by Charles Todd
I said, cutting across her answer, “Mr. Burton. Jenny is quite ill. I don’t believe it’s what your wife fears, but the next four-and-twenty hours could be critical. I hope that if you need me in the night, you will come for me. Your daughter’s life may depend on it.” It was Matron’s voice, dealing with obstreperous Aussies, and it reached him.
“Then I’ll thank you to go now.”
“I’ll be happy to leave you to care for your family.” I turned to Mrs. Burton. “Remember what I said about keeping her strength up. It’s the best thing you can do for her now.”
And I rebuttoned my coat, taking my time, before nodding to the two adults and walking briskly toward the door.
Honor satisfied. I hadn’t been tossed out on my ear, and I had made my point about Jenny’s care.
I shut the door firmly behind me, and set out toward the top of the Down where the hedge separated the path from the Griffith house.
Thank God, it hadn’t been diphtheria. It could have raced through such an isolated community with impunity, and taken at least some of the children here with it before it was finished. Jenny for one. The village would have had to accept help—there would have to be quarantine, medical care. I’d have gone directly to Ellen and sent her to fetch doctors at once, since her motorcar was the fastest way of reaching Swansea. And I’d have had to stay here until the epidemic was over, since I had examined the patient. My duty would have been clear. And it wouldn’t have mattered if Ellen was annoyed or not. Or anyone else out here in Caudle.
I was sure Daniel Burton would have been the first to object. His truculence worried me. His wife was afraid of him, and possibly the children were as well. I saw no indication that he beat them, but I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find that he enjoyed using his fists. He was the sort of man whose anger needed a target. I hadn’t wanted to leave them with him, but there had been no choice. Staying would only have angered him more, and they would have paid for it one way or another. I made a promise to myself to look in on them in the morning. There was no Constable here to call on if there was trouble, but I had a feeling Mr. Burton would leave me alone. If only to be sure I carried no tales with me.
When I reached the hedge, I stopped and looked back. There were wisps of smoke coming from chimneys, gulls wheeling over the strand, and the sound of the sea and the wind was the backdrop as it always was. It all looked so pastoral, so peaceful. I could frame it with my hands and call it beautiful.
No doctor here, no Constable, a rector who worried about his own soul. What kept these people pinned to an upheaval of limestone cliffs and a Down that ran to the sea? To such a harsh way of life? And yet it seemed inbred in them, part of the fabric of them, to live out here as their medieval ancestors had done. Hardy souls who weren’t afraid to leave the soft counties of Devon and perhaps Dorset to try their luck on a storm-drenched headland dominated by The Worm, and somehow make a go of it.
Had these been younger sons, who knew their portion of the family’s land wouldn’t be enough to live on? Or a collection of ne’er-do-wells only a step ahead of the Constable and the debtors’ prison? Or the refuse of larger towns?
For that matter, the Norman lord might have swept up half a hundred people from his own estates and put them on board ships without a by-your-leave. He would have had that right.
It didn’t matter. They had survived out here, an English foothold on Welsh shores, and it must have hardened them, made them stronger and more resilient.
They didn’t look to me as if they were in any danger of leaving in the beginning of the twentieth century.
In the afternoon, another of those bad storms came up out at sea. The sun set behind a bank of black clouds, and when I stepped outside for a few minutes, I could see flashes of lightning in the darkness moving toward us. It was the time of year for these storms, but they seemed to be increasing in intensity, and Rachel had gone out to be sure the ewes and young lambs were sheltered. Hugh and the dogs helped her bring them in, and by the time I stood there by the door, looking toward the Channel, my skirts were whipping wildly and I had to put a hand to my cap to keep it from flying off my head. I got back inside and shut the door against the wind. It took some doing to latch it.
We ate by lamplight that danced and flung our shadows around the kitchen as the wind rattled the windows and whistled around the corners of the house. It roared down the chimneys, sending gusts of ash across the floor in the front room, and threatened to put out the fire in the cooker. Once it hit the front door with such force that it blew it back against the wall, and Rachel and I had to fling ourselves against it to close it again.
Twice I saw Hugh glance up with worry in his eyes, and I thought he must be concerned about the roof holding. But Rachel assured us that the house had stood these many years and would stand as many more.
But it was as bad a storm as I’d ever lived through, I thought as I climbed the stairs, shielding my candle. Behind me, Hugh was saying, “It will scour out the bay, and send the sea up the strand, if this goes on.”
Rachel, bringing up the rear with our hot water bottles, said, “Oh, I don’t think so.”
I was worried about Jenny with her sore throat. Her mother wouldn’t be able to bring her up the road, not in such a gale. But Jenny’s father could, he was strong enough. I hoped they would be all right.
Standing at my window, I watched the rain blowing sideways, and I was glad the ewes and lambs were safe. The night was black as pitch, and I couldn’t even see a light in Mr. Griffith’s house.
I lay awake, listening to the wind howl, and once I heard Rachel coming out of her room and going quietly down the stairs. I thought perhaps she’d put on a show of not worrying for our sakes, and was making sure no rain was getting in. We’d put rags at the foot of the front door to prevent water from coming in, but that was the best we could do.
It was the small hours of the morning when the storm finally began to show signs of slowing down. But it was still raining at six when I got up to look out, and the dawn was gray and very wet. I heard Rachel go out to look at the sheep, taking the dogs with her, and I dressed quickly, thinking I might start breakfast for her.
Hugh had the front door open as I came down the stairs, and over his shoulder I saw people hurrying toward the hedge and the way down to the sea.
“What is it?” I asked quickly, thinking there must be another boat in trouble, caught by the gale and trying to make it into the bay.
“I—it’s nothing.”
“Hugh—why are they rushing down to the sea?”
“Leave it, Bess.”
But there was something about the way the villagers were hurrying that told me it wasn’t nothing.
“Is it another boat? Or has something happened to some of the houses out there on the Down?” I wondered suddenly if Jenny’s cottage was all right.
He turned to look at me.
“There’s nothing you can do. Leave it.”
But I’d been trained to help. I couldn’t just shut the door and ignore a need.
“Something is wrong,” I said, still watching the men and women heading toward the hedge. I went quickly back upstairs, caught up my coat and hat. As I was coming down again, Hugh blocked my way.
Hugh said, “Bess. Don’t go out there.”
“But if I can help—”
He caught my arm as I started past him. “No. You can’t.”
I broke free. “I have to try,” I said. “I can’t stand by and do nothing.”
Outside, people glanced sideways at me, not wanting to look me in the face, as I joined them on my way to the hedge. But when I got there and looked out across the bay, there wasn’t a boat or anything else in the water as it rolled toward the strand.
Jostled by latecomers, I scanned the cottages. There was a scattering of debris, things blown about that hadn’t been tied down properly, but the cottages were intact. I didn’t see any signs of real damage.
I looked again at the strand as I
heard shouting. And in the throng of people along the water’s edge a shoving match had started, two women lunging at each other, and then a third joining in, before several men separated them. Others were scrabbling in the surf, running this way and that, as if to find a better place, bumping into each other, too intent on what they were doing to take notice of the cold wind. Farther along, two men nearly got into a fight before dropping to their knees in the same spot and digging with their bare hands in the sand, ignoring the icy water washing over their fingers. A little boy called out, holding something up over his head in his excitement, and a woman came hurrying to take whatever it was from him. So much activity on the usually quiet strand sent the gulls wheeling out to sea. And I stood there watching, unable to believe my own eyes.
It was as if everyone in the village had run mad.
What were they after? Some sort of fish or shellfish that had washed ashore? But they were cramming whatever they’d found into their pockets or their aprons, and the intensity of their need to dig into the surf was beginning to get ugly.
I was alone up here at the hedge, now. And the latecomers were hurrying down the road. I watched one man trip and fall, but no one stopped to help him, and he got to his feet and ran to get ahead of the stragglers.
People found new places to dig at the water’s edge, and others came up to try to take whatever it was away.
Hugh spoke just behind me, making me jump.
“Bess. Come back to the house.”
“But what is it? What are they doing?”
I could see Mr. Griffith among them, laying about with his own fists.
“Just come with me. Now. I’ll explain when you’re safely inside. Quickly, now, before someone remembers you were out here.”
The insistence in his voice, the look on his face, spoke of fear, and worry.
I turned slowly, hardly able to tear myself away from the spectacle of most of the village coming to blows at the water’s edge. And I followed him back to the house.
As we crossed the road, I looked down toward the coast guard station, wondering if Ellen had gone along to the strand with everyone else.
And that’s when I saw Mr. Wilson, the rector, standing there by the overlook, not far from where I’d found blood, staring down at his flock, who appeared to have run mad in the aftermath of the storm. His black coat and scarf were blowing in the wind, giving him the appearance of an abandoned scarecrow as he leaned into it.
At that moment, he turned and looked at the two of us, almost at the path up to Rachel’s door. He stared for a moment, and then went back to watching the scene below.
I heard Hugh swear under his breath.
But surely we had nothing to fear from the rector?
We came back inside and hung our wet coats on the backs of chairs in the kitchen. Hugh set his crutches to one side and sat down heavily as I went to the cooker and stirred the banked embers to life before filling the kettle. That done, I turned and looked at the Captain.
He stared back at me.
“What is it? What was happening down there? You said you would tell me.”
He turned his gaze toward the window. “It’s best you don’t know.”
“They were after something in the surf. Fighting over it. What was it, Hugh? I came back to the house, as you asked. Now you must tell me. Some of those people are going to have serious injuries, the way they were attacking each other. You’d have thought they’d just discovered buried treasure—”
His eyes met mine, and something in his face warned me.
“You aren’t serious—Hugh, are you saying there’s something down there at the water’s edge? Surely not buried treasure?”
“No. Not buried. Well, not precisely. Bess, there was a ship. Back in Charles II’s day. It came to grief out there in a storm—I expect very much like the one last night—and they tried everything possible to beach it. But it must have gone hard aground just inside the bay, and it began to break apart. Those on board could see the lights out there on the Down, and they were screaming for help. But there was nothing the local people could do. They didn’t have a boat that could reach the ship, and it would have been madness to try. They watched helplessly as it was battered by the storm and finally broke apart. Everyone on board drowned. Their bodies began washing up the next day, along with whatever had been on the ship. The villagers collected everything, clothing, furnishings, bits and pieces of rigging, anything they could salvage, and shared it out. The bodies were brought up to the churchyard and given decent burial. A week later, strangers came, looking to find out what had happened to the ship. It had been sighted off the western coast of Ireland, but then the storm blew up and it had vanished.”
“And then?” I said, when he stopped. The kettle had boiled, and I took it off.
He took a deep breath. “Before the strangers arrived, one of the families had found something in the surf. Pieces of silver, lots of them. There were more the next day and the next. Anything that might have identified the ship was hastily burned. The raw graves were erased, older stones set over them to hide who and what they were. And the local people swore they never saw the ship.”
“Because of those pieces of silver?”
“Yes. And long after the people searching for the ship had gone, silver continued to wash up. Apparently it was a treasure ship, coming in from India with a queen’s dowry.”
“It’s still washing up today?”
“The chests went deep into the sand. That’s the theory. And storms bring the contents up. A goodly amount came ashore just after the wreck, and the people here were grateful. You must see that even a few silver coins were a godsend to them. There must have been other incidents over the centuries. Then a large cache was found in 1833. One man left in the middle of the night—he’d been out in the aftermath of a storm, and it was claimed he had a coach full of silver he’d discovered. I doubt it was that much, but the fear was, when he reached Swansea with all that silver, the truth was going to get out at last. The next morning his coach was found wrecked on the road to Swansea, and he was inside it, dead. The silver he’d taken with him was missing. No one knew where it was. Although there were suspicions.”
The phantom coach that was heard on stormy nights . . .
“But who had taken it?”
He shrugged. “The fastest horse out here belonged to Ellen’s grandfather. And the old coach must have been a lumbering affair out there on the drovers’ road. But there was no proof, you see. Her grandfather couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen, and he swore he’d been asleep in his bed. The horse was calmly grazing in a pasture and didn’t appear to have been ridden hard. What’s more, his mother vouched for him. Suspicion lingered, I daresay, but without even a justice of the peace to look into the matter, there was nothing to be done. More importantly, her grandfather never behaved as if he’d suddenly come into a great deal of money. His first wife died in childbirth, and by the time his second wife had given him a daughter—Ellen’s mother—and he saw to it that she had everything, it proved nothing.”
“And you’re telling me that the people out there on the strand right now have discovered more silver washing in, and they’re willing to batter each other in their attempt to grab as much as possible.”
“Over four centuries, it has been the lifeblood of this village.”
I gestured around me. “And this house? Did Rachel’s family also share in the silver?”
“I have never asked.”
I suddenly remembered the cross I’d seen in her room. Was that one of the treasures from the wrecked ship? And the silver cup in the Burton cottage.
“How much silver was that ship carrying?”
“Chests of it. It was meant for the dowry of Charles II’s wife. A Portuguese princess. It was coming from Goa. Over the years there’s no telling how much—or how little—of it has actually come ashore. Or how much is still out there. Waiting until the next storm.” He hesitated. “There are two very beautiful ca
ndlesticks on the altar in the church, and a communion cup and plate.”
I reached for the kettle and put it back on the cooker. “And the people out here have spent that money—and no one the wiser?”
“Melted down, silver is silver. I doubt you could trace it. I don’t know precisely how it’s done, and Rachel tells me that’s for the best. But I have a feeling that it’s turned into something that can be sold without arousing suspicion. That would make sense.”
“I see.” Small wonder the village didn’t want the police to come prying into their affairs. “How did you come to know about it?”
This time when the kettle came to a boil, I began to make the tea.
He glanced toward the passage, listening for the door. “Tom talked to Rachel’s father. And then told me. Apparently that silver made it possible for Rachel to be educated in Cardiff. I don’t believe she realized that. But her father wanted Tom to understand that there was almost none left.”
The outer door opened, and the dogs came racing down the passage, followed by Rachel. She seemed relieved to find both of us in the kitchen. I saw her face, but Hugh had his back to her.
That’s when I knew that Rachel understood more about the silver than Hugh was aware of. She’d been worried that we had been out—had seen the mad scramble to collect as much as possible before the tide turned. Had she been down there? I hadn’t noticed her . . .
But she said only, “It’s better than I thought, but the sheep are tired. They’ve found sheltered places to rest. I’ll have a cup of that, if there’s any left in the pot.”
I poured her a cup, and sat down to finish my own before starting our breakfast.
I stayed in the house, away from the front windows, for the rest of the day, washing and then ironing my aprons, but I was worried about Jenny—and worried too about those who had been fighting down by the strand. How many of them had been hurt? But they wouldn’t come to me.
It was just before dark—the sun had hardly shown its face, and dusk had been early, with the cloud cover—when there was a knock at the outer door.
