away.”
He smiled at me then and it seemed a very long moment that we looked at each other.
“The trading ships would have to be equipped with guns,” my father said.
“There is no doubt of that,” replied Fennimore warmly, “for there will always be pirates. We must be ready. Our shipyards should now be working at full strength. We need ships, ships, ships.”
“England has always had need of ships,” said Carlos.
“But rarely as urgently as now. We have this breathing space. I doubt the Spaniards will ever recover from the trouncing they’ve had. Our rivals will be the Dutch. We must be prepared to meet the challenge.”
“And this,” said my father, “is what you wish to speak to me about.”
“Captain Pennlyon, your praises are sung all along these coasts and farther. The Queen herself has spoken of you as one of the guardians of the realm.”
“God bless her,” said my father. He lifted his glass and we all drank to Queen Elizabeth.
“May this be the beginning of a new era,” said Fennimore earnestly. “The great age of peace, trade and prosperity because of these great blessings.”
“Amen,” said my mother.
My father looked at her and I saw the faint smile which passed between them; I knew then that she would persuade him to consider Fennimore’s proposal, whatever it was going to be, and that he would.
After that the conversation became more general.
Jacko had two of the new medals which had been struck to commemorate the victory. We all laughed over the one on which was engraved “ Venit, vidit, fugit ,” a play on Julius Caesar’s “I came, I saw, I conquered.” With the Spaniards they had come, seen and fled.
My father kept gazing at it and chuckling over it.
My mother said: “The Captain has suffered a great bereavement. He has lost his Spaniards. What shall you do, Jake, with no one to curse, no throats to cut, none to run through with your sword?”
“I doubt not,” he said, his eyes flashing fire at her, “that there are some lurking in that poxy land who will yet feel the steel of my sword.”
Edwina commented that she had heard that Robert Dudley’s death had caused the Queen great sorrow. “She truly loved him,” she said. “What a pity she could not have married him. I believe she would have been happy to do so.”
“She was too wise for that,” said Fennimore. “She is a great Queen. England comes first with her. She would let no man come between her and her duty to her country.”
“I like the medal,” said my mother, “which stresses the fact that she is a woman and that a woman was at the heart of our victory. ‘ Dux femina facti .’ It is a heartening thought … for us women.”
“She is an unusual woman, don’t forget, and she wears a crown,” said Jake. “’Twould be a sorry state of affairs if all women thought they could govern men.”
“’Twould be worth a try,” retorted my mother. “You have all been saying—and my husband in particular—that we have just had the most resounding victory ever known. And a woman was at the heart of it. I like that medal.”
“There were men who served her well,” pointed out Fennimore. “But perhaps they did so because she was a woman.”
Edwina said that in her opinion men and women should work together. There should be no rivalry between them. They should be complementary one to the other.
“If men would remember that, there would be complete understanding, between the sexes,” said my mother.
Penn said: “Is it true that Robert Dudley was poisoned?”
There was a brief silence at the table. It was not usually wise to discuss such matters freely, but over the last weeks we had all grown a little less careful.
Court affairs were always of the utmost interest to us, none the less so because, being so far from London, we usually heard of them some time after they had taken place. This distance may well have made us perhaps more reckless than we would have dared be had we lived