CHAPTER THIRTY
They were loading the last of the boats. The sloped deck of the Sally gently rose and fell beneath me as I held the rail for balance. Even with the hanging mist I still could see the shore, the little cove curved round its sheltered bit of sea, green hills that echoed those we had just left and small square houses stacked in cosy clusters up the slopes, with only the slight difference in the architecture telling me that we had crossed the narrow stretch of sea dividing Cornwall from the Continent, and had arrived in Brittany.
The crew were hard at work still bringing up the Sally’s cargo. I tried purposely to keep my gaze averted so they wouldn’t think me nosy, but I had already seen the bales of wool.
A true free trade, I thought. They swapped the raw materials that were, by British law, so hard to come by on the Continent, for finished goods that were considered luxuries to those back home in England, just as Daniel had explained to me.
He’d gone ashore himself on the first boat, and I’d assumed I would be coming on this final one with Fergal when the crew had finished loading it, but even as I smoothed my hands across my gown to tidy my appearance Fergal strode across the deck and set me straight.
With a curt nod he said, ‘I’ll be away myself, now. Time you got below.’
‘What?’
‘You’ll be safer in the cabin,’ he elaborated. ‘Come.’
He took me there himself, and quickly looked around to see that everything was as it should be while I grappled with the fact that they were leaving me behind, that I would not be going with them when they went ashore. I hadn’t been expecting that.
I wasn’t good at hiding how I felt. My own face must have held a mix of irritation and dismay, but if it did then Fergal chose not to react to it. He simply faced me, hands on hips, and asked me, ‘Can you fire a pistol?’
‘Pardon?’
Crossing to the desk he pulled the top drawer open just enough to show the pistol lying there. ‘You’ll find it primed and loaded. Do you know the way to fire it?’
‘Likely not.’
‘Then let me show you. Pay attention now,’ he told me, as he took the pistol from the drawer and led me through the steps.
‘Fergal …’
‘Not that you’ll be needing it.’ His glance was reassuring. ‘There will be only three men left aboard with you, and none of them will give you any trouble. I could trust them with my mother. Still,’ he added, with a shrug, ‘’tis always best to think the worst of everyone, for that way you’ll be seldom disappointed.’
‘Fergal.’
‘Ay?’
I knew the answer, but I had to ask him anyway. ‘Can’t I come with you?’
He half-turned and fixed me with that dead blank stare that meant I’d caught him off his guard, and then he made a great show of considering the question. ‘Well, you could, were you a fishwife or a whore, but since you’re neither you’ll do best to keep here safely in the cabin,’ he advised me in a dry tone that asked whether I had any sense at all. ‘What sort of men would you be thinking that we are, to take a woman in to shore?’
‘Well …’
‘You watch from this window and see how many women from the village leave the safety of their homes to welcome us,’ he said. ‘More likely when they see the Sally drop her anchor they all scurry out of sight to guard their precious virtues.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s probably because they think it’s Jack.’
Again I got the blank look, then his eyes began to crinkle at their corners and he grinned. ‘Ay, like as not they do.’ He handed me the pistol. ‘Bolt that door, now.’
When he’d gone, I set the pistol back in place within the drawer. It felt too dangerous to hold. Above my head I heard the heavy tramp of feet as those last crewmen bound for shore climbed down into the waiting boat, and when the splash of oars passed by I took a step back from the windows so that I was partly shielded by the curtains at their edge. I didn’t want to be caught watching like a child left behind; but that was how I felt.
Still, there wasn’t any point in sitting stewing in self-pity when there wasn’t anything that I could do about it, other than find some way to amuse myself while everyone was gone.
The captain’s cabin wasn’t fitted out for entertainment. I could only see that single shelf of charts and papers on the wall beside the desk, with several books wedged in among them, and the books at first glance didn’t hold too much appeal. One was mathematical, another was in Latin … the third appeared to be either by Alexander Pope or about him, since his name was printed on the spine, which meant it might not be too terrible. But when I tried to take it from the shelf it was so tight against the others that it brought the book beside it out as well and sent it tumbling to the floor.
The unknown book fell both face down and fully open and I scooped it up as quickly as I could, so that the pages wouldn’t bend. I’d planned to simply close it and return it to the shelf, but when I turned it over in my hands I saw the scratchy lines of handwriting in black and blotted ink, and realised what I held was not a printed book.
It didn’t seem to be a journal or a log book, either. There were no divisions for the dates and times, just paragraphs of writing.
Then a sudden thought occurred to me. I closed the book and opened it again at the beginning, to the words that I’d suspected I might find there, written in that same uneducated hand: ‘Jack Butler, His Book’.
Jack was midway through his memoirs, from the look of it. The memoirs that he’d find a way to publish later on in life, and which in turn would find their way to me three hundred years from now.
I hadn’t had a chance to read much more than the first several pages of my copy of A Life Before the Wind, the book that Oliver had no doubt paid a shocking sum of money for. He might have saved himself the bother, I thought smiling. I could read the whole thing now for free. After all, it wasn’t really an invasion of Jack’s privacy if all this was already published openly in my own time. And from my first quick glance at the initial page, it seemed that he had published it exactly as he’d written it – the words had not been changed.
With that decided, I put Alexander Pope back on the shelf instead and settled down with Jack’s book in the gently swinging hammock.
It felt curious and strange to read the same exact words I had read two nights ago, the same account of Jack’s and Daniel’s upbringing, but this time as a manuscript. And this time I was able to go further on. The focus stayed on Jack, of course – he’d clearly set himself up as the hero of the narrative – but now and then he widened out his viewpoint to include things like,
It was at this time that my brother Daniel, going up to London, chanced upon two men who were then being pressed into the Queen’s service, and taking it upon himself to intervene he did effect their rescue and did find himself indicted for a Trespass for his troubles. Having languished several weeks in Newgate he was finally brought to trial, whereupon it was discovered there were none who would appear against him, and he was happily acquitted to rejoin us…
I could remember Fergal making mention of that episode when I had overheard him arguing with Daniel in the next room on the first day I had come to their Trelowarth – the Trelowarth of the past. He had been reminding Daniel that the Duke of Ormonde’s battles weren’t their own. ‘When did the flaming Duke of Ormonde ever think to do you favours?’ I recalled him saying. ‘Never, that’s when. Did he think to put his hand in when they had you up to Newgate? Did he come to pay you visits?’
Evidently not, although from what I’d read so far it didn’t seem the Butler brothers needed anybody’s intervention. They appeared to lead charmed lives. Just reading Jack’s accounts of his own captures and escapes, and the few tales he told of how both he and Daniel had outwitted Queen Anne’s agents while at sea, I was ready to believe the only luck they had was good luck.
With one notable exception.
And at summer’s end my brother’s wife succumbed to her l
ong illness and was laid to rest with God.
He said no more about Ann’s death, nor its effect upon the family, though I thought the constable came into things a little bit more often after that, a darker presence in the background of the narrative.
And the narrative, in spite of Jack’s poor grammar and the challenge of his handwriting, made for some fascinating reading.
So much so, that when I turned a page expecting to find more of the description of a riot that had happened just this spring at celebrations for King George’s birthday, and instead found that the sentence I’d been reading simply ended there, with blankness after, I was disappointed.
Flipping ahead to make sure there was nothing more, I closed the book regretfully. Oh, well, I thought. At least I had the finished version waiting for me in the present day. I’d have to be content with that.
I was starting to swing myself out of the hammock when the Sally lifted suddenly and rocked as though a wave had struck her broadside. As the hammock swung me back again I gripped it with my free hand, though in truth there was no danger I’d fall out. It was, as everyone had promised me, completely safe.
But that safety felt relative, now.
The Sally rolled a second time as something blotted out the daylight from the windows at the stern, behind me. Still clinging tightly to the hammock I turned round to see another ship’s hull sliding ominously past, so close that I could see the gilded scrolls of woodwork on her gun ports.
The sight brought me out of the hammock in one swift decided move, planting my feet on the unsteady floor while I tried not to panic.
I couldn’t see anything out the stern windows except the dark rise of the black-painted ship and one narrow slice of the grey sea and mist-shrouded shoreline that seemed too far off now to be any help, and I felt a new sense of frustration with Daniel and Fergal for leaving me here.
I’d be safer here, would I?
It didn’t appear so. The unknown ship had started a slow turn that brought her bow around to face the offshore winds. I watched her black stern swinging out away from ours until the two ships rested almost parallel to one another with the hard slap of the waves against the Sally’s hull the only sound of protest.
I’d expected some reaction from the three men left on board with me, but so far I’d heard nothing, not so much as one stray footfall on the upper deck. Maybe, I thought, my three would-be protectors had slipped into hiding – something they wouldn’t have done unless there was a reason to hide.
I knew that I was speculating; knew I had no way to tell if this new ship was friend or foe, but the mere sight of that black hull sliding past with all its gunports standing open, and this strange, unsettled silence that now hovered over everything inclined me to believe the worst.
Hiding wasn’t exactly an option for me – I didn’t know the Sally well enough to know where I’d be safe. At least here in the captain’s cabin I had that strong bolted door between me and whatever came. And more, I had the pistol.
It had slipped my mind initially, but now I crossed to take it from its drawer again with hands that weren’t quite steady.
I had barely closed the drawer again when I heard the quiet splash of oars approaching, almost furtive … heard the creak as they were lifted, and the scrape and bump of something on the Sally’s starboard side.
Gripping the pistol I closed my eyes briefly, preparing myself for the obvious since there was no way to stop it.
The Sally was going to be boarded.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Not knowing, not seeing, just hearing the sounds of the men coming over the sides was the worst part by far. I’d seen too many pirate movies and my mind was freely fitting images to what I heard above me, matching every shuffling step to some crazed killer carrying a cutlass in his hand.
So when I heard the first thump of a man’s boots coming down the stairs, I had the pistol waiting, cocked the way Fergal had shown me. As the boots approached I raised the pistol higher, and when the handle of the cabin door first gave a rattle I prepared to fire.
But then the intruder did something I hadn’t expected.
He knocked.
And Daniel’s voice said, ‘Eva? Let me in.’
The rush of relief was so great that it set loose a wave of adrenaline that made my fingers fumble on the bolt until I concentrated.
Daniel looked surprised to see the gun. ‘Are you all right?’ He swung the door shut firmly at his back. ‘Has something happened?’
I kept my voice low, so the crew wouldn’t hear. ‘There’s a ship.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Relaxing, he reached out to take the pistol from my hand. He let the hammer down with care. ‘There is no need for you to worry. Did you think that I would leave you so defenceless?’
I was on the brink of saying that I hadn’t thought he’d leave me in the first place, but I caught the words in time before I spoke them. It was not his fault, I knew, that social customs were the way they were; that men and women here were bound by different rules. And if I was feeling left out, I had no one but myself to blame. I’d asked to come along.
I said, ‘I just thought I should be prepared for anything.’ And then, because he didn’t look entirely convinced, I changed the subject while he put the pistol in its drawer. ‘Did you get all your business done on shore?’
‘We did. And bought ourselves a boat into the bargain, to replace the one that Creed’s boy rowed away in, else we’d find it a damp walk between our mooring and the beach when we got home.’
The tramping of men up and down between decks let me know that whatever they had traded for the wool was now being unloaded and stored in the Sally’s deep hold. Soon the great creaking winch would start hauling the anchor up. So much, I thought, for my grand sea adventure. In no time at all we’d be finished and back at Trelowarth.
Holding in my disappointment, I crossed to the windows and focused my gaze on the black ship that had given me those few unsettling moments. ‘Is that ship a free-trader, too?’
Daniel leant on the edge of his desk. ‘No. She is, by her colours, a French naval frigate.’ He seemed unconcerned.
‘She’s a much bigger ship than the Sally.’
His practised eye measured the looming black hull. ‘Ay, she’ll be close on 400 tons, and has 32 guns to our 8, and she’ll be carrying at least ten men for every one of ours.’
I said, ‘That’s hardly reassuring.’
‘On the contrary, for that description fits in every way that of the ship I have been sent to meet.’
So this wasn’t an ordinary smuggling run, then. ‘You’re supposed to be meeting another ship here?’
‘My instructions were to that effect.’ Daniel tipped his head slightly as though trying to get a clear view of the French ship’s rigging. ‘Though I must confess they did not name the ship in question.’
The scenery of my own view through the windows at the stern began to slip a little sideways as the Sally caught the wind and started slowly nosing out along the grey line of the shore. We glided once again into the French ship’s shadow.
Daniel must have sensed my nervousness. He said, ‘This is no place for us to make an introduction, with so many watching eyes. It will be better if we seek a quieter stretch of coastline where we can heave to and see what they intend.’
Looking at that line of gilded gun ports I fought back my own misgivings. ‘Yes, of course.’
He wasn’t fooled. ‘Are you now wishing you had stayed back at Trelowarth?’
‘No.’ That came out too quickly. I said it again, ‘No, I’m glad I came.’
He didn’t comment on that, and his silence made me turn self-consciously to find he was still leaning on his desk, arms folded, watching me with thoughtful eyes. I asked him, ‘What?’
He seemed to think a moment longer, then he said, ‘You will not wound me, Eva, if you speak the truth. I would have honesty between us.’
‘I am being honest.’
He didn’t ar
gue that. He only straightened from the desk and crossed to stand beside me, looking out the windows while the steadily retreating shadow of the black French frigate brightened into grey waves that broke hard upon the rocky shore to spray their mist and hide the rise of greening cliffs behind. ‘It has a wild beauty all its own, the Breton coast,’ he said, ‘but I would doubt it could compare with India.’
My turn for silence. I thought he had missed that small slip I had made back when Fergal had noticed the tag in my T-shirt that said ‘Made in India’, and I’d been thinking of the time I’d spent there with Katrina, and he’d watched my face …
‘You have been there,’ said Daniel. He spoke the words surely, a statement of fact.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘And where else have you travelled?’
I scrolled through the list in my memory. ‘A lot of places.’
‘Is it that you think my mind so limited and narrow that I will not comprehend the truth? Is that why you conceal it?’
‘No, I—’
Daniel turned his head. His eyes met mine. ‘There is no map for this, no ordered rules of conduct, so we must invent them as we stumble through, and I would argue that the first rule must be honesty.’
I wasn’t all that sure what he was wanting me to answer. My expression must have shown that, for he gave a tight-lipped sigh and looked away again.
‘You are glad that you came,’ he said. ‘You, who have seen and done things I can scarcely imagine; you, who have freedoms in your time the women of mine cannot contemplate. Doubtless you thought that this voyage would be an adventure, and yet you have spent this day shut in a cabin alone and in fear for your life, and you say you are glad that you came. You’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘if I do not believe you.’
The Rose Garden Page 28
