Blake's Reach

by Catherine Gaskin

  There was no hope of sleep now. She listened, but she could hear nothing more. There was no further fire from the other vessel, and the Dolphin did not return the shot. She sensed the increased speed of the Dolphin, as if Paul had risked putting on more sail. There were no more shouted orders from the deck, and Charles did not return, either.

  She lay there still, watching the ports for the first light of dawn, wondering how long it would be before the storm blew itself out. It was September already, she thought, and this was the first storm of autumn.

  ***

  A watery sun rose, breaking through the racing grey clouds. Except where the sun touched it, the sea was also grey, with a heavy swell running. The Dolphin seemed to be all alone in the Channel; Jane lay listened to the cries of the gulls who followed in the wake of the ship.

  At last Paul came down to the cabin, his eyes dull-looking, the lines of fatigue set hard on his face. He wore a sou’wester, but no oilskins and his clothes were wet. He dropped into the seat under the ports, flinging his arms and legs wide in a mighty stretch and a yawn.

  ‘Lord, Jane, I’m tired! No sleep since … since days ago!’ He closed his eyes for a moment, moving his head from side to side to stretch his neck. Then he looked at her again. ‘We’ll be in Le Havre by afternoon. Got blown off course last night.’

  ‘Is that all you can say,’ she asked. ‘Or didn’t you notice the cannon shot?’

  He grinned. ‘I wondered if it woke you!’ Then the smile faded; he shrugged. ‘We came near to it, Jane! ‒ Lord, it got so dark when that weather blew up that you could hardly see your hand in front of you. Then suddenly I got a sight of the riding lights on this craft, and we went so close I could see she was flying the Revenue Stripes. We weren’t flying anything at all, and I’m hoping she’ll still be trying to guess who we were.’

  ‘But the shot …?’

  ‘She fired a blank to signal us to heave-to, but we weren’t stopping for courtesies like that! We went about as quickly as we could make it, and got to hell away from her. The Dolphin was built to run, not to stay and fight … well, there wasn’t a sight of them this morning.’

  ‘I was frightened,’ Jane said. ‘I was scared stiff!’

  ‘That’s the most sensible thing I’ve heard you say for a long time. Anyone but a fool would have been scared … we’ve got a load of wool aboard I was supposed to ship to Flushing, and we have no export licence to show if we’d been searched.’

  ‘Charles went on deck,’ she said. ‘I heard him go up.’

  Paul nodded. ‘He stayed there right through it, and, for a landsman, he managed not to get too much in the way.’

  ‘He’s still there?’

  ‘Yes ‒ stayed there all night. Hardly spoke a word, either. Didn’t seem to be afraid ‒ didn’t even ask if we’d lost the Revenue cruiser. Just stood all night on the deck, and didn’t say a word! Wouldn’t even go to the galley with me to get something to eat. He’s still there … just looking at the empty sea.’

  Jane shivered. ‘I don’t understand Charles.’

  ‘Nor do I! ‒ don’t even understand myself for doing what he tells me to! This trip to Le Havre … it’s madness! Even though he owns the Dolphin, I’m her master and I could have refused to do as he said. I tried to refuse, and then I shut up, and let him have his way. Why does he have to go himself? … he could have sent someone for this Frenchwoman, and he wouldn’t have endangered his own life. To escape once is enough … Doesn’t he know he’s asking too much of his luck to do it again? Doesn’t he know that, Jane?’

  ‘I think he knows it,’ she said soberly. ‘And perhaps that’s why we do as he says, and go where he tells us. He has great courage, Paul, and somehow he carries you along with it. Look at me! ‒ I lie here and wonder why in Heaven’s name I ever said I’d come along. I don’t feel brave, and I don’t love Louise de Montignot. But Charles has such courage and he’s so direct and determined about what he has to do for that woman ‒ and I found myself saying I’d go.’

  Paul rubbed his hand wearily across his eyelids. ‘You admire him, don’t you, Jane?’

  ‘I think he is brave,’ she said frowning, ‘but he is cold! It is almost as if he didn’t know what it would feel like to be afraid. He looks at you with those cold, black eyes … and he drinks and he rides and he spends money ‒ perhaps he even makes love ‒ and I don’t think his heart ever beats faster for it! Can you think how he looks now? ‒ as cold as the sea!’

  She pulled the blankets close about her chin, and rolled on her side, facing Paul. ‘I wonder,’ she said musingly, ‘… I wonder if he loves Louise. I wonder if it will make him happy to have her at Blake’s Reach?’ She looked at him questioningly, and yet did not expect an answer. ‘Or does he think of it only as a promise he gave, and must keep, no matter what he thinks or feels about Louise …’

  ‘I don’t care what Charles feels about the Frenchwoman,’ Paul said. His tone was dull, as if he were repeating something he had decided a long time ago, and now it was an established fact. ‘All I care about is that you are here, on the Dolphin, and I must be here also to see that nothing happens to you. I will go ashore at Le Havre and get this de Montignot woman, and I will use whatever cunning and skill and speed I have in doing it. And it won’t be for her sake, or for Charles’s, but for you Jane. He has taken you into danger simply by lifting his finger and beckoning. If I love you I have to save you from Charles’s obsession and his ruthlessness ‒ I have to take you out of danger.’

  His eyes had closed again; his lips looked thin and pinched.

  ‘You’re very tired, Paul,’ she said softly.

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Could you sleep if you came in here with me. If I lay very still, could you sleep?’

  His eyes flickered open. ‘Not even you could keep me awake now, Jane.’

  He sat on the edge of the cot, and she helped him strip off the sodden clothes. They lay in a pile on the deck; he kicked his boots aside and they slid across the deck and collapsed against the door. She squeezed herself against the bulkhead to make room for him in the cot, then she put her arm under his head, and covered his shoulders with the blanket.

  He lay still for a few moments, breathing heavily; she began to think he was already asleep. Then suddenly he spoke, in a low, dull voice. ‘What will you do, Jane, when she takes Blake’s Reach from you? Are you going to come with me?’

  Softly she pressed a kiss on his temple. ‘Sweetheart, we’ll talk about that when the time comes,’ she murmured.

  Then she gathered his chilled, weary body close to her, holding him against her to give him warmth. He seemed to yield himself to her then, not protesting or making any further effort to talk. His wet blond hair had fallen down across his forehead. He slept, with his head cradled against her breasts, a heavy, exhausted sleep that lasted until the sun was high.

  Four

  All through the hours of the afternoon and the coming of dusk Jane and Charles waited for Paul to return. It had been a golden September day, warm, with only a hint of freshness in the breeze to carry the premonition of winter. And even that slight chill had gone once they passed the entry to the port of Le Havre, passed the round battlemented tower that had dominated the fortifications since the days of Francis the First. Jane watched the grey granite walls of the quais slide by them, and tried to hold back the shiver that touched her, in spite of the sun warm on her back. Charles looked unconcerned, as if he was not aware that the menace of an enemy now lay all about them.

  ‘That is La Citadelle,’ he said, gesturing over to the right of the entry. She turned and looked, and the sight of it was not reassuring. It was a high, square pile of masonry, facing both to the estuary and to the town itself, with fortified lookout towers at intervals along the walls. Not even the green of the trees within the enclosure softened its lines. Jane turned away quickly.

  The Basin du Roi was more cheerful. The town clustered close about the shipping docked here; the bustle of people
going about their everyday affairs had a normal look to Jane’s eyes. It was a town not so very different from Folkestone, and she could almost persuade herself that this was England, peaceful and safe. And while she looked, her hands clutched the bulwark tightly to conceal from Charles their trembling.

  The houses were of plaster and timber and tile, many different colours, whose top storeys overhung the cobbled streets. Washing was hanging from the windows, brightly coloured clothes flapping in the breeze like a great flock of birds on the move … or banners, Jane thought, yes, banners for a celebration day. She wondered why she thought these things, why she tried to persuade herself that this was a happy place, that no danger for them existed here. Behind one of these windows Louise de Montignot lay, and perhaps she even heard the harsh voices of the blanchisseuses Charles pointed out to her, calling and gossiping to each other over their wash tubs gathered about the fountain. The tubs were coloured also ‒ blue and green.

  During the afternoon the crew of the Dolphin had made an exaggerated show of discharging and consigning to a warehouse the cargo Paul had carried aboard at Barham. The bales of English wool had, after all, served their purpose in providing a pretext for being in the port.

  Paul memorized the map Latour had drawn; from where they had dropped anchor in the Basin du Roi they could see the stream of traffic moving along the Rue de Paris. In the Rue de Paris Paul was to look for a wine shop, which also sold bread; there he would enquire for Albert Cornand.

  Jane and Charles watched while Matt Shore rowed him to the steps of the quai. Then he was lost from sight among the crowds. They settled to wait.

  ***

  The dusk came down slowly on the town. Jane had tried to sleep down in the cabin, but without the wind on the open sea it was stuffy and oppressive. Charles was still on deck when she came up, and it seemed as if he had not moved from his position by the bulwark. He turned as she paused beside him.

  ‘A boat has just put off from the quai,’ he said briefly. ‘I think it is Paul, but there are two other people with him. One of them is a woman.’

  In the gathering darkness it was difficult to see the boat, but as it drew nearer she recognized Paul in the stern. Matt Shore had stationed himself by the steps of the quai throughout the afternoon; Paul had wanted to remain as inconspicuous as possible, and had avoided using one of the small craft which waited there to serve as a ferry. The boat pulled in to the Dolphin’s side; it carried, as Charles had said, two passengers beside Paul. The first, a man, and a stranger to Jane, began to climb the ladder; Paul tried to steady it as the other climbed. Timidly the woman followed.

  It was not Louise de Montignot; Jane knew this as soon as the woman stepped on to the deck. She was middle-aged, heavy with a pasty fleshiness; she wore a grey gown with a fraying, dirty fichu and a soiled cap on her grey hair. She looked weary and afraid, her brown eyes regarding them suspiciously. Jane had had many different ideas of what Louise de Montignot would look like, but she knew certainly that this was not she. Charles said nothing.

  Paul joined them, and wordlessly motioned them all towards the companion-ladder leading to the cabin. Jane opened her mouth to speak to him, but his face was set with an anxious pre-occupation she knew could not break with a casual word; she let her hand rest in his for a moment as he helped her on the ladder and he smiled in response, a smile that briefly warmed her, and let her share his anxiety. Charles was the last to come down the stairs; he stood by the open doorway while Jane, Paul, and the two strangers tried to find space for themselves inside.

  Paul gestured towards the pair, who had settled themselves side by side on the seat under the ports. The man, Jane guessed, was near sixty, with straggling, scant hair. His eyes looked out of his lined face with a desperate appeal.

  ‘Monsieur and Madame Duval,’ Paul said. ‘I found them in hiding at Albert Cornand’s shop, and they asked me for passage from France.’

  ‘You will be going soon?’ the man asked. ‘It is imperative, Monsieur, that we leave quickly.’ With a kind of shock Jane realised that he was speaking English, and in passing she wondered how he had learned it.

  From the doorway Charles spoke. ‘We will leave Le Havre as soon as our business here is completed ‒ not before.’

  ‘Completed!’ The woman spoke, a deep voice that carried the tones of disgust and bitterness. ‘If it’s the Comtesse you’ve come for, then your business is completed. I know a dead woman when I see one, and she’s as good as dead.’

  Charles said coldly, ‘But she still lives?’

  ‘She lives, yes …’ The woman shrugged. ‘But for how long? A few hours ‒ a day at the most!’ She nudged her husband, and nodded towards Paul savagely. ‘You’ve paid good money for this passage! You must demand that we leave immediately. I have no use for this waiting about for a dead woman!’ She heaved her plump shoulders as she spoke. Beside her husband Jane noticed that she appeared strong and muscular, despite her fatigue; in her fierce way she was protective of him.

  The man gestured apologetically to Charles. ‘Forgive her, Monsieur! It is not usually Marie’s way to be so ‒ so harsh. But we have had an unfortunate experience trying to help a lady who was sought by the Commune … most unfortunate! I had a business in Paris, you understand. I am a violin maker with a high reputation …’

  ‘Ah!’ Marie Duval exclaimed contemptuously. ‘A sentimental fool, that’s what he is! Involving himself with the escape of an old patroness of our firm ‒ one who should have taken her chance of justice before the courts as all good citizens do! But no! ‒ he must meddle, and now we are ruined! Lucky to get out with our lives, and what gold we had in the house. We are ruined! … ruined!’

  ‘Then be thankful you’re not dead!’ Charles said, dismissing the Duvals, and turning to Paul. ‘What news is there? What of Louise?’

  ‘It is as they say,’ Paul answered. ‘I have seen her, and she still lives.’ Then he shook his head. ‘But as for getting her aboard the Dolphin …’

  ‘You have spoken with her?’ Charles said eagerly. ‘Have you told her I have come, and soon she will be in England.’

  ‘I told her,’ Paul said, ‘and she was glad to know you were here. But when I told her you were coming, and that to-night we would take her aboard the Dolphin, she said nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘She said only that she would be happy to see you, but nothing else.’

  Charles brushed his words aside. ‘It is only her weakness ‒ she must have time to get used to the idea that we have come to take her away.’ He frowned as Paul began to shake his head. ‘What is wrong with you! Have you turned into a miserable coward like everyone else ‒ like this pair here?’ He indicated the Duvals. ‘Are you going to desert her when we are so close?’

  ‘I think,’ Paul said quietly, ‘that the countess hasn’t the strength to reach the Dolphin.’

  ‘We will make her reach it! It can be done ‒ a carriage or a sedan chair to the quai, and then we will carry her into the boat. Matt Shore must rig up some kind of sling to get her aboard. Damn you, why are you shaking your head? Are you defeated before we have begun?’

  ‘Not defeated! Not yet! But things have been happening in France in the past few days that make even the short trip between Cornand’s shop and the quai dangerous for a woman who must be helped every step of the way.’

  ‘What has happened?’ he demanded impatiently.

  ‘Has Monsieur not heard?’ Duval said. ‘The news came from Paris this morning, and the town is in a fever.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Since the affair at the Tuileries last month, when the Swiss Guard was overthrown and the Royal Family taken to the Temple …’

  ‘You mean when the Swiss Guard was murdered,’ Charles said tersely.

  The man shrugged. ‘As you wish, Monsieur. Others have a different way of looking at it. Towards the end of August the citizens of Paris saw the funerals of the patriots which they claim were murdered by the ari
stocrats during the same attack on the Tuileries. All through the month the arrests have been countless, and the temper of the people so inflamed it was not safe to open one’s mouth unless to denounce a neighbour or a brother to the Revolutionary Tribunal. It was necessary, you understand, to prove that one was a loyal patriot. It was then we fled …’

  ‘Yes ‒ what more.’

  ‘Terrible rumours have been spreading about Paris … the Prussians were at the gates, the National Volunteers had gone to the front and Paris was unprotected. The word went around that the attack on the city was to be the signal for a counter-revolution. The prisons were to be thrown open, and the women and children would be at the mercy of the aristocrats and their paid assassins. I thank God we got away …’

  He shuddered, closing his eyes for a second. ‘To-day the news reached here from Paris. An order was issued two days ago ‒ September the second, that would have been ‒ by the Commune that all the prisoners in L’Abbaye and La Force were to be tried immediately … it was an order for execution or release. At midday the same day an alarm gun was fired from the Pont-Neuf, and a black flag was flown at Hotel de Ville. They say already hundreds have died, hacked to pieces by the mob who wait only the few minutes given to the mockery of a trial. It is the same for them all ‒ criminals, priests, prostitutes, royalists. It is release or death! A massacre, Monsieur!’

  ‘And it continues?’

  ‘So far as we know, Monsieur. The news reached here to-day, with orders for a special watch to be set for persons attempting to escape, the Seine being one of the best ways to leave Paris …’

  ‘This morning we were nearly caught,’ Marie Duval said. ‘We left the house in which we spent the night but a few minutes before it was searched by the National Guard. You know now why we have no wish to wait here like sitting ducks until they decide to search all the vessels in the port. I tell you every citizen has suddenly two pairs of eyes ‒ one for himself, and another for any action or word he thinks suspicious. It is a time when patriotism cannot be taken for granted. It must be proved!’