Penelope Goes to Portsmouth

by M C Beaton

  Josiah scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘There’s a house in Sheep Street, hard by a gin-shop.’

  ‘Number?’

  ‘Ain’t got no number. Right o’ the gin-shop. Anyone stops her, she can say she’s meeting Josiah. Got that?’

  ‘She’ll be there in an hour,’ said Mr Fotheringay, suddenly relieved that his part in the proceedings was over. He turned and looked at Ben, who was cleaning his filthy fingernails with the point of a large knife, and then scuttled off.

  To his annoyance, his aunt stated she had no intention of going to Sheep Street on her own and her nephew must accompany her if he wished to see any of her money. She then loaded a brace of pistols, handed one to Mr Fotheringay, and tucked the other inside a large muff.

  ‘I don’t see why you don’t take one of those villainous servants of yours,’ complained Mr Fotheringay. ‘Old Biggs, for example, looks as if he could slit a throat and think nothing of it.’

  ‘Biggs is a fool. I have decided it is safer to deal only with you and your villains, John. Lead on!’

  The smugglers found it odd doing business with what appeared to be a lady of the quality, although she was so heavily veiled they could not make out much. But she was generous, very generous. They received a bag of gold and were told they would get the other half after they had done what they were being paid to do.

  ‘That’s that, I think,’ said Lady Carsey as she and her nephew walked away from the dingy Sheep Street.

  ‘I think they’re the genuine article, Auntie. Does it not bother you that they might take your money and not turn up?’

  ‘I have dealt with men like that before,’ said Lady Carsey. ‘It’s easy pickings for them. They’ll do it … and so good-bye, Miss Pym!’

  Lord Augustus wondered if he had ever really felt so young in his life before. There was such a beautifully carefree air of holiday about the party that assembled at the inn. Mr Cato was to take Hannah and Miss Trenton, and Lord Augustus had hired a light chaise, and, to Mr Wilkins’s overwhelming joy, offered to escort Penelope. Repressing an urge to follow the party, Mr Wilkins went back to his business. His lordship should have plenty of opportunities to propose, and the presence of Penelope’s father might throw cold water on the budding romance.

  Penelope was wearing a dark-blue nankeen coat with gold buttons and a white collar. On her curls was a broad-brimmed straw hat. Lord Augustus thought she looked enchanting. But Penelope was suddenly very shy of him and could not find anything to say.

  ‘Beautiful day, is it not?’ asked Lord Augustus.

  ‘Yes,’ said Penelope.

  ‘I suppose you are used to the sea and boats?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you swim?’

  ‘No.’

  Lord Augustus laughed. ‘You are not very nautical, Miss Wilkins, but you are monosyllabic. Do try to say more than one word.’

  ‘I prefer to admire the view.’

  They were bowling along one of Portsmouth’s filthier streets where barefoot urchins played in the kennel and slatternly women lounged in doorways smoking clay pipes.

  ‘Marvellous, is it not?’ drawled Lord Augustus.

  ‘I cannot be chattering all the time,’ said Penelope. She was becoming irritated with him, because her body was aching in a strange way and something happened to her breathing every time his arm brushed against her own.

  ‘Then I shall chatter for us both,’ said Lord Augustus. ‘You have all reformed me. I am determined to do something with my life.’

  ‘And what is that?’ asked Penelope.

  ‘Well, for one thing, we are still at war and I am an able-bodied man doing nothing about it.’

  ‘Were you in the army?’

  ‘Yes, my chuck. Flanders and India.’

  ‘And you did not like it?’

  ‘No, but Flanders was a disaster and India gruelling. But at least I was doing something. Think, child, if all the men in Britain were like me, we would be overrun by Napoleon’s troops in no time at all. Despite my good intentions, I might borrow money from my uncle after all and buy myself a commission.’

  So he did not plan marriage, thought Penelope dismally, and yet why should she expect him to? It was all her father’s fault, thought Penelope a trifle illogically. Mr Wilkins should have stuck to his principles and not have put ideas about marrying lords into her head.

  ‘But when did you suddenly decide to re-enlist?’

  ‘It is your fault, Miss Wilkins. You and Miss Pym. Between you, you have contrived to make me feel utterly worthless.’

  ‘But it is in the nature of your class to be utterly worthless.’

  Lord Augustus grinned. ‘Not all of us, my sweet Radical. Faith! It is a perfect day for Miss Pym’s outing.’

  They had left the town and were travelling along a road by the shore. There was not a cloud in the sky. A brisk breeze was blowing.

  ‘How odd,’ said Penelope. ‘The sky is so blue and yet the water is black. Why is that?’

  ‘A trick of the light? Who knows?’

  Lord Abernethy rose late and went up to his crow’s nest at the top of his house. Although a wealthy man, it suited him to live in the centre of the town rather than in splendid isolation in some estate in the country. He loved to watch the ships coming and going through his telescope. He did hope his nephew was not going to make a fool of himself over the Wilkinses’ chit, but decided he could easily put a stop to it by talking some sense into Mr Wilkins’s head.

  After a light breakfast of dry toast and weak tea, he settled down at the window and turned the telescope on the harbour. The room was so high up that he could look down over the roofs of the other houses.

  He studied the glaring blue of the sky, the blackness of the water, and then felt a sharp rheumatic pain in his hip. He got up and went to a barometer on the wall and tapped it. The needle was slipping towards ‘Stormy’. He gave an exclamation under his breath. Those fools, land-lubbers all, would probably put to sea not knowing the weather was about to make an abrupt and horrible change.

  He opened the door and called, ‘Mary!’ and his little housemaid came running lightly up the stairs. The admiral kept few servants and all of them were women.

  ‘Run round to the livery stables and get me a carriage, Mary,’ said Lord Abernethy. ‘And be quick about it. A fast-travelling carriage and a good pair of fifteen-mile-an-hour tits, and damn the expense!’

  Mr Cato, who had already travelled to Croombe that morning, had hired a rowing-boat, which was resting at the foot of the jetty steps. The owner of the boat, a gnarled little fisherman, was pacing up and down.

  ‘Reckon you shouldn’t go out,’ he said, looking anxiously at the blue sky. ‘Nasty weather coming.’

  ‘We are only going out a little way,’ said Mr Cato.

  The owner was reluctant to cancel the hire and so lose the generous sum Mr Cato had paid him.

  ‘I’d be quick about it then,’ he said, capitulating. ‘But don’t go out to the open sea.’

  The party of land-lubbers cheerfully walked down the jetty steps and arranged themselves in the bobbing boat, Miss Trenton and Miss Pym in the stern, Penelope and Lord Augustus in the bow, and Mr Cato in the middle at the oars. Benjamin had been given the day off.

  Mr Cato pushed off with one oar and then sat down and began to row smoothly. Lord Augustus reflected that Mr Cato was a surprisingly powerful man.

  ‘Done much of this?’ he called.

  ‘Only on nice calm rivers,’ shouted Mr Cato, ‘but it’s all the same thing.’

  Hannah was quite dizzy with excitement. The slapping of the waves against the boat, the salt wind in her face exalted her. She felt like the veriest mariner of England.

  Penelope sat next to Lord Augustus, her thigh against his thigh, and fought with a tumult of emotions. It could not be love, she thought. Love was something sweet and spiritual.

  ‘Are we not going a little too far out?’ called Lord Augustus.

  ‘Oh, further!’
shouted Hannah, her eyes flashing green. ‘What power Mr Cato has.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Miss Trenton, fighting gamely with seasickness but determined not to be outdone by Hannah when it came to compliments. ‘You must be made of iron, Mr Cato.’

  Mr Cato had a slight uneasy feeling that their rapid progress out to the open sea might be caused by a current, but the ladies’ compliments went right to his head and he rowed the harder.

  Hannah looked up at the sky in surprise. One minute it had been bright blue, as blue as the eyes of Sir George Clarence and just as sparkling, and the next it was a milky colour that was rapidly becoming grey.

  They shot out past the long arm of the harbour and into the open sea. Penelope screamed as a wave curled over the bow of the boat and soaked her to the skin.

  ‘Better turn back,’ shouted Lord Augustus as the boat began to crawl up one large wave and then plunge down into a black trough of swirling water below another.

  Mr Cato tried to bring the boat about. Another wave crashed over the side of the boat this time and Miss Trenton let out a high thin wail of terror.

  ‘I’m caught in a current,’ said Mr Cato.

  Lord Augustus crawled forward and took a seat next to Mr Cato. ‘Give me an oar,’ he said. ‘Between us, we’ll make it. Stop screaming, ladies, and bail.’

  Penelope and Hannah found a couple of pannikins and bailed for all they were worth. Miss Trenton sat in the stern praying loudly.

  ‘We’ll row to the left first,’ said Lord Augustus to Mr Cato, ‘and keep rowing until we get out of the grip of this current.’

  Both men rowed as hard as they could while the waves crashed and tumbled into the boat and even the redoubtable Miss Pym was turning quite white.

  ‘Now!’ shouted Lord Augustus. ‘Pull for the shore.’

  They rowed hard, the going easier now. ‘We’re well away from the harbour,’ said Lord Augustus. ‘We make for the shore.’

  ‘Thank God!’ cried Hannah suddenly. ‘Someone is coming to our aid.’ Mr Cato and Lord Augustus rested on the oars and looked. A large rowing-boat with two powerful men in it was speeding straight towards them. ‘Keep bailing,’ ordered Mr Cato. ‘It might be safer to let them take us on board. They’ve got a bigger boat.’

  On and on came the other boat, at times almost hidden by the mounting waves, and then it appeared to come hurtling down on them from the crest of a high black wave and rammed them amidships with a sickening thwack. With amazing dexterity considering the height of the sea that was running, the two men turned their boat and headed for the shore. Not once had they even looked at the people in the boat they had just holed.

  Water was pouring in. Hannah’s life swirled before her eyes, eyes as full of salt as the ocean. All those years of service and a brief few months of happiness to end in a watery grave. She would never see Sir George again.

  She could not swim. The water roared in her ears. She struggled up and her head broke the surface and then down she went again. She fought her way back up. One more look at daylight. Just one more look. And then as she was going down again, hearing a sort of confused shouting, something dug into her back and she felt herself being lifted up through the water. She blinked and found herself staring at the wooden side of a boat. ‘Here’s another,’ shouted a voice. The grappling-iron that was dug into the back of Hannah’s pelisse ripped the thin fabric and she felt herself sinking again and then strong arms seized her. She barked her shins as she was unceremoniously dragged on board and lay in the bottom of the boat, cold and shivering but miraculously alive.

  ‘Sit up, ma’am,’ ordered a familiar voice, ‘and drink this.’

  Hannah sat up and found herself looking into the face of Lord Abernethy. He held a flask of brandy to her lips. Hannah pushed it away. ‘The others,’ she croaked. ‘What of the others?’

  ‘Why, look about you!’

  Hannah looked wildly around. She was in a longboat. Six burly rowers were manning the oars. In the stem was Penelope, white and limp, being cradled in Lord Augustus’s arms. Beside them, Mr Cato was holding Miss Trenton, who was still crying noisily.

  Helped by Lord Abernethy, Hannah struggled to join them.

  She wanted to ask all sorts of questions, but she felt too tired and ill to manage to say anything. She turned her head away and was suddenly and violently sick over the side, getting rid of a great deal of sea water.

  There was a reception committee waiting for them at the harbour: the local inn-keeper and two maids with blankets to wrap them in, local fishermen to support their faltering footsteps along the quay.

  Penelope had recovered consciousness, although she was still being carried by Lord Augustus. Once inside the inn, Lord Abernethy ordered Lord Augustus to carry Penelope up to one of the bedchambers and Hannah to accompany them.

  Tears kept pouring down Hannah’s face. She was so glad to be alive. How brightly the fire crackled on the hearth and how sweet to hear the rising storm raging outside the snug inn. ‘Stay beside the fire,’ ordered Lord Abernethy. ‘I have sent to the George in Portsmouth, and to Mr Wilkins as well, for dry clothes for you all.’

  Lord Augustus placed Penelope in a chair beside the fire and smoothed the wet hair from her forehead. He suddenly wanted to kiss her but could not because of his watching uncle and Miss Pym.

  When the two men had left, Penelope and Hannah stripped off their wet clothes, dried themselves thoroughly, and then, wrapped in blankets, sat by the fire.

  ‘How were you rescued?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘Lord Augustus. He can swim. He supported me as best he could. I owe him my life.’

  ‘Thank goodness that uncle of his came just at the right time,’ said Hannah. ‘Oh, dear Miss Wilkins, I was so sure I was about to die.’

  ‘But those terrible men. Why did they not see us? And having holed us, why did they not stay to help?’

  ‘I do not want to alarm you, Miss Wilkins, but I am convinced they came out with the express purpose of trying to drown us. That was no accident. They were able to handle that heavy boat of theirs with ease. Could any of the others swim?’

  ‘Mr Cato could not and he is such a heavy man that they had great difficulty in rescuing him, or so said Lord Abernethy, particularly as he thought the rescuers were those men who sank us and tried to fight them. But Miss Trenton could. I heard Lord Abernethy say she came swimming alongside, just like a cod in a bonnet.’

  Hannah giggled.

  Penelope began to laugh as well. Then her face grew serious. ‘We must all get together and try to find out who it was who would wish to harm us.’

  ‘The only person I can think of is Lady Carsey.’

  ‘But she is in Esher!’

  ‘She can travel to Portsmouth just as we did.’

  ‘But would she risk doing such a thing?’

  ‘Why not?’ Hannah sniffed. ‘All she has to do is get some of those villainous servants of hers to do it for her, although I did not recognize either of the men in the boat. The brief glimpse I had of them, they looked like smugglers. That is, they looked like fishermen, and villainous-looking fishermen are, I believe, always smugglers.’

  ‘But how could Lady Carsey find smugglers? You cannot go out in the streets of Portsmouth and say, “I want to hire two smugglers.”’

  ‘In these years of shortage caused by that wicked French blockade, a surprising number of people, even in London, deal with the smugglers, and do not for one moment consider they are being unpatriotic in doing so. On the contrary, most Englishmen consider it their patriotic right to cheat the taxman. So all people such as Lady Carsey have to do is to put it about that tea or brandy is wanted and that way the smugglers are found.’

  Penelope wrinkled her nose. ‘But if it is so simple, why are so few of them caught? I mean, could not the excisemen simply pose as customers?’

  ‘One brave excisemen did so. He testified in court against them. The following day his wife and children were murdered. They exact a terrible revenge. Ev
eryone turns a blind eye to smuggling. What is the harm in a few bottles of brandy? That is how they look at it. And then few deal with them direct. The innkeepers and wine merchants and grocers often buy from the smugglers; often, I gather from what I have read, are forced to buy from the smugglers. If Lady Carsey is at the back of this, then I do not think she quite knows what a hornets’ nest she will have stirred up.’

  They fell silent and then gradually both of them, overcome with fatigue, fell asleep, to be roused an hour later with the arrival of an anxious Benjamin bearing their trunks.

  Briefly Hannah told him what had happened, forcing herself to form each word clearly so that he could read her lips, for she was too tired to write it all down. She then dismissed the footman and she and Penelope dressed and went downstairs.

  Mr John Fotheringay lounged at his ease in the coffee room at the George and waited for the news of any drownings. He did not want to ask outright and so draw attention to himself. He looked at his watch and then tucked it back into his waistcoat pocket. Nine o’clock in the evening, a raging storm blowing outside, and not a sign of the stage-coach passengers. Things were looking hopeful. So hopeful that he began to dream that the smugglers had been drowned as well. He had felt uneasy about using them.

  The minutes ticked slowly by. People came and went. He shifted uneasily. His aunt could not possibly expect him to remain there all night. He decided he would need to ask some questions after all.

  And then a party of young men came in, shouting for the manager and demanding rooms. The manager hurried up. ‘We’re all fully booked, sirs,’ he said. ‘Or that is, I think we are.’

  ‘Think you are?’ demanded the leader of the party. ‘Speak up, fellow. You either know if you have rooms or not.’

  ‘Fact is,’ said the manager, ‘several of the guests took a boat out in the storm along the coast and their luggage was sent for, but one of my waiters told me he had heard they had all been drowned. But I cannot give up their rooms to anyone else until I hear for sure.’