“He owns more than half the ships that sail in and out of Tawpuddle. I’m sorry … I thought everyone knew that.”
“He’s the Linnet’s owner?”
“Yes. It was his father who had her built thirty or more years since. She was the finest ship in Tawpuddle, in her day, but she never once sailed to the Americas in all those years.” She paused for a moment. Sighed. Shook her head. “There was something wrong from the moment Father signed up for that voyage. I knew it, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Benson came looking for him. Took him off up to the manor. That had never happened before. Usually Father would pick his own ship down on the quay at Tawpuddle: sign on with a captain he liked. He was glad of Sir Robert’s offer of work, he said, but he was unsettled after he took it. Restless, right until the day they sailed. He’s a good man, Caleb, and a patient one: I’d never known him raise his voice even. But all that changed. Suddenly he was so quick to anger, so slow to calm down, not like himself at all. He never said what ailed him even though I almost wore my tongue out asking. Then I heard the talk. The Linnet had been fitted out for the crossing, see, but word was that she wasn’t sound. I told Father, but he said they were all damned fools, that the Linnet was fine – couldn’t anything be safer than a grand old girl like her. I had to take his word for it. Only then I saw her sail…” Her voice trailed away.
“And what of it?” Caleb prompted.
“Her rigging was old, her sails were ragged. She hadn’t been fitted out at all. She was low in the water, too. Overloaded, I’d have said. Father’s been at sea since he was eleven years old: there’s nothing he doesn’t know about it. I never thought to see him set sail in a ship that looked like it wouldn’t last the voyage. So why did he?” Letty looked towards Anne, who was tossing from side to side and mumbling fretfully in her sleep. Kneeling beside her stepmother, she carefully replaced the blanket Anne had thrown aside. “I never told her, of course. It would have frayed her nerves to pieces.”
They were both silent a while. Caleb perceived that Letty had been as deeply troubled these past months as he had. Secrets had eaten away at her and she’d had no one to share them with. Well, all that was different now. But why would an experienced mariner like Edward Avery sail in a ship that was not seaworthy? It was lunacy. No sane man would do it willingly. But maybe Edward had not been a willing crewman…?
Caleb had seen enough of Sir Robert Fairbrother to know how much power he wielded over his tenants. Even the parson’s living was in his gift. Perhaps Letty’s father had been threatened – forced – into joining the Linnet’s crew. He checked that Anne still slept then asked Letty softly, “Could pressure have been put on him? Is it possible Sir Robert forced your father into something against his judgement?”
“Sir bleeding-high-and-mighty Robert could have forced anyone into doing anything if he chose. But why would he? Why would anyone send a ship out to sea that isn’t sound? He’s a rich man but not so wealthy that the loss of the Linnet wouldn’t be a bitter blow. There isn’t a man on Earth would want to risk a ship going down.”
She did not have to remind Caleb what the loss of a vessel could mean. Hadn’t such a catastrophe ruined his grandfather?
Letty continued, “I saw Sir Robert down on the quay the day she sailed. First time he’s ever bothered to see one of his ships off.”
“Did his face give anything away?”
Letty shook her head. “He’s a hard man to fathom – doesn’t show anything most of the time. He lost a child a few years back. The boy was took with fever. Died. When they came to bury him, Lady Fairbrother was screaming and crying – you could hear her right through the village. She was beside herself. But him? By all accounts he stood there and watched them lay his boy in the vault and never even shed a tear.”
Letty stopped, for the same thought was passing through both their heads: fever was no respecter of rank or wealth. If it could take a rich man’s son it could as easily take Dorcas and Anne.
It was some time before Letty added, “I’ll tell you something else. William Benson was there with Sir Robert on the quay when the Linnet sailed. You know what he’s like – face like a slab of slate most of the time. But that day, when he saw the convicts going on board, he started grinning from one ear to the other. He was excited, like he was in on some big secret.”
Caleb’s head had begun to ache. He rubbed at his temples. “Whatever it is – your father will tell us what happened to Pa. This mystery will be resolved when he returns.”
“Maybe,” said Letty, dabbing her sister’s forehead. “Pray God we’re all still alive to see that day.”
11.
Letty fell sick two days after Anne. At first she was tired – so tired she could barely lift a bucket or put one foot in front of the other. Then the fever took hold: sweat poured off her body, and her eyes became glazed and distant like those of her sister and stepmother.
Caleb – who remained in stubborn good health – was left to nurse all three, to cool their foreheads, to clean them, to wash their soiled linen and to spoon drink into their mouths, to collect wood for the fire and fetch water from the well. To pray and pray and pray for the Lord to preserve them, for he had not realized how much this family meant to him until he feared he might lose them all.
Dorcas was plagued by dreams but what ran through her head he could only imagine. Stroking her hair from her face, he told her over and over again, “I am here, I am here. I will protect you.” But she remained lost in a nightmare landscape of her own and he could not reach her.
His aunt in her delirium would suddenly seize Caleb by the arm and demand, “Is it you?” Her hands would reach for his cheeks, pulling him down until his face was within an inch or two of her own. She seemed almost ready to kiss him, but then, discerning his features, her own would fall into lines of disappointment. On one occasion she demanded, “Where is he? Where is your father? Where’s he gone? Where’s he gone?” She was clearly distressed but Caleb had no answer that would soothe her. What was he to say? That Pa was lying in the graveyard under a false name? Or the truth as the parson would have it – that he was in America doing Lord alone knew what? How could he tell her that her own husband had been part of the crew that had carried Pa away? Caleb was so dumbfounded by all he knew – and all he did not – that he spoke not a word.
And Letty? Letty was the most terrifying of the three. When she sank into the delirium she said nothing, but simply stared at Caleb with furious eyes and a jaw clamped so tight shut he feared she would bite through her own tongue.
One morning when they were all sleeping he left the house to draw water from the well. He might have hoped for some neighbourly feeling, some measure of sympathetic concern, but he encountered only enmity and suspicion. Why had he alone not sickened? the gossips asked each other in voices pitched plenty loud enough for him to hear. He must have carried the contagion to his aunt’s. A lad like him couldn’t be a healthy thing to have in a house. Hadn’t they said so since the bastard arrived? Perhaps it was divine judgement. Punishment for some terrible vice. Didn’t the parson preach last Sunday about the sins of the fathers? What could he have meant, but to warn the village against the darkie?
The next day, worse came. The gossips decided it was witchcraft. Sorcery. Heathen devilry. Caleb had – until the fever came – gone to church every Sunday but if you think about it, well then … a darkie can’t really be a Christian, can he? He probably doesn’t even have a soul. There surely can’t be men like him in heaven? Leaving sooty handprints on the angels’ gowns? God wouldn’t allow it!
Caleb had never felt as lonely or as miserable as those interminable, exhausting days and nights he tended Dorcas, Anne and then Letty. A week passed. They lay senseless and helpless upon the floor and still he did not sicken, and yet watching them suffer was perhaps a worse torment.
When – after almost two weeks – it was plain that all his nursing was not enough, Caleb went running to bring help from Tawpuddle.
> The surgeon who came back with him would not even enter the house. He looked at Anne and Dorcas and Letty from the safety of the doorway and announced that he could work a cure, but that he would not lift a finger unless he was first paid.
Caleb cursed himself. He should have expected this. Pa always said that physicians were charlatans and surgeons were butchers, both as likely to kill their patients as to cure them. But Pa was dead and Caleb was desperate. He handed over the hard-earned money they had so carefully set aside to pay the rent. He had no choice. If they died what point was there in keeping a roof over his own head?
With brutal roughness the surgeon bled his patients until the basin was filled once, twice, three times. And then, as he left, he pressed a bottle of medicine into Caleb’s hands and instructed him to dose them with it three times daily. What was in it he would not say, but when Caleb uncorked the bottle it looked and smelled as though it was nothing but watered-down treacle.
They were all three quieter that night but that was worse than when they had been calling out in their delirium. He sat listening to their rasping breath, dreading that each inhalation would be the last, that each exhalation would turn into a death rattle.
For two more days and nights they seemed to hang between this world and the next and Caleb, too, was suspended in a twilight region from which there was no escape.
And then came midwinter. The longest night. He sat, unable to believe that the sun would ever rise. He was trapped in everlasting dark. Everlasting solitude.
When at last the sky began to lighten on the morning of the third day that followed the surgeon’s visit all three lay still as death, their skin white and waxen, their lips a pale violet. How am I to pay for their funerals? was Caleb’s first thought. I cannot let them go to a pauper’s grave!
But then one by one he saw they breathed still and that their colour was so pale because they had lost the ruddy rash of the fever. It had departed, and carried none of them with it.
For the first time since Pa had been taken he sat, wrapped his arms around his knees, buried his face and wept like a child.
Their misfortunes were not over when the fever broke. All three were helpless as newborn kittens for many days afterwards. Caleb’s sixteenth birthday passed unremarked. Christmas likewise came and went and they could not even attend church, but slept and slept with Caleb watching over them.
As the invalids started to gain some strength and he no longer feared to leave them alone, Caleb went in search of work. He knocked on the door of every house in both Fishpool and Tawpuddle to offer his services, not simply as a tailor, but for any task they could offer. He would have done anything: swept pigsties, scraped cattle byres, dug night soil from privies. Anything. He went to the butcher’s, the draper’s, the baker’s, the chandler’s, the tailor’s. He even stood on the quay and talked to captains and first mates. But he had not Letty’s power of persuasion, or perhaps he was not picking the right vessels or the right men, for no one would give him work.
Each night he returned home empty-handed, footsore, his heart heavy with failure. He was able and willing to provide for his family yet it was the one thing he seemed unable to do!
Caleb said nothing of the surgeon’s visit or what it had cost. Neither his aunt nor Letty recalled it and he didn’t wish to harm their recovery by making them fear being turned out of the house for want of rent. He watched Anne and Letty and Dorcas gaining in strength and vigour, saw the pinkness returning to their cheeks, and all the while he felt sick inside. When life resumed some semblance of normality he couldn’t keep the lack of money secret any longer. Rent day was fast approaching and when his aunt went to the jar and shook it she was aghast to find it made no sound.
Caleb, hanging his head in shame, had to explain that he had run to Tawpuddle for the surgeon.
Letty turned on him in fury. “Everyone knows the man is a quack! Were you out of your mind? What made you send for him?”
His temper matched hers. “I couldn’t stand by and watch you die.”
“No more you could.” Anne was conciliatory. “Hush, Letty. Caleb did as he judged best. We will hear no more of it.”
There were no more reproaches, but they all knew that very soon William Benson would come and demand Sir Robert’s money. Though still weakened by her illness, Letty was once more out in the rowing boat fetching what sewing jobs she could find. Anne and Caleb worked in a frenzy on whatever scraps she brought back but the money they earned was nothing like enough. Not a word was said, but it seemed likely that at the turning of the year they would be forced out of the cottage and onto the street.
The knock on the door came a day early, but William Benson was not there to demand Sir Robert’s rent or to evict them. He had brought news.
The Linnet had been lost at sea.
12.
When William Benson knocked on the door, Caleb was in Tawpuddle delivering the shirts that he and his aunt had patched, but he knew something was amiss as soon as he walked back into Fishpool. There were people out of doors, bunched in groups, talking, arguing. A common enough sight on a summer’s day, perhaps, but not in the middle of winter when a bitter wind was being funnelled down the street. All fell silent as he walked by. He knew they would begin whispering again as soon as he had passed and so he kept his ears open, but he caught only snatches, piecemeal fragments that made no sense.
“Wasn’t no surprise.”
“None at all.”
“What was he thinking of, fitting her out like that?”
“Old girl should have been broken up.”
He was uneasy even before he walked into his aunt’s house and found Letty sitting staring into the dying fire, Dorcas huddled on her lap. When the little girl saw Caleb she struggled to escape her sister’s iron grip. A white-faced Letty released her reluctantly and Dorcas toddled towards him, outstretched arms clamping around his neck as he lifted her from the floor.
“What’s wrong? Where is my aunt?”
Letty’s eyes shut for a moment. Her mouth became pinched, as if she was struggling to contain her emotion. Then she said quickly, “The Linnet’s gone down.”
“Down?”
“She got halfway to America, or near enough. Sank in a storm in the middle of the ocean.”
Caleb exhaled heavily. “Oh dear God! Your father…?”
“Is alive and well,” said Letty dully. “The crew was saved, every man-jack of them.”
“Saved?” He felt awash with relief. “Thank the Lord! But how…?”
“They lowered the rowboat. Got picked up by a ship bound for Bristol. It brought them into Tawpuddle this very afternoon. You must have just missed seeing them.” Her voice was entirely without expression.
Caleb crouched down beside Letty, Dorcas still cradled in his arms. “You seem distressed. Is this not good news? Your father is alive!”
“He is. And I’m grateful for that – of course I am. But you haven’t heard it all. William Benson came to tell us the crew are at Norton Manor right now. They were taken up there straight from the ship. They’ve got to give an account of the sinking. Sign affidavits, he said, in front of the magistrate. It’s all got to be written down to keep the records straight. Anne went running along there right away, she was that desperate to see Father. Left me alone with Benson.” For a moment her composure slipped.
A fist squeezed Caleb’s heart. “What did he say? Did he harm you?”
“No. He just hung back long enough to tell me that you and me were to go there too as soon as you came home.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. But it wasn’t an invitation, Caleb. It was an order.”
Dorcas started to wriggle out of his arms. Setting her down on the floor, he stood up. “Do they mean to tell us what happened to Pa, do you think?”
“The truth?” Letty shook her head. “I doubt it. They don’t know how much we know, remember? After Anne had gone Benson told me the convicts had been chained in the hold: that all twelv
e went down with the ship. He said it like it didn’t mean anything much, that he was just passing the time, exchanging a morsel of gossip. But he watched me when he said it. Watched me to see how I’d react. All twelve, Caleb. He was very particular about that. He said they’re at the bottom of the sea, every single one of them.”
Caleb’s heart was thumping. “Did he mention Pa’s name?”
“No. But neither did I. Because we’re not supposed to know he was on the Linnet, are we? If you hadn’t got into the customs house, looked at that bill of lading, we’d be none the wiser. Were you seen, do you think?”
“I thought not…” Caleb recalled the cat in the shadows. It was possible someone had been lurking there.
“Well … if you were it can’t be helped.” Her voice cracked a little. She looked beaten.
Letty had the courage of a lion. To see her so troubled now was profoundly disturbing. “There’s more here,” he said. “You’ve not told me it all. What else did Benson say? Did he threaten you?”
“No! If he’d threatened me I’d have told him what for. No … it was worse than that. He put on this big, broad smile. Said how it was nice to see Dorcas looking so well, after she’d been so sick. Then he said little ones are such a worry – accidents can happen so quickly, a life can be snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Like a candle, he said. If anyone else had been listening they’d have thought it was innocent enough. But I reckon it was a warning. It felt like one.”
“You think he knows what we have discovered?”
“Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t.” She rubbed her face with her hands. “Maybe he’s just passing on the message he was told to deliver. I couldn’t say. But I reckon we’re being told to keep in line, not make waves, not ask questions. Someone doesn’t want us saying what we know.” Though the child protested, she pulled Dorcas back onto her lap and held her there tight for a few moments. Then she got to her feet and tugged a shawl around her head and shoulders, wrapping Dorcas into its folds. “Best we both remember that, for her sake. Keep it to ourselves if we want her safe. We’ve got to leave now. We mustn’t keep them waiting.”
Hell and High Water Page 10