Here Was a Man Read online

  Also by Norah Lofts

  The Concubine

  The King’s Pleasure

  Touchstone

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1963 by Norah Lofts

  Copyright renewed © 1964 by Norah Lofts

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

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  ISBN-10: 1-4391-0064-0

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-0064-6

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  Contents

  PART ONE

  Chapter One BUDLEIGH POINT IN THE COUNTY OF DEVON

  Chapter Two THE NETHERLANDS

  Chapter Three BALLY-IN-HARSH, IRELAND

  Chapter Four WHITEHALL

  Chapter Five HATFIELD

  Chapter Six THE MERMAID TAVERN

  Chapter Seven LONDON

  Chapter Eight THE RING MEADOW

  Chapter Nine WHITEHALL

  Chapter Ten LONDON

  Chapter Eleven IRELAND; LONDON

  Chapter Twelve THE TOWER

  PART TWO

  Chapter Thirteen DARTMOUTH

  Chapter Fourteen SHERBORNE

  Chapter Fifteen GUIANA

  Chapter Sixteen LONDON

  Chapter Seventeen CADIZ AND LONDON

  Chapter Eighteen HAMPTON COURT

  Chapter Nineteen HAMPTON COURT

  Chapter Twenty ESSEX HOUSE, THE STRAND

  Chapter Twenty-one THE TOWER YARD

  Chapter Twenty-two SHERBORNE

  Chapter Twenty-three HAMPTON COURT

  PART THREE

  Chapter Twenty-four WINDSOR CASTLE

  Chapter Twenty-five THE TOWER

  Chapter Twenty-six WHITEHALL

  Chapter Twenty-seven THE TOWER

  Chapter Twenty-eight LONDON

  Chapter Twenty-nine THE CANARIES

  Chapter Thirty TRINIDAD

  The Conclusion OLD PALACE YARD

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  BUDLEIGH POINT IN THE COUNTY OF DEVON

  June 23, 1568

  We’ve only one virginity to lose,

  And where we lose it, there our hearts will be.

  OLD HARKESS PAUSED IN HIS dragging of the boat to the water’s edge, and listened. There were no sounds except the sighing of the summer sea and the swish of the wind through the rough grass at the cliff’s top, and he was not listening for those. He sighed, for he was an old man, and lazy, and a little help with the launching and the rowing was very welcome on these warm nights. He spat on his hands and took a fresh hold on the boat. Twice after that he paused, and the third time heard what he had been waiting for, the quick step, the hurried breathing, and presently the voice calling breathlessly, “Harky, wait for me. Harky.”

  Urgent as was the call, it was not loud, and the old man smiled in the darkness; a cautious one, Wally, for all his eagerness. He called back, quietly, “Ahoy, lad.” Out of the shadows a figure came stumbling, threw itself silently upon the boat, and with the old man’s apparent help, dragged it into the water. As they clambered in the boy said, with reproach in his voice, “I believe you were going without me.”

  “I didn’t want to. I like a bit of company, as you know. But ’twas getting latish and the nights are short now. I thought they’d kept you in up at the house.”

  “They tried. Father locked me in, but thank God I’m still thin enough for the window, and light enough for the wisteria.”

  “You won’t allust be. What’ll you do then?”

  “I’ll be gone before then. I’m to go to Oxford this autumn.”

  “I shall miss you, Wally.”

  “Not as much as I shall you, Harky. Any boy who’ll lend you a hand is the same to you. You’re Odysseus to me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A bald sailor who was always talking.”

  “Nice thing to call me!”

  “High praise really. Where’re you making for?”

  “Straight out from the Point. ’Tis a French ship with a cargo of best Bordeaux. ’S’ pity your father’s so set against the night wine, Wally. Many’s the cheap drink he might have.”

  “Oh, father.” The boy’s voice was a shrug. “He’s got trouble enough without running foul of the Excise men. Devon men are always wrong; they upset Mary by being Protestant, and now Elizabeth is all against the privateering.”

  “Only when it’s near home, lad. If your father and his friends were busy in the Indies she’d call them the brightest jewels in her crown.”

  The word “Indies” struck like a gong in the boy’s mind.

  “Here, I’ll row, Harky. You take a rest. She’ll be heavier coming back.”

  Nothing loath the old man drew in his oars and sat back.

  “Why’s your father so set against the sea for you, Wally? He’s a seaman himself.”

  “That’s just why. There’s nothing in it, he says. I’m to study for the law or the Church, and then look for preferment. Kate Ashley’s a cousin of father’s, and she has the Queen’s ear and will speak for me.”

  “Well, no doubt that’d be a steady safe thing to be. But you’d be wasted as a clerk, lad.”

  “Maybe. Still, learning can do you no harm. Anyway, I can’t be a sailor like Humphrey, I’m always sick at sea. Nights like this are all very well. And oh, but I’ve a mind to see the Indies and all that vast country beyond them.”

  “Ah, it’s fair enough, some of it, and rich too. But you ain’t so welcome there as you was in my young days. Thick with Spaniards, and the Indians so savage with the treatment they’ve had that they’re waiting behind every tree to put a poisoned arrow through your guts.”

  “They’ll all be wiped out soon, though. Remember what you were telling me the other night.”

  “About the thousands that were driven into the silver mines and never came out again? Yes, I dare say you’re right. Still anybody that sets foot in that continent from now on’ll have to fight every step, I’m thinking.”

  They both fell silent, the old man thinking of the far countries that had held no romance for him, that had been places where one was hungry or thirsty or in danger, and the boy thinking of the far countries too, but as places that drew him as inexplicably as a magnet draws a needle. He knew that Harkess would mock at his thoughts, could he know them. Harky said that four thousand slaves were driven into a silver mine, but he didn’t see them in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t see, in that driving, the gesture of the conqueror. He didn’t see the silver delved for by dark slaves from the dark earth, pouring its silver stream into the treasure galleons that sailed with it, stately into Cadiz. He didn’t want Harky to think like that. Enough for him to supply the fact, and to leave the image unsullied by his thoughts. And in Harkess’s simplicity and realism may have lain the secret of the enormous influence of his casual words upon young Raleigh’s life.

  Presently the dark hulk of a ship loomed up; Harkess took his oars again, and they drew alongside carefully. The wine i
n its roped casks was stowed neatly in the bottom of the boat; money changed hands, a few sentences were spoken in the smugglers’ peculiar tongue that was neither French nor English, and Raleigh and Harkess began pulling for the shore. They spoke little, for the laden boat demanded all their care and strength; once Harkess spoke, but only to say, “Second cave, Wally.”

  Within about a hundred yards of the shore Raleigh halted his oars and turned his head, listening. Harkess stopped rowing and said quietly, “What is it?”

  “Somebody’s at the cave if I’m not mistaken. Can you hear anything?”

  “Hearing’s not what it was. But there…there was a light. God’s breath, it’s that Trebor, he’s been on the watch for weeks. We can’t land, Wally. We must pull round the Point and hope to get it all under cover at Mother Shale’s before morning. If we don’t you’ll have the pleasure of the sight of me in the stocks. As for you, your father’d…”

  “Flay me,” said Raleigh.

  Already there was a hint of coming light in the sky to the east and they bent their backs, working the oars like slaves in the galleys. To get round the Point was always a hard task, currents met there, and at intervals a swirl of frothy water betrayed the presence of hidden rocks. By the time they were round they could see each other, they had both discarded all clothes but their breeches and the sweat was running off them in streams. Once round, however, they were out of sight of whoever had been watching the cave, and stood a reasonable chance of retaining both their cargo and their liberty. Mother Shale’s stood in a dip in the cliff, sheltered from view on all sides except that facing the sea. It was a long, low, rambling building which could be alehouse, farm, smugglers’ rendezvous or brothel according to who came inquiring. There were always barrels in her cellar, but seldom the same barrels two nights running, and the same might be said of the horses in her stable.

  She herself was a villainous old woman. She bore on her back the marks of a whipping that she had received through the streets of Exeter for being a wanton, long ago. That whipping had put her definitely on the side of the lawbreakers, and many a smuggler, rogue, and wench in trouble had had cause to bless those stripes.

  She came to the window in response to a shower of pebbles sped from Raleigh’s hand. Ten words from Harkess informed her of the night’s doings and brought her stumbling to the door. In a quarter of an hour the wine was in her cellar, and the boat a foot below the sand in the cove beside the house. Meantime someone within doors had stirred up the ashes of the fire that seldom died completely, and soon Harkess and Raleigh, shivering in the cold morning air, were crouched beside it, wooden platters of fat bacon on their knees, and horn cups of strong ale in their hands. The boy, who had been awake all night and subjected to unusual strain for some hours, could barely stay awake long enough to finish his breakfast. He roused himself for just long enough to say to Harkess, “I must be getting back,” but he never heard Harkess reply, “You can’t go in that state, lad. And anyhow, you can’t get home before they miss you.” His head had fallen forward and he was asleep.

  When he woke he became conscious first of the scent of new hay and then of the red glow with which he was surrounded. Then he saw the girl who had waked him looking at him. She had red smiling lips, and she was laughing at him. He sat up quickly and began to pick the hay from his hair and clothes, blushing slightly at the indignity of being caught so by a laughing girl. She laughed again, and catching up a handful of loose hay, tossed it over him, and said, “Sleepyhead. You’ve been asleep all day. Harkess is having his supper.”

  Raleigh scrambled to his feet, shaking the hay from his head, brushing it from his clothes. But the girl was in a teasing mind, and fast as he cleaned himself she tossed more on him. At last, more to gain time than from any desire to play with her, he gathered a great armful and dropped it on her from his superior position on top of the heap. With a little squeal she threw herself on him, the hay flew wildly for several minutes. The red rays of the sunset danced with dust, and at last, spent and breathless, they dropped down beside one another on the tousled mound, and looked at each other, panting. He saw then that she was both older than himself and very pretty. Her hair that was black where it hugged her head had a web of reddish light over it where the loose strands stood up in the sun. Her skin was like honey, and her parted lips showed little white teeth, and a pink, pointed tongue. In her sharp nose and chin lay the threat that in a few years she would be unmistakably old Mother Shale’s granddaughter, but for the time being she was lovely. She pouted her lips to blow away a wisp of hair that had fallen over her nose, and then she leaned back, back until she was lying on the hay, with her arms curved above her head. The rolled-up sleeves of her cotton frock revealed the little blue veins that ran, slanting, from wrist to elbow, and the whole pose drew attention to the base of her neck where the un-tanned skin was startlingly white, and to the budding breasts that thrust their nipples against the thin material.

  Something unknown caught the boy by the throat. “You’re lovely,” he breathed. She laughed again, and threw out one arm to catch his head and draw it down to her face. He kissed her, clumsily and shyly at first, as he kissed his mother when occasion demanded. But in this, as in all things, he was fated to be a quick learner, and an expert when learned. And to the girl it was no new road. It was very easy.

  Harkess’s voice rang through the barn. “What are you at, Wally! I can’t wait any longer. You can finish your sleeping at home.”

  Shaking, the boy rose to his feet. The girl whispered, “Don’t say I’m here. Come again.”

  “I will,” he whispered, and slipped off the mound of hay, and came, with a well-simulated yawn, out of the shadowy barn to where Harkess stood in the last glow of sunset.

  “Never see such a boy for sleeping,” grumbled the old man. “Come on now, put your best foot forward, and I’ll come home with you and tell your father that the fault was none of yours.”

  “You needn’t trouble, Harky. I can deal with my father.”

  There was something in the tone that made Harkess look at him sharply. True he had said “Harky” in the old, boyish, friendly way, but there was something arrogant in the voice and in the rest of the speech that made Harkess suddenly conscious that this was the Squire’s son, and that he was only a foremast hand turned smuggler. Still, his kind old heart made him persist, “Are you sure? I’d hate for you to get into trouble through me.”

  Raleigh said, absently, “That’ll be all right,” and they walked on in silence.

  This then, thought the boy, was to be a man, with a man’s pleasures and privileges. He had known about it, of course, and rather recoiled from it, but he had never guessed. How sweet she was, soft and yielding and wise! Better not to dwell on her wisdom perhaps, it emphasized his own ignorance. But oh what paths, what prospects of pleasures had been opened tonight! With the Indies forgotten, he bade Harkess a careless good night and went to face his father. He was a man now, he was not going to be flogged on this or any other night. The very idea of an irreverent hand being laid upon him made him burn with shame where yesterday there would have been fear only. And so deep was his new assurance, so soundly rooted in natural laws, that his father after one glance at his flushed and defiant face put all thought of corporal punishment behind him, forever.

  Chapter Two

  THE NETHERLANDS

  November 17, 1572

  IT WAS A NOVEMBER EVENING. Three men sat huddled over a brazier in a leaky tent, waiting for a fourth. They might have been waiting for him to complete the number for a card game, for the cards lay in a pile on an upturned box, which held also a bottle of wine, three parts empty, and some horn cups. But there was an expression of anxiety upon their faces, and a certain tension in the way that they sat upon their stools that belied the peaceful supposition. Humphrey Gilbert was boring fresh holes in a belt that had stretched from constant soaking; the nail that he used squeaked in the wet leather and every now and then he paused with it uplifted in his
hand and listened; then, assured that the sound was not the one that he awaited, he would shake his large head, lower the nail, and resume his squeaking. At each pause Philip Sydney would hold his pen still and look toward the door of the tent and wait. Then, as Gilbert shook his head, Sydney would look toward him, catch his eye with an expression of sympathy, and go on with his writing. The third man seemed less concerned. He tilted his stool upon one leg and swiveled round upon it; he hummed softly behind his closed lips; he eyed the bottle and grimaced as he realized how little was left in it; and at every pause of Gilbert’s he let out an impatient sigh.

  Presently Sydney laid down his pen, closed the little vessel that contained his ink and folded his paper.

  “It’s useless,” he said in his quiet voice, “the boy has been gone twelve hours or more. Something must have happened.”

  “I don’t trust the country people,” said Gilbert miserably. “If it comes to blows they’re as likely as not to turn against their allies, to curry favor with the Spaniards. It’s my fault, I should never have let him go. He’s but a lad when all’s said.”

  “Well,” said Gasgoigne, righting his stool with a thud, “if aught has happened to him it’s an end he would have chosen for himself. And I for one would as soon have a Spanish bullet, or for that matter a Dutch pike, through my spleen as hang about here up to my eyes in mud for the rest of my days, as we look like doing.”

  “We weren’t talking of you.” Sydney spoke quietly still, but there was a wealth of dislike in his voice. “You may have little to live for. Walter is young, far too young to…”