Bernard Cornwell

by Wildtrack

  "The bishop did?"

  "It was a positive and ecclesiastical fumble. Do you want to dance again?"

  "I don't think I can. My back still hurts."

  "So long as it isn't your pride. You should have slapped her silly face."

  "I'm not into hitting women."

  "Good old chauvinist Nick." She kissed me. "Do you mind if I slither off?"

  Melissa had generously salved my pride after Angela's mauling, and I was grateful for it, yet I still felt foully awkward. Jill-Beth, dressed in a simple shirt and white trousers, was ignoring me, preferring Mulder's company, while the other guests treated me as though I had smallpox or the plague. It was clearly not to be my evening. I saw Matthew's cameraman setting up his gear ready for the announcement, and, wishing no more part of it, I gingerly stood and limped down the garden steps. I kept my leg stiff so the knee could not buckle.

  As I peglegged down the last few steps Mulder and Jill-Beth came arm-in-arm to the terrace's balustrade. They leaned there, heads close together, and the American girl's laughter struck me like a jealous dart. I limped down the long lawn to where the reflected lights shimmered on the black water. I flinched with pain as I stepped down on to Sycorax's deck, and again as I huddled down in the cockpit among the heaped stores that would soon go into the rebuilt cabin lockers. I could smell the linseed from the spars which lay on trestles on the bank, and the tar varnish which I'd smeared into the bilges.

  I sat for a long time as the pain ebbed away from my spine. The moonlit sky seemed almost luminous above the black trees which edged the river. The Romans had seen this river thus, and they must have stared into the dark deep woods and wondered what strange misshapen creatures moved like wraiths among the leaves. It must have seemed a weird, hostile place, and I wondered if some Roman officer had been wounded here and then gone back to Rome where he fell in love with a dark-haired girl who rejected him for a hairy Phoenician sea-captain. Damn Jill-Beth, and damn Mulder, and damn the fact that I could not slip my moorings on this high tide and take Sycorax to sea. I straightened my right leg and pressed my foot against the bridge deck hard enough to stab a lance of pain up my thigh. I went on pressing, welcoming the pain as evidence that the leg would mend. I pressed till there were tears cold on my cheeks.

  Applause sounded from Bannister's house and I knew he must be announcing his entry for this year's St Pierre. I opened a beer and drank it slowly. Bannister could sail without me. From this day on I wanted sailing to be a whim, dictated only by wind and sea. I wanted to wander and drift through a busy world, freed of tax and bills and the loud voices of politicians and pompous men. Perhaps Medusa was right, and perhaps I was a layabout, and perhaps I was too stupid to make a proper living, but, God damn it, I was not a piece of television slime.

  I drank another beer. Silver-edged clouds were heaping above Dartmoor to make aery and fantastic battlements that climbed higher and ever higher as the ocean winds were lifted by the slopes above the Tamar. I decided I would rig the boat with my last savings and I would sail south, penniless, just to escape Bannister and Angela. I would strap my right knee, lay in a stock of painkillers, and disappear.

  Jill-Beth Kirov's voice stirred me from my morose thoughts. I raised my head over the cockpit's coaming and saw her walking down the lawn on Fanny Mulder's arm. "I won't see anything!" I heard her say.

  "You'll see fine, girl."

  She stopped at the river wall and stared at Wildtrack. "It's so beautiful!"

  Mulder pulled a dinghy to the garden steps. Jill-Beth laughed as she stepped down into the small boat and I felt the sting of jealousy. She'd preferred Mulder to me, or to any other man at the party for that matter, and my pride was offended. A daft thing, pride. It had once driven me up a hill on an Atlantic island to meet a bullet.

  I heard Jill-Beth's soft laughter again as Mulder rowed the dinghy the few strokes to Wildtrack. He helped Jill-Beth on to its long rakish deck, then gave her the full guided tour of the topsides. He turned on the deck lights that were mounted beneath the lower spreaders and their brilliant light showed me Jill-Beth's dark hair and strong jaw and bright excited eyes. I stayed still, a shadow within a shadow, watching.

  They stood in the aft cockpit and I could hear every word they said because water carries sound as cleanly as glass carries light. And suddenly, very suddenly, I forgot my misery because Jill-Beth was encouraging Mulder to tell the story of Nadeznha Bannister's death. "I'd gone forward, see?" Mulder pointed to the mast. "The kicking-strap had worked loose."

  "And Mrs Bannister stayed here?" Jill-Beth asked.

  "She liked being aft in a big sea, and that sea was a bastard. But nothing we hadn't seen before. Then one broke and pooped us. She just disappeared."

  Jill-Beth turned and looked at the array of lifebuoys and Danbuoys that decorated Wildtrack's stern. "She wasn't wearing a harness?"

  "She could have taken it off for a moment, you know how you do? Maybe she wanted to go forward? Or maybe it bent. I've seen snaphooks bent straight in a gale. And it was a crazy night," Mulder said. "I didn't see she'd gone at first, you know, what with being busy with the kicking-strap and the water everywhere and the boat bucking like a jack-hammer gone ape. Must have taken me five minutes to get back to the wheel."

  Jill-Beth stared up at the masthead where the string of lights was bright above the floodlights. "Poor girl."

  "Ja." Mulder pulled open the aft cabin hatch. "A drink?"

  Did I sense a hesitation in Jill-Beth? I prayed for her to say no. I didn't want to watch her go into that aft cabin with its wide double bunk. She said no. "I've got an early start in the morning, Fanny, but thanks."

  "I thought you were interested." He sounded hurt. "I mean I've still got that night's log down here if you want to see it."

  She hesitated, but then her curiosity about Nadeznha Bannister's death swayed the issue. "Sure."

  It was like that moment when, during a calm, the water shadows itself beneath the first stirrings of a killing wind. For these last weeks, as I had lost myself in the restoration of Sycorax, I had forgotten the stories of Nadeznha Bannister's death. But other people had not forgotten. Harry Abbott had warned me off the stories, but here was an American girl stirring up the dangerous rumours. And the dead girl's father was American too. It was a cold wind that was disturbing my calm. I shivered.

  Wildtrack's deck lights were doused and the cabin lights glowed through the narrow scuttles until curtains were snatched across the glass.

  I thought of what I'd heard. It matched the evidence given to the inquest, and made sense. A safety harness would have saved Nadeznha Bannister's life, but safety harnesses are not infallible. A harness is a webbing strap that encases the torso and from which a strong line hangs. At the end of the line is a steel snaphook that can be attached to a jackstay or D-ring. I'd known a snaphook open simply because it was wrenched at an odd angle. I'd known them bend open, too. Snaphooks were made of thick, forged steel, but water is stronger than steel, especially when the water comes in the form of a breaking ocean wave. I imagined a heavy following swell, lifting Wildtrack, surging her forward, then dropping her like a runaway lift into the deep trough. The next wave would steal the wind from the sails, there'd be a moment of unnatural quiet, then Nadeznha Bannister would have heard the awesome melding roar as the great tongue of breaking death curved over the stern. She might have looked up to see her death shredding high and white in the night above her. If she had unsnapped her harness for a moment she would have screamed then, but too late, because the cold tons of white water would be collapsing on to the boat to turn the cockpit into a maelstrom of foam and berserk force.

  Wildtrack would have staggered, her bow rising as her stern was pile-driven downwards, but a good boat would survive a pooping and Wildtrack would have juddered upwards, shedding the flooding water. But Nadeznha Bannister would already have been a hundred yards astern, helpless in the mad blackness. The wind would have been shrieking in the rigging, the decks woul
d have been seething, and her cries would have been lost in the welter of foam and wind and banging sails.

  Or else she was pushed. But the cries in the darkness would have been just as forlorn.

  Then, from Wildtrack's aft cabin, Jill-Beth screamed.

  The scream was more of a yelp, and swiftly cut off as though a hand had been slapped over her mouth. I detected panic in the quick sound, but the music on the terrace was far too loud for anyone but me to have heard the truncated scream.

  I picked up a full beer bottle and hurled it. Wildtrack lay no further than good grenade distance away and the bottle crashed with a satisfying noise on her main coachroof. The second ricocheted off a guardrail and shattered a cabin window, the third missed, but the fourth bottle broke against the metal mainmast and showered fragments of glass and foaming beer on to the boat.

  The aft cabin door opened, and Jill-Beth came out like a dog sprung from a trap. She did not hesitate, but scrambled over the guardrail and dived into the river. Mulder, bellowing in frustrated anger, followed from the cabin as I hurled the fifth full bottle. By pure chance it hit him clean on the forehead, throwing him back and out of sight. He shouted in anger or pain. I'd thrown the bottle hard enough to fracture his skull, but he seemed quite unhurt as, seconds later, he reappeared with his shotgun in his hands. He aimed it at Sycorax 's cockpit.

  I dropped.

  He fired. Both barrels.

  The noise slammed across the water and I saw the glare of the barrel flames sheet the sky above me. The pellets went high, spattering into the bushes above the wharf. I listened for the sound of Jill-Beth swimming, but could only hear the sharp click as Mulder broke the gun for reloading.

  I scrabbled through the tangled mess of stores that clogged the cockpit. Jimmy Nicholls' and my hauls from the boat auctions lay in an unseamanlike confusion. I cursed, then found the net bag I wanted. I heard the cartridges slap home in Mulder's gun and the click as the breech was closed.

  When in doubt, an old commanding officer of mine liked to say, hit the buggers with smoke. I had bought some old emergency smoke floats and I prayed that they still worked as I pulled the first ring. I counted as though it were a grenade, then lobbed it out of my shelter.

  There was a pause as the water entered the floating can, then I smelt the acrid scent and I raised my head to see a smear of orange smoke boiling up from the river. The lurid smudge spread to hide Wildtrack's hull. The ebb had just begun and the can was floating downstream, but the sea breeze was conveniently carrying the smoke back towards Mulder. I thickened it with a second can, then leaned over Sycorax's side to search for Jill-Beth. I could hear people calling from the terrace. I tossed yet another float to keep Mulder blinded, and the can landed just feet away from a sleek black head that suddenly surfaced in the river. "Miss Kirov?" I called politely.

  "Nick?"

  I held out my hand for her, and as I did so Mulder unleashed his next weapon. Perhaps he had realized that one volley of gunfire was enough, and that more might land him in trouble with the law, so now he fired a distress flare in Sycorax's direction. The flare was rocket-propelled, designed to sear high into the air where it would deploy a brilliant red light which dangled from a parachute. I heard the missile fizz close overhead. It struck the coping of the wharf and bounced up into the night trailing smoke and sparks. A second rocket followed from the mass of orange smoke. Either could have killed if they had hit my head, but both went high.

  Jill-Beth's hand took hold of mine and I pulled her dripping from the water. I was given haste and strength by a third rocket which went wide. The first flare had exploded in the trees above the boathouse and the brilliant dazzle of the red light made it seem as if the wood had caught fire. I hurled my last smoke float towards Wildtrack and searched among the mess in the cockpit to find my own flares. Jill-Beth was panting. Her expensive silk shirt and white trousers were soaked and dirty. "Climb the wall," I said, "and run like hell for the house." There were people streaming down the lawn, shouting, and I hoped their presence would deter Mulder's madness. I found a flare that I pointed towards the bigger boat.

  "No!" Jill-Beth said the word with panicked force. "I can't stay here! For God's sake get me out! Have you got a dinghy?"

  "Yes."

  "Come on, Nick! Let's go!"

  I abandoned the flare and we scrambled over the stern into my tender. I had the presence of mind to toss a duffelbag of spare clothes in first, then I slashed the painter. Jill-Beth pushed us away and we drifted on the tide towards the overhanging trees beyond the boathouse cut. Jill-Beth poled us with an oar and we reached the shelter of the thick branches just as the first guests reached the river bank to stare in awe at the rolling orange smoke that was meant to mark an emergency at sea for searching helicopters. The cloud had shrouded Wildtrack right up to her gaudy string of lights and was made even more spectacular by the brilliant light of the burning flares.

  "The smoke was smart of you," Jill-Beth said. "Sorry, Nick."

  "Sorry?"

  "Never mind. Sh!" She touched a warning finger to her lips, then pointed behind me as if to say that we could be overheard by the people who now crowded the river bank. I was rigging the dinghy's outboard, an ancient and small British Seagull that I'd bought for a knockdown price at auction.

  "Fanny!" It was Bannister's angry voice. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "Fireworks, sir!" Fanny must have realized that he had over-reacted and now he proved sharp enough to find an explanation that fitted the night's mood. "Just using up old flares, sir!"

  "I heard a gunshot." The Honourable John's voice.

  "Lifeboat maroon." Mulder's voice came out of the thick smoke.

  "How awfully exciting." Melissa's voice. "Have you got an Exocet?"

  "Nothing to be excited about." That was Bannister again, thinking ahead to the possibility of headlines. He knew it was illegal to set off distress flares unnecessarily. "Are you drunk, Fanny?"

  "A bit, sir!"

  "I'll paddle!" That was Jill-Beth, in a whisper. She pushed the dinghy along the bank, keeping under the trees' cover. "That bastard wanted to kill me!" she whispered.

  "I thought he was raping you."

  "That was just for starters. Does that engine work?"

  "I was cheated of ten quid if it doesn't." Seagulls might not be flash, but by God they work. I pulled, the old engine coughed and caught, and the noise brought the stab of a torch beam that swept round towards us from Bannister's garden, but we were now well under the cover of the overhanging trees. The branches whipped at us as I opened the throttle, and I heard Jill-Beth giggle, apparently in reaction to the panicked escapade. "There are dry clothes in the bag," I said.

  "You're a genius, Nick."

  I waited till we had rounded Sansom's Point before I broke out from under the trees' shelter. We were hidden from Bannister's house by now and I curved the dinghy towards the main channel and opened the throttle as high as it would go. Seagulls might work, but they're not fast and we were going at no more than a hearse's crawl as we left the black shadows under the trees and emerged into the moonlight where I found myself sharing the dinghy with one very wet, very tanned and entirely naked girl who was rubbing herself dry and warm with one of my spare sweaters. She seemed quite unabashed, and I had time to notice that she was tanned all over and how nice the all over was before I politely looked away. "Enjoying the view?" she asked.

  "Very much."

  She pulled on the sweater and a pair of my dirty jeans that she rolled up around her calves. She pushed at her soaking hair, then looked upriver. "Where are we going?"

  "Jimmy Nicholls' cottage. You know Jimmy?"

  "I've met him." The village lights were bright on the starboard bank while two miles further south the town lights quivered on the water. Beyond that was the sea. Jimmy's cottage was just short of the town.

  Jill-Beth was searching through the duffelbag. "Got any sneakers here?"

  "No shoes, sorry."
/>   She looked up at me and smiled. "Thank you for the rescue."

  "That's what we white knights are for," I said.

  At which point the dragon growled, or rather I heard a percussive bang and then the throaty roar of big engines, and I knew it was too late to reach Jimmy's house. I pulled the outboard's lever towards me and prayed that the puttering little two-stroke could outrun the gleaming monster engines on Wildtrack II's stern. I'd forgotten the threat of the big powerboat crouched in Bannister's boathouse.

  Jill-Beth turned as the engine noise splintered in the night. She knew immediately what the sound meant. "That bastard doesn't give up, does he?"

  "A Boer trait." I was running for the darker western bank where more overhanging trees might hide us. I glanced behind to where the dying flares still silhouetted Sansom's Point. They also lit the shredding remnants of my smokescreen through which, as yet, there was no sign of the big powerboat.

  Jill-Beth was suddenly scared. "He knew why I'm here," she said in astonishment.

  I suspected that I knew why she was here too, but it was no time for explanations because a brilliant stab of white light suddenly slashed across the river. Mulder, if it was Mulder in Wildtrack II, had turned on the boat's searchlight. He was still beyond Sansom's Point and the light was far away from us, but I knew it would only be seconds before the powerboat came snarling into our reach of water.

  "Come on, you bastard!" I enjoined the engine.

  "Jesus!" Jill-Beth cowered as the sharp prow of Wildtrack II burst into view. There was a speed limit of six knots on the river and he must have been doing twenty already and was still accelerating. That was his mistake, for the acceleration was throwing up his bows so he could not see straight in front. The wake was like twin curls of moonlit gossamer that spread behind him.