Cate of the Lost Colony - Lisa Klein [62]
But by the warning tone of his voice, I suspected that the men were hardly of one mind.
The governor’s household was also divided. Eleanor wept and begged her father not to go, to send another man, and to stand up to the scheming Roger Bailey. John White pleaded with her to be brave, and anyone with a heart would have wept to hear them. I held little Virginia and wiped my tears on her dress. She was not even mine, and still I could not imagine parting from her. Poor John White! When Ananias returned, Eleanor released her fury on him, saying he had betrayed her father and thus was no longer welcome in her bed. He shouted at her but managed to refrain from striking her. Then he left the house to lodge elsewhere.
Retreating to a corner of the tempest-tossed house, I wrote a hasty letter to Sir Walter, my words flowing like water over a broken dam. The time was short, for Fernandes would sail with the morning tide. I gave the letter to John White to deliver and thanked him for his kindness to me. His face was grooved with sadness.
That night three of the assistants rowed the governor to where the Lion and the flyboat were anchored. Our little household was headless, the colony leaderless. And I was mindful of a suppressed longing my pen had reawakened, the desire for Sir Walter’s familiar voice and his touch.
Chapter 24
From the Papers of Sir Walter Ralegh
Memorandum
8 August 1587. There is a new favorite at court—the Earl of Essex, Leicester’s stepson. Leicester, grown too old for the queen’s love, slips the boy into his place, knowing she will not be able to resist the hot-blooded pup. He is barely able to grow a beard and skilled at nothing but playing cards.
2 September. Essex dared to thumb his nose at me. I seized his collar and promised to answer the insult later.
18 September. The queen was entertaining her knavish boy in her chamber when I heard shouting and a crash from within. I flung open the door and entered the chamber with a sergeant behind me. “I cannot serve a mistress who would be in awe of such a man,” Essex was saying. He held a broken wine vessel, its contents spilled over the queen’s dressing gown.
Seeing me, he said in a tone of contempt, “Speak of the devil, and he comes!” Then he put his hand to his sword hilt, and I arrested him by the arms.
“It is treason to draw in the the presence of the sovereign,” I said.
“Let me go, ape! My lady, order him to release me,” the arrogant youth commanded.
“Nay, hold him still,” she said to me, much angered. Then to the boy: “You speak and act too boldly for a subject of mine.” She struck him across the face with her fan, leaving a red welt. “Let this be a lesson to you. You rise by falling.”
She pointed to the ground and he duly fell to his knees. Then she laughed, saying to me, “Let him go and leave us alone.”
Essex is fortunate that Elizabeth is smitten. For less offense than his, many a luckless creature has been sent to the Tower.
21 October. With the prospect of a Spanish invasion growing more likely, the queen has appointed me to raise armies and strengthen the coastal defenses of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset. She also tasks me with converting merchant vessels for the use of the navy and enforcing the Privy Council’s ban on shipping from all ports.
Thus I am released from guarding her private person, that I may guard her public body—the realm of England. This is a duty that befits a man of action.
20 November 1587. Received a most unexpected visitor today—a sea-roughened, bone-thin John White. The news from Virginia is dismal: my colonists left at Roanoke Island, the need for supplies immediate, and the governor forced to seek relief himself, his voyage so fraught with misfortunes that he was at sea for months and returned home more dead than alive.
What ill luck attends this venture! I explained to White that the threat of war, the ban on shipping, and my own lack of funds prevented