Hell and High Water

by Tanya Landman

Her answer came back at once. “The Linnet.”

  He laughed in surprise. “Your memory’s extraordinary!”

  “It’s not the kind of thing I could go forgetting.” Letty’s tone wiped the smile from Caleb’s face. “The Linnet is the ship my father sailed on.”

  8.

  For some moments Caleb was speechless. Was this a joke? But no … she seemed sincere. Barely controlling his temper, he said, “Letty, why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Because of Anne.” Letty’s voice was a whisper.

  “Anne? What has she to do with this?” he demanded.

  When Letty lifted her face there was such anguish on it that Caleb’s anger melted away. “Nothing. That’s just the point.” She began to talk, the words coming thick and fast as though she wanted to spit them out before they choked her. “Anne doesn’t ever come and see Father off – the sea scares her stiff and she hates watching him sail – so she didn’t know there were convicts on that ship and I didn’t want to tell her. You know how she is. She feels things so deeply, she’s so soft-hearted! I thought it best to let her think there was nothing unusual about the cargo his ship was carrying because she’d tear herself to pieces thinking of those convicts. There was something shaming about it, Caleb, something dirty and vile for all it’s a legal trade. I didn’t know what it might do to her so I decided she didn’t need to know anything about it. I knew Father wouldn’t say anything – I saw the look on his face when they were loaded on board: he was mortified, but he doesn’t get a say in what a ship carries. So I kept quiet, but then you came along talking about how your Pa had got himself transported and how you’d walked here and I started wondering if one of those men might have been him, but I couldn’t say anything then either because how could I tell Anne that maybe, just maybe, her husband was carrying her brother off to America like he was a piece of salt pork? And how could I tell you that maybe, just maybe, my father might be the gaoler of yours? I didn’t think there was any sense saying anything because it wasn’t like I could change any of it.” She drew a breath and then exclaimed, “And it might not be true! I don’t know where those convicts were from, don’t know their names, don’t know anything for sure. I just kept hoping and praying I was wrong.”

  Letty was sniffing now and swallowing as though she was trying to hold tears at bay. He felt the urge to put his arms around her but feared she’d push him away. Instead he said awkwardly, “I wish you hadn’t carried this for so long alone!”

  “Well,” she said, wiping a hand across her face. “It’s out now.”

  “It is. And I will find out what happened. It may be hard but I need to know the truth. I think you do too?” Her face was pale, her expression grim, but she nodded. “How would I find out if Pa was on the Linnet?” he continued. “Do they keep records of such things?”

  “In the customs house, yes. The officers write down everything that goes out from Tawpuddle. Everything that comes in too. They’re over the ships like rats, poking into every nook and cranny, checking the cargo. They’ve got to tax it, see, for the king. Bill of lading, they call it.”

  Caleb recalled the phrase: he’d heard it the day he’d first arrived in Tawpuddle. He remembered the place he’d stopped at to ask the name of the town, where men sat in a line at desks and one had demanded if he was off the Mary-Louise and if he’d brought the bill of lading – that must be the customs house. “I’ll go there, then. Yes, that would be the place to start.”

  It wouldn’t be easy, he thought, and it must be done secretly. No one but Letty could know. But here at last was a definite task: a firm course of action. He felt his mood lightening.

  Taking a deep breath, Letty picked up her basket of driftwood. Caleb shouldered his. Together they walked back to the cottage.

  Having made the decision, Caleb wanted to go to the customs house at once, but it was in Tawpuddle and he couldn’t leave his aunt’s house without good reason. He and Anne had a job hemming linen sheets for a trader in the town and it was three long, frustrating days before the task was completed to her satisfaction.

  When the sheets were at last finished, Anne tied them into a bundle. To Caleb’s annoyance she’d decided to deliver them herself, but Dorcas was fretful that morning, tired and tearful yet unable to settle or to rest, so Caleb volunteered to go in Anne’s place.

  He made the delivery. He collected the payment. And then he made his way towards the customs house.

  Everyone in Fishpool knew each other’s business inside out and back to front. It would no doubt be the same in Tawpuddle. He could not be seen to be lingering outside the place without people noticing and if word got around that he was looking for information concerning his father he could be in the gravest of dangers. And so he strolled along the quay as if he’d been bred to a life of idleness, seeming to admire the many ships whose masts bristled from the water like the spines of a hedgehog.

  The tides had been a mystery to him when he first arrived – he’d found the constant shifting of water strange and unnerving – but after several months at his aunt’s he’d got their measure and had timed his arrival carefully. Now, at high water, the port was at its busiest, bringing ships in while others prepared to sail the moment the tide turned. Cargoes would need to be inspected, accounted for. Letty had told him that Tawpuddle’s fishing fleet was due to depart for the cod banks of Newfoundland that very day and it seemed she was right. The quay was in chaos and the customs officers were fully occupied.

  He was careful not to get in anyone’s way. As well as the customs men there were plenty of seamen whose families had gathered to watch their men sail. Sweethearts clinging to their lovers; wives holding tight to their children while they bade their husbands goodbye; children embracing their fathers as if for the last time.

  When Pa had sailed there had been no one to call farewell or wish him a safe voyage. How lonely, how desolate it must have been. Caleb tried to shake free the picture that Letty had planted in his head: Pa, filthy and in shackles. He could not allow himself to think of that now. He needed to concentrate on the task ahead.

  When he drew near to the customs house he noticed that the door of the building was ajar and the place apparently unmanned. He glanced to the left, as if his attention had been caught by something of interest in the high street. Heart in his mouth, he crossed over, apparently making for the chandler’s. But as he passed the customs house he slipped inside, pulling the door closed behind him.

  He coughed noisily. No one emerged to see who’d come in. He was alone.

  A line of desks. Rows of shelves, groaning under a weight of thick ledgers. A ticking clock, loud and ominous in the empty room. His forehead began to prickle with sweat. He didn’t know what he was looking for, or where to begin. He wished Letty was with him but she wasn’t. He had to rely on his own wits now.

  Lying on the desk was an open ledger. It seemed as good a place as any to start. Pa had taught him to read but printed words were one thing – to decipher these men’s handwriting was more time-consuming. Their letters looped and curled and wound back on themselves as much as the river. Taking a breath to steady himself, he ran his finger along the line of writing and gradually made sense of the thing. The name of the ship and the date of sailing were written at the top of each page, and each bill was kept in strict chronological order. He started to turn back through the heavy pages but this volume went back only two months so there was no mention of the Linnet.

  It must be in one of the volumes standing on the shelves then. Acutely aware of the clock’s ticking he crossed the room, frantically scanning their spines, and found that – thank God! – the customs men were meticulous in their approach to record-keeping. It did not take him long to locate the correct volume and, heaving it down, he began leafing through the pages. Eventually he found the sheets from the month of July, when Letty said the Linnet had sailed.

  There had been a vast number of vessels going in and out of the port that month. It took him some time –
time in which his palms itched, his heart pounded and the sweat began to trickle down the sides of his face – before Caleb found what he was looking for.

  There it was. Black ink on cream paper.

  “Outwards, Port of Tawpuddle, in the ship the Linnet, British-built about 70 tons. Luke Slater, a British man, captain for this present voyage to Maryland in America with ten crew besides.”

  The crew’s names were listed. One of them was Edward Avery – Letty’s father. And then came the details of the cargo.

  “365 bushels of Spanish salt

  4 boxes cutlery ware

  2 casks haberdashery

  17 bales containing Brocade, Broadcloth, Stockings, Duffles, Kerseys, Serges

  5 casks nails

  1 hogshead cordage

  1 box Lace and Silks

  1 box Hats

  7 bales Irish Linen

  7 bales wool

  6 hampers wrought pewter

  on account of Sir Robert Fairbrother.”

  The name jerked in his head like a fish caught on a line. Sir Robert! Was he, too, linked to the Linnet? Did Letty know of this? Caleb was gripped with sudden fury. Was this another secret she’d kept? Why hadn’t she told him of it?

  Forcing himself to keep calm, he read on:

  “12 convicts brought from Torcester: Jack Lancey, Mark Andrews, Thomas Sinnett, John Kingscot, Henry Meddon, Edwin Hampton, Robert Buckleigh, Walter Coombs, William Hockin, Edward Braddick, Richard Brendon, Joseph Chappell.”

  Joseph Chappell.

  Caleb traced Pa’s name with his finger. To see it written gave him a grim kind of satisfaction. It was true then: Pa had sailed for the Americas from Tawpuddle shortly before Caleb had arrived at his aunt’s house.

  It was a start. He would get to the bottom of this. Slowly, inch by inch, Caleb would creep towards the truth. He would find out why Pa’s body had washed up on the beach almost five months after he had sailed.

  And he would expose the villain responsible for it.

  9.

  His mind on fire with the implications of what he’d read, Caleb failed to notice that one of the customs men had finished his inspections on the quayside. Only when he heard a hand on the door latch did he look up.

  The man outside had paused and was greeting a passing acquaintance. Neither had seen him, but Caleb couldn’t leave the building now without both of them doing so. There was no time to close the ledger or return it to its place. He fled. There was nowhere for him to go but up the narrow staircase, nowhere for him to conceal himself but flat on the floor, under a sideboard. He lay there and tried to steady himself as one by one the customs men returned from the quay and took their places at their desks. If he didn’t grow calmer they’d hear the noisy hammering of his heart.

  There he stayed, expecting to hear a cry of rage when the officers saw their ledgers had been disturbed, expecting them to begin a search and for him to be dragged out by his heels and compelled to explain himself. But there was nothing. Through a crack in the floorboards he watched the movement of the men below. One of them closed the ledger Caleb had opened, and replaced it on the shelf. He didn’t even remark on it being out of place. There was the occasional hum of conversation, the scratching of pens on paper, the creak of floorboards as they went about their work. Slowly his frantic heartbeat steadied. All he could do was lie there and wait and watch.

  He became fascinated by the men who were going about their work. They all seemed to be orderly, decent, respectable people, ensuring regularity of business and fairness in administering the king’s taxes. Mariners came and went, passing over papers for signature, checking records. Those newly into port from long voyages were weary, stinking of the sea, eager to be off home to their families. Those about to depart were on edge, impatient to get underway. But then a ship’s captain entered, declaring he had brought in the Charming Sally’s record for their inspection. When the ledger was laid on the desk directly below Caleb’s peephole he saw that coins had been slid between the sheets. Coins which were then deftly palmed by a customs officer before he signed off the record as accurate and agreed. He had not had time, surely, to read a single line. The captain bade him a cheerful farewell and left. As Caleb lay there in his dusty hiding place that long afternoon the same thing happened time and again. It seemed to be quite routine for a captain or first mate to slip a few coins between the sheets of his ship’s record in order to get the signature the law required.

  Dishonesty. Corruption. Caleb’s lip curled in distaste. Oh, he knew there were pickpockets and thieves in the world: he’d kept a sharp lookout for them every market day in Torcester. But Pa had looked upon such people with a kindlier eye than Caleb. “Some are rogues, it’s true,” he’d said. “But most are poor and desperate.”

  It was the wealthy whose morals Pa had more often questioned. “Look around you. Magistrates, ministers, members of parliament, even the king – all of them skimming a little cream off the top for themselves. None of them get called thief! None of them swing on Gallows Hill. There are plenty of men in the city of Torcester who steal from those who have nothing. Only they call it business.”

  Caleb might be an innocent in the ways of seafaring men but he knew a bribe when he saw one. For all their apparent vigilance the customs men could be bought. By the end of the afternoon Caleb had begun to wonder if there was an honest man in the whole of Tawpuddle.

  He stayed hidden until the day’s end. When the men left the building, they locked him inside. His only means of escape was an upstairs window, through which he squeezed, praying for the darkness to conceal him. Hanging by his fingernails from the ledge, he dropped into the yard, sinking knee-deep into a midden heap.

  It broke his fall, but landing in such extremes of filth was a high price to pay for keeping his ankles intact. As he looked in disgust at the decaying dung and fresh excrement into which his feet had disappeared he thought he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He froze, scanning the shadows. A soft thud. A scrabble. A crunch. And then a cat emerged, a mouse dangling from its jaws. Thereafter all was still.

  He extricated himself from the heap. There was no time to get clean. He must return to his aunt’s, and quickly. He’d been gone the greater part of the day and she’d want to know what he’d been doing. Letty might have thought up some tale to tell Anne. Or she might not. He felt strangely uncertain about her since he’d seen Sir Robert’s name on the Linnet’s bill of lading. Why had she kept it from him? Could she be relied on? He didn’t know. Perhaps he’d better invent some plausible lie for Anne himself.

  But there were no questions asked on Caleb’s return. Indeed, Anne barely looked at him. She was beside herself with worry.

  Dorcas, who had been fretful and unwell when Caleb left that morning, had worsened. The child was lying by the hearth, tossing and turning in a high fever.

  10.

  Dorcas was slicked with sweat, her skin burning to the touch, but shivering so violently that her teeth chattered. When he entered the cottage the sight of her was enough to drive all thoughts of the customs house from Caleb’s mind. Almost all. Letty glanced at him and he gave her a brief nod to confirm what she’d long feared. A look of suffering passed across her face that pierced him to the core. How foolish he’d been! She wasn’t a child: playing games, keeping secrets. He’d been so wrapped up in Pa’s fate that he’d given no thought to Letty’s feelings. Her father was caught up in this murky business and the pain and shame weighed heavy on her. But she would not let Anne see any of it. Her face cleared almost at once. Her jaw was thrust forward. He realized then that her expression of furious indifference was an armour she donned to protect herself. He’d seen beneath it now and would be more careful with her in the future.

  Soon after Caleb’s return, Anne tried to carry Dorcas up to bed, but the girl screamed out in pain when she was touched. Anne sank to her knees, panic-stricken, frozen with fear. It was Caleb who fetched down the straw mattress from the loft; Caleb who stoked up th
e fire and put a kettle of water on to boil; Letty who tried to make Dorcas comfortable as the fever grew stronger, who washed her down when she soiled herself and wrapped her in clean linen. And all the while Anne sat mute and trembling and pale as death.

  A fever is a terrible thing: terrible for Dorcas to endure, terrible for the rest of them to watch. Caleb had never seen anything like it. The child tossed and turned and whimpered. None of them slept that night.

  Caleb longed to seize the disease, to fight and wrestle, to kick and pummel it into submission, but he could do nothing but sit and pray and hope that dawn would bring Dorcas some relief.

  It did not.

  By first light Dorcas was even worse. Caleb and Letty looked at each other, seeing their alarm reflected in the other’s eyes. The child’s colour was ghastly, her eyes bright but unseeing. She shrunk away when they tried to touch her. When Anne rose to her feet, saying she would fetch fresh water to bathe Dorcas, her legs buckled beneath her and she fell to the floor. Her brow was sheened with sweat, her palms clammy. Caleb lifted Anne as gently as he could and laid her beside her daughter on the mattress.

  That day, Letty and Caleb shared the invalids’ care. First, Letty went to the well while Caleb tended them by the fire. Later he gathered wood and she took his seat, watching, praying.

  Neither mother nor child would eat, so Caleb spooned what little ale they would take into their mouths. Letty moistened their brows with cooling water until both went into spasms of shivering and Anne begged that they stoke up the fire for she was cold, so very cold.

  As the day wore on, Anne and Dorcas slept in snatches, giving their nurses a little time to rest and talk.

  “Sir Robert’s name was on the bill,” Caleb told Letty quietly. “You didn’t tell me he had an interest in the Linnet.”

  She looked puzzled. “It’s no secret.”

  “I thought him just a landlord.”