happened. Otherwise he would have been home.

There seemed now to be a general feeling in the household that we should never see Jake again, but I refused to accept this. So did Carlos and Jacko, Jennet too.

“Whatever has happened to him,” Carlos constantly said, “he’ll be back.”

There was a great deal of talk about Francis Drake, a Devon man born not far from Plymouth, in Tavistock, it was said. The Spaniards regarded him as a supernatural being, the Devil incarnate, who sailed the seas with the purpose of destroying those of the Catholic Faith and stealing their treasure. They called him El Draque, the Dragon.

It was on a December day in the year 1577 when we had the great excitement of seeing him sail from Plymouth. What a glorious sight it was. For some time Drake had been preparing for this expedition. We did not know then that he was to circumnavigate the world.

His own ship, the Pelican, was not unlike our Lion. (He was later to change its name from Pelican to Golden Hind.) With him sailed the Elizabeth, the Marigold, Swan and Christopher; and in addition to the ships there were pinnaces, some of them in pieces, the better to store them; they would be put together when needed. We were all amazed at the provisions which had been carried ashore and some of the plate for his table was of silver. He took with him too his band of musicians. It had been discovered how important music could be to men who were far from home and weary for it. A concert could turn men’s mind from the boredom in which are the seeds of mutiny.

I was caught up to some extent in the general excitement, but it reminded me poignantly of the occasions when Jake had left for his voyages.

“Jake, Jake,” I murmured, “when are you coming home?” I refused to consider the possibility of his death.

Carlos came in one day full of excitement. He had been talking to some of the seamen as he often did and had met the great man himself. Drake had been interested to learn that he was the son of Jake Pennlyon.