Mistress of the Sea by Jenny Barden Read Free Book Online Page A

The day being come we were espied by the Spaniards, and pursued, and taken, and brought before the Vice Roy and head justices, who threatened to hang us . . .’
    —
From the account of the imprisonment by the Spanish in Mexico of the English survivors following the battle of San Juan de Ulúa as recorded by Miles Philips, one of the captives
(
in The Principal Navigations . . . by Richard Hakluyt
)
    The City of Mexico, the Americas
    ‘I AM NEXT.’ Kit felt the length of the reed in his hands. He held it up towards the light for all to see.
    The response was hushed.
    ‘May God have mercy on you . . .’
    ‘No prayers.’ Kit put an end to the muttering. ‘Say no prayers for me.’
    The five men with him fell silent. Someone shuffled and coughed, then only breathing could be heard.
    Kit pressed his back to the wall and clasped his hands round his knees. The others must not feel him shaking. He sought to be free from their touch, and that was possible now if he hunched up small. He had been close enough to his companions over the last few months, forced to rest in turns because there was so little room on the reed strewn floor. He had to find peace.
    He looked up at the light. It entered in slender rays through tiny holes set in stones that were too high to reach. The rays were his link to the world outside. His eyes fixed upon them. If he was taken to his death, then the light would fade and be gone, and later return with a dawn he would not know. But he could not accept that his death might be near. He could not conceive of a world continuing in which, for him, everything was over. Perhaps he had not lived long enough to come to terms with that idea. At only seventeen, how could he be reconciled to the end of his life? Heaven was not Earth, and it would be stranger than the difference between the Indies and England. He could not think of dying. He clenched his teeth.
    He had made himself brave in front of his friends, and he must not fail them now. They were all much older. When the time came to leave, he would have to show courage because they would be watching him. This was why the lots had been drawn: to give the next man chance to prepare, so that when the moment arrived he could be calm in going – to prove that Englishmen were not cowards.
    But he was afraid. After the first prisoner had been taken, the Spaniards had soon returned to drag another away. He might not have much longer. Sweat trickled down his sides. The air was motionless in the dark at the bottom of the cell. He bowed his head and gasped.
    What would happen? he wondered. All that was certain was that he would not be set free. He could be taken to another prison somewhere else in Mexico. He might be tried before one of the Viceroy’s courts, questioned again by the bishop, or marched back to the coast, all the way from the great city, to be delivered to the Inquisition in a ship bound for Spain.
    Someone groaned: a small quiet sound, but enough to make him think of other sounds he had heard.
    He might be tortured.
    For weeks on end he had listened to screams, cries that could have been made by anyone: sick or wounded, or deliberately hurt. But one man calling had been begging for his mother, that word had been clear. Who had he heard? Someone among the English prisoners that the Spaniards still held: any one of a hundred or more. Did it matter who he had heard? It mattered that he had not heard his brother crying out. He had not heard Will.
    He pressed his thumb against his teeth. It was something he knew he should not do. ‘Better way not,’ as his mother would say. ‘And thee be blessed with an angel’s face,’ she would add, as though that made any difference. But he took his hand from his mouth since she had entered his mind, and he imagined her nodding in an approving way.
    He should be praying.
    ‘Mother. Father,’ he mouthed without speaking. He named his sisters in the way he had always done in his private prayers: a name to ask