12

While Lumey and Sonoy were talking to the Queen’s secretary, Jan went to look around her palace.

There was to be a pageant here, or an execution; workmen were building wooden stages in the garden, and on strings between the tall trees and over the little artificial watercourse they were hanging lanterns and swags of colored cloth. Across the lawn from the stage, a cluster of men were struggling to make a fountain work. Jan went closer to watch. They had the ornamental top of the fountain pulled off and were fitting pipes together in the base. The pipes ran away up the slope in a trench through the green grass, with the sods piled up beside it, leading to a huge wine tun. They were trying to make the fountain flow with wine.

Not an execution, then, unless these English were more ghoulish even than the Spaniards.

As he walked away, they got the pipes connected. A red spurt of wine gushed up from the fountain’s throat, and the workmen cheered.

The palace itself was a patchwork of old and new buildings, strung together over the hillside. He walked back into the gallery where he had left his fellow Beggars, to find Lumey shouting red faced at the secretary and Sonoy pacing up and down nearby, shaking his head.

“We’re chasing eels with herring nets,” he said when Jan came up to him, which Jan took to mean they had come all this way for nothing.

“Two weeks!” Lumey shouted, storming up between them. “Maybe she will see us in two weeks!”

Through the nearest door into the long sunlit gallery came two pretty little boys in lace collars, the first carrying a hat with a long white feather, the second carrying a wooden head, topped by a fluff of black hair. As the boys ran past Sonoy, the black hair flew off and landed at Jan’s feet. He jumped back away from it, startled. The boy snatched it up, plopped it back on the wooden bulb of the wig stand, and rushed on down the gallery.

“What’s going on here?” Jan wheeled around toward his friends.

“There’s a disguisers’ ball tonight,” Sonoy said. “The Queen hosts a German prince, here to offer marriage to her.”

Lumey was shouting at the secretary again. Sonoy pulled on his beard, his mouth curled into a thoughtful purse. “There are times,” he said, “when a loud noise makes only an echo. Let’s go.”

Jan was watching a parade of pretty girls go giggling by him, their arms piled up with flowers. A powerful perfume lingered in their wake. He wondered where they found flowers so early in the year. Sonoy got him by the arm.

“Let’s go!”

“Where’s …” Jan twisted to look behind him for Lumey.

The big pirate was still screaming in the secretary’s face; now the Englishman jerked up his arm in a signal, and all around the gallery the men in orange velvet who flanked the doors came forward. Lumey stood his ground against them.

“I’ll have you know I am a baron of the German Empire—”

Unfortunately he issued this declaration in Dutch. The English guards strode on toward him, six men, six big men, their hands on their small swords. The first two to reach Lumey hooked their arms through his and heaved him toward the front door. Lumey let out a roar of indignation. He wrenched one arm free and flung his fist at the guard on his other side.

Jan started forward to help him; the other four guards were closing fast with him, drawing their swords. Sonoy rushed past them all. Snatching up a little stool as he passed, he dashed in between the guard who held Lumey and Lumey himself.

“For the John Calvin!” he cried, and clubbed Lumey over the head with his stool.

Jan shouted, amazed. Lumey collapsed on the floor at his feet, and Jan took a step forward, straddling him, to defend him from the guards. Sonoy gave the stool to the nearest man in orange velvet, who gaped at him, dumb.

The secretary said something crisply, motioning the guards away. Sonoy turned. “Bring him,” he said to Jan, and walked away to the door.

“Why did you do that?” Leicester stalked away from the window, his shadow long before him. “Valiant warriors for the faith, true hearts in our own cause, and you turn them off. You are afraid, aren’t you?” He wheeled toward her, his face flushed with the intensity that served him in place of thought. “You’re afraid of Philip.”

“Everyone is afraid of Philip.”

“That dog. That meeching monk. He lost us Calais; you know that.” Fierce as a cheetah, he stalked toward her where she stood in the window overlooking the gate yard. “The Bloody Queen went to help the Hapsburgs, and so we lost Calais. The Dutch could be our chance to recover our empire! Don’t you see that?”

The English Empire: one city. One lost city. She put her shoulder to passionate Robin Leicester and turned her eyes toward the Dutch pirates, down by the gate. The two still upright were laying their unconscious fellow across his saddle. She would have to have the story of that; no guards of hers had escorted them out of the palace, as they would have had they taken force to the Dutch. She laid her hand on the white windowsill. The tall fair man held her interest, who had carried the other out on his shoulder. Her father had carried her around on his shoulder.

“The Dutch deserve our help,” said her bonny Robin, still prowling the room behind her in his excess of male vigor. “They fight our enemies and they are alone. I do not understand why you refuse even to see them.”

She knew something of the Dutch, and something more of Philip of Spain; to meddle between them would need a steady hand and a keen eye, and a willingness to settle for very little in the matter of reward. Now the Prince of Orange’s navy was riding out the gate, an opportunity checked. Or a temptation safely avoided. She turned toward Leicester, who saw no value in ambiguity.

“You heard their story complete. Tell me the lines of it again.”

“I had it only in the echo, but even so it heats my blood, as it will yours.” He crossed the room toward her, walking from the shadow into the light. “Outnumbered and outgunned, they fought the Spanish to a standstill on the Channel seas until a storm scattered them, and the galleons took refuge in Plymouth Sound. Next, the Dutch appear”—his hands made sails in the air—“and stand between the Dons and their escape. Night falls, and under the shield of darkness, the Spanish flame the greatest of the Dutch ships, nearly murdering all on board.”

She chuckled at him. “I think you need a theater for your full effect, my lord. Still, you are right, it’s a serious matter. I’ll send to Plymouth for an edition in English. And now, sir—”

She held out her hand to him, and with some little grace he gave her his arm to rest her fingers on. They left the room.

Jan drew rein and looked back up the road; beyond the rooftops of the houses that crowded around its walls, the palace of the English Queen raised its bannered towers into the sky.

“Come along,” said Sonoy. “A slow foot makes a long road.”

“Captain—” Jan faced him over Lumey, still hanging like a roll of carpet over the saddle of his horse. “A disguisers’ ball—everyone will wear a costume. Isn’t that right?”

Lumey groaned. Sonoy put one foot on his friend’s backside and rocked him back and forth. “Yes, that’s what it means.”

“Then why can’t we go?”

Sonoy’s gaze rose to meet his. Lumey was moving now, his head bobbing over the stirrup. Chimes sounded down the road; a beer wagon was rolling up the way toward them, the horses’ harness merry with brass bells.

“We haven’t got any costumes, for one thing,” Sonoy said.

“We do,” Jan said. “We could go as seamen. What’s wrong with that?”

“If we’re caught, that’s the end of our suit with Elizabeth.”

“It seems to me our suit’s at an end already.”

He looked back up at the palace again; the wall hid the bunting and lanterns in the garden from him, the stage, the fountain gushing wine, the improbable flowers, the pretty girls. When night came, and the lanterns glowed, and the girls laughed and danced on the lawns …

“I’m going,” he said. “I have a clean shirt in my bag.”

Face down on the saddle, Lumey thrashed, and a yell erupted from him. He heaved himself upright, grabbing for the pommel of his saddle, missed his hold, and fell into the street. Sonoy murmured in sleek satisfaction.

“Mortified, by God.” He swung down from his horse and hauled Lumey onto his feet. “Rise up, rise up, the wind’s fair and the sea won’t wait forever. Young van Cleef has a notion to storm the Queen’s fancy evening.”

“What?” Still groggy, Lumey swung his head from side to side. “What?”

Fool. Jan galloped away down the road toward London.

Lady Jane Dudley was dressed as Diana, with a crescent moon in her hair and a sheaf of arrows on her back; Elizabeth was one of her huntresses. In the moonlight the white gowns seemed to shine like silver. Pleased, Elizabeth drew back by the arbor to see everything whole.

In among the new-leafed trees tied with flowers of silk and paper, in the patchy glow of the lanterns, her court strutted and preened like a flock of Byzantine birds, all jeweled and ribboned, made tall by strange headdresses and wide by extravagant padding. There by the fountain was someone—Gilbert—got up as Caesar, in a long white gown like a nightdress, a wreath of laurel on his thinning hair, and two fellows trailing after him with bundles of sticks. He went bowing and posturing through a crowd of wood nymphs and fools in clocked hose, stranger than any of Caesar’s triumphs. King Solomon backed out of his way, stiff under an enormous crown of ostrich plumes that swayed perilously whenever he moved; behind him, blackamoors held up the litter on which Sheba reclined, her dress flashing and fiery with jewels.

In another part of the garden was a troop of Brazilian aborigines, nude but for strategic placements of feathers and gold. Greeks and Arabs were everywhere, drinking and boisterous, and even some animals—a lion, walking upright with a mane of golden wire, and a unicorn going about properly on all fours, casting glances here and there from glowing eyes.

The musicians behind Elizabeth began to play; she thought of organizing all these visions into a dance. Her eye caught on a strange appearance at the far side of the garden.

It was a tall man, fair headed and half-naked, without a jewel on him anywhere, a rude stone in this treasure chest. Elizabeth went a little closer, intrigued. He wore shirt and trousers of common cloth, but nothing more; it was the contrast of such plain stuff with the fantastic dress around him that made him look naked. She guessed he was costumed as a sailor.

A moment later she realized he was a sailor, one of the Sea Beggars who had spent the afternoon trying to gain audience with her. After him came the other two, one as soberly dressed as a precisian, and the other, more ordinary in this company, wearing a long embroidered tunic like a Popish priest’s vestment.

The Queen’s temper warmed. She was minded to have them chased away, and looked for one of her guards; she would have them beaten, too, for such impudence. The nearest guard lounged against a walnut tree across the lawn, flirting with Maid Marian, who was toying with his belt.

The costumes made everything different, Elizabeth saw; they were all strangers now, even to themselves—freed of themselves for the evening. Wasn’t that what she had intended? She smiled, her royal anger cooled. She herself could hide in this artifice, rest from her nature and find some amusement to renew her mind. Let the Dutchmen stay. She went down the sloping lawn into the anonymous crowd.

The flowers were false. They were made of paper and cloth and drenched in perfume, like whores.

Disappointed, Jan moved away from the trees, toward the fountain sparkling and splashing in the center of the lawn. The people there were dancing, a dozen of them drawn up in the figure for a round, the girls on the inside. Their clothes were magnificent. The more he saw of them, the more out of place he felt here, in his canvas shirt: these people wore their fortunes on their backs. He stood watching the circles of dancers heel and toe and heel and leap to the brittle music of viol and lute.

One girl especially caught his eye, so beautiful he held his breath a moment, to see her, dancing on the far side of the circle. She wore a long green gown, her puffed white sleeves spangled with gems and her hair done in braids over her head; he supposed all these English recognized the character at once. The dance brought her steadily closer to him, and he went forward a little, eager to see her beauty in the lantern light, ready to worship her; and then she came face to face with him and he saw her beauty was paint, and her looks, close on, so hard and false he turned his back at once and blundered away through the crowd.

He found some wine and drank it. Where Sonoy and Lumey had gone, he had no notion; strangers surrounded him, talking in a language he did not understand. He walked through the night gardens, avoiding the other masquers. The wine was strong; he drank too much of it. The strangers jostled him. He stood watching them whirl and sway in another dance. In their jewels and feathers and fanciful clothes, they no longer seemed like people to him, but made things, mechanical beings, and monsters.

He wondered if all expectations suffered like this, if all beauty were false. If all heroic deeds began as cheap shams, like the burning of the John Calvin.

He went into the trees, to relieve himself. As he stood pissing into a bush, a girl ran into him from one side.

She giggled. She smelled of the strong wine. Her bodice was open down the front and one round breast emerged, nestled in the folds of cloth. She clutched his arm to keep her balance, laughing; with his free hand he struggled to put away his penis. A man burst out of the bushes after her.

“Oho!” The man strode up to them, shouted some angry words at the girl, seized her arm, and pulled her back away from Jan. She tripped on her skirts and fell backward against the newcomer. Jan pulled his trousers closed. The man pushed him.

“Easy, there,” Jan said, and backed off a step, looking for the way out of this.

A volley of hot English came at him. The man let go of the girl, who slid down onto the trampled grass, subsiding into feeble drunken giggles. Her companion drew his long sword.

“Now, wait,” Jan said, switching to French. “You have this wrong. I did nothing with her.” His eyes followed the silvery gleam of the blade. His stomach tightened; he backed up another step, and came up hard against someone else, behind him, who seized his arms.

The man with the sword bellowed and lunged forward, the sword point aimed at Jan’s belt buckle. Full of wine, Jan saw this all very slowly, and moved slowly, as if in a dance, sidestepping to let the sword pass by him, wrenching his arms free of the grip from behind him.

Something struck him on the head. In French, he cried, “I am innocent!” and fell. The ground came up hard into his face. He rolled over, dodging the unseen sword point. A foot thudded into his side. His legs got tangled in the brush, and he kicked out; another roll, and he hit the rough bark of a tree trunk.

“Hold!”

That voice rang like iron. He lay still, breathing hard, while his attackers moved away from him.

The iron voice, not loud, spoke on in English. Surprised, he realized the timbre was feminine. Feet moved swiftly around him, pattering away. He lifted his head; he was alone, and not hurt, not badly. He sat up.

Not alone. She stood in front of him, a woman in a long white gown with a sheaf of silver arrows on her back.

She said, in French, “Well, Master Sailor, something shipwrecked in the wine?”

“Thank you,” he said. He knew this was the Queen.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, Madame.” He pushed himself up onto his feet, one hand to his head, where he had been struck. Now he stood over her, head and shoulders taller, which he shortened in as fine a bow as he could muster. “Thank you, your Grace.”

She stood straight and stiff as a pikestaff before him, frowning at him. “Thank me when you have gone safely from me, Master Beggar! I am considering now whether to have you thrown into the ditch, or into one of my dungeons.”

His head was beginning to hurt. He said, “The choice is yours. This is your kingdom, is it not?” Grimly he wished himself back on board the Wayward Girl, where the choice was his.

“What arrogance! By what right come you here, invade my pleasures, and trifle with the innocent young girls of my court?”

“I did nothing! She came at me, she—” He stopped his tongue, embarrassed; the girl was gone, all his protestations only proofless words. He faced this iron queen in her silvery dress. “Do as you will, lady. God, I would I were anywhere but here, a Spanish gallows but not here.”

She said nothing a moment. Leisurely, her gaze traveled over him from head to foot, her face, with its angular bones and feline breadth between the eyes, empty of expression. At last she moved, walking toward him, walking past him.

“Came at you, I can imagine. We have no such beasts in our English menagerie. Sit down here; you seem unsteady yet from your brawling. Or perhaps the wine.”

He went after her through the bushes to a little open glade where a stone bench sat under a tree. This one was not gauded up with fakeries, only its own new softly uncurling leaves, and he sat down on the cold bench and put his hand to his head again.

“You are one of the Prince of Orange’s men?” she asked, behind him.

“I? No, not Orange—that … court dancer, that toy soldier—”

“Oh?” Surprise sharpened her voice. “I took you for a Sea Beggar.”

“That I am, lady.”

“Oh. Well, a matter of names, as is all the world. You did come here to tell me about the evil deeds the Spanish did in Plymouth, and to have my help in the business.”

He lifted his head; it had all begun with that, with that falsehood, the burning of the John Calvin. “Yes,” he said.

“Well, I am inclined to favor your suit, if there be a way to do so without drawing down on me the untoward blusterings of Spain. I will not have foreign powers making war in my harbors.”

He pressed his lips together, remembering all that had happened in Plymouth. She spoke behind him, her voice mild and colorless.

“Spain believes he does the work of God; it is a common self-deceit of power. Daily his arrogance binds more tightly on my own English seamen, here and in the Indies. But this is worse than arrogance—to burn a ship in Plymouth harbor—”

“We burned her,” Jan burst out.

Behind him there was now a silence, crowded and heavy, like the air before a thunderstorm.

“I said,” he said, more loudly, “that we burned her. She was already sinking. The idea was Lumey’s. Sonoy had no doing of it. We burned her, to force the Spanish out where we could deal with them.”

With a whisper of cloth she strode around before him, face to face with him. “Why do you tell me this?”

“I am tired of lying,” he said.

“By God’s blood!” She walked two steps away and whirled around again, her white gown flying about her and the silver arrows flashing on her shoulder. “What insolence is this—first you contrive to dupe me, and then you have the belly to tell me so. What a fool you take me for!”

He shrugged, careless of her; he had cleansed himself, and all his fear and low thoughts were gone.

“You have my leave, Master Dutchman!”

He got up onto his feet, steady now, and sober. “Thank you for saving my life,” he said to her, and bowed again, the bow his tutor had schooled him in during his classroom days in Antwerp. She stood like an idol in her white and silver, her eyes brilliant with rage. He went away through the garden.

He had no idea what had become of Lumey and Sonoy, and he didn’t care. Going back down to the inn where they had taken a room, he stuffed his clothes into his seabag, slung it on his back, and walked away down the road toward the far end of England.

Most of the night he walked, then slept through the dawn in a field beside the road. In the morning light, he walked on. He followed the Roman road; sometimes other travelers joined him, merchants and chapmen, vagabonds and highborn people on horseback, but usually he went alone, with nothing to do but think.

He remembered what his uncle had said, about stealing from the people around him, but Pieter had not gone far enough in his explanation. To steal, to cheat corrupted everything; one lie fueled another, making truth impossible.

He thought of Alva, his courage, his cold brilliance. There was a grandeur in his evil that Jan could not find in himself. If he were good, it was in modest ways. More likely, he was neither good nor evil, but only something formless in between.

The clouds raced over the sky like greyhounds on the hunt. The rain fell.

It was raining when he came to Salisbury, several days on, and he found his way to Stonegate House. By the time he reached the gate yard the rain had stopped. He stood by the way in, looking into the brick courtyard, where ducks fluttered and splashed in the puddles. A milkmaid was coming up the lane toward him, a yoke on her shoulders, a bucket of milk in each hand. The rain was over, and now he needed no more shelter than one of the huge-barreled oaks that grew up over the lane, but he lingered still. As the milkmaid passed, she smiled at him, and he followed her into the courtyard.

Ivy covered the little old brick house on the far side. The milkmaid disappeared through a low archway in the back. A man in a woolen cap was unloading wood from a wheelbarrow in a corner of the yard, and he straightened and spoke in English, with a question rising at the end of his words.

“Mistress—” As he spoke, her name, forgotten until now, sprang to his tongue. “Mistress Simmons?”

In the ivy-covered brick wall, a shutter opened, and a woman leaned out; she called sharply down into the courtyard. The man at the woodpile turned, shouting back, and waggled his thumb at Jan. The woman gaped at him. She pulled the shutter closed. The man in the woolen cap turned to Jan again and smiled and motioned with his hand for him to wait. Jan let the seabag slide down off his shoulder.

“You look wet,” she said, leading him up the stairs. “Were you caught in the storm?”

“In several storms, Mistress Simmons.”

“Well, then, I’m pleased I have a room to offer you to yourself this time, and not the stable.”

Outside the door, he stood looking down at her. “I have a little money. I should be very happy to pay—”

“No, no,” she said, briskly. “My husband, when he died, left me with more than I could ever use myself. We had no children; he had no other heirs; what is there to do with it, save God’s charity?” She smiled at him. Older than he remembered, her eyes nested in fine lines that fanned out when she smiled. “Make yourself comfortable. We shall have a supper, when night falls, in the hall.”

“Thank you.”

She opened the door for him and stood on the threshold talking, while he put his seabag down and looked around the little room.

“Have you been already to London? I hope your business transpired as you wished.”

He had no interest in telling her the tangled doings of the past few days. “This is very comfortable,” he said. “I should have been happy in the stable.” The room was just large enough for the bed and a tall old-fashioned French wardrobe; a little hearth faced the window. On the rope webbing of the bed, a straw-filled tick was folded. She came into the room and spread it out on the bedframe.

“Will your friends be coming along later?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I left without seeing them.” The wardrobe smelled of fresh lavender. He inhaled deeply of the pleasant scent. “This is very fine, Mistress Simmons.”

“If there is anything necessary to your comfort, we shall try to supply it.”

He was standing at the window, looking out over the wall of the courtyard. It was so different here from his own country: this swelling plain, not flat like Brabant, the trees squat old oaks instead of poplars and elms, no canals, no mills, and yet some things the same, the black and white cows that grazed on the far meadow, the sky’s depthless blue, glittering after the rain. He turned toward Eleanor Simmons again.

“You’ve given me very much, simply in being here,” he said. “I came from London with a very bad taste in my mouth, which your hospitality has rinsed away. Thank you.”

“You are very kind,” she said, and her cheeks reddened. This time, she did go, and he was alone.

Before supper Eleanor walked to the village, to take some bread to the poor there. As she walked back up the plain toward Stonegate, she saw, ahead of her, the young Dutch seaman coming toward her.

They met where the path ran by the old standing stones; when she came up to him, the Dutchman was looking at the huge old stones, frowning.

“What are these?” he said, and put his hands on one stone and pushed as if he might knock it down.

“Pagan things,” she said. “It’s for this my house is named Stonegate.”

She had forgotten his name. It quivered on her tongue to ask him.

He walked around the stones, touching them, and looking up at them. Usually she went by this place in a hurry, but today she lingered. His great height amazed her; the good proportions of his body disguised its size. He jumped up to touch the lintel stone. Measuring the gate with himself.

“I’ve forgotten your name,” she burst out suddenly.

He smiled at her. “Jan van Cleef, at your service, my lady.”

That made her laugh. “I am only Mistress Simmons, my lord. Or Eleanor, if it please you.”

“It pleases me.” He took her basket from her, to carry it for her, and they walked up the path toward the house.

“Enlighten me, sir. Why are you who rebel against the Spanish King called Beggars?”

He walked along beside her, his eyes on the path, which was slippery from the recent rains. “Because years ago, when we were still asking the King politely to honor our rights and privileges, the court scorned us by that name. Now every true Dutchman reverences the title Beggar.”

“And you are a Beggar.”

“Yes,” he said, adamantly.

“I think it most honorable and true to be so, from what I have heard of affairs in your country.”

“They murdered my father,” he said.

She pressed her hand to her breast, her gaze straight ahead of them on the path. “God help you. I am very sorry to hear it.”

“Tell me how your husband died. Was it recently?”

They were coming up toward the house; in the fallow field on the other side of the path, the dray horses grazed, standing to their hocks in the daisies. She said, “He took a fever, five years ago.” He had told her of his father; this exchange of pain was good currency. Yet it opened up the old sore again. She and William Simmons had quarreled before he died, and he had gone off so abruptly, in the space of a day, that she had had no chance to mend it with him. Whenever she thought of it, remorse dragged her down in its net of melancholy.

She said, “Now I spend my life in service to others.”

Beside her, he stopped abruptly. “There’s still daylight left,” he said. “Will you sit with me and talk?”

They sat down on a log beside the lane, under an oak tree. He said, “Since I left Plymouth I’ve had no one to talk to, save Lumey and Sonoy, and they are …”

She waited for him to finish; he did not. She said, “Sometimes even here, where I have been nearly all my life, there seems to be no one to talk to.”

“Maybe,” he said, “there’s nothing to say.”

“What a curious remark. I assure you, I always have something to say.” Did he think she was stupid? She frowned at him.

He stretched his legs out in front of him, moving his shoulders, working his great muscled arms. He said, “There is a world of words, and the real world, and you must not mistake the one for the other.”

That was even more curious. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I am not sure. Except it seems to me that sometimes people—I myself, very much—do something and attach words to it, and think by putting the right words to it to make the deed mean other than it does.”

“Yes, that seems a common folly of mankind, and nothing new with you.”

“There’s a boy on my ship, a little slow in the head, named Mouse. While we were chasing the Spanish, I sent him up to the masthead, to get him out of my way, and he fell into the sea.”

“Oh!”

“He’s safe now; don’t cry for him. We had to stop and pick him out of the ocean and the Spanish nearly got us, all because of me, trying to play hero while doing the villain’s business.”

“But you regret it,” she said, and put her hand over his. “You know the wrong.”

He turned to face her; his hand turned over beneath hers, and his fingers closed on hers. He said, “Knowing wrong is miles off from doing right.”

“God knows the truth in that.” His hand was warm, and so large it swallowed hers. Her gaze fell, lest he read too much in her eyes. She fumbled for some honesty to match his. Low, she said, “I try so hard to do God’s work, but it’s all ashes to me, my charities. I cannot say why—it brings me no peace. It all seems so small, taking bread to this one, medicines to that—a business of number and transport, not of my person. I want … I want …”

Now she was coming close to the center of her being, and she could not speak it, how she longed to matter in herself again, as she had mattered to William Simmons, long ago. How she yearned for some important work, some sacrifice, to fight, to die for her causes, to have her people’s hearts with their gratitude.

He said, “You will have what you want.”

“You don’t even know it.”

“Still, I can see in your face what a great-hearted woman you are.” He leaned toward her and pressed his lips to hers.

The kiss was chaste enough, with closed lips, but their joined hands went wanton, squeezing and stroking.

Somewhere beyond the hill a bell began to ring. Eleanor looked up. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it must shake the cloth of her dress.

“Let us go in,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, and rose and helped her solemnly to her feet. “Thank you for talking to me—you make me feel like an honest man again.”

Was this the end of it? Reluctantly she let go his hand. His size attracted her powerfully. What he had said worked on in her mind. To play the hero—to live in the world of deeds. Suddenly she thought him wonderful beyond all other men she had ever known, except William Simmons.

They walked back toward the house, silent, both of them, not even looking at one another.

In the courtyard was a noisy tangle of people and horses. Here they could not talk. They separated. Eleanor went slowly toward the kitchen, where she would have the supper to oversee. The wild yearning in her heart mixed with the suspicion that it were better if she never saw Jan van Cleef again, if one kiss could stir her so. She was hungry. Her hands were salty with sweat; she would have to wash. At the brick archway, she turned and looked across the courtyard.

He stood there by the wall, watching her. When he found her gaze on him, he smiled and raised his hand.

Her cheeks went hot as her feelings. Unable to keep still, she wheeled and ran like a child down the steps to the kitchen.

At supper, other people crowded the table, and Jan had no chance to talk to Eleanor. He watched her all the while, how she ate delicately as a bird, taking only the smallest morsels of the meat and breaking her bread into little pieces. She did not seem to pay much heed to him; only once she looked up, and then catching his gaze on her turned swiftly away.

After the meal he went out to the courtyard, not knowing where else to go, and stood around on the bricks watching the kitchen girls bring the scraps from supper out for the chickens. He thought of nothing but Eleanor. Her eager interest in him, her touch, the kiss, everything that had happened between them seemed to go on and on in his memory; his body ached all over from the exercise of his senses. But she did not care. She had gone somewhere else tonight.

Then, just as he was falling into despair, she came out from the kitchen.

They walked out along the lane again, talking about virtue and how one could know the right things to do. Everything that had chafed him since Mouse fell into the sea now poured out in a rush of words, how he longed for some great exalting work, how instead everything he did disintegrated into trivia and commonplaces and meanness.

The darkness deepened. He took her by the hand, to help her over the rough footing of the lane.

“I wish I were a man,” she said. “I’d go with you; we’d fight the Spanish together. But as it is—”

He lifted up her hand and kissed it. “You have the heart for it.”

Rain began to fall, and they turned their steps back to the house. Jan wanted to kiss her; he wanted to do other things with her. But there seemed no place where they could be alone and secure enough. He could think of nothing to say. He had never met a woman before who was so apt to his thoughts, to his longings as Eleanor, but perhaps she felt differently. A widow, too, with another lover’s memory to honor.

The courtyard was empty; the rain was falling steadily now. She said, “Shall we go to the hall?”

“Whatever you choose.”

They went to the hall; the old man who had sat by Jan at supper was dozing by the fire, and two maidservants tittered and played cat’s cradle by the window. Eleanor drew back.

“Not here,” she said.

“Come up to my room,” Jan said.

She moved away from him; they stood on the landing outside the door to the hall, in the dark. She said, “The others will know and they’ll talk.”

He let go her hand. “Whatever you choose.”

Now she turned her face fully toward him; the rain had dampened her hair. She said, low, “Very well.” Swiftly she went by him up the stairs. He followed her.

They climbed up to the room under the eaves where he was to sleep. There was a fire laid on the hearth, and Jan knelt to light it. She lit a candle, put it on the mantel, and went to fasten the shutters over the window. Jan built the fire high, his hands trembling, his mouth dry with excitement.

She sat next to him on the hearth and he turned and kissed her.

“We ought not,” she said.

“Because of these other people,” he said, and went back to poking at the fire again.

She knelt beside him, tilted forward a little from the waist, her face bathed in the glow of the fire. Her lips were pressed tightly together. Her eyes glittered. He thought she was beautiful, not in the common way of beauty, but in her aliveness.

She said, “I do everything now, it seems, for what other people will think.”

He took her hand and kissed it, and she moved toward him and he put his arms around her and pressed his mouth to her cheek, to her forehead and eyes and lips. Her arms went around his neck. She lay in his arms, her breath warm on his cheek. He put his hand on her bodice. The thin cloth there was damp from the rain, warm from the breast underneath.

“We shouldn’t do it,” she said.

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know. I am afraid. I want to but I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. I’ll never do anything to hurt you …”

His hand stroked over her, and she moved again, arching her back, her breast rising into the palm of his hand. He pulled the light cloth down and slipped his hand in against her bare flesh, and she moaned. With his mouth he searched out her kiss again, hungry now, her breast filling his hand as he would fill up her body soon, and she was letting him, eager, her hands pulling at her clothes, shyly seeking through his clothes until suddenly she touched his penis, and the surge of pleasure through him nearly made him shout.

He lifted her up. The bed was right behind him, under the window. He laid her down on it and unlaced her gown and her hands leapt past his, pulling away the encumbering dress, baring her round breasts in the firelight. He put his lips to one small erect nipple. She gasped, her hands on his hair, her legs moving, her hips against him. They pushed away her clothes. His hand stroked down over the soft skin of her belly, down to her thighs, where the thick curly hair grew, and when he touched her there she spread her legs apart. He had never handled a woman before, not there, and he groped, uncertain, surprised at the dampness, at the softness of her flesh, and slipped his fingers down between the tender folded skin, and reached up into her body.

She cried out; her whole body arched, letting him in deeper, her hands on his shoulders. Standing up, he shed his clothes and knelt on the bed between her knees, his penis jutting out in front of him. She reached for it; her hand enclosed it, and he quivered all over, his strength gone; led by her hand, he lay down on her, braced on his elbows, and she drew his power down and into her and engulfed him.

It was over for him almost at once. The warmth and pressure all around his organ brought him instantly to the point of bursting, and on the third stroke he gave up twenty years of waiting. He clutched her tight. She was whimpering under him; he knew she wanted him to go on, and he did, amazed at the power of his body, at the effect of his body on her. He held her face between his hands and watched her open like a blossom between his fingers, her eyes brimming with tears, her mouth slack and yielding, until finally her eyes closed and a rosy glow spread over her face, and she was quiet under him.

He kissed her closed, tear-filled eyes. The scent of their bodies was like a perfume in the air around them.

She said, “We’ve sinned.”

“Well, maybe.” He rolled to the side of the bed and looked at her body, subtly printed with his, the breasts flattened, the belly red, the wonderful curled place between her legs still a little ajar where he had been. “Are you cold?”

She sighed. “No. Open the window a little, will you?”

He opened the shutter enough to let in the air and the sound of the rain. Lying down beside her again, he touched her breast. In a few moments he would be ready to do it again.

“I haven’t even kissed a man since my husband died,” she said.

Jan was playing with her nipple. He put his mouth on it, drawing the hard bud upward. “I know you are no wanton.”

“Only for lack of opportunity,” she said, and sighed again. “I have lain in my cold widow’s bed, some nights, wishing—”

“I had never done it before,” he said; he did not want her wishing she had not done it. He kissed her mouth again. “If it is a sin it is a mild one.”

“How can you say that?” she cried. “A few hours ago we were talking of great deeds and heroes, and now we have fallen into sin again, dragged one another into sin—”

He put his hand over her mouth. Above his fingers her eyes shone with a desperate will to unhappiness.

“You are mine now,” he said. “I’ll decide what is sin between us and what is not. I’ll hear no more of this from you, not if you love me. Do you understand?”

He took his hand away; she lay still, her gaze on him, her mouth curled into a pensive line. His hand lay on her belly, where soon he meant to lie.

“Do you love me?” she said.

“Yes,” Jan said.

She put her arms up, to encircle his neck, and drew his head down to kiss again.

“I think it must have been a palace once,” Jan said, and jumped down from the great stone that lay in the grass before the stone gateway. “Now this entrance is all that’s left.”

Eleanor laughed. “Perhaps some moralism could be drawn from that.”

“What?” He came over to her and took her hand, and they went on along the way to the village.

“I don’t know—that everything wicked crumbles into dust.”

“Why do you think it was wicked?”

She shrugged, unwilling to lay open her thoughts about the stone gate. And someone was coming up the way toward them. When Jan tried to take hold of her hand she pulled away from him.

“What’s the matter?”

She said nothing, smiling; they walked along the path, while the cowherd and his boy came toward them, an old man and a young, in identical brown broad-brimmed hats. The boy carried a long stick. Their dog loped along before them.

“Good morning, Jem,” she said. “Joe.”

They chorused, “Good day, Mis’s Simmons.” Their dark eyes probed at Jan, beside her, as they passed.

When they had gone on by, Jan said, “Are you ashamed of me?”

“No, I—”

“Just of what we did last night?”

“Hush,” she said, firmly.

When she thought of the night before, she knew, unsettled, that she had lost power over herself, that he had taken mastery of her somehow; she was determined not to do that again—not to give herself up to him again. Carefully she did not think of the pleasure of his body. Her body.

“Do you want to marry me?” he asked.

That startled her. She looked up at him, his face still so new to her that every fresh angle showed her a stranger. “Do you want to?”

“I love you,” he said.

She faced forward again, her heart pounding. Now she wished he would take her hand; she would not pull away from him now. But they were coming into the village, where other people abounded. The moment was gone.

Crisply she said, “I am to the bookseller’s. Will you come with me?”

“I’ll meet you there,” he said, and went off.

She wondered if he were annoyed with her. They were still just barely friends to one another, and he was not English. Maybe it was foolish even to think of marrying him. At once her spirit lowered; she began to fret herself over the right thing to do. For an instant, her temper overflowed with fury at a God Who made everything so hard.

“Good day, Mistress Simmons.”

“Good day,” she said, not even knowing whom she answered, and went blindly on into the bookstore.

Maybe, she thought, staring at a shelf of books, she was only a whore inside, doing that with him, and so to marry him would drag an innocent down with her. He had said he was a virgin. She reached out for a little blue volume and took it in her hand. On the spine was written Dido, Queen of Carthage. She turned it over and over, feeling the leather smooth under her fingers.

At that moment the door behind her slammed open, and Jan like a great blond thunderbolt stormed into the shop.

“Eleanor.” He gripped her elbow and made her turn to face him. “She’s seized the ships.”

“What?”

“The Queen of England. She’s taken the Spanish ships for herself! Our prizes!”

Eleanor blinked at him, uncomprehending; then she remembered why he had been to London, and the irony of it struck her and she laughed.

“God, what fools we were, trusting in a crown—in a woman crowned, at that.” He rushed up and down past her, his voice shaking with fury. Eleanor gripped the book in her hands. His passionate energy fascinated her.

“I’m going,” he said. “I’m to Plymouth—to my ship. The other Beggars will be having a meeting, to decide what to do. I can’t let them decide without me.”

Her insides contracted. “But—what about me?”

“I’ll come back.” He laid his hands on her shoulders and looked solemnly into her face. “I’ll come back, as soon as I can. Wait for me.” Already he was turning from her. Not even a kiss. Shocked, she could not move a step to follow him. Over his shoulder, he cried, “Wait for me. If you take another lover, I’ll kill him!” And was gone out the door.

She lowered her eyes to the blue volume in her hand. Seduced and abandoned. Opening her fingers, she let the book slide to the floor.

Old Pieter said, “I don’t see how you expected otherwise.” He leaned back in his chair, his hands on his stomach; his gaze ranged over the tavern, where the other Beggars sat or stood in groups and shook their heads and cursed Elizabeth.

It delighted him to see them thus, their hopes destroyed, their work turned to nothing. Now their phantom unity would fade, and he would fall free of the unwelcome cause. Already some were arguing, accusing one another of the fault.

“I say we up anchor and go,” he said to Jan, beside him. “You see what use it’s been to join with these fools.”

Jan said nothing. He had been strangely silent following his return from London. At his shoulder stood Mouse, who had not left his side since Jan came back.

The other Beggars filled the tavern; the barmaids and the tavern keeper had gone into the back, leaving the place to the boisterous Dutch. Near the door, two men suddenly began to throw their fists at one another, and those around them pressed in closer, cheering on the fight. Old Pieter looked on with contentment. In a few moments the whole fleet would disappear, like the white head of the dandelion in a puff of wind, and he would walk from this tavern a free man. Then through the door came Lumey, striding into the pack; he broke apart the fistfight, split the cheering crowd, and subdued them with a look.

The din quieted. All eyes turned on the Beggars’ admiral, walking to the head of the room.

“Well, well,” Pieter said loudly, “here’s the conquering hero himself, returned from successful combat with the Queen! All hail the great man!”

He beat his palms together in solitary applause. The others kept still.

Lumey said, “Ay, the Queen betrayed us. But what would you have done, Pieter van Cleef?”

“Better than you!”

From another quarter of the room came a rough voice in a Flemish accent. “What went wrong? What did you do in London to dash our hopes?”

Another man cried, “Did you sell the Spanish ships to her, Lumey?”

Pieter clapped his hands together again. “I say, let us all go our own way, and have done with the fairy tale of fighting some great war against the Dons!” He glanced at Jan. His nephew sat picking his teeth with a straw, his face unreadable.

All around the tavern, now, men were calling for Lumey to answer, to confess, or to defend himself. Their quarreling voices rose to a deafening roar. The light was dim in here, with only two lanterns on the walls, and the men seemed no more than shadows that moved in the gloom.

A tall, slender figure in a wide-brimmed hat loomed up before them—van Treslong, a senior captain, and a nobleman as wellborn as Lumey himself. He called, “Lumey, answer. How did you fare in London?”

“In no way,” Lumey said calmly. All Pieter could see of him was his tarnished and filthy vestment. “She would not even hear our petition. Ask Jan van Cleef. Ask Dirk Sonoy—”

“Sonoy is not here,” said van Treslong. “He is refitting his other ship. Apparently you angered him as well as the Queen.”

A yell went up from the left side of the room. “Down with Lumey! Hang him in with the priests on his own yardarm!”

Beside old Pieter suddenly Jan moved, rising to his feet; he said nothing, and the others, facing Lumey like wolves ready to spring, did not mark him. They shouted and shoved one another toward their admiral, calling for his blood, while van Treslong in vain waved his arms to quiet them and Lumey glowered and paced across the back wall of the tavern.

“Down with Lumey!”

“Down with the Beggars,” Pieter shouted, and beat his boots on the floor.

Jan strode forward. Taller than any other man there, he moved through them and silenced them by his passage. He came up beside van Treslong and said, “Lumey’s not to blame. His scheme would have worked. The Queen was partial to our suit, until I told her—I”—he looked to see all heard him—“told her it was we who burned the John Calvin.”

The silence that fell on the heels of these words was breathless, like the air before a storm. Lumey grunted as if someone had struck him.

“You told her! Why?”

“I am tired of lying,” Jan said.

“Knock him in the head!” someone shouted, but nobody moved; a mutter rippled the crowd, intent on Jan and Lumey and van Treslong in their midst. Many had not known before that the Calvin had burned by a Dutch torch; they turned to their neighbors and muttered, “Did you guess? Is it true?”

Van Treslong himself, his face white, said, “We burned the John Calvin?”

“You fool!” Lumey beat the air with his fist. “I had her in the palm of my hand!”

“Lumey burned her,” Jan said to van Treslong. “To throw the blame on the Spaniards, and drive them from Plymouth. It would have worked, maybe, had the Queen not learned the truth.”

From the rear of the crowd came another shout against Jan. “Take him! Hang him up—he sold our prizes.” A whimper from his left drew Pieter’s eyes: Mouse stood there gnawing his knuckle.

Van Treslong flung his arms out to silence the uproar. Jan cast a wide-ranging look around the room. Old Pieter coughed. He said to Mouse, “The boy’s a fool.” Yet against his will he warmed with pride at his nephew’s calm courage.

Mouse said, “We must always tell the truth,” and Pieter knew that Jan could do nothing that the boy would scorn.

Jan was turning, in the middle of the room, his hair glinting in the lantern light. His voice boomed out, the voice he used to carry orders on the Wayward Girl, and the murmuring crowd fell still again, expectant.

“I’ll go by your word,” he cried. “I’ll stay a Beggar, if you let me, but if you deem me worthless now, I’ll go.”

A hush answered him. Mouse leaned forward, his lips moving. Then, like an explosion, an oath burst from Lumey’s lips, and he strode forward and flung his arm around Jan’s shoulders.

“Stay, by God! One of us!”

The crowd raised a single thunderous voice in agreement. Van Treslong shook Jan’s hand and hugged him, and the whole of the Beggars pushed forward around him. Old Pieter grimaced. He saw Jan was their darling now, for all his misdeeds, or because of them, as a man loved a woman he could not master. There would be no removing the Wayward Girl from the shadow of the Beggars’ banner. He folded his arms over his chest.

“We sail tomorrow,” Lumey shouted.

“Tomorrow.” Jan wheeled, his face suddenly rough with concern. “Have we no more time than that?”

“Do you want the Queen confiscating our ships too? Let her take the notion, and she will—tomorrow! We leave on the morning tide!” Lumey beat on the tavern wall. “Bring the beer! Bring wine and geneva—the Beggars sail tomorrow; tonight belongs to pleasure!”

Looking very gloomy, Jan came back to Pieter’s side, and the old man put his hand on his arm. “Changed your mind, I see.”

“There’s a woman, up in Salisbury.”

“Oh,” Pieter said, and sniffed. He drew his hand back, envious. “There’s a wench in this, is there? I might have known. Well, choose, boy-o, choose—the wench in Salisbury, or the Wayward Girl.”

Jan drew back, his face furrowed with indecision. Mouse hung by him, looking up adoring into his face. “Will you go? I’ll stay with you.”

Jan laid one arm around the boy’s shoulders and hugged him up against his side. Pieter grunted. He had never seen his nephew so open with the half-wit boy before. Van Treslong walked up to them.

“You did us a great favor, Master van Cleef—the Queen would have guessed the truth, sooner or later, anyway. We’ll see you at the council, after supper?”

“I—” Jan licked his lips. His gaze fell on Pieter, something in his eyes pleading, or just hurt. The old man reached out his hand and gripped his nephew’s arm.

“I cannot rule the ship without you, boy-o.”

Jan heaved up a sigh from a depth great as the ocean floor. He nodded, first to Pieter, and next to van Treslong. “I’ll be there.” With one arm he hugged Mouse against him; with the other he clasped his uncle’s hand.