London - Edward Rutherfurd [362]
“The Virginia Company.”
“The Virginia Company?” Sir Jacob was surprised. When Sir Walter Raleigh had named the great American territory, there had been nothing there except some Indians. Attempts at a trading post had foundered. But in the last few years, believing in the potential of the territory, the Virginia Company had sent out settlers to try again in the huge American wastes, and a rather uncertain bridgehead, called Jamestown, had been established by Captain John Smith. “Why Virginia?” Sir Jacob asked.
How could the boy explain? Was it some instinct carried down from his Saxon Bull ancestors who had founded just such a trading post and settlement on the banks of the Thames a thousand years before? Was it the romantic lure of this huge, undiscovered continent that had sparked his enthusiasm? Perhaps both. But, not knowing how to put his feelings into words, and remembering things he had heard his father say, he answered instead: “Because it will be like Ulster.”
Sir Jacob gazed down in delight, for this was exactly what it was meant to be. The plantation of Ulster, in the northern part of Ireland, was a source of pride for Sir Jacob. In this land of wild papists – “little better than animals” – King James had decided to make a great colony of English and Scottish settlers. Land had been offered on easy terms and an agreement made with the London guilds, who put up a huge investment to stock the farmsteads and rebuild the whole city of Derry in return for future rents and profits. The Mercers alone were contributing over two thousand pounds. As for Virginia, wasn’t the parallel clear? Weren’t the wild papists of Ireland and the heathen Indians of America very similar? Of course they were. The king and Sir Jacob were quite explicit: “Virginia shall be the Ulster of America.”
Curious, he questioned the boy further. What did the settlement mean? Did it mean order? Julius nodded: “So that things work.” And was it done for profit alone? Julius frowned, “I think it’s a place for good Protestants,” he said. Did he think, then, that he could serve God, here in the Royal Exchange as well as in the church? At which, after a little thought, the boy smiled happily. “Why yes, father. For didn’t God choose us?”
And Sir Jacob was well pleased.
It was a month later that Julius found the sea chest.
It was lying in a corner of the big cellar under his father’s house, behind some bales of cloth – a dark old chest crossed by a fretwork of brass bands which had long since grown black, and secured by three great padlocks. He assumed it was old.
Not that this was unusual. If the Royal Exchange represented the adventure of the new, the ancient world was still comfortably all around him. In his own home, there were the heavy four-poster beds from King Harry’s reign; a Caxton edition of Chaucer, printed soon after the Wars of the Roses; Silver Ducket’s monastic plate, older still. Why, even the oak panelling and the oak ceiling with its ribs and bosses, though installed but ten years ago, seemed to wear the patina of a solid, smoky age. And it was the same at Bocton. Though the façade of the old ragstone house had been remodelled in Tudor times with a more regular double row of mullioned windows, the estate peasantry still came to pay their feudal fines in the courtroom, the black old cauldrons in the kitchen had been in use since Plantagenet times, and the deer in the park’s great silence moved with a grace as ancient as the woods.
But the sea chest looked so mysterious, he asked his father what it was; only to be astonished by the reply.
“It’s a pirate’s treasure.”
A real pirate: more exciting still, a blackamoor. He listened enthralled as his father told of the strange seafarer who had left the treasure in his keeping. “He went away. They say he kidnapped a girl from the Globe, but nobody knows. He’s never been seen again. Some say he went to America, others that he’s in the southern seas.” He smiled.