A Christmas Grace c-6

by Anne Perry

  The curtains were drawn closed, but Susannah kept looking towards the windows. There was no rain to hear, just the wind and occasionally the sudden hard bang as a twig hit the glass.

  They were both happy to go to bed early.

  “Perhaps by morning it will have blown itself out,” Emily said hopefully.

  Susannah turned a white face towards her, eyes filled with fear. “No, it won’t,” she said quietly, the wind almost drowning her words. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

  Emily’s common sense wanted to tell her that that was stupid, but she knew it would not help. Whatever Susannah was talking about, it was something far more than the wind. Perhaps it was whatever she was really afraid of, and the reason she had wanted Emily here.

  Emily thought as she undressed that in London Jack would be at the theater, possible enjoying the interval, laughing with their friends at the play, swapping gossip. Or would he not have gone without her? It wouldn’t be the same, would it?

  Surprisingly, she went to sleep fairly quickly, but she woke with a jolt. She had no idea what time it was, except that she was in total darkness. She could see nothing whatever. The wind had risen to a high, constant scream.

  Then it came—a flare of lightning so vivid that it lit the room even through the drawn curtains. The thunder was all but instantaneous, crashing around and around, as if it came from all directions.

  For a moment she lay motionless. The lightning blazed again, a brief, spectral glare, almost shadowless, then it was gone and there was only the roaring of thunder and shrill scream of the wind.

  She threw the covers off and, picking up a shawl from the chair, went to the window. She pulled the curtains back but the darkness was impenetrable. The noise was demonic, louder without the muffling of the curtains. This was ridiculous; she would have seen as much if she had stayed in bed with the covers over her head, like a child.

  Then the lightning struck again, and showed her a world in torment. The few trees in the garden were thrashing wildly, broken twigs flying. The sky was filled with roiling clouds so low they closed in as if to settle on the earth. But it was the sea that held her eyes. In the glare it seethed white with spume, heaving as if trying to break its bounds and rise to consume the land. The howl of it could be heard even above the wind.

  Then the darkness returned as if she had been blinded. She could not see even the glass inches from her face. She was cold. There was nothing to do, nothing to achieve, and yet she stood on the spot as if she were fixed to it.

  The lightning flared again, at almost the same moment as the thunder, sheets of colorless light across the sky, then forks like stab wounds from heaven to the sea. And there, quite clearly out in the bay, was a ship struggling from the north, battered and overwhelmed, trying to make its way around the headland to Galway. It was going to fail. Emily knew that as surely as if it had already happened. The sea was going to devour it.

  She felt almost obscene, standing here in the safety of the house, watching while people were destroyed in front of her. But neither could she simply turn around and go back to bed, even if what she had seen were a dream and would all have vanished in the morning. They would be dying, choking in the water while she lay there warm and safe.

  It was probably pointless to waken Susannah, as if Emily were a child who could not cope with a nightmare alone, and yet she did not hesitate. She tied the shawl more tightly around her and went along the corridor with a candle in her hand. She knocked on Susannah’s bedroom door, prepared to go in if she were not answered.

  She knocked again, harder, more urgently. She heard Susannah’s voice and opened the door.

  Susannah sat up slowly, her face pale, her long hair tousled. In the yellow light of the flame she looked almost young again, almost well.

  “Did the storm disturb you?” she asked quietly. “You don’t need to worry; the house has withstood many like this before.”

  “It’s not for me,” Emily closed the bedroom door behind her, a tacit signal she did not mean to leave. “There’s a ship out in the bay, in terrible trouble. I suppose there’s nothing we can do, but I have to be sure.” She sounded ridiculous. Of course there was nothing. She simply did not want to watch its sinking alone.

  The horror in Susannah’s eyes was worse than anything Emily could have imagined.

  “Susannah! Is there somebody you know on it?” she went forward quickly and grasped Susannah’s hands on the counterpane. They were stiff and cold.

  “No,” Susannah replied hoarsely. “I don’t think so. But that hardly makes it different, does it? Don’t we all know each other, when it matters?”

  There was no answer. They stood side by side at the window staring into the darkness, then as the lightning came again, a searing flash, it left an imprint on the eyes of a ship floundering in cavernous waves, hurled one way and then another, struggling to keep bow to the wind. As soon as they were tossed sideways they would be rolled over, pummeled to pieces and sucked downwards forever. The sailors must know that, just as Emily did. The two women were watching something inevitable, and yet Emily found her body rigid with the effort of hope that somehow it would not be so.

  She stood closer to Susannah, touching her. Susannah took her hand, gripping it. The ship was still afloat, battling south towards the point. Once it was out of sight, would anyone ever know what had happened to them?

  As if reading Emily’s thoughts, Susannah said, “They’re probably bound for Galway, but they might take shelter in Cashel, just beyond the headland. It’s a big bay, complicated. There’s plenty of calm water, whichever way the wind’s coming.”

  “Is it often like this?” Emily asked, appalled at the thought. Susannah did not answer.

  “Is it?”

  “Once before…” Susannah began, then drew in her breath in a gasp of pain so fierce that Emily all but felt it herself as Susannah’s fingers clenched around hers, bruising the bones.

  Emily stared out into the pitch-darkness, and then the lightning burned again, and the ship was gone. She saw it in a moment of hideous clarity, just the mast above the seething water.

  Susannah turned back to the room. “I must go and tell Fergal O’Bannion. He’ll get the rest of the men of the village out. Someone…may be washed ashore. We’ll need to…”

  “I’ll go.” Emily put her hand on Susannah’s arm, holding her back. “I know where he lives.”

  “You’ll never see your way…” Susannah began.

  “I’ll take a lantern. Anyway, does it really matter if I get the right house? If I wake someone else, they’ll get Fergal. Can we do anything more than give them a decent burial?”

  Susannah’s voice was a whisper forced between her lips. “Someone could be alive. It has happened before…”

  “I’ll go and get Fergal O’Bannion,” Emily said. “Please keep warm. I don’t suppose you can go back to sleep, but rest.”

  Susannah nodded. “Hurry.”

  Emily went back to her room and dressed as quickly as she could, then took a lantern from the hall and went out of the front door. Suddenly she was in the middle of a maelstrom. The wind shrieked and howled like a chorus of mad things. In the lightning she could see trees breaking as if they were plywood. Then the darkness was absolute again, until she raised the lantern, shining a weak yellow shaft in front of her.

  She went forward, picking her way on the unfamiliar path, having to lean all her weight against the gate to force it open. On the road she stumbled and felt a moment of terror that she would fall and smash the lantern, perhaps cut herself. Then she would be utterly lost.

  “Stupid!” she said aloud, although she could not hear her own words in the bedlam of the elements. “Don’t be so feeble!” she snapped at herself. She was on dry land. All she had to do was keep her feet, and walk. There were people out there being swallowed by the sea.

  She increased her pace, holding the lantern as high as she could until her arm ached and she was weaving around in the road as the wind
knocked her off her path, then relented suddenly and left her pushing against nothing.

  She was gasping for breath as she finally staggered to the doorway of the first house she came to. She really didn’t care whether it was Fergal O’Bannion’s or not. She banged many times, and no one answered. She backed away and found several pebbles from the garden and threw them up at the largest window. If she broke it she would apologize, even pay for it. But she would have smashed every window in the house if it gave her even a chance of helping any of those men out there in the bay.

  She flung them hard and heard them clatter, the last one cracked ominously.

  A few moments later the door opened and she saw Fergal’s startled face and rumpled hair. He recognized Emily immediately. “Is Mrs. Ross worse?” he asked hoarsely.

  “No. No, there’s a ship gone down in the bay,” Emily gasped. “She said you’d know what to do, in case there were any survivors.”

  A sudden fear came into his face and he stood motionless in the doorway.

  “Do you?” her voice cracked in panic.

  He looked as if she had struck him. “Yes. I’ll get Maggie to get the others. I’ll set out for the shore, in case…” He did not finish the sentence.

  “Can anyone really survive this?” she asked him.

  He did not answer, but retreated into the house, leaving the door wide for her to follow. A few moments later he came down the stairs again fully dressed, Maggie behind him.

  “I’ll fetch everyone I can,” she said, after briefly acknowledging Emily. “You go to the shore. I’ll get blankets and whiskey and we’ll bring them. Go!”

  White-faced, he picked up a lantern and stepped out into the night.

  Emily looked at Maggie.

  “Come with me,” Maggie said without hesitation. “We’ll get who else we can.” She lit another lantern, pulled her shawl around her, and went out also.

  Together they struggled along the road, although it would not be as bad here as on the shore. Maggie pointed to one house and told Emily the name of the people in it, while she went to one farther along. One by one, shouting and banging, occasionally throwing more stones, they raised nearly a dozen men to go down along the beach, and as many women to get whiskey and blankets, and cans of stew off the stove and chunks of bread.

  “Could be a long night,” Maggie said drily, her face bleak, eyes filled with fear and pity. In twos and threes they made their way across the hummocks of grass and sand. Emily was confused by how many houses they had missed out. “Would they not come?” she asked, having to shout above the clamor. “Surely anyone would help when people are drowning. Do you want me to go back and try?”

  “No.” Maggie reached out and took her arm, as if to force her forward, into the wind. They were closer to the water now and could hear the deep roar of it like a great beast.

  “But—” Emily began.

  “They’re empty,” Maggie shouted back. “Gone.”

  “All of them?” That was impossible. She was speaking of almost half the village. Then Emily remembered Father Tyndale’s apology for the sparseness of the place now, and a great hollowness opened up as if at her feet. The village was dying. That was what he had meant.

  Another flare of lightning burned across the sky and she saw the enormity of the sea far closer than she had imagined. The power and savagery of it was terrifying, but it was also beautiful. She felt a kind of bereavement when the flare died and again she could see nothing but the bobbing yellow lanterns, the fold of a skirt, a leg of trouser, and a swaying movement of sand and grass below. Several of the men had great lengths of rope, she wondered what for.

  They were strung out along the beach, some closer to the white rage of the water than she could bear to look at. What could they do? The strongest boat ever built could not put to sea in this. They would be smashed, overturned, and dragged under before they were fifty yards out. That would help no one.

  She looked at Maggie.

  Maggie’s face was set towards the sea, but even in the wavering gleam of the lantern Emily could see the fear in her, the wide eyes, the tight muscles of her jaw, the quick breathing.

  She looked away, along the shore, and saw in the next flash the large figure of Father Tyndale, the farthest man along the line.

  “I’ll take the Father some bread and whiskey,” Emily offered. “Or does he not…?”

  Maggie forced a smile. “Oh, he wouldn’t mind in the least,” she assured her. “He gets as much cold in his bones as anyone else.”

  With a brief smile Emily set out, leaning into the wind, pushed and pulled by it until she felt bruised, her feet dragging in the fine sand, the noise deafening her. She judged where she was by the slope of the shore, and every now and then climbed a little higher as the wind carried the spray and she was drenched. The thunder was swallowed up by the noise of the waves, but every lightning flare lit up the whole shore with a ghastly, spectral clarity.

  She reached Father Tyndale, shouting to him just as another huge wave roared in and she was completely inaudible. She held out the whiskey and the packet of bread. He smiled at her and accepted it, gulping down the spirits and shuddering as the fire of it hit his throat. He undid the parcel of bread and ate it hungrily, ignoring the sea spray and wind-driven rain that must have soaked it. Even in the smothering darkness in between the lightning flares, he never seemed to have moved his gaze from the sea.

  Emily looked back the way she had come, seeing the string of lanterns, each steady as if they were gripped hard. No one appeared to move. She had no idea what time it was, or how long since she had woken and seen the ship.

  Did this happen every winter? Was that why they had spoken of the storm with such dread, nights waiting for the sea to regurgitate its dead? Perhaps people from the surrounding villages, whom they knew?

  The wind had not abated at all, but now there were gaps between the lightning and the thunder that followed it. Very slowly the storm was passing.

  Then, after three flashes of sheet lightning, two of the lanterns were raised high in the air and swung in some kind of a signal. Father Tyndale gripped Emily’s arm and pulled her along as he started to run, floundering in the sand. She scrambled after him, hanging on to her lantern.

  By the time they reached the spot where the signal had been given, four men were already roped together and the leading one was fighting his way against the waves deeper into the sea, battered, pummeled, but each flare of lightning showed him farther out.

  It seemed an endless wait, but in fact it was probably little more then ten minutes before the others started heaving on the rope and backing farther up the beach onto the weed-laced shore. The women huddled together, lanterns making a pool of light on the sodden men as one by one they were hauled ashore, exhausted, stumbling to their knees before gasping, and turning back to help those still behind them.

  The last man, Brendan Flaherty, was carrying a body in his arms. Others reached forward to help him, and he staggered up the sand to lay it gently beyond the sea’s reach. Father Tyndale clasped his shoulder and shouted something, lost in the wind and roar of the water, then bent to the body.

  Emily looked at the villagers’ faces as they stood in a half-circle, the yellow flares of the lanterns under-lighting their features, hair wet and wind-whipped, eyes dark. There was pity in their knowledge of death and loss, but more than anything else she was touched again by the drenching sense of fear.

  She looked down at the body. It was that of a young man, in his late twenties. His skin was ashen white, a little blue around the eye sockets and lips. His hair looked black in this lantern light, and it clung to his head, straggling across his brow. He was quite tall, probably slender under the seaman’s jacket and rough trousers. Above all, he was handsome. It was a dreamer’s face, a man with a world inside his head.

  Emily wanted to ask if he was dead, against her will imagining how it had happened, but she dreaded the answer. She looked one by one at the ring of faces around her.
They were motionless, gripped by pity, and more than that, by horror.

  “Do you know him?” Emily asked, a sudden lull in the wind making it seem as if she were shouting at them.

  “No,” they answered. “No…”

  And yet she was certain that they were looking at something they had half expected to see. There was no surprise in them at all, no puzzlement, just a dreadful certainty.

  “Is he dead?” she asked Father Tyndale.

  “No,” Father Tyndale answered. “Here, Fergal, help me get him up on my shoulder, and I’ll carry him to Susannah’s. We’ll need to get him warm and dry. Maggie, will you stay with him? And Mrs. Radley, no doubt?”

  “Yes, of course,” Emily agreed. “We’re by far the closest, and we have plenty of room.”

  W hen they reached the house Susannah must have been up and looking out of the window, because she opened the door before anyone knocked. The young man was carried upstairs, awkwardly, booted feet scraping and numb hands knocking against the banisters. He was laid on the floor and the women asked to leave. Susannah had already put out a nightshirt, presumably one of Hugo’s she had kept. Emily wondered if she had kept all his clothes.

  There were no sheets on the bed, only blankets. “Shall I—” Emily began.

  “Blankets are warmer,” Susannah cut across her. “Sheets later, when the blood’s flowing again.” She looked down at the young man’s face and there was sadness in her own, and fear, as if something long-dreaded had happened at last.

  Then they excused themselves and went to get bowls of hot soup for the men, and all the dry woolens and socks they could find. The men would all have to go back again. There could be more people washed up, dead or alive.