Martin Stephen: The galleon's grave

'Don't ever say wanting to be with me was stupid!' Gresham said, and pulled her towards him. They kissed again, and he felt the desire within him, the need to die within her. Yet he controlled it, somehow, using all the power over his own body he had taken so long to develop.

'I've been so scared,' he said, 'so scared of committing myself. I'd decided I hated people, could only love a cause. Then I hated it when I found I was loving you…'

What triggered it? Who knows? Who cares? It happened then. As it was always going to happen. As perhaps Anna's mother had known. Loss of control? A total, marvellous loss of control. A delirious, wonderful, extended loss of control, a blending of body and mind. Controlling everything always was overrated.

Had they fallen asleep? It was possible. Suddenly she was standing before him, fully dressed, her hair somehow magnificently rearranged. Prim. Proper.

'I love you very much,' she said, smiling at him. Yet why were there tears streaming down her face? Were they tears of happiness? Why that sadness in the smile?

'And I must marry Jacques Henri,' she said. There was a break in her voice, a bleak intensity in her eyes, red-rimmed now, something like an occasional shiver seeming to shake her body.

His world exploded. -

'Marry… how can you… I thought we… We've just… The best I ever…'

'Henry… my Henry… my very first lover…' The tenderness in her voice would have melted the frozen Thames. 'Please don't blame me. Please don't blame me!'

She moved towards him, and gently drew him to her.

He was sobbing! Henry Gresham was sobbing in front of a woman! The total shame! Crying on her shoulder, like a little boy reunited with his mother. Uncontrollably, as if a great wall had suddenly collapsed in on itself, the tears burned his cheeks, threatening to stain her dress.

'How can you…,' he spoke through his tears.

'You must listen to me,' she said softly. 'Now will you listen to me?'

Gresham nodded, his mind a lightning flash of discordance. Never commit yourself, his mind screamed at him. Never depend on another human! Never fall in love!

'I love you,' said Anna gently, 'as I believe you love me. And it is not only that I gave my word to my mother that means I must not marry you. It is more than that.'

'What more can there be other than what we feel for each other?' said Gresham bitterly, biting back the tears, too ashamed to wipe them from his cheek.

'I am all that is left of my family now. It dies with me, unless I make it live on.'

'Could we not breed easily enough?' asked Gresham, flinching at his own harshness.

'Children need a father. Henry Gresham could not give up his life of danger, not even for what we have between us. Henry Gresham has to push at the gates of death for him to feel alive. And we both know that one day soon the gates may close on him. And a woman needs her man, just as a child needs its father. I can love you, Henry Gresham. I can make love with you. But I cannot marry you, because you are not ready for marriage. You would chafe in marriage, feel imprisoned. It is not your time. Yet it is my time. Not my time to be a mistress to a man who has many more years of roving before him. My time to grow from being a girl and become a woman. To have children by a good man. A man for whom I will not have to drown, tell lies, be shipwrecked and spend nights in strange taverns. How strange that I shall miss it so much. You see,' she said, and there were tears in her eyes now, 'you have grown me up.'

'You're so sure this man will marry you?' asked Gresham. 'When you have seen each other for minutes, and exchanged no words?'

'I think he would walk out of a third-floor window for me, never mind backwards through a door. Women know these things.' She looked up at him from under her eyelashes, with the slightest hint of an impish grin on her full lips, at odds with the sadness and the tears in her eyes.

So much certainty. So much control. Would Henry Gresham ever have such certainty?

'And you will be content with him?' asked Gresham. He had not given up yet.

'I think he seems to be a good man, a kind man. At least, that is what the servants of the father said the last time we met.'

A terrible suspicion began to form in Gresham's mind.

'Have you… did you… was this always a possibility in your mind? That you might marry the son?'

‘I remember the son, when his fat father came to visit us. I remember him being very handsome, and very kind to me, like a sister. Yet with respect. And so I asked the servants how he behaved to them. The servants always know. People reveal themselves to their servants.'

Good God! Could any man ever understand the way a woman's mind worked?

'It is a good match for me,' said Anna. She was speaking to convince herself. Yet the tears were still gathering and rolling down her cheeks, Gresham noticed. 'He has wealth, and I will make sure it grows and he does not squander it. He is handsome, and I will make sure he does not regret coming to the same bed every night. And I will give him good, strong children, and run his house for him so that he thinks he is doing it all. And he will obey me, without realising it. That is what men want, is it not?'

'Will you allow us to meet again? If a certain Henry Gresham were to come calling in France…' whispered Gresham, placing his head close to her ear, feeling the warmth of her, smelling the delicious perfume, feeling her hair stroke his face.

She did not turn away, but stared ahead, not turning to meet him. ‘I would remember a hero, the man I chose as my first lover. A man I will always love. And I would refuse him access to my bed, seek to calm my pulse and deny my desire. A good woman does not cheat on her husband, not when he is well formed and virile and gives constancy in return.'

'So why did you sleep with me?' asked Gresham.

'Because all women are allowed one secret. I chose you to be my first lover. I choose Jacques Henri's son to be my second, and last. Only two people will ever know who my first lover was. And neither of them will tell the tale.' She turned and pushed him away gently. ‘I am sorry. We were two wild creatures, and I think we needed each other. You are still that wild creature. I cannot be so for any longer. All things have their term.'

A red flush came across Gresham's face. It was as if she'd read his mind.

'Used goods?' she chided him gently. 'How will Jacques. Henri know that he married a virgin? Oh, Henry Gresham…' it seemed as if he was about to giggle.

‘Sir Henry Gresham, please,' he said, trying to gain control of the situation.

'Sir Henry,' she said with a decorous little curtsey. 'Men are so naive. A little blood and a little gasp of pain… He will believe what his heart and mind tell him he wants to believe.'

Was it his imagination that recollected her small gasp of pain? Yet with him there had been no acting. He wondered at the vast clash of emotions in his head. A deep, deep sadness, a sense of an aching void that would never be filled. Anger, even, that someone he had chosen could reject him. And, despite it all, despite the void of loneliness that was his life, something of a slight sense of… relief.

Relief.

The irresistible force of his passion had collided with his immovable strength of need to be free of attachments, and had subsided. Rest in peace, he thought in a prayer to her dead mother. She has done what you wished. And I do not think I have harmed her in pursuing that wish.

There was a tap on the door, and a gruff call. Gresham flushed and opened it. Had Mannion been standing there all this time? Guarding the door? Closing his ears?

'Young Jacques Henri'll be having his ninth course for lunch unless you get a move on.'

They left Jacques Henri and Anna to make their mark on each other, and strolled to the other end of the Long Gallery.