Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [446]
She had made a few friends, all women. Apart from this, she kept herself to herself and saved her money.
“It’s a start,” she considered. “I’ve had luck.”
She had – but not enough, a small voice told her, to send word to her brother. She could tell him she was safe, of course; she could tell him a merchant was keeping her. But at this thought she only shrugged. She wanted more than that: for it was hardly progress.
“One day,” she told herself, “I’ll send him word I’m married.”
There was no question, of course, of the merchant marrying her. A rich burgher of the city would never do that. And indeed, she had no wish to marry him.
“Three nights a week with the merchant is well enough,” she admitted cheerfully; “but to spend my days with him as well . . .”
And yet. She had never entered his own house, where his children lived, but she could see it – for he had proudly described it for her often enough. Yes, she could see it very clearly: its solid oak table, the gleaming pewter and silver in the hall and in the kitchen, the handsome, embroidered counterpanes upon the beds. Perhaps I could even bear the merchant for a house, she thought. And for long hours she would lie, alone in her room, dreaming of that other house she would one day call her own: she could see its broad fires, its sparkling cleanliness; she could smell the great saddles of mutton, the roasts, the spiced dishes and baskets of fruit she would heap proudly upon the table, and see the faces of her children . . . Her children, the merchant’s mistress thought of them each day: the vision was her secret comfort; it was almost an obsession.
But there was the rub. What kind of man would marry her? And what kind of man, come to that, could she put up with patiently herself? “Any good man,” she would murmur sometimes; then laugh at herself. No, not any man.
Captain Wilson had been taken to sea, despite his mother’s protests, by his father when he was ten. His father had told the owner of the ship that the boy would make himself useful or be thrown overboard. He had made himself useful.
His grandfather had come from Sarum, he knew. He had been the first to go to sea, and had become, in the fullness of time, master of a small ship. He could remember old Will Wilson very well – a small but sturdy man, equal to any crisis.
“Found my first ship in London,” he always used to say. “God sent me a sign in the thunderstorm – a bolt of fire, right through a field. Lucky I followed it.”
His family used to laugh in secret at his tale, obviously invented. But then they, too, knew nothing of Roman roads either.
Captain Jack Wilson was already a successful man when Nellie saw him at the inn.
He had never married, though he had numerous children in London, Bristol and Southampton. He gave their mothers handsome presents of money when they were born, then never troubled about them. The life of the port was easy going. He had a child in Spain that he did not even know about.
“And that,” she thought as she watched him at the inn, “is my man.”
He was staying there a week, then going on business to London, she discovered. She must act fast.
Within the hour she was talking to him. She made no advances at all; but she learned his business and surprised him by how much she understood of the trading affairs of the port. The merchant had been useful to her there.
She soon discovered that he was planning to sail his little ship to the Baltic. There was a newly formed Muscovy company, he started to explain.
“I know,” she cut in, and gave him not only details of the company but an accurate account of the recent attempt by Willoughby and Chancellor to find a route through to the fabled Cathay by the North East Passage. This, too, she had learned from the merchant.
He looked at her with interest.
“Do you trade south, to the Barbary coast” she asked.
Yes, he told her, he had been to the Mediterranean, but the Barbary pirates were a match even for him.
“I don’t mind a fight,” he said easily, “but not if there’s no profit.”
After a