Earlier he had asked the boy for water and more light, and she was able to wash herself at last. She noticed how her shaking fingers looked red and coarse against the fine porcelain of the bowl. The water was salty and stung in the small cuts in her fingers. They were no longer soft and white but looked like the hands of a maid of all work. She thought fleetingly of Ella, but the thought pained her, so she resolutely put it aside and paid attention to the act of washing her face.
The wooden door opened and Richard stepped over the threshold, ducking his height under the lintel, his arms full of blankets, a basket of other items balanced on top. She turned from her washing and reached out her hand to pull a corner of a linen cloth from the basket. She rubbed vigorously at her face.
‘If I am supposed to be your wife, then I suppose I must take pains to be clean, at least,’ she smiled.
‘I surely would not choose such a troublesome wife as thee.’
He was making jest, and they both laughed, but there was a moment’s silence before he spoke again. A moment where both saw clearly what they had not seen before.
‘As my wife,’ he said to her softly, ‘I would have kept thee safe at home and made sure nothing could harm thee.’
Tears sprang to her eyes from a deep well inside her. The cloth fell to her side.
‘Come here,’ he said softly.
He put down the basket and reached out towards her, closing his arms tightly about her waist. The tears came. But then she found herself yielding, pliant like a tender young shoot, her back arched, her face upturned to his. When he kissed her, it was long and slow and sweet, his lips soft and warm against hers. And there was a stir ring in her breast and the heaving world seemed turned to silence by his kiss. It was he who pulled away first, his eyes beseeching. ‘I have not offended thee?’
‘No, Richard. I think I have wished it for a long time but without knowing it, since the very first time you smiled at me. In the miller’s. Do you remember?’
‘I remember your face, and something in your eyes. A light there that catches me somehow.’ He took hold of her face and looked down at her. ‘It still does.’
He reached for her again, and she felt him press towards her and his face come down to cover her throat with kisses, whilst her hands grasped his hair as she sought to bring him home to her. She heard herself moan with pleasure as an exquisite tingle mounted in her thighs and she pushed her hips towards him. His hand was on her breastbone, where her breath rose and fell in gusts, she felt him move against her, hard, through the soft petticoats.
He guided her over to the cot, where he began to untie the laces from the side of her bodice, with the sort of concentration one might use if engaged in a very delicate act of calligraphy. She watched the laces slide away through the holes and hang in his broad fingers, his head bowed to the task, and was strangely moved. Her breath came quicker as the bodice slid slowly from her shoulders, and his hands rubbed over her breasts through the fine lawn of the chemise, her nipples hardening as his kisses drew nearer towards them. Finally his mouth was on her nipple and her hand was wrapped in the silky skein of his hair. She pushed towards him, the place between her legs wet and wanting.
He reached out to touch her face. ‘Your husband? I would not want…’
‘Hush,’ she said then, moved by his earnest expression. ‘Who knows what tomorrow may bring. Yesterday I thought my life ending. But today it seems it was a beginning, for I have found you, I have found thee, and if it be one more hour or one more day in thy company, I am content.’
He smiled then and kissed her neck, and the ship creaked gently as they took their pleasure of each other for the first time.
The rap on the door made them both start. Richard stood up quickly, tugging on his breeches, and went to listen at the door.
‘Who is it?’
‘’Tis the steward’s boy, sir,’ came a high-pitched voice from without. Alice pulled her bodice back over her shoulders, flustered, her eyes never leaving Richard’s face.
‘The Master requests you at his table. At the next bell, sir.’
Alice mouthed to him, ‘What shall we do?’
He shook his head. ‘Thank you, boy,’ he said loudly through the door. ‘Thank the Master, but tell him the lady has not yet found her sea legs and we must unfortunately decline his invitation. Perhaps tomorrow.’
‘Yes, sir.’ They listened until the footsteps had died away. Richard then opened the door and looked out, before shutting it and barring it firmly against intruders.
‘I am not ready to share thee with company,’ he said. ‘Happen the owner of the ship can wait until the morrow for his payment. After all, we cannot go far unless we wish to swim.’
She did not even smile. ‘Richard, I am afraid.’
‘We are safe here.’ He reached for her hand. ‘Or leastways as safe as anyone else on this voyage.’
She paused a moment. A deep unease gnawed in her belly but it was a feeling she could not name. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I am just not used to the sea. And I am as much afraid of gaining a new life as I was of losing it.’
‘Thou wilt find thy sea legs soon enough. ’Tis hard to get accustomed to at first, I know.’
‘It is not that. It’s like an emptiness, leaving England behind. I have nothing left, Richard, nothing to offer. Only what I am standing in.’
He grasped hold of her shoulders and looked at her steadily.
‘That is enough for me. Thy life. It could so easily have been otherwise. I will not leave thee, I promise. We will face what life brings together.’ He dropped his eyes a moment before speaking again. ‘I cannot hold it from thee any longer, the ship is not bound for France, but for New England—’ She drew back and made to protest, but he stayed her. ‘There are Quakers there who will help us–old Isaac used to talk of them. It is not so bad. We can make a fresh start there, build a new life for ourselves.’
‘But I know nothing of Quaker life, only the few things Hannah told me.’ She turned away, agitated. ‘I cannot start to imagine it, I’m not ready to even think of it.’ She pressed her palm to her forehead. ‘The other side of the world. I have never been out of my little England before. And besides, I am not so devout as Hannah. I am not sure I am fitted for that life.’ She moved away, twisting the lace of her bodice in her fingers.
‘You know I would never press thee to become one of us. But we have no choice, and in a way it is good, for it would be hard for thee to return to England, to be always looking over thy shoulder. In New England thou wilt be a free woman in a free land. A new start–for us both.’
He reached over, curled his fingers into hers and squeezed them, his eyes searching hers. She looked down at his broad palm and her own hand lying trustingly there. She must have faith in providence. She reached her other hand around his neck and pulled him down towards her. The boards under her feet tilted slightly and she shifted her weight to compensate. He took her in his arms and clasped her close.
‘I love thee, Alice,’ he said.
Chapter 36
After his afternoon nap, Geoffrey awoke feeling nauseous and disorientated. He had slept too long and now he forced himself to step up on deck to take some air, where he zigzagged from rail to rail, looking blankly out to sea. His headaches were now severe enough to stop him in his tracks or cause him to hold his skull between his hands and rock back and forth like a lunatic. Since waking he had alleviated the pain with rum, so that now it was a mere throb like distant thunder.
Under the brisk easterly the ship forged ahead like a white-capped mountain, shouldering the waves aside, the water pouring from the canvas, the breeze singing in the tautened ropes. Spray whipped across the deck in the eddy of the mainsail, the deck a-tilt, so that all movement became a lurch from handrail to rope in the slippery film of salty water. Rain was falling now, insistent and blinding, from a sky devoid of stars.
He climbed the narrow steps and breathed in the smell of salt from the top deck, leaning over to watch
the tips of the waves slip by in flashes of white. He held onto the rails and looked out beyond the prow to the inky line where the sea joined the sky. The rain stung his face.
He always used to love the ship’s motion, the sense of riding on such a huge depth of water, but now he was unsettled by the constant movement, and irritated that it made him bilious. He had hoped another spell at sea would improve his health and clear his mind of the nightmare of the past few weeks. His life was falling asunder. He had never thought he would see the day when his son would disobey him. He did not think Stephen had the guts.
Geoffrey hurried below. Although he had an oilskin cloak, he had no desire to fetch it and subject himself to the sheeting rain when he could lie on his bunk below and read Pinax Theatri Botanici, a fascinating manual by a Frenchman which listed species of New England plants. He was determined to follow in the footsteps of the famous Tradescant and find and list further wonders–ones not already collected by the French.
As he turned the pages he could not cast Stephen from his mind. He thought back to the embarrassing scene in the dining room where Stephen had virtually called him a tyrant and dared to imply he was a laughing stock. Stephen’s words had hurt, but he had decided to forgive and forget, and make a new start with his awkward son. He had tried everything to persuade Stephen to take passage with him but to no avail. Even at the last minute Geoffrey had thought he would come round but, frustratingly, despite his best efforts, at the turn of the tide Stephen had been nowhere to be found. Patterson and the dairymen had searched the whole estate, but the old brown nag was missing from the stables so it was clear enough he had purposely ridden out. So to Geoffrey’s bitter disappointment he had been forced to take ship alone.
He was angry with himself–he suspected he had been too soft with his son. A few months at sea would have got rid of Stephen’s heretical Quaker notions. But he was damned if he was going to let Stephen rule his life, dictate to him what he should and should not do. When it had become clear Stephen was to stay in Westmorland, he had called on Rawlinson and enjoined him to take Stephen under his wing–tutor him a little, whilst he was away. Rawlinson had said Stephen was a grown man now, and perhaps giving him his trust, and a measure of responsibility, would make a man of him. Geoffrey hoped he was right. Rawlinson was no fool; he would keep Stephen on the straight and narrow. And Stephen would return to his senses soon enough–no sane lad would turn his back on an income of forty pounds a year and a house like Fisk Manor.
Eventually, chewing on his lip, Geoffrey took up a quill to pen a letter to him. A six-month absence was always a risk in these uncertain times, and he hoped Stephen was home by now at the manor, safely under Rawlinson’s eagle eye. He dreaded he might go back to London to drain the coffers of his inheritance–or, even worse, that he might be hanging about with the scullions at the Hall. Rawlinson had promised him the fire-setting Quakers would be tried and sentenced, so perhaps that would quash Wheeler’s treasonous sect for good.
Geoffrey sharpened the quill and dipped it in the ink. ‘My dear Stephen,’ he scratched, but then paused, wondering how to continue. He did not know what to say, had no idea where to start. He realized he had never written to his son before. Emilia had always done it. He blinked, surprised. His eyes were wet.
He gritted his teeth, lowered the quill into the ink again and wiped it on the lip of the bottle. He must demonstrate affection to his son, put difficulties behind them, guide him away from these ranters and bad influences. It was something he had never understood, why he and Stephen were unable to see eye to eye. Even as a child, Stephen seemed bred of different stock.
Geoffrey remembered that when the Netherbarrow Hunt arrived at a kill, the other boys would be eager to be first there, to have the sticky blood smeared upon their cheeks, and he would look out for his son hoping to see him jesting amongst the throng–but Stephen was inevitably the last, left limping behind the field, his knees flapping aimlessly against his horse’s flank, his face pinched with fear.
He cast those thoughts away and instead imagined the two of them managing the estate together, constructing a vast trading network of ships and sugar colonies, putting away quantities of gold against future calamities, such as another war. Father and son together. Slowly he began to write, filling out his dreams, his pen scratching unevenly across the paper as the ship listed from side to side.
He had a sudden idea, and paused mid-sentence. He put down his pen, stood up and went over to the locker. He would make some purchases from his New England friends. When he returned home he would surprise his son with a gift of some land of his own for a tobacco plantation. His own plantation! That would surely whet his interest. And he would purchase some well-seasoned negroes to labour on it for him. Stephen could have charge of them, to accustom himself to giving orders and managing a workforce.
Inspired, he took out papers and charts from his locker, choosing a rolled map of the new territories. He undid the ribbon and spread it out on the escritoire with two lead blocks to hold it flat, for the ship was pitching more now, and he could hear the clap of the waves against the sides and the shouts of the men calling ‘Belay’. The gloom below had intensified, so he lit a small lantern and stood it on the edge of the desk, the better to see the itinerary. His eyesight had failed him of late, words often danced about on the page and his headache made it difficult to concentrate.
The last time he had been in St Christopher in the Caribbees, he recalled, he had visited a sugar farm. He had been most impressed with the vast numbers of dusky men cutting like an army through the canes, and had heard that the same technique had been adopted in New England for tobacco. He was fascinated by the blackness of their skins, their flat noses, their loose limbs, the way they needed no rest but moved inexorably along the lines like the black shadow on a sundial. The crops were made fast in half the usual time. He saw no reason why these advanced methods should not eventually hold good for his own estate, and the economics of it were plain. Stephen could arrange the building of their quarters and later sort out the gangs for threshing and ploughing. In this new age Stephen would soon prosper, and he, Geoffrey, would be free to explore his horticultural and scientific interests in his sunset years.
Now with the map in front of him, he laid out his route in his mind, progressing down the coast to the large estates in St Mary’s and Jamestown. There he would be able to buy a portion of land for Stephen. He looked closely at the map, seeking a plot close to his own. He earmarked two possible positions in his mind. Once he had made his purchase, he thought, he would check his own plantations, relax and dine in a reasonably civilized fashion, and return refreshed, a few days later, to his ship. From these holdings it was a week’s sail to the remoter parts of Virginia, where he would take armed expedition to forage for new plants and extraordinary exhibits before returning to Providence, from there to load his more regular cargo of rice and tobacco.
As he looked at the vast tracts of blank land laid out on the map, the edges fraying into the unknown, the petty world of England grew far away and, with it, the hanging of Alice Ibbetson–for by now, he thought with relief, it was over, and she was surely at peace. The old woman’s ghost must have been blown away by the fierce winds and salt spray of the ocean. Here was his little empire, moving steadily towards a new world.
Geoffrey’s shoulders began to lower, the tension bled away, his head nodded again over his chest. He rested his forearm over the crenellated coastline of New England, as if to protect it, and sank his long face into the crook of his elbow. He inhaled the subtle smell of the wind from the fibres of his green velvet coat, let his eyes close. Within a few moments he was asleep. Several hours later he half woke, found himself scratching, so took another dose of his remedy. Still dressed, he stumbled to his bunk, fell down onto it and began to snore.
As the graveyard bells rang out, he dreamt his tobacco plantations were full of crawling insects, like ants, that scuttled across the land devouring everything in a black tide.
Chapter 37
Richard lay in the dark in the narrow cot, Alice’s hand clasped in his, her head on his shoulder. He held her loosely, feeling the back of her ribs expand and contract with her breath. She was heavy-limbed and warm, sleeping peacefully. From his position he propped himself up on one elbow to look out of their salt-smeared window for any sign of land. Of course that was foolish, he knew. But it was what everyone did on board ship.
He looked down and twined one of Alice’s fine coppery curls in his fingers; they were ebony in this light. They had eschewed the hammock and gladly slept in the same cot despite the lack of space. It felt natural, inevitable, like a coming home. She had opened herself to him trustingly, and so he had found himself gentle, respectful, despite the urgency of his desire. Having seen her so near to death, the want in him for life was intense, but also the search for life’s deep secret in her eyes. He had been surprised by his own nakedness; it was as if in the previous years he had forgotten his body was there at all. He stretched his cramped bare limbs like a new-born.
A great crash of something falling on the upper deck roused him from his thoughts, and woke Alice, who moved to cling to him more tightly.
‘Hush, dear one,’ he said. ‘The sea is rough, there may be a storm coming.’
‘Should we rise?’ she asked sleepily, pulling him close.
‘No need,’ he said. ‘I am sure this vessel is built to withstand any storm. But it may get more blustery yet, and the sea swell more fierce. I had best secure anything loose in the cabin.’
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