by Julia Jones
“…When the tide had turned at noon Dutch admiral Van Nes had captured the Royal Katherine, an 82-gun second-rate English ‘great ship’. He’d taken her captain and officers on board his own vessel and put some of his men onto the Royal Katherine to sail her back to Holland. The English crew were imprisoned below decks…”
“What’s the time now?” Luke asked. Without his mobile the answer could be anything.
“Nine o’clock,” Mike broke off, briefly. Angel took a quick extra breath and carried on clinging to his arm.
“They’ll all be home, our families. Not knowing where we are.” Even Anna couldn’t get a mobile traced that had been chucked into the sea several hours ago.
“Please, don’t stop Dad talking.”
“Sorry.”
Luke pulled out the next box. It was full of part-used nightlights and the stumps of tiny candles. Had Helen and her mum been having a vigil for them dead sailors?
Maybe he would listen to Mike’s talking for a bit.
Mike finished describing the recapture of the Royal Katherine and went back to the beginning of his series. He reached Lecture Number 2 ‘The Butcher’s Bill’.
“…even the foam was tinged with blood…”
Luke had heard that before. All those different ways to die and the people watching from the shore who couldn’t help even though they might have been their families. It was all horrible.
“Do you think these women really care?” he interrupted.
The heist would be sort of understandable if they wanted the lion for some real reason. Like a memorial or something.
He could also maybe understand how thinking of so many dead people could have driven Hendrike crazy – especially if some might have been her and Helen’s ancestors. Was Mike saying that their ancestors were the brothers who got torn to pieces? That bit was gross.
Mike wasn’t stopping for questions so Luke opened another box.
There was the poppet that had been dressed to look exactly like his dad and there was the heavy runestone that had been used to smash it from behind.
He felt the blood drain from his face and a lurch in his stomach that was nothing to do with fly agaric poisoning or with the motion of the sea. Mike was still reciting and Angel was gripping onto his arm.
Luke sat on the floor of the tiny cabin stroking the lifeless doll. It was as if this broken doll was real and the figure in the hospital had been a dream. As if Hendrike had really killed his dad.
“Not everyone died,” said Mike. He’d reached the place where he usually paused. “Not even off the Royal James.”
“The Royal James is the painting we had in the living room, isn’t it, Dad?” asked Angel. “The one Mum made you take down.”
“It was just a poster, from the National Maritime Museum. I’ve got a collection. Postcards too. Nelly says all the ships look the same to her. And the battle scenes are too upsetting, she says. She’s right of course – about the battles, not the ships. There’s a lot to see in those drawings if you take the time to look. She’s promised to come…”
“Dad…if you don’t mind. I’d rather not think about Mum at the moment. I know I said it first but I shouldn’t have.”
Mike gulped. As if he could have been gulping back tears.
“No. Sorry. I’ll carry on. Try to…”
He cleared his throat, shifted about on the bunk, then got caught out by an extra-huge leap from Drie Vrouwen. The sort that leaves your stomach floating somewhere twenty metres above your head and you can’t believe you’ll ever get back together again.
“I think I’m going to be sick. Those pills don’t last…”
“No, you’re not, Dad. Don’t go all cold on me. You just talk and I’ll do the concentrating.”
Mike sort of panted a bit, cleared his throat again and had another try.
“Now that I’ve reached this point in the series I want to say that I’m happy to take any other questions you may have. There’s no need to save them until the end. After all, we don’t at the moment know that there’ll be an end, do we? I mean, not the sort of end where the chairman gives a vote of thanks. We know that there’ll be other ends – the end of this night: the end of this trip: the end of our lives. Even the survivors from the Battle of Sole Bay didn’t go on for ever. Not the human ones.
“I’m sorry Luke. I’m sorry Angela. I’m rubbish if I lose my script.
“You’ve been an exceptional audience. Both of you. I have to admit that there have been occasions when I’ve found myself in an empty hall. I usually give the talks anyway – as long as the caretaker doesn’t mind. It’s all so vivid in my head. There’s always a chance that someone might come in if there’s heating available and a cup of tea afterwards.
“That brings me back to the Dutch prisoners. In July 1672 there were one hundred and eighty Dutch prisoners starving in Harwich. They’d been given 2d each for food to last four days. That’s all we know. You can see why thinking of a cup of tea helped recall them to my mind. I’ve often wished I knew what had happened to them, any of them. Just recently – and this isn’t yet incorporated in my talks – I’ve discovered evidence that some of them…”
“STOP! Mr Vandervelde, please STOP!”
Mike had been speaking for two hours…three? It could be past midnight and into next day. And all this time Drie Vrouwen had been taking them away from England and their families.
Luke had replaced the broken doll in its box and put the runestone in the pocket of his fleece. It was awkward and it made his jacket sag but it was the nearest to a weapon he could find.
“I need you both to move. I’ve searched everywhere else in this cabin. Now I want to look under the mattress.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sole Bay II
Friday 7 November, first of the waxing crescent
Luke
They looked surprised, confused and similar: Ants with her hennaed mane tamed and crumpled by her cramped position on the bunk, Mike with his fly-away grey hair stiffened into salty peaks by his soaking earlier. They were both white-faced, both with charcoal shadows beneath their eyes. He remembered Helen’s exhausted face.
Hateful Helen. Enemy.
“On Lowestoft Lass there’s storage under the bunks. There’s sometimes even space to crawl through. Me and Liam discovered it.”
They still looked bewildered. They didn’t move, as if they didn’t know where they should move to.
“Put the mattress onto the floor. No room? Roll it up then and shove it across to the side. And move yourselves. I’m having those panels off.”
“We’re gonna like re-enact the Royal Katherine and escape?” This was Ants.
“Huh?”
“She was the prize that was taken by the Dutch and then the English crew fought back,” explained Mike. “She was a big second-rater but poorly designed. She’d been damaged. The English overpowered their captors and sailed her for Harwich.”
“Yeah. Okay. Whatever.”
He had got the panels out and pushed them to one side. As he’d expected there was a big space underneath the bunk. Trouble was that it was nearly filled by some large tank. Sealed off. Not storage. There was a gap about a foot or so between the tank and Drie Vrouwen’s metal hull.
Luke could hear water. Twice. Water outside the rearing, plunging hull and water sloshing next to him as well.
Needn’t be water. It could be fuel. Lowestoft Lass had tanks for both. Point was that it was a tank and it was in his way and he didn’t think that he’d be able to break it. Or even that he should if he wasn’t certain what was inside.
Could he get round the tank? Luke tried to bend his body, feet first, into the gap between the tank and the hull. It felt well tight. So then he tried the other way. He sucked his stomach in, leaned down next to the tank and stretched his arm as far forward as he could
.
He almost dislocated his shoulder but his fingertips touched a bulkhead – a partition between this space and whatever came next. The bulkhead didn’t feel that solid. It could be his way out to…somewhere, if he could smash it.
The problem was that his arm wasn’t long enough to get any force behind a blow but his shoulders and chest were slightly too big to let him squeeze any further in. Luke pulled back to think.
What if he got into the gap feet first and used the length of his leg? He could probably kick out the bulkhead. But what was the point if he couldn’t then fit his body through?
“Ants…?”
“Yeah?”
“You know you’re small…?”
“…mmm.”
“Well there’s a gap between this tank and the hull. Then there’s a partition but I think we might be able to kick it out. If I made a hole, would you be on for trying to get through?”
“Course I would. I do get quite bad claustrophobia.”
Oh.
“The stress could trigger another seizure.” This was Mike sounding parental. “And who knows what’s on the other side. She could be going straight into the Kapitein’s bedroom.”
“Otherwise known as the lion’s den. What if I try the kicking bit anyway and then we see what happens next? If I go first and there’s anyone there, then it’ll be my foot that gets used for target practice.”
It was odd how even thinking such a thought made the bottom of his foot feel like a mass of soft, warm flesh, a delicate net of nerve and bone. A bullet smashing into that! The pain would be terrible. And there’d be no help on board Drie Vrouwen. He might get gangrene. Have to have the whole leg off. Crippled for life – if he didn’t die.
“I’ll do it,” said Mike. “My legs are longer.”
But Mike’s pelvis was much broader and he was so awkward and so stiff. He couldn’t even touch the partition with his leg. It turned out that it had to be Luke.
“It was my idea anyway.”
The runestone in his pocket jammed against the narrow opening so he took it out and passed it to Ants to hold.
“What is it?”
“Whatever that bitch-witch used to club the doll she’d dressed up as my dad.”
“She what?”
“She didn’t like my dad so she made this doll and I think she’d been sticking pins in or something and then she got this stone and tried beating him to bits. No wonder he had an accident. I told you. She’s evil.”
“You think,” breathed Mike, “A genuine survival of seventeenth-century dark arts?”
“But …that was me and the lads what knocked out the chock and made the boat fall on your dad. You know that …”
Ants’s voice could make you think of the smallest lost kitten abandoned in the cold.
“Maybe you were in Hendrike’s power. It was Halloween, remember. You could have been Possessed. Or maybe it was an accident. But if you take a look at the doll inside that box – like I’ve been doing for the past hour – you’ll find it pretty clear what she meant to happen to Dad. That accident was exactly what she wanted. BITCH-WITCH!”
Luke pushed himself deep into the gap and began pounding the bulkhead at the end with more strength than he’d known he had.
“BITCH-WITCH! BITCH-WITCH!”
He timed his blows with the motion of the barge: each thud of his foot on the thin wood coinciding with Drie Vrouwen plummeting down some unseen wave. A half dozen hefty kicks and he felt the partition start to sag. He felt no fear that there might be someone on the other side. It splintered and he was glad.
“BITCH-WITCH! BITCH-WITCH!”
He needed to make a really good-sized hole so there wouldn’t be any problem for Ants getting though. Then she’d have to find her way back round and unlock the cabin door to let them out. He kicked a few more times, his anger draining as he felt the opening increase.
What sort of key had the bitch-witch used? Whatever it was she probably hadn’t left it hanging neatly on a hook outside. Much more likely to be in some pocket deep inside her horrible baggy clothes.
Tackling Hendrike would be like tackling some human hippo. They were supposed to be the most dangerous animal in the wild. Worse than lions, weren’t they? He couldn’t ask Ants to do that.
Luke stopped kicking: the hole was big enough. He tried to remember what sort of sound the lock had made when she had shut them into the cabin. Was there a bolt or had Hendrike used a key? He’d wriggle back and ask the others.
But he couldn’t. Couldn’t move at all. As he’d kicked – violently, repeatedly – with his right leg, using the forward surge of the boat each time, he hadn’t noticed how he’d slipped further and further along the narrow gap. His hands were still either side of the opening, gripping awkwardly onto the frame, but his left leg was doubled underneath him and his pelvis was completely wedged around the far corner of the tank.
“Mike! Ants! Can you give us a pull please?”
He heard some sort of exclamation from Mike and then he felt Ants’s small hands gripping one of his and heard her telling her father that he needed to get hold of Luke’s wrist. They began to pull.
“Not like that, Dad. Pull with the boat. When she goes up in the air.”
The place he was caught by was just completely wrong and the pain was suddenly excruciating.
“Stop it! Please!”
“What’s the matter?” Mike’s head was peering into the space, blocking the light.
“I’ve gone too far. My…bum’s stuck around the end of the tank. I can’t get back.”
He could hear the panic in his own voice.
Mike was worse. “Oh good heavens what shall we do? I shouldn’t have let you go down there. I should have known better.”
Now it seemed like Mike was trying to climb into the gap with him. “Can you give me space, Mike? I feel like I might suffocate.”
“Sit up, Dad. You’re blocking out all the light. Luke, you need to hold my hand and slow your breathing. Don’t think about anything except that. We’re not going to leave you and you’re going to be okay. Try to relax.”
Was that Ants? Must be. He could feel her holding one of his hands with both of hers. Feel her sort of beaming reassurance into him.
He did as she said and tried to slow his breathing. Relaxed his body bit by bit. Understood that there was no reason for his shoulders to be hunched up around his ears. That wasn’t the part he was caught by.
“If I try to kick again, could you try and push this time? See if we can get me through into wherever it is that I’ve made the hole?”
Ants and Mike both tried but by now he was kicking empty air. As much as he tried to jerk himself forwards with every wave-slide he knew he wasn’t getting anywhere. That same bit of tank was sticking into the same bit of him and he hadn’t progressed a millimetre.
Then he felt someone grab his leg and begin pulling. Pulling from through the hole. Pulling really strongly.
His left leg was doubled underneath him, the edge of the tank was pressing hard into his groin. This person had muscles.
Luke couldn’t help it. He screamed.
Everything stopped. He was panting, trembling, covered in sweat.
“I’m sorry,” came a voice from beyond the opening. “I had changed sides. I’ve been watching you and now I was trying to help.”
He needed to wait for the pain to stop. Those small hands of Ants’s were still there, holding his clammy one.
“Are you…?”
“I am Helen. I am very sorry.”
“Are you Helen on her own or Helen with her bitch-witch mother and her mother’s murdering friend?”
“Only Helen. Helen who loves her country and thought that she would do anything to get home but discovers that she can’t.”
“Can’t which? Can’t get home.
Or can’t… whatever it is.”
“Can’t either, I don’t think. May I try to pull you through?”
“Not like you just did. How could your ancestors have been torn to pieces? That was agony.”
“I don’t know. I hate the seventeenth century. I hate everything about it. I hate violence, oppression of women, religious mania, power politics and poverty. I hate state-operated torture and if there was truly witchcraft in the seventeenth century then I hate that too. What exactly is preventing you?”
It was a good question. He couldn’t quite think how to explain that he was somehow straddling the corner of an unyielding water tank and that every time she pulled – or Ants and her father pushed – his balls got crushed against it.
“Not sure. Possibly my other leg. It’s hooked up underneath me and I can’t get it out.”
“Okay. I’ll fetch a torch to take a proper look. Don’t move.”
“Can’t move!”
“Are you okay?” That was Ants.
“I’m good. But don’t stop hanging onto me. I’ve got Helen at the other end.”
“Oh.”
“Please, Ants.” He squeezed her small hot hand. It was maybe like a paw. “Stay with me.”
He thought he heard her sniff. “Ain’t got no choice. You don’t want to trust her though.”
“I’m not seeing a lot of choice about that either.”
There was a light by his feet. Helen had a torch and she was reaching in and feeling round the corner of the tank (that was nearly embarrassing) and then she was getting hold of his doubled-up left leg.
“It’s not broken?”
“No. It’s stuck.”
“Okay. Wait a minute while I make it straight. Then I give you soap.”
Which she did. She sorted his left leg, gently but firmly so that it was lying alongside his right leg. Both of them now pointing into some unknown place where he trusted that there was only her.
Then she passed him a large damp block of old-fashioned soap.
“You rub this everywhere,” she said. “On all the surfaces that are stuck. Mainly on your trousers.”
