Raleigh's Page (9 page)

19

R
EPORT TO
M
R
. R
ALEIGH

Word of their return got to Durham House before they’d anchored in the Pool. Pena and Mr. Harriot met them at the dock. At the great door of Mr. Raleigh’s house, James was waiting for them, beaming. They hurried up to the turret, where Mr. Harriot cut the vests away. The skin underneath was red and oozing from bugs and chafing.

Mr. Raleigh wrapped them in towels and rang for James.

“Tell the kitchen to send a boy with a bucket of warm water and a stack of clean cloths from the laundry. Quick!”

While they waited, Tremayne made everyone laugh by telling how Brion had tested Andrew with naphtha and Viton had made Tremayne try the first sample. He told how the noisy lock to the cook’s door had made Andrew jump and how the cat’s yowl had made him do the same.

Mr. Raleigh washed their sores. The soap and water stung. Then he rummaged in his sea chest.

“I’m going to put on medicine,” he told Andrew. “It will burn, but you’ll have no scars. Hold him, Monsieur Pena!”

Pena held the boy tight. Suddenly his sores burned like flares. Andrew lurched and bit his lip bloody to keep from crying out. Then the hurts went numb.

When it was Tremayne’s turn, Mr. Raleigh gave him a rag to put in his mouth to keep from cursing. When the medicine hit him, Tremayne whipped about like a caught fish.

Mr. Raleigh cut open the vest pockets. All eyes were on him as he sorted through the papers.

“You did well,” he said. “You got the map.”

He pointed to it. “Did you look?”

“No,” said Tremayne. “There wasn’t time.”

“Look now,” said Mr. Raleigh. “The West Indian islands are shown with their harbors. Where the Spaniards have forts, there are red marks.”

He paused and looked at Tremayne.

“Will you go with them?” he asked. The sweep of his hand took in Mr. Harriot and Andrew.

“The three of us?” Tremayne asked. “Andrew, Mr. Harriot, and me?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Raleigh. “You three are my Americans now.”

Andrew caught his breath: he was going too! Pena was nodding and smiling at him.

“Yes, I’ll go,” said Tremayne.

“Good,” said Mr. Raleigh. “Understand, you’ll not be going as settlers: this expedition will be to gather facts and write a report to encourage others to invest and settle. You and Andrew will go as explorers under Mr. Harriot.

“For now, go back to your school and carry on as before. We hope to sail in the spring.

“Neither of you will speak of this to anyone. To those who ask, say you’ve been to Ireland.”

He nodded for them to leave.

As Andrew got to the door, he turned and asked the question that had been gnawing at him since the night they left Marseilles.

“Sir, did the drug kill them?”

“No,” Mr. Raleigh said with a dry laugh. “I diluted it to one-quarter strength. I feared your hand would shake and you’d give too much.”

“So they’re alive?”

“Ha!” he exclaimed, making a face. “They are, and eager to renew your acquaintance, along with the Crown’s agents who have warrants for your arrest. Had you not made it out that night, you might not be standing here. By dawn they were searching every ship.

“That map you took—it did not belong to Viton, you know. He’d borrowed it from someone high in Paris who had no business lending it.

“Trouble all around!” Mr. Raleigh said with a happy smile.

When Andrew got into the hall, Pena embraced him.

“The French have invitations for me too,” he said. His face was grim.

“For you? Why?”

“We were plotting against the Crown,” he said.

“The gardeners?” Andrew asked.

“In life we all wear many hats,” he said slowly. “To some I was a gardener, to others I was a revolutionary for the Protestant cause. My name was on their list. A dozen years ago on Saint Bartholomew’s Eve, they killed ten thousand of us Protestants. All of my family. Every Huguenot on which they could lay their hands—noble or simple, man, woman, or child—murdered. The streets ran with blood; the river was full of corpses. The killing went on for days as Catholics rose in many towns and followed the example of Paris.

“Mr. Raleigh was in France then,” Pena continued. “We were escaping together when we got caught. The men who found us had their knives out to cut our throats when Mr. Raleigh splashed them with his black oil and set them afire.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, shaking the dark memory from his mind like a dog shedding water.

“Come see our children!” said Pena. “The plants, the seedlings—the melons are up! And today we begin the swimming!”

“No!” cried Andrew.

“Well, when your sores heal.”

That night, Andrew undressed out of sight. He was so tired he left his clothes where they fell.

“Where have you been?” William asked.

“To Ireland, training to be a merchant.”

“You would be a merchant?” Peter sneered. “Only that?”

Peter’s tone of voice made him shiver, like the scraping of fingernails over slate.

“That much,” Andrew replied quietly. It crossed his mind to tell them what Doctor Dee had said about merchants being heirs to adventure, but he didn’t. He was too tired.

Hours later he awakened to Peter’s shrieks: “A Catholic! Andrew is a Catholic! A spy!”

Somehow, when Andrew undressed, the rosary Rebecca had given him must have slipped from his pocket. When Peter got up in the night, he’d found it.

As William and Andrew started up, Peter dashed into the hall, yelling, “Andrew is a spy! Andrew is a spy!”

For a moment the boy lay helpless. Then his strength came on, like pouring naphtha on a going fire. He dashed into the hall and tackled Peter front-on, head to gut, taking him down hard and knocking his wind out. Peter was heavier and stronger, but at that moment his kicks and heavings were like a fly’s flutterings to the younger boy’s fury.

With his teeth, Andrew shredded his nightshirt and tied Peter at the elbows as tight as he could. Peter was screaming a different tune now as Andrew half-rose and sat down on him hard to knock his wind out again. Peter lay still, gasping like a beached fish.

He tied Peter’s legs together at the knees, then his ankles to his hands. The senior page ended up writhing like a trussed pig, gibbering and crying.

Andrew stood over him. The beads lay next to the wall.

By now William was there, along with Mr. Harriot, Pena, and James. Andrew wiped blood from his nose.

Andrew looked at them, then at Peter. “You tell them,” he panted.

He picked up the beads and went back to bed. As he lay down, he figured that was it for him at Durham House. He wasn’t sorry. It was like a boil burst: whatever followed, the relief was worth it. He went to sleep and slept wonderfully.

The next morning Peter and Andrew stood before Mr. Raleigh. Andrew’s head throbbed. Peter could hardly walk.

Mr. Raleigh’s face was like carved stone.

“Show me,” he said.

Andrew pulled the beads from his pocket.

Mr. Raleigh shook his head like one annoyed at something small. “Put them away and go to your work.”

The next day, Peter left for Ireland.

Some weeks later, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Barry received a thundering letter from Viton & Frères accusing them of sponsoring common thieves. As proof, they returned the worn Barnes & Barry leather samples case, the six small bottles safe in their lamb’s-wool compartments.

20

T
HE
S
WIMMING
L
ESSON

“Today is for the swimming!” Pena announced. “The sailors say to respect the sea you must never learn to swim, because if you do she will take you as one of her own. To that I say,
‘Zut!’
” He spat.

It was a warm afternoon. The tide was flowing. The water moved like a huge brown snake, hissing as it pushed and frothed past Mr. Raleigh’s water gate. It smelled of dead plants, old rope, rot, dead fish. Andrew’s skin crawled at the thought of going in, but Pena was determined.

They took off their clothes. The steps were moss covered and slippery. Pena went into the water ahead of Andrew. It was cold. It grabbed at the boy’s knees as he balanced on the last step.

“Fall toward me now,” Pena ordered. “I will catch you.”

A surge of water knocked Andrew in. He coughed and thrashed as the burly Frenchman made to hold him. He felt himself going down. He couldn’t breathe. The panic of drowning gripped him like a bear crushing its victim.

“Easy! Easy!” the Frenchman yelled. “You are not so heavy in the water! Now you will lie on your back. I will hold you up. Lie still!”

Andrew couldn’t. He was howling and flailing, shivering from cold and fear as Pena half-lifted him and turned him over. The boy’s legs and hands were churning and kicking. He couldn’t help himself.

“No need! No need!” Pena yelled. His hands were under Andrew’s back. “You see, you float,
non
?”

“No!” Andrew screamed. “No! No!”

“Draw your breath and arch your back. Let your hands and feet flutter,” the Frenchman yelled. “Now you float! You do not sink! Look!”

Laughing, Pena held up his hands. Andrew was almost floating as he gagged and spat out mouthfuls of the awful water. He was struggling, choking, screaming. But he got the trick of it.

Pena showed him how he could lie steady in the water by flapping his feet and making half circles with his open hands. With Pena’s help, he made it back to the stairs. He was shaking. His feet slipped. He fell back and went under, swallowing a mouthful.

As Andrew retched and gasped, Pena pushed him onto the worn steps.

“Now fall in on your own and roll over,” Pena ordered.

Andrew hesitated. Pena pulled him in.

“Now kick like the duck,” the man said. “Let your feet work like ducks’ feet.”

He used a small log floating by to buoy his student as he kicked. Andrew was able to get back to the steps on his own.

They clambered out.

Pena made Andrew stand over the cistern again, cold and miserable, his stomach heaving.

“Observe the frog,” the man said as he dropped a frog into the tank. “Watch how he pulls himself forward with his fronts as he kicks with his rears. You see how he positions his rear legs, drawing them up, out, and in together.

“You will do this now. I will hold you. Back into the water.”

They practiced until the skin on Andrew’s fingers was puffy and wrinkled.

“You do not want to paddle like a dog,” Pena said. “That is too tiring. The way a frog swims, he can rest as he goes. So can you, with the turning over on your back.

“Give a dog a long distance to swim and he will drown, which is how geese and ducks defend themselves—they let the dog get close and then paddle on, drawing him out and out, and then,
voilà
! No dog!

“Today perhaps I save your life.”

21

A
PPEAL TO THE
Q
UEEN

It was a warm afternoon. The air was sweet with blossoms and the first downed leaves. Durham House was mirrored in the river.

Andrew was working with Pena, harvesting some of their Spanish seedlings, trying to figure out what they might be good for.

“First we crush a leaf and a root for smell,” said Pena. “Some of these I know as herbs for seasoning. Too bad we keep no goat here: she could tell us what’s good to eat. A cow, even better; the cow is a more delicate feeder,” Pena explained.

“Ah! This is good,” Pena said, holding up a root. “Ginger. And this one, sarsaparilla. They flavor their drinks with it. But these—” he said, waving his hand over a pile of wilting plants, “I can make nothing of them. Next year their blooms and fruits will tell us more, yes?

“There is a tree I look for,” he said. “I hear the Indians in New Spain treat fever with the bark of a tree—but what tree?”

On his way to bathe, Andrew met Mr. Harriot in the hall.

“Mr. Raleigh’s just summoned Mr. Hakluyt and your friend Tremayne to come help write an appeal to the Queen to let our expedition sail.”

“I thought she was for it,” Andrew said.

“It hangs in the balance. Her advisors fear war with Spain if we go; for her part, she frets at the expense. Many hands reach out; few realize how little she has to give.

“‘When people arrive at my age,’ she said sourly to Mr. Raleigh, ‘they take all they can get with both hands and only give with the little finger.’

“‘Your little finger, madam,’ he replied, ‘will do very well for us!’

“She smiled at that—a good sign. Now we must persuade her to twitch that finger in our favor.”

When the others arrived, Andrew was called to the turret. Mr. Raleigh’s writing board was awash with books, maps, and papers.

“Arrange that mess under three trumpets,” Mr. Hakluyt ordered. “‘Riches,’ ‘Faith,’ and ‘Safety.’ Our Queen loves those horns best, so we’re going to blow her such a tune she’ll dance her way to the New World!

“The first—the loudest—will play to her nose for riches. People in the colony will send her strings of pearls, and perhaps there is gold. We’ll hint but make no promise.

“We
can
promise profit in the trade as those people buy our English products and provide the things we now trade with others for—sugar, silk, and emeralds.

“Our second trumpet will proclaim her chance to bring Reformed Religion to the natives—gentler and kinder than what the Catholic Spaniards practice. They rob and murder their natives and torture to convert; ours will be the true Christian way.

“The third—the trumpet Safety—will announce a place for vagrants, petty criminals, and enclosure men.

“Do you know about enclosure men?” he asked.

“I do,” Andrew muttered. His tone made Mr. Hakluyt look up.

“Good,” he said drily. “Few at Court seem to.

“Once you’ve got our papers arranged, you’ll write as Mr. Harriot, Pena, and Tremayne direct—a list of everything the expedition will require. The Queen is England’s frugal housewife. She’ll want to know the quantity and price of everything. Check your addition carefully, for she will!”

Andrew wrote as the men directed—so many kegs of nails, so many shovels and axes, so many barrels of flour and stockfish, two hundred wool hats, five hundred blankets. They worked for days going over old expedition records and provisioning logs.

“But what about toys?” Andrew asked suddenly.

“Toys?” Tremayne and Mr. Harriot exclaimed together. “We’re taking no children. What will the explorers want with toys?”

“We’ve got gifts for the chiefs and grown people we meet,” Andrew answered. “We’ll want to make their children our friends too. Tops and puzzles, dolls to dress, whistles, toy animals on wheels with strings to pull, hobbyhorses…”

“But they don’t know horses—or pigs or cattle, for that matter,” Tremayne said.

Pena looked at Andrew and nodded. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “The children might become our first friends and bring the others along.”

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Harriot after a pause. “Add toys to the list.”

The next day, they finished drafting and polishing. Their appeal to the Queen—including the list of supplies and toys—ran sixty-three pages.

Tremayne hurried back to Plymouth.

William was called to help Andrew write the final copies. Their backs and necks ached as their fingers stained black with ink and the fine sand they used for drying got up their noses and in their hair. They both had cuts where their penknives slipped as they sharpened the quills.

Mr. Raleigh composed the title page: “A Discourse of Western Planting: Certain reasons to induce Her Majesty and the State to take in hand the western voyage and the planting therein.”

That afternoon, he and Mr. Hakluyt went to Whitehall Palace to present their appeal to the Queen. Mr. Harriot went along in case she had questions about what the explorers might require.

Late in the day, against all orders for secrecy, in his high excitement Mr. Harriot sent a messenger from the palace with a note for Andrew:

“It goes! The Queen adventures the ship
Tyger
and four hundred pounds of the Irish spice—gunpowder from the Tower. More, she lends her name. In an inspiration of flattery, Mr. Raleigh proposed naming the place ‘Virginia’ after her celebrated condition. It is said she smiled, so it is allowed. With her name attached, the colony is more than his venture, it is hers as well, and indeed all England’s. In her pleasure he is now Sir Walter. He has ordered a seal struck with new arms and title, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord and Governor of Virginia.’ Her Lord Treasurer fought against it all until the Queen in fury told him, ‘I have been strong enough to lift you out of the dirt, and I am still able to cast you down again.’

“Burn this.”

Andrew’s hands shook as he folded the note into his pocket. He didn’t burn it. In his excitement he forgot what that news might mean to the Spaniards. He forgot all about Sir Walter’s orders for secrecy. He couldn’t stand still! He had to tell someone! That night, he sent Mr. Harriot’s note on to his father with this scribbled on the outside: “We’re going to Virginia! Get this to Tremayne!”

Days later, Andrew was dirty and sweating, hoeing squashes with Pena, when he was ordered to the turret. There was no time to wash or change.

Mr. Harriot was there, ghastly pale, rubbing his hands together, his eyes wide when they met Andrew’s. Sir Walter was darker than the boy had ever seen him.

“Where is it?” Sir Walter demanded.

Andrew knew what he meant. His weakness clutched at his chest. He had difficulty getting breath.

“What, sir?” he stammered at last.

“The letter Mr. Harriot sent you.”

A lie flickered. It died on the boy’s tongue.

“I sent it home,” he panted.

“So you did,” said Sir Walter, holding up a sheet of paper, “and here’s the copy made by a Spanish agent at Plymouth. Interesting reading for the Spaniards!

“Why did you do this against my orders?”

All was over anyway. Andrew spoke his heart, even though it was pounding so hard he thought it would jump out of his chest.

“Pride, sir. Pride in what we’d done persuading the Queen.”

Sir Walter gave him a long look. “‘Pride goeth before a fall’ is the maxim,” he muttered.

Andrew stood straight, his eyes held to Mr. Raleigh’s as he waited to hear him say, “Go!”

Mr. Raleigh turned away and walked to the window. “Of course they knew it already,” he said. “But out of pride you might someday give them the bit they don’t have, the piece that works as the key.

“Maybe now you will believe how good their taps are, how thoroughly we are watched.

“Enough,” he muttered. “You both spoke truly. You’re valuable to the cause. Get back to it, but study to be quiet. And, Andrew,” he added, “this shortness of breath you suffer. It is like your blush. Every actor knows it. When you feel it coming, force yourself to breathe deep before you speak.”