Liverpool, Summer 1446
Liverpool, Summer
NOBODY WILL TELL me when my captivity will be over, but I am placed into the safekeeping of the Stanleys. It is their officers and guards who take me from one of their grand houses to another and then to their port of Liverpool.
The little ship at the dock rises and falls with the waves. ‘I cannot go,’ I say urgently to the captain. ‘I suffer from seasickness and fear of deep water. I cannot get on that ship.’
His face is closed and white, as if he has been warned against being enchanted, as if he might tie himself to the mast to be deaf to the songs of sirens. ‘We’re all afraid of this passage,’ he says too loudly, and wins a laugh from his men. ‘We’re all afraid of these deeps.’
‘I tell you, I will not go!’
‘I am ordered to load you and unload you,’ he says. ‘With or without your consent.’
I gasp at his impertinence. ‘I have done penance for my sins and I am forgiven,’ I tell him. ‘Who are you to threaten me?’
‘I am Captain John Glegg, custodian of Castle Rushen and Peel Castle, Isle of Man,’ he tells me. ‘And I am ordered by my lord Thomas Stanley to take you to the Isle of Man.’
‘Why?’
‘Imprisonment.’
‘I have done penance – I am not to be punished!’
His gaze goes past my face to the creaking ship. ‘I should have said for safekeeping.’
‘Till when?’
‘Till they tell me to bring you back again.’