Beyond the Savage Sea Page 31

  “He would.” Drake yawned.

  She turned a vexed expression on him. “What will you wear, Drake? I doubt you even care.”

  “Unlike Lord Kersey, I’ll wear something I can afford and will have paid for.” Then, because he sounded like a penny-pinching grouch even to his own ears, he kissed her cheek. “I want you to have a beautiful coronation gown—the loveliest in the city.”

  “It is beautiful. I had a fitting last week.” She sighed. “I would die for a strand of pearls to wear with it.”

  He smiled in the darkness. “Truly die?”

  “Perish.”

  “You needn’t do that. I’ll provide them.”

  “Oh, Drake.” She lunged up, threw her arms around him, and strangled his neck. “Darling, you’re so good to me.”

  “That’s because I love you.”

  “And I love you.”

  Elated about the pearls, she snuggled in his arms and happily went to sleep. Drake lay awake, worrying. He ran his finances through his head. A good strand of pearls would cost all of thirty pounds.

  * * * *

  In his attempt to make Anne happy, Drake stole time from the wine shop, which he could ill afford to do, and took her to the afternoon theatrical performances as often as possible. Theater enchanted her. Closed during the strict Puritan Cromwell years, the theaters of London had reopened with a flourish.

  Female actors appeared on stage for the first time in the history of England. While London professed to be shocked, the whole city flocked to see the spectacle of women on the stage. Drake refused to pretend he was shocked when he was genuinely delighted. He enjoyed looking at a beautiful woman as much as any man, especially when the actresses played in costume farces, prancing about the stage in tights, their shapely legs on display for all of London to see.

  It was at a Drury Lane playhouse on a blustery February day that he spotted Charles Dare in the stalls. Despite Charles’s promise to visit Drake, he hadn’t come. The omission hurt. They’d once been best friends. What in hell had happened?

  Determined to get to the bottom of it, he kept an eye on Charles, and when Charles rose in mid-performance to go out to the privy, Drake went, too. They pissed side by side, their two trails of steam rising in the cold air.

  “What’s wrong, Charles? What’s happened between us?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “You know damn well what I mean. We used to be best friends.”

  “We still are,” Charles protested.

  “The hell we are. You haven’t come to the wine shop, or to dine with us. You haven’t invited me to dine with you.”

  “Been busy.” Charles gave him a broad wink. “Got a new mistress. An actress. That girl in the blue tights? Mine.”

  Drake looked at him in the waning winter sunlight. That could explain it, of course. Whenever Charles fell in love, which he did as regularly as other men pared their toenails, he became consumed with his paramour. Drake smiled.

  “Weil, you’re not busy now. Come with Anne and me to the George and Vulture after the performance. We’ll sup on lobster. My treat.”

  Charles seemed uncomfortable with the invitation. He took his hat off and nervously rippled a gloved hand through his fair hair. Charles was as good-looking as ever—broad of brow and jowl. He had a face women took to. With a reluctant nod and a broad smile, Charles accepted. There’s something wrong here, Drake thought.

  He thought it even more as the three of them walked the short distance through the blustery wind to Cornhill, Anne giving Charles the cold shoulder, scarcely even willing to speak to him. When they’d seated themselves in a tall wooden booth near the fire in the noisy taproom and sat thawing out, Anne remained stiff, a flush of anger tinting her cheeks. She plainly didn’t want Charles with them. Drake could not understand why. She’d always liked Charles.

  Charles was not himself, either. He talked too loudly, laughed too hard. As they drank wine, shucked and ate oysters, and enjoyed sweet, buttery lobster, Charles talked nonstop about his two years in Italy. Drake gazed at him, puzzled. He hadn’t invited Charles for a travel recitation. He’d hoped to reestablish intimacy and friendship. At one point Anne, who’d been entirely silent, burst out at Charles.

  “Oh, do shut up!”

  Startled, Charles fell silent, then recovered and babbled faster and louder than ever. Drake put down his lobster-cracking utensil and looked at Anne. “Do shut up” was such an intimate thing to say. Drake’s heart beat oddly, and he looked piercingly at Charles, who was raving now about his visit to Rome, almost frantically piling detail upon detail of it. Drake’s uneasiness grew. There was an undercurrent here, something out of reach. He felt a searing sensation in his brain. The undercurrent rippled away in the mundane ordinariness of talk and drink and food, but the memory of it lingered, deeply disturbing him.

  * * * *

  Edwinna cherished every letter that came from Drake. He wrote with faithful regularity and accepted his responsibility as sugar factor seriously. She read each letter a hundred times, even though the contents dealt mainly with business: tonnage received, sugar prices, supplies ordered, dates sent. Drake was not one to put his personal life on paper, but she sensed that all was not well and she worried about him.

  As for herself, she thought of Drake constantly and saw him everywhere. She saw his broad-shouldered figure in the cane fields, his black hair glistening in the bright sunshine. She saw him at noon table, sitting relaxed and easy in the place now empty, talking harvest with the overseers. She heard his voice, his step on the stair. Sometimes she imagined she smelled his scent, the sugary smell of fresh-cut cane. Whenever her need for him overwhelmed her, she spent the night sleeping in his bed, her arms tightly wrapped around his pillow.

  As if she were important to him, Drake took time to write her a long, detailed letter describing the king’s coronation, which took place in April. Reading the letter nightly in bed by candlelight, she would cease to hear the rumble of the grinder and would hear, instead, Drake’s magnificent voice telling her about the event.

  Drake counted himself lucky to witness it. The coronation of His Majesty, King Charles II, was the celebration of the century. In splendor and richness and pomp, its like had never before been seen in England and never would be seen again.

  Drake set business aside during Coronation Week and witnessed all that he could, every bit of it, beginning with the majestic ceremony of the Knights of the Bath in the painted chamber in Westminster. Drake watched, dazzled by the rich robes and the glittering coronets of the knights. He was touched to the very soul by the religious rite, as the king put off his own robes to humble himself and take the ritual bath that signified his cleansing in preparation to rule England.

  Similar pageantry went on each day of Coronation Week, each event richer and more dazzling than the last. But the most exciting was the coronation parade.

  The participants gathered at the Tower of London the night before. Slated to take a minor part in it, Drake went to the Tower, too, and watched the thousands of participants arrive throughout the night: Swiss guards in white ruffs and uniforms of Stuart scarlet; the London militia in new tunics of blue and white linen; General Monck’s army, wearing capes of gold cloth; splendidly garbed generals, bishops, dukes, earls, barons, viscounts. The richness of their attire hurt the eye. The Tower glittered with gold and jewels and diamonds.

  As Drake wrote Edwinna later, he was glad he’d let Anne badger him into buying a new suit of black brocade silk. He didn’t “glitter,” but he felt appropriately dressed. He also wore two Steel family heirlooms—his great-great-grandfather’s gold gorget at his throat, and his grandfather’s gold-and-diamond ring on his finger.

  But the lords’ horses were attired even better than he. They wore gold-tooled saddles, blankets of gold cloth, and their grooms spent the entire night working by torchlight, braiding gold ribbons into their manes and tails. A few of the horses wore diamonds as large as hens’ eggs on their forelocks.<
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  With a great deal of pomp and ceremony, the mile-long procession started out from the Tower at nine in the morning, led by the king, bands playing, thousands of scarlet silk flags flying. In the bright sunshine, the procession was a glittering sea of diamonds and gold. London screamed with joy. Church bells rang ceaselessly. Wine flowed freely in the public fountains. People grew merry and drunk. The flower-strewn streets had been graveled for the event, and families throughout London had decorated their houses, hanging out flags and tapestries.

  When Drake reached Cornhill, he eagerly looked up at Verity’s windows and waved to his family, who cheered and tossed flowers to him. Lord, how beautiful Anne looked. He threw her a kiss, and she excitedly threw kisses to him. With her silvery blond hair dressed with pink flowers and her figure clad in low-necked cerise-colored silk, she was easily the most beautiful woman in London—a sight to capture any man, king or beggar. He had a moment of uneasiness, imagining the king passing this spot, looking up and seeing Anne so beautiful and desirable.

  Marching on with the other men who would soon be knighted, Drake suddenly felt a lowering of spirits that was incongruous with the joyful day. He’d had such uncomfortable thoughts lately. When Anne came home from court these days she seemed overexcited, wound up like a child’s toy top, a flush on her cheeks, her eyes bright and distant, shutting him out. He fought against his burgeoning suspicions; he didn’t want to discover the reasons behind her altered behaviors. Yet, two week earlier he’d discovered a rent in her moral fabric, and, for that matter, a damned big hole in his own. He’d touched Anne with violence—a thing he’d never done before. Just thinking about the incident left him shaken.

  The quarrel had begun without warning. He’d worked late, wrestling with his financial problems, and had come home to a midnight supper with Anne. As they sat at the table in candlelight, he’d made the simple request that she not commit him to any more creditors this year. The request had escalated into another argument about money.

  “If that homely Barbados woman had not begged you to take only three percent as sugar factor we would have plenty of money,” Anne had declared.

  He’d looked up with a flash of anger. He didn’t like Edwinna being called homely. She was lovely.

  “She did not beg me. I insisted. She offered ten percent.”

  “And you didn’t take it? Drake, how ridiculous. You should write her and change your fee.”

  “No.”

  “Then I will write her and change it.”

  “You will not!”

  “Why? It isn’t as if you owe her anything.”

  He’d looked up sharply. “I owe her my life. Or would you rather have money than me?” It was a thought that had been occurring to him lately. He’d gone on eating his soup.

  “Darling. I am only saying that she has pots of money and we have none. It isn’t fair. What would it hurt if you kept back some of the sugar money or overcharged her for supplies? She would never know.”

  He’d looked up, utterly astonished. “Anne! Good lord, where do you get such thoughts? I would never cheat Edwinna. Never.”

  She’d tossed her head, golden hair shinning in the candlelight. “Oh, don’t be so self-righteous. It is a common enough practice among sugar factors.”

  “Not,” he said, growing harsh, “in the Steel family. Anne, sometimes I think I don’t know you anymore.”

  “Oh. Now it is my fault we have no money, is it?”

  “If you want the truth, yes.”

  The quarrel had grown hotter from that point on. They’d both said harsh things they would not have said had the hour not been so late and had Drake not been so damned tired. Her dressmaker bills, her preoccupation with going to court, and the undercurrent he felt lately frightened him.

  “Then, do you know what I hope?” Anne said curtly. “I hope she dies. Then William and Katherine will inherit her plantation and we will finally have enough money to live decently!”

  Drake was out of his chair instantly. He grabbed her, yanked her to her feet, and gave her a vicious shake.

  “Don’t you dare say that! Don’t you dare wish her dead.” He shook her until her teeth rattled, until she cried out in fear. Not until he heard her pathetic weeping did he come to himself and realize what he was doing. He looked down at his beautiful Anne, aghast. Her eyes were wide with terror, and she stared at him as if he were a monster.

  “Oh, my God.” He crushed her close. “Darling, I’m sorry. Anne, I’m so sorry.” She clung to him, sobbing against his chest. “I’m sorry, Anne, I’m sorry.” He petted and comforted her and buried his mouth in her hair. “Anne, Anne, what’s become of us? What’s happening to us?”

  She sobbed into his shirt, contrite. “Drake. If you want, I won’t go to court anymore—I’ll stay home.”

  “No, no, sweetheart,” he whispered into her angel-soft hair. “I’m no tyrant. I’m just a stupid, jealous husband. Go to court. All I ask is your loyalty. Without it, I am unmanned—useless to myself, to you, to the children, to everyone. I need your loyalty, Anne.”

  She wept in his arms like a heartbroken child.

  * * * *

  The coronation of King Charles II took place the day after the parade. Again and even more loudly, church bells pealed all over London. More wine flowed in the public fountains. Londoners shouted and cheered and danced in the streets.

  To get a seat on the scaffolding erected for the proceedings inside Westminster Abbey, Drake and Arthur came at four in the morning, making their way through the dark city. By six in the morning all of the seats were taken. They then sat and waited until eleven for the ceremony to begin. Outside the abbey the crowd roared like thunder and massed so thickly the militia had to hold them back. People occupied every inch of space and perched on near-by rooftops and in trees. The Thames River was a solid carpet of boats. People walked across the Thames from one shore to the other by stepping from boat to boat, full of high spirits, merry with wine.

  The ceremony was worth the long wait. Drake and Arthur heard little of the actual rites with the crowd roaring so loudly outside, but the pageant itself proved splendid and rich, so religious that it swelled Drake’s heart, and when the time came to shout, “God Save King Charles the Second,” he and Arthur shouted as zealously as peasants and with tears in their eyes. The civil war and the wretched Cromwell years were indeed at an end. The monarchy was restored. Drake wished that his father had lived to see it.

  * * * *

  Two weeks after the coronation, Drake’s world began to unravel. It began with one slip of the tongue—Anne’s tongue.

  Drake and Anne were at the royal theater on Drury Lane when Charles Dare walked in on the opposite side of the playhouse. Drake glanced in his direction. So did Anne. She said tartly, “I see Charles Dare is growing his mustache again. He looks ridiculous. Some men look well in a mustache, the king being one, but Charles Dare does not. Someone should tell him how foolish he looks.”

  Drake felt the chill all through his body. He stared at her, unsure he’d heard right, hoping he hadn’t.

  “Growing his mustache again? Anne, Charles Dare has never grown a mustache. Not in all the years I’ve known him, and I’ve known him all of my life.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. Her breath caught. She flushed.

  “Well, then, I disremember. Likely it is someone else I am thinking of.”

  “Surely.”

  The play began. Anne leaned forward with zest. Drake stared at the stage, but saw nothing. For three hours as the play went on, he sat neither seeing nor hearing. I see Charles Dare is growing his mustache again. Oh, do shut up! What do you do at court, Anne? Do you ever see the king? Oh, no! Very rarely. I spend all my time with Lady Elizabeth and Lady Edith. I am teaching them to sing. I see Charles Dare is growing his mustache again. Oh, do shut up! What do you do at court, Anne? Do you ever see the king?

  He spent a sleepless night. He watched Anne as she slept beside him and he agonized. He arose haggard in the mor
ning and sent word to Arthur that he would not be in. Without waiting to break his fast, he dressed and went directly to St. Catherine’s Docks, to the shipping office that had owned the Fair Wind, the ship on which Anne had set sail for France to visit her gravely ill sister.

  “I want to see the passenger records for the Fair Wind” he told the clerk on duty.

  “That ship, she’s sunk. Pirates. Two years ago.” The clerk was a thin young man with a whiny voice and smallpox scars on his face.

  “I know. I want to see the records for her last sailing.”

  “ ‘Tis a passel o’ work, diggin’ em out.”

  Drake stacked five shillings on the countertop. With a furtive glance, the clerk whipped his head to the right and to the left, making sure his superiors were not watching. Then he swept the coins off the counter and into his pocket and scuttled off.

  Drake waited a half hour.

  “ ‘Twas a passel o’ work,” the clerk said again, hinting for more money.

  “You’ve been paid.” Drake jerked the manifest out of the man’s hands. For a moment, he couldn’t look at it. Tension made his head throb, blackened his vision. He drew a deep breath to clear his head, then forced himself to look. He traced a finger down the passenger list. Mrs. Anne Steel. Expected. He continued to draw his finger down the list and found it. Mr. Charles Dare.

  For a moment his head spun. He braced his hands on the counter and drew a ragged breath. Anne and Charles Dare had sailed together. They had done that in his absence.

  “You sick, sir?”

  “No.”

  “Will that be all?” the clerk inquired.

  “Yes.”

  Drake shoved the manifest at the clerk and strode out. He passed blindly through the city, trudging for hours, not caring in what direction he traveled or where he was going, unaware of pedestrians except when someone barked, “Look where ye be going. Ye near knocked me down. Are ye drunk?” He walked and walked, pushing his way through crowds, now cursing, now shedding tears, vaguely aware that he must look demented or drunk or both, for people gave him a wide berth, crossing to the other side of the street. Anne and Charles!