Armada

‘I feared for you,’ she said, holding his gaze steadily.

‘I was in God’s care.’

‘We are all in God’s hand,’ she quoted and Seeley nodded solemnly.

‘Was the enterprise successful?’

‘More than we could have hoped,’ Seeley replied proudly. ‘My share of the purse should be significant, enough perhaps for us to increase our holdings. The heretic Spanish have been badly bloodied. Drake is confident that their Armada will not sail this season.’

‘And in your steadfast love you will cut off my enemies, and you will destroy all the adversaries of my soul, for I am your servant,’ his mother recited.

‘Amen,’ Seeley replied but noticed that his mother was crying again.

‘I’m sorry. I should not ask about such things, but …’

She covered her face with her hands and sobbed, her shoulders shuddering with each breath she tried to draw. ‘They took everything. That antichrist Philip, and Mary, I pray her soul burns forever in hellfire. They left your father with nothing … and now we … we live …’ Tears overwhelmed her.

Seeley tightened his grip on her forearm, trying to reach her through her grief. He knew he could not. It was a scene he had witnessed too many times, from his youngest days, and the dormant anger within him reared its head once more.

He had never known the life his mother remembered, the life she had enjoyed in her youth and for the brief years after she married Seeley’s father. That social status and wealth had been seared from their grasp by the flames of execution. They had emerged from hiding with the death of Mary Tudor and the ascension of Elizabeth but the lives they had known before were lost forever. Privilege had become strife and over the years their pride was slowly consumed by supplication and labour.