Contraband Hearts

by Alex Beecroft

  His knock brought light footsteps and the sound of two bolts sliding back—they locked up tight. The woman who opened the door made him step back a pace, his heart rattling as though a foreign queen had opened the door, terrible and beautiful. Tragic.

  He blinked at his own flight of fancy, but even with his eyes cleared, the woman in this modest Cornish cottage was an orchid in a milk pail. She was as tall as he and extremely slender, her face so pale he could see the blood flush up into her cheeks, presumably because his speechlessness embarrassed her. She wore a bronze-coloured house dress, a tall turban of gold silk and earrings of gold and carnelian that were almost the same colour as her brows and eyelashes. He registered the creases around her blue eyes, the slight sag of her ivory throat, and the swollen knuckles of her work-roughened hands a moment later and was knocked again to realize she must be twice his age. A notable beauty once and still stately to the core.

  Fortunately, she appeared to have been equally surprised by him. She recovered only a moment first. “Yes? Can I help you?”

  Perry cleared his throat, inwardly congratulating himself that he was not a man to desire women, and fortunately his mind remained clear. “I’m looking for Tomas Quick? You’re his wife?”

  She laughed. “I’m his mother, dear: Zuliy. But you’ve just missed him. The tide’s turned, the boats are floating. He’s gone this very moment to the north steps to cast off the Swift. If you run like the wind, you may catch him.”

  He had followed the gesture of her right hand and was running up the street toward the tip of the promontory before he fully registered that she had not come into the sunlight, nor had she let go of the door—if he had kicked it, she could have slammed it in his face. Was that a personal modesty, or a perpetual readiness to delay the law long enough that her no-good son could slip out the back door?

  Curiosity piqued, almost excited by the thought, he sprinted over the rough ground at the edge of the promontory and almost fell headlong down the stairs carved into the sheer rock. Throwing himself backwards as soon as he noticed the cliff, he tumbled—rather shaken—to his arse and had to scrabble up to hands and knees to peer over the edge, where the stair, cut into the cliffside, went down like a ladder.

  Below, the sea was indeed coming in. Its waves already lapped the bottom step of the stair, so shallow as yet that the pebbles were visible moving beneath it.

  A hundred feet further down the beach, however, a handsome cutter had been lying on its side, but it was already rocking itself upward as the waves lifted it. Green livery—a wide green-and-gold stripe beneath its gunwales. It wasn’t yet upright, but already two men on the windlass were winding up its stern anchor.

  A boy by the wheel, with wide voluminous petticoat breeches was— But no, that was a girl, barefoot and brown armed, apparently reading a chart. The aft main and top sails, above and below the gaff, were already lowered, helping to heel the cutter upright and the jib and staysail were ballooning out to catch the wind.

  She would be under way in moments, and even as Perry realized this, he saw the man he had come to interrogate, breast-deep in the water below the hull. The man seized a rope tossed down to him and swarmed up the side, throwing himself over the gunwale with a glittering spray of water. He must have been barely fifty yards ahead of Perry, before Perry balked at the stairs. Now he was as out of reach as if he had been in Antarctica.

  Almost as soon as her captain was on board, the cutter was upright. Quick balanced with practiced ease on the heaving deck, and—looking back—caught Perry’s eyes to give him a contemptuous grin.

  Perry’s heart, so rattled by the man’s mother, now stopped altogether. Someone had already talked. It was certain as death that Quick already knew Perry was after him, and this was his challenge.

  Perry stared down the hot gaze as he would have stared down the barrel of a duelling pistol. He wished he was close enough to see better, and yet he already knew he would never forget this distant glimpse against the immensity of sea and sky: The man’s vivid face and his flame of red-gold hair. The insouciant outright fucking mockery of his smile, bright under a slew of freckles, brown as pebbled stones. These things would always be with Perry now until he could wipe that grin off with the back of his hand.

  You think you can defy me? His pride exalted, almost like joy at the prospect of the fight. This was to be personal was it? Bring it on.

  A sandy path in the dunes that bordered Constantine Beach provided a faster way for Perry to get back into town than fighting through the industrious crowds on the beach again. Someone at the magistrate’s house must be in Tomas Quick’s pay or confidence—must have overheard his conversation with Lazarus and slipped off to tell Tomas that Perry was coming. From there, Tomas’s own guilty conscience had made him flee so precipitately, snatching himself out of Perry’s grasp a bare moment before they could touch.

  What a face, though! Dazzling gold like Lucifer newly tossed from heaven, still with the impudence in his eyes. Perry enjoyed the chase at all times, but with the prospect of this man being his quarry, he was abruptly deeply delighted with his new home, his new circumstances, and his life. It was with a bound in his step that he turned up the street where his partner had left him and headed for the building with a door over which hung a collection of rusted iron stars on a chain.

  Seven stars, arranged in two rows—four above and three below—with flecks of gold paint still clinging to their interstices from a happier day. The door and sash window beside it stood open and pipe smoke wisped out of both. A scent of strong coffee and of cooked fish reminded Perry that he had not eaten since taking a little dry toast before being hustled onto the coach this morning.

  Had that really been only this morning? Already he felt profoundly changed from the man who had arrived here. He had a purpose now, and it was one that filled his blood with passion.

  Nevertheless, he still needed to eat. Kicking the sand from his shoes at the door, he dived into the fug of the coffee shop, his presence (and complexion) causing a brief silence before the conversations began again at lower volume.

  The change of light from the brilliance outside to the smoky gloom within foxed him for an instant, and then he saw—as he had expected—Jowan Ede lounging at a table at the back of the room, the Porthkennack Gazette spread out in front of him, a mug of small beer by his left hand, a long clay pipe drooping from his right, his feet up on the bench opposite, his head reclined against the wall, and his eyes closed.

  The proprietress, in a fetching gown of printed cotton that must have cost a fortune if the fabric were not contraband, rose from her perch in the corner to take his order, and sneered a little at his expression, as though she could tell he was measuring up the legality of her dress. He asked for stargazy pie—whatever that was—and coffee, and dropped heavily onto the bench on which Jowan’s feet were resting, startling him awake.

  “Busy at all times riding the area of your ward, alert to prevent smugglers by land or sea.” Perry laughed. “Of course I’ve been partnered with the laziest bastard in the county—unless you’re all like this?”

  “I do my job,” Jowan grumbled, rubbing his eyes and looking with disappointment at his pipe. Not only had it gone out, but as he’d slept, his hand had turned, and there was now a small pile of burned and unburned tobacco on the ground beneath the empty bowl. “’Tis no surprise I’d fall asleep the one time I get to sit down after patrolling the cliffs all night. Not like you. Barely arrived, you have and you’re already off with your hoity-toity friends.”

  He got on his knees beneath the table, pinched up the spilled tobacco, and pressed it back into his pipe.

  While Jowan was down there, the woman in the sprigged dress slammed a plate of pie in front of Perry and clicked a small cup of sludge-like Turkish coffee next to it with a firmness that made even the gloop seep over the top. The pie had fish heads baked into its crusts and their open mouths seemed to gape at his rudeness.

  Evidently his attitude was not m
aking him any friends.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, when Jowan was upright once more and struggling to light his pipe. “Sometimes I don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth until it does. I should not have been so thoughtless, nor so cruel.”

  “Get yourself in trouble with that mouth, you will.” Jowan glowered at him until the tobacco finally caught, and then he drew in a deep breath of smoke and his expression eased. “Well, nor you won’t be the first officious bastard I’ve partnered neither. We’ll learn to rub along, I’m sure. How did it go? With the magistrate?”

  Neither pie nor coffee tasted as vile as it looked. Perry took a mouthful of both and felt strengthened for them. “He wanted me to investigate a man called Tomas Quick.”

  Even the name now made his breath catch in the back of his throat, and a thrill of danger course through his veins. “Which is apparently not his true name. You’ve mentioned that you are a fount of local knowledge. What can you tell me about the man?”

  Jowan chuckled and took a long draught of his beer as sunlight slanted through the room’s one window and lit the smoke within into a milky swirl. “He didn’t lose no time, did he? No secret there’s bad blood between Tomas and Lazarus Quick. I don’t quite know the story there—no one does—but you ask around the town, and you’ll find that Tomas is very liked hereabouts. Upstanding Methodist. His mother’s a bit weird, but then she’s foreign. Shipwrecked here she was, as a girl. It’s amazing what the sea blows up. His da started as a sailor but drug himself up to become a lawyer. A good one too. Also popular.”

  Jowan laughed again, a little huff of amusement through his nose. “You’re in trouble, mate. The town’s not going to be happy with you coming after Tomas. The man’s a gentleman, whatever his birth.”

  Perry’s stomach lurched with something he wasn’t sure how to identify. It should have been disappointment, but it oddly felt like hope as he imagined introducing himself to Tomas as a friend. That could be an altogether different pursuit—equally dangerous, perhaps, but with what a reward! “You mean he isn’t a smuggler at all?”

  This time it was a full-out guffaw. “God bless your innocence, lad. Tomas Quick is a smuggler certain sure. But he’s an honest man for all that. You stay here long enough, you’ll come to know what I mean.”

  Perry finished his pie, leaving the heads on the plate, and sucked the gritty remains of his coffee through his teeth. “I’m sure you have informers you could introduce me to,” he said thoughtfully. “Other people who could tell me more. Come now, will you give me the tour of Porthkennack and teach me what I need to know to clean this town up?”

  “I will do that.” Jowan downed the rest of his beer. “Tomorrow. But I waren’t joking. I’ve to be on the cliffs again tonight. I need to spend the afternoon asleep.”

  “Quick took his boat out on the rising tide,” Perry insisted, standing to let Jowan edge his way from behind the table. “Suppose he’s gone to drag up sunken casks—he knows you’re sleeping. He’ll be getting them in now before you’re back up.”

  “That’s as may be.” Jowan passed his hand through his hair, setting it on end, and jammed his hat atop it. “But I’m sleeping nevertheless.”

  The lack of zeal could have been corruption, but giving Jowan the benefit of the doubt, Perry decided to think of it as mere laziness. He abandoned hopes of help from his partner and flashed to the next option. “The customs cutter—the Vigilant—where does it dock?”

  “Just up from the warehouse. Lip of Long Cove. Captain Armstrong’s in command—Harry Armstrong.” Jowan smothered a yawn and raised his eyebrows at Perry, as if he found him humorous. “Good luck.”

  “We’re just back from Newquay after creeping for rafts over the whole north shore.” Captain Harry Armstrong stood with one foot on the gunwale of the Vigilant and one foot on the quay, his left hand casual on the stay, his eyes narrowed. “The lads want a rest.”

  The “lads” had the gnarled look of seasoned sailors for all that they were prissily uniformed in blue trousers and scarlet smocks. They gave Perry the same poisonous glare to a man, as he pressed the magistrate’s letter into their captain’s hand. “I insist.”

  Armstrong capitulated with sullen ill grace. “I’ll go up the south shore while there’s light. If we see ’im, we’ll chase. If not, there’s naught I can do.”

  So midafternoon saw Perry in the bows of the customs cutter as she slipped out into a brisk wind and a choppy sea, the spray coming up like grapeshot from her narrow prow, all the rowing boats she carried creaking in their ropes as she tacked against the wind and began to work her way toward Tintagel.

  As if to register his protest, Armstrong shut himself in the cabin with a jug of rum. It was a younger officer who came and stood beside Perry with a telescope balanced on the hook that had replaced his left hand.

  “Quick’s probably gone over to France,” this young man said. “And we shouldn’t expect him back until next week. But there are shallows just off the coast at Boscastle. We’ll look there just in ca— Oh!”

  On their left, the coastline rose in a series of jagged grey monoliths. To their right and ahead, the surface of the sea seemed a paler green, and the pattern of the waves broke from its oceanic furrows into a confused scatter. In the midst of this strange water, another cutter was slowly slipping along with its sails clewed up and ropes hanging off the stern. Even to Perry, the green stripe and the ochre sails of the distant cutter were familiar. He straightened up like a pointer dog with a fallen pheasant in its sights.

  It was a standard manoeuvre for incoming smugglers to attach weights to their contraband and leave it anchored to the ocean bed, ready to be fished up later while the authorities weren’t watching. The smugglers could sell each barrel of liquor or lace for a huge profit. But if a customs crew found them instead, there was a salvage fee per barrel that would make the men very happy.

  “Well, I’ll be,” said the young man with the telescope. “That is the Swift, and they do seem like they’re creeping for casks. I see barrels on deck.” He broke out in a grand grin. “We might have something here lads! Look lively! There’s a share in the prize for every man if we get her.”

  Resentment vanished. Someone shouted into the cabin, and Armstrong clattered onto the deck. “Hoist the staysail!” he yelled to the helmsman. “Prepare to tack.”

  But his voice must have carried on the wind, because there was a sudden boiling of movement on the deck of the Swift. A man chopped through the stern ropes with an axe just as the main and jib sails were set. As the Vigilant got the wind behind her, the Swift—true to her name—filled her sheets and leaped ahead.

  Someone pressed a speaking trumpet into Perry’s hand. “Swift,” he shouted. “This is his Majesty’s Customs Vessel Vigilant. Reduce sail and prepare to be boarded!”

  At the Swift’s helm, a man in a slouch hat raised his hand to his ear as if to say I can’t hear you!

  The wind blew the brim of the hat back enough to let a teasing hint of red-gold gleam out like a distant ember, and Perry let out a “Ha!” of exultation and determination. “Give them a gun.”

  It took three of the crew a whole minute to prime and load the small swivel gun, and in that time the Swift perceptibly drew ahead, her wake a jade-coloured path behind her.

  “Fire!” Perry yelled, and saw the tongue of flame lance toward the Swift like his hopes, but even the ball fell short.

  The man at the Swift’s helm—it must have been Quick himself, though his face couldn’t be seen for the hat—made another pantomime of not understanding, and then with no warning put the helm right over. His crew flung the sails into a wrenching tack—the creak and moan of Swift’s timbers as she made an almost ninety-degree turn and shot downwind was a voice of portent.

  “Oh shit, sir!”

  And Perry knew. He knew it was going to happen before it did—managed to grab on to the forestay with arms and legs as Vigilant rammed herself into a sandbank concealed beneath barely a foot
of rippling water and came to a sudden, yowling, catastrophic halt, the backstays snapping and the topmast breaking clean off.

  Undeterred, the Swift sailed peacefully away, leaving them grounded on the sandbank that Perry had seen coming—the thing that had changed the colour of the water, made their quarry’s wake seem like stone. The thing that in his excitement he hadn’t recognized until it was too late.

  “Fuck,” said Captain Armstrong with feeling, once he had established that nobody was dead and that apart from a few sprung planks they did not seem to be taking on too much water. “Very well, then. Two of you get up and splice that stay. The rest into boats afore and by the sides. Let’s see if we can drag or rock ourselves off.”

  They could, it turned out. But the exercise took another four hours. Long enough for Swift to sail triumphantly back to Porthkennack and land any cargo it wished.

  “Not the best of first days,” Captain Armstrong remarked. He had offered to take his crew to the pub when they finally reached harbour again, but did not extend the offer to Perry. “I hope you’ll learn something from it.”

  “I will.” Perry nodded and headed back to his hotel with a tremble of weariness in all his bones and fire in his heart. I’ll try harder next time.

  Having taken his wig in to a small peruke-maker he spotted on the way back to his hotel, assured that he could collect it tomorrow afternoon with the dirt removed and the curls reset, Perry let himself into his sliver of a room and threw himself down to sleep. It being the summer, the light lingered seemingly forever, and the heat of the day rose from the ground and gathered in his tiny attic cell until he might have been in a sweat bath.

  When he pulled his blanket over his face to block out the light, he could not breathe, but if he tossed the blanket off, he felt exposed, here in a town where no one knew him but everyone knew the man he had unmistakably declared his enemy. His heart beat strangely beneath his breastbone, its rhythm felt through his bones rather than heard. Downstairs the evening had only just got underway, and the roar of conversation and laughter through the floorboards drove out subtle sounds.