by Peter Tonkin
Tom looked away to his right. The line of culverins stepped away in series, each jutting its stubby barrel out over the precipice, each with the solid little wheels of its trunnions rolled up to the very edge, each with a tub of powder beside its tub of match. Beyond the last of them, the lip of the platform became the top of the wall. Tom turned. Behind him, beyond Ben, a couple of culverins separated him from a second edge, where the platform once again became the top of the outer wall, which circled solidly round until it joined the top of the battlements above the gatehouse. Apart from the wall-top, nothing came near the elevated platform; apart from the church tower, nothing overlooked it – and only the inner shafts led up to and down from the place.
Tom let go of the solid metal and stepped inwards. Of course, the platform he was crossing could not be as featureless at it had first seemed. There was another opening three cannons down, with another ladder leading back down into the gun emplacements they had just explored. Further in, near the centre of the area, there was a series of trap-doors. All of these were locked or stuck – except for one. Tom eased that one up for an inch or so, allowing the moonlight to flood into the shaft it capped; his nose twitched, then he replaced it silently and rose.
Everywhere was empty, silent, but for the restlessnesses of wind close at hand and far-distant waves; except for the waning light of the setting moon, dark. But for Ben, Tom might have been standing alone at the utter edge of all the world.
Then why, he wondered, was he certain that there was someone watching him? ‘Ben?’ he called, his voice low.
Ben turned from his inspection of the vessel far below. ‘Master?’
‘Do you feel that secret eyes are on us?’ His voice only just carried to his thoughtful assistant.
‘No, Master. But I have been watching this ship, so I have paid scant attention. It has stopped signalling and is setting sail.’
‘Very well,’ said Tom, loudly, after a moment more. ‘Then let us return to our post. There is nothing more for us here.’
So they passed the night, with Ben sitting beside the cannon and Tom leaning against the inner wall beside the metal grille.
Tom, particularly, kept his eyes out to seaward, as though watching for the mysterious ship’s return. In fact his eyes were closed, allowing only the sensitivity of his most acute hearing to venture in through the grille into the dark room – where, as the night passed, the fire crackled and settled; the errant draughts whispered in papers like autumn leaves; the candle guttered and hissed into silence; and his lady’s even breathing was punctuated with the whispering sound of her night clothes and her bed clothes as she tossed and turned restlessly in the grip of her silent sleep.
***
Only when both she and Ben were safe and sound did Tom stir. Silently he climbed back up to the square-cut roof. Out of the pouch at his side he took the tinderbox that rarely left his side and, easily in the dead calm of moon-set, he lit the candle once again. Then, with the steady star of light in one hand and the late footpad Green’s dag loaded and ready in the other, he explored the roof again and tried the trap that had been open before. It was closed and bolted now, but still the tell-tale stench given off by a dark-lantern lingered; and still in the hinge of the thing, as he had noticed in the moonlight earlier, was a scrap of lace torn off the cuff of the secret signaller – hopefully unnoticed as he made good his escape down here.
***
Awoken before dawn by the breakfast feeding of the local gulls, Ben and Tom crept silently back to their chamber and – flesh having its limitations even in such as they – slept until the early afternoon. Both men were old soldiers, used to maintaining their clothing even in battlefield conditions; they invested the first hour after awakening in brushing and washing, in spitting and polishing. Then, while various garments aired and dried, they fell to barbering, trimming and shaving, with Tom’s long razor-sharp Solingen steel daggers. Then, having made themselves presentable with Tom’s fearsome armaments, courtesy dictated that the swords and daggers – all but one dagger apiece for use at table – be left in their room.
They made a creditable show of cleanliness and courtly fashion in person, linen, boots and beards, when they swaggered forth in search of late luncheon, therefore, but were swept into My Lady’s bustling orbit before fashion or famine could be addressed.
‘Master Musgrave,’ called Agnes Danforth the moment Tom stepped down into the entrance hall. ‘My Lady asked me to call you to her the moment I saw you myself.’
‘What’s toward?’ demanded Tom with a frown of worry. He turned on her heel and gestured Ben to follow.
‘Something I daresay you’ll dismiss as a trifle, but it’s upset her.’
Tom manfully demurred, but the fact was that when the Lady Margaret told him of her latest trial he was hard put not to laugh aloud. The expression on his face as he read her note, however, caused a flash of fire in those warm blue eyes, a frown and a decided stamp of her foot.
‘You do not understand,’ said Agnes with infinite superiority, resuming at last her rightful place as both woman and housekeeper over him, mere man and passing visitor that he was. ‘Percy Gawdy’s continued absence is a serious matter to My Lady. At least the Baron can continue his education with Master St Just in Doctor Rowley’s absence, but without her secretary Her Ladyship is most sorely tried. You do not comprehend the weight of her responsibilities, sir, nor the delicacy of her position. It is expected that she will host a party for all the local people of the first rank within the next two days and yet without Secretary Gawdy she cannot even issue invitations...’
‘What!’ said Tom. ‘Is Gawdy the only one of you that can write?’
No! answered the Lady, neatly proving her word by her action. But these things must be done in a certain style and form...
‘And in clear handwriting, as like as not,’ allowed Tom.
‘You have it right, sir,’ admitted Agnes. ‘There are proud families hereabout that would be mortally offended if someone such as My Lady were to send out a missive of any kind that was less than perfectly presented...’
‘I see,’ said Tom thoughtfully. And of course he saw more even than Agnes would tell: that the most educated here, those with the best writing and the grasp of the correct forms, were every bit as proud as the local lords and ladies. Somehow he could not imagine Master Quin or Danforth being willing to demean himself and cover his cuffs and fingers in humiliating ink-blots. Nor St Just, come to that. He had particularly long and fashionable cuffs: he would hardly risk his standing in the household, even to spend an afternoon cheek by jowl with his too-beloved mistress. The secretary, after all, like the schoolmaster, was necessarily of high education but eternally of low esteem.
‘Well I can go in search of them, I suppose,’ he said after a while. ‘Or... No. I have it. Fear not, My Lady; I think help is at hand. And from the most unlikely source of all.’ For into his memory had flashed the original note that she had sent him – not the bloodied version, fading even as he looked at it, but Ben’s transcription, bold, clear and beautifully written.
No fool, and no willing scribe either, Ben was halfway out through the door by this time, but Tom was too quick for him. At least, to sweeten the deal, Tom arranged to have food brought in to him while he worked.
With Lady Margaret’s most pressing need satisfied for the time being, Tom took his nose for dark-lanterns and trouble together with his one torn clue of lace and explored the castle. He went everywhere the notion took him. If there were places in the castle kept intentionally secret, he did not find them then. Every place he wished to visit was opened to him as he worked his slow, thoughtful way upward through that Monday afternoon. It was not always done with good grace, nor was it always done at once – for his desires often ran counter to the usual routines and both Martin Danforth and Polrudden Quin had good reason to resent his inquisitiveness; but it was done, because the Lady Margaret ordered it – and her word, silent though it might be, was law.
Here, being the man he was, Tom began to test himself, savouring the rare taste of his diminishing fear of the place. Thus he was standing on the very edge, looking down past a toe-cap that actually projected from the edge when the young Baron found him.
‘Master St Just is taking me out in my boat. Would you like to come?’
‘Does the Lady Margaret know of this?’
‘Oh, we need not tell her everything, need we?’ sparkled the excited boy. ‘My Lady mother has enough to worry about, even though I hear you have lent her your bricklayer as a secretary! Hurry or we shall miss the tide!’
Between the chapel and the powder store there was a sally-port or secret gateway in the wall. It led out on to a solid rock balcony that gave on to a combination of steps and sloping pathways that swooped under a beetling overhang and away down the cliff to a little bay and a big stone jetty. At various points on this vertiginous way there were more balconies, many of them backed not with solid rock but with great iron-bound doors set into the cliff face; and down the steepest paths and stairways ropes hung convenient for use as banisters. It was at once a surprise that the sea, so distant from the castle battlements, should be so accessible; and yet it was somehow inevitable, thought Tom, for the sea and the ships upon it were the reason for the castle’s existence in the first place.
The bay was private, the jetty solid – large but by no means huge. Tom turned and looked upwards. The ropes that proved such useful banisters were attached to a series of pulleys reaching up beneath the castle walls, which seemed to reach out into the very air, standing on the overhang at the top of that vertiginous cliff. He could see how in the early days of the Outram family’s rise to fortune, a goodly fleet of trading vessels could have come and gone from here, sending their cargoes up the cliffs easily and swiftly almost secretly – before the fleet became so large and the vessels themselves so massive that they had been forced to move round the corner into the larger anchorages in Plymouth itself.
Certainly, there were no large vessels here at the moment. All that bobbed by the jetty, held by a single line, was a little open boat, scarcely more than a rowing-boat. If it was a dozen feet long Tom would have been surprised. The mast stepped through the forward seat seemed little taller than he was himself. There was a simple foresail secured to the bow without the addition of a bowsprit. There was a triangular mainsail held at the mast-top and on a simple, stubby boom. A pair of oars and a boat-hook lay in the bilge, which seemed sound enough and dry. It was very much the type of boat that Tom had played around in with his big brother John and their friend Robbie Noble on the Lakes and on the Solway Firth close by.
‘See, Master St Just,’ called Hal as they arrived, ‘I have brought Master Musgrave. He shall see me take the tiller too!’
St Just looked up from where he was untying the line. ‘I saw ye on the cliff,’ he said. Cliff hissed a little, but it was clear enough – clear also that he had had time enough to school himself out of any resentment he might have felt at Tom’s sudden inclusion in the expedition. ‘Can ye sail?’
‘Not like you,’ said Tom courteously. ‘Never with the likes of Drake.’
‘In then and take the tiller. Nind the doon.’ It took Tom a moment to translate: Mind the boom.
Tom stepped down and sat with the tiller under his arm, his spare hand on the ropes that held the boom. The liveliness of the little vessel flowed into him with the same shock as he had felt when touching Lady Margaret’s hand.
A fist closed on his shoulder and Hal climbed down.
‘In the dow till we’re out in the day,’ ordered St Just, and the boy obeyed with unsteady care.
The line slapped into the bow in front of him, then St Just stepped down beside Tom. His fist too closed briefly on his shoulder, revealing to Tom’s quick eye a long lace cuff –with a piece of it torn away. ‘You nidshits. I take tiller.’
Tom moved on to the midships seat at the foot of the mast, careful lest his weight set the little vessel rocking too dangerously. St Just took the tiller and the wind took the sails as though their strange skipper had whistled it up. But no, thought Tom: whistling was something else lost to him with ‘b’s and ‘p’s and ‘m’s and any hopes he may ever have harboured of winning his Lady’s heart. He looked at Hal and received Lady Margaret’s sunniest smile with a twinkle from the Earl of Essex’s eyes.
The little vessel skimmed across the bay towards the open sea, but before they came anywhere near the bigger waters out in the Channel proper, St Just turned once again, using the headland to protect them while the wind came steadily over their shoulders. Tom’s wise eyes read the water and he began to understand what Hal had said about missing the tide. It must be slack water now, sitting lazily on top of the flood. They would have to watch out when the ebb set in, though, or they would be swept out into dangerous waters very swiftly indeed.
Tom’s thoughts were interrupted by a terse command in St Just’s peculiar accent. Hal rose obediently and made his careful way back down the boat. Soon he was seated at St Just’s side and the sailor began to instruct him on how to take the tiller and steer. ‘Renender,’ he said gently, ‘the doat’s head will go the other way to the way you hush the tiller. See?’
The tiller was pushed right a little; the bow began to swing left.
‘And as you go, ratch the doon. Over it cones! Duck!’
Round she came and over came the boom, the sail filling on the other tack. Tom found himself leaning backwards with his shoulders seemingly just above the hissing surface. He looked ahead. They were skimming along parallel to the shore of Whitsand Bay, with the cliffs reaching out to the castle on Rame Head still protecting them, seeming to swell, indeed, towards their highest point, such was the speed of their passage. The boat gave a little skip as St Just gave the boy full control and a handful of foam slapped Tom in the face. Laughing, he dashed it away and blinked his eyes clear, thinking, He’d better be quick to come about at the end of this tack or we’ll be away out to sea with a vengeance. And so he did. The little vessel danced around well enough under his increasingly confident hand. The two men relaxed a little as the boy concentrated.
‘Why would someone want to be signalling from the castle in the dead of night?’ asked Tom conversationally. ‘Someone with a dark-lantern?’
St Just’s face came round slowly, until his violet eyes rested on Tom. He was so controlled that it occurred to Tom at once that he had been waiting for the question all afternoon. ‘The coast’s alive with snugglers,’ he hissed. ‘Across to France and out to the Scillies. There are those in the castle have deen signalling to snugglers since the first of the Outrans cane here.’
‘And before then,’ added Hal excitedly. ‘Smugglers have been signalling here since long before my ancestors arrived, though I would wager my forefathers were as good at smuggling as they were at exploring.’
‘And you, Master St Just – are you following in an ancient family tradition?’ asked Tom, holding out the piece of lace as he spoke, to see if it would fit in St Just’s torn sleeve.
The squall came round the headland then, so fast that it took them all by surprise. It was just a sudden flaw in the wind, a counter-draft. Tom saw it most clearly as a sudden darkening of the sea just in front of them as a counter-set of wavelets came with the new wind. The wind slapped him in the face harder than the foam had done; and again, more purposefully. The f
oresail slammed across from a swelling in front of Tom to a hollow on the far side. The little boat hesitated, came upright, seemed to freeze at the point where all the forces were, for an atom of time, in balance.
Tom looked back over his shoulder. Then over she went the other way, at the mercy of the sudden headwind. The mainsail did exactly what the foresail had done and slammed across on to the other side of the boat, taking the boom with it. Sea-wise and quick-thinking, even with the distraction of Tom’s sudden accusation, St Just ducked automatically so that the heavy balk of wood skimmed over his gleaming curls.
Hal, confused, hesitant, literally taken aback, was too slow. The boom took him squarely on the side of the head and batted him over the side.
St Just took control of the vessel at once, hauling the tiller round so that the new wind spun the boat almost on her heel. Tom knew better than to move, but his eyes were fastened on the circle of ripples and the column of bubbles at their centre where the lad had gone in. Round they came with every line and joint groaning with the strain.
‘Can ye see hin?’ bellowed St Just.
‘No.’
‘I can’t sin!’ he called.
Tom’s whirling brain couldn’t make it out. He forgot what he had been thinking earlier about St Just’s missing ‘w’s and ‘m’s.
I’n a sailor. I can’t sin!’ shouted the desperate man.
Then, as they came thumping back across the first ripples of that terrible circle, Tom understood what St Just was saying.
I’m a sailor. I can’t swim.
Twenty-two: Life and Death
Tom hit the water head-first with no further thought – with no thought at all, in fact, or he would have taken off his black-velvet doublet and his boots. At the very least he would have put the tell-tale scrap of lace somewhere safe; but as it was, he simply sucked in a massive breath, rolled sideways over the gunwale and began to swim vigorously downwards, following the column of bubbles into the darkening heart of the bay.
