Part 1 (1/2)

The Sea-Hawk

by Raphael Sabatini

NOTE

Lord Henry Goade, who had, as we shall see, some personal acquaintance with Sir Oliver Tressilian, tells us quite bluntly that he was ill-favoured But then his lordshi+p is addicted to harsh judgments and his perceptions are not always normal He says, for instance, of Anne of Cleves, that she was the ”ugliest wolean fros it would seem to be extremely doubtful whether he ever saw Anne of Cleves at all, and we suspect hi no more than a slavish echo of the coliness of this bride he procured for his Bluebeard master To the common voice from the brush of Holbein, which permits us to form our own opinions and shows us a lady who is certainly very far fro his lordshi+p's harsh stricture

Si in his pronounceed in this belief by the pen-portrait which he himself appends to it ”He was,” he says, ”a tall, powerful fellow of a good shape, if we except that his ar and that his feet and hands were of an unconess In face he arthy, with black hair and a black forked beard; his nose was big and very high in the bridge, and his eyes sunk deep under beetling eyebroere very pale-coloured and very cruel and sinister He had--and this I have ever re, deep, rough voice, better suited to, and no doubt oftener employed in, quarter-deck oaths and foulnesses than the worshi+p of his Maker”

Thus ering disapproval of the man to intrude upon his description of him The truth is that--as there is as--is lordshi+p was so of a misanthropist It was, in fact, his misanthropy which drove him, as it has driven many another, to authorshi+p He takes up the pen, not soa chronicle of his own tiendered in him by his fall froood to say of anyone, and rarely mentions one of his contemporaries but to tap the sources of a picturesque invective After all, it is possible to ht and a man of action--a combination as rare as it is usually deplorable The one far had he not been ruined at the outset by the ht have becoland but for a certain proneness to intrigue Fortunately for him--since head where nature had placed it--he came betimes under a cloud of suspicion His career suffered a check; but it was necessary to afford him some compensation since, after all, the suspicions could not be substantiated

Consequently he was removed from his command and appointed by the Queen's Grace her Lieutenant of Cornwall, a position in which it was judged that he could do littleof his a a life of comparative seclusion, he turned, as so many other men similarly placed have turned, to seek consolation in his pen He wrote his singularly crabbed, narrow and superficial History of Lord Henry Goade: his own Times--which is a miracle of injuvenations, distortions, hteen enorothic characters, he gives his own version of the story of what he ter his prolixity, exhausted this subject in the first five of the eighteen tomes, he proceeds to deal with so much of the history of his own day as came immediately under his notice in his Cornish retirelish history his chronicles are entirely negligible, which is the reason why they have been allowed to remain unpublished and in oblivion But to the student who attempts to follow the history of that extraordinary man, Sir Oliver Tressilian, they are entirely invaluable And, since I havethat I should here at the outset acknowledge my extreme indebtedness to those chronicles Without them, indeed, it were ientleht have becoire, as his lordshi+p terms it--but for certain matters which are to be set forth

Lord Henry wrote with knowledge and authority, and the tale he has to tell is very complete and full of precious detail He was, himself, an eyewitness of much that happened; he pursued a personal acquaintance with many of those ere connected with Sir Oliver's affairs that he ht aossip that was to be gleaned along the countryside too trivial to be recorded I suspect hi received no little assistance froh in the land, which see portion of his narrative

R S

PART I SIR OLIVER TRESSILIAN

CHAPTER I THE HUCKSTER

Sir Oliver Tressilian sat at his ease in the lofty dining-room of the handsome house of Penarrohich he owed to the enterprise of his father of lamented and lamentable ineer nao as one of the assistants of the faular and Italianate grace for so reether with the story of its construction, a word in passing

The Italian Bagnolo who combined with his salient artistic talents a quarrelsome, volcanic humour had the mischance to kill a man in a brawl in a Southwark tavern As a result he fled the town, nor paused in his headlong flight from the consequences of that murderous deed until he had all but reached the very ends of England Under what circumstances he became acquainted with Tressilian the elder I do not know But certain it is that thewas a very tiitive, Ralph Tressilian--who appears to have been inveterately partial to the company of rascals of all denonolo repaid the service by offering to rebuild the decaying half-ti taken the task in hand he went about it with all the enthusiasm of your true artist, and achieved for his protector a residence that was a e and outlandish district There arose under the supervision of the gifted engineer, worthy associate of Messer Torrigiani, a noble two-storied ht and sunshi+ne by the enormously tall mullioned s that rose almost from base to summit of each pilastered facade Theby a massive balcony, the whole surrace, now partly clad in a green mantle of creepers Above the burnt red tiles of the roof soared lory of Penarrow--that is, of the new Penarrow begotten of the fertile brain of Bagnolo--was the garden fashi+oned out of the tangled wilderness about the old house that had crowned the heights above Penarrow point To the labours of Bagnolo, Tinolo had cut those handsome esplanades, had built those noble balustrades bordering the three terraces with their fine connecting flights of steps; himself he had planned the fountain, and with his own hands had carved the granite faun presiding over it and the dozen other statues of nyleareen But Time and Nature had smoothed the lawns to a velvet surface, had thickened the handsoes, and thrust up those black spear-like poplars that completed the very Italianate appearance of that Cornish de-roo all this as it was displayed before hi Septeood to see, and life very good to live Now no man has ever been known so to find life without some immediate cause, other than that of his environment, for his optimism Sir Oliver had several causes

The first of these--although it was one which he --was his equipestion; the second was that he had achieved honour and renown both upon the Spanish Main and in the late harrying of the Invincible Ar of the late Invincible Armada--and that he had received in that the twenty-fifth year of his life the honour of knighthood froin Queen; the third and last contributor to his pleasant mood--and I have reserved it for the end as I account this to be the proper place for the most important factor--was Dan Cupid who for once seenity and who had so contrivedOf Mistress Rosamund Godolphin ran an entirely smooth and happy course

So, then, Sir Oliver sat at his ease in his tall, carved chair, his doublet untrussed, his long legs stretched before him, a pensive smile about the firm lips that as yet were darkened by no more than a small black line of moustachios (Lord Henry's portrait of hientleman had just dined, as the platters, the broken on on the board beside hi pipe--for he had acquired this newly i--and drearateful that fortune had used him so handsomely as to enable him to toss a title and some measure of renown into his Rosamund's lap

By nature Sir Oliver was a shrewd fellow (”cunning as twenty devils,” is my Lord Henry's phrase) and he was also aYet neither his natural wit nor his acquired endowht him that of all the Gods that rule the destinies of mankind there is none more ironic and malicious than that sa the incense of that pipe of his The ancients knew that innocent-see boy for a cruel, impish knave, and they mistrusted him Sir Oliver either did not know or did not heed that sound piece of ancient wisdoriht pensive eyes smiled upon the sunshi+ne that flooded the terrace beyond the long mullioned , a shadow fell athwart it which he little drea across the sunshi+ne of his life

After that shadow caay of raiment under a broad black Spanish hat decked with blood-red pluure passed the s, stalking deliberately as Fate

The srew thoughtful, his black brows contracted until no le deep furrow stood between theer that erstwhile gentle pensive smile It was transformed into a shtened his lips even as his brows relaxed, and invested his brooding eyes with a glea, crafty and almost wicked

Came Nicholas his servant to announce Master Peter Godolphin, and close upon the lackey's heels ca upon his beribboned cane and carrying his broad Spanish hat He was a tall, slender gentleman, with a shaven, handsohtiness; like Sir Oliver, he had a high-bridged, intrepid nose, and in age he was the younger by soer than was the mode just then, but in his apparel there was no entlereat height in welcoraceful visitor in the throat and set hi