by Chris Speyer
He went back to the cockpit and unlashed the tiller, then pushed it over to port. Curlew began to swing to starboard.
‘Let her out slowly!’ called Zaki.
Anusha let out more rope.
‘There’s not much left!’ she called.
Curlew’s stern was now level with Morveren’s bow and three metres to starboard.
‘That’s all the rope – and I can’t hold it much longer!’
Zaki lashed the tiller to port and leapt to the foredeck to help Anusha tie off the anchor rope.
Morveren was tantalisingly close, but still just out of reach.
‘I’m going to try something,’ said Zaki. ‘If I get the boats close enough, can you see if you can get on to Morveren?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Anusha.
Zaki untied the tiller. He put the helm over to starboard and Curlew ‘sailed’ on the tide away from Morveren. When he judged she would go no further, he put the helm over to port and she swung back towards the other boat, gathering momentum like the weight on a pendulum – closer – closer – closer . . .
‘Now!’ shouted Zaki.
Anusha flung herself from the stern of Curlew and landed with her stomach across Morveren’s bowsprit, where she hung precariously, arms and head dangling one side, legs dangling the other as Curlew swung away.
‘Owww!’ She kicked and wriggled until she got one leg over the spar. She sat up grinning and gave Zaki a thumbs-up, then scrambled back to Morveren’s foredeck.
Zaki repeated the manoeuvre and this time, as the gap closed, he tossed a rope to Anusha. With a line across, it was an easy matter to pull the boats together so that they could cross with ease from one to the other. Zaki joined Anusha on Morveren. They unlashed the sailing dinghy from Morveren’s deck, turned it over and heaved it into the water. They’d have to row; the sails were locked up in the cabin. Zaki dropped the oars into the dinghy and tied it to Curlew’s stern. Now came the most tiring part of the whole job, to haul Curlew back up her anchor rope against the ebb tide, but the thought that the girl might return at any time spurred them on and fifteen exhausting minutes later they had Curlew back where she had started.
Time to abandon ship. They closed up the hatches and climbed into the dinghy. Zaki tucked the pilfered logbook under the dinghy’s seat. It was twenty-five to six by Zaki’s watch; they should have just enough time to row across to his grandad’s shed before he packed up for the night. Row? There was a flaw in his plan – how could he row with one arm?
‘Can you row?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Not very . . . Well, I’ve never tried,’ came the reply.
Zaki made room for Anusha on the centre seat.
‘You take one oar; I’ll take the other. Just try to keep in time.’ Zaki cast off.
At first, they tended to go round in circles, and the ebb tide threatened to carry them out to sea. On two occasions Anusha missed the water altogether with her oar and fell backwards into the bottom of the dinghy, after which she got a terrible fit of the giggles, but eventually they settled into a steady rhythm and pulled away from the moored boats. Zaki kept them on a diagonal course, aiming up the estuary to allow for the strong current that sucked at the yellow buoys in mid-channel.
‘You’re doing great,’ encouraged Zaki.
‘Don’t distract me,’ came the sharp response.
After which they rowed in silence until Anusha asked, ‘Did you see that cat?’
‘What cat?’
‘There was a cat on the boat when I came looking for you.’
‘On Curlew?’
‘Yes. I thought it must belong on board but it was gone when we got out of the cabin.’
Zaki’s oar dug too deep and he lost the rhythm. ‘What was it like?’ he asked, but he knew the answer.
‘Grey. It was sitting at the back of the boat. Almost like it was on guard.’
For six strokes Zaki made himself concentrate on the rowing, then he said, ‘That cat is like the hawk in the classroom. It appears and disappears. It’s been following me. It slept in my room last night. And it can change its shape.’
He could feel Anusha fighting her disbelief. She pulled at her oar with extra ferocity.
‘OK,’ she said at last, ‘I think you better tell me everything.’
Lift the oars, lean forward, dip the oars, lean back – lift the oars, lean forward, dip the oars, lean back. They were much the same height and weight and their movements were now perfectly synchronised. Zaki’s sentences, clipped short by shortness of breath, fell into the rhythm of their rowing. He began with the moment he entered the cave by Dragon Pool, told how the tide had trapped him and of his near-drowning. How the girl had rescued him and made him promise to tell no one what he had seen. How she’d taken back the bracelet.
The bracelet! With a gasp of horror, Zaki remembered he was still wearing it! She might overlook the missing logbook – but how long would it be before she discovered the theft of the bracelet?
‘What is it?’ Anusha asked when Zaki fell silent.
Zaki covered his alarm over the bracelet by looking round to check their progress. For some reason that he couldn’t quite explain he chose not to tell Anusha he had taken it.
‘We’re almost there,’ he said.
A few more strokes and the dinghy nosed against the slipway behind Grandad’s boat shed.
By the time they had tied up the dinghy, Zaki had added the details about the grey cat and its strange transformation.
‘Better hurry,’ he now urged, ‘Grandad likes to finish before the shipping forecast.’
‘Whatever that is,’ said Anusha, as she followed him into the shed.
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Chapter 8
Jenna gave one loud bark as Zaki entered the shed with Anusha close behind him. The old dog heaved herself up from her place under the side workbench and, tail wagging, came to greet them. She accepted a quick scruffing of her fur and a ‘Hello, Jenna’ from Zaki before pushing around him to inspect Anusha.
‘Where did you spring from?’ demanded Grandad, looking up from sweeping the shed floor. ‘And who’s this pretty little maid?’ as his eyes fell on Anusha, who was now kneeling among the wood shavings, scratching Jenna under the collar.
‘This is Anusha, Grandad. I was teaching her to row.’
‘Hello, Mr Luxton,’ said Anusha.
‘You’ll be all over dust and shavin’s if you crawl around there, my love.’
‘I don’t mind,’ smiled Anusha, hopping up and dusting herself off.
‘Learnin’ to row, eh?’
‘Yes,’ said Anusha, ‘but it was getting late, so we had to give up. Wow! This is so beautiful! I didn’t know boats were built like this.’ She walked around the part-built boat, examining it inside and out.
‘Not many are any more,’ grunted Grandad.
Zaki could see that half the planks of the rowing boat’s hull were now in place. It was a slow process, particularly if you worked on your own. Each plank had to be offered up to the one before, marked, then shaped by hand and finally fixed in place. For the hull to be watertight, the fit had to be perfect.
‘We left the dinghy by the slip. Hope that’s OK,’ said Zaki. ‘I’ll take her back out to Morveren on the weekend.’
‘Shouldn’t be too much in the way. Your parents know where you are?’
‘Dad won’t be home yet,’ said Zaki.
‘I probably ought to phone my mum,’ said Anusha.
‘Probably you ought to,’ said Grandad. ‘You can call her from the house.’
They filed out of the shed and waited with Jenna while Grandad locked up. Jenna sniffed hopefully at the carrier bag containing the logbook that Zaki had ‘borrowed’ from Curlew but, having ascertained that it contained nothing edible, she lost interest.
‘What you got in the bag?’ enquired Grandad.
‘School project,’ said Anusha quickly, to cover Zaki’s hesitation.
‘Has that cat been back?’ asked Zaki.<
br />
‘Not since your last visit.’
Grandad led the way across the narrow lane and up the steep flight of steps to the cottage overlooking Batsford Creek where four generations of Luxtons, including Zaki’s father, had been born and raised. Little ever changed in Grandad’s house. The green oilcloth that covered the kitchen table was the same green oilcloth that Zaki could remember covering the table when he was little more than a toddler. The same chipped mugs and jugs hung from hooks, the same pictures of ships under sail hung on the walls. But, although the range was still always alight, some of the cosy warmth seemed to have left the kitchen since Zaki’s grandma had died two years earlier, and the smells of cooking and baking had slowly faded, to be replaced by the workshop smells carried in by Grandad.
Jenna pushed between their legs, crossed the kitchen and threw herself down in her favourite spot with her back against the stove.
Zaki remembered the day his grandmother died. He had raced up the steps to the cottage ahead of his mother and father, eager as ever to see his grandparents. His grandmother had been ill for some time and they were visiting regularly. His grandad was sitting at the kitchen table, an unusual place for him during the day. ‘How’s Grandma?’ Zaki had asked. His grandfather looked up and there was an emptiness in his eyes that Zaki had never seen, like a grey empty sea under a winter sky. ‘We’re just waitin’ for the tide to go out. She’s a fisherman’s daughter, she’ll go with the tide’ his grandad said quietly. His grandmother died at low tide that evening.
‘Telephone’s by here. Help yourself,’ Grandad said to Anusha. ‘’Spect you children’ll be hungry if you’ve been rowin’ all afternoon. Have a rummage in the larder, Zaki. See if you can find some eggs. I’ll get a bit of tea and toast goin’.’
It was agreed that after tea Grandad would run them back into Kingsbridge. Soon the three of them were sitting around the kitchen table eating fried eggs on thick slices of buttered toast. With the first mouthful Zaki realised he was starving and, judging by the quiet concentration with which Anusha was attacking her food, he guessed she was just as hungry.
‘Grandad,’ began Zaki, through egg and toast, ‘do you have a chart of the Orme?’
‘Should do. Why d’you ask?’
‘Is there deep water anywhere in the Orme, apart from Dragon Pool?’
‘Not in the river, but in one o’ them creeks there’s a bit of a pool by an old lime kiln. They must have dredged it once upon a time.’
‘Can you show me?’
‘Finish up your tea an’ I’ll fetch the chart down.’
When they had finished eating, Zaki cleared the table and Grandad spread out the chart.
‘Look here,’ Grandad said, tapping a callused finger on the chart.
‘Stapleton’s Creek,’ read Zaki. ‘Stapleton – that was the name of the landowner, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Owned the land right down to the sea. There’s the lime kiln, and see? Deep water right by it. Makes sense – they would ‘ave had to bring quite big boats in there with lime for the kiln.’
‘What was the lime for?’ asked Anusha.
‘Well – they made quick lime, didn’t they – to put on the fields – stopped the soil gettin’ too acid. Of course, they say, Stapleton had another purpose.’
‘What purpose?’ asked Zaki.
‘I told you about the wreckers burying the bodies in Stapleton’s fields? Well, they say they buried ’em in quick lime. Helped ’em to rot down, you see.’
‘Urgh! Yuck!’ declared Anusha in disgust. ‘Whose bodies are you talking about?’
‘I’ll explain later.’ Zaki studied the chart; it looked quite old. ‘Are these depths fathoms or metres?’
‘Metres,’ said Grandad.
Not too old, then. But he remembered how the sandbanks moved around in the Orme; the depths would certainly have changed since the chart was drawn. In the pool by the lime kiln there was a depth of three metres marked close in-shore. So a boat could lie in there and stay afloat even at low tide. The mouth of the creek was blocked by a mudbank that a boat would only be able to cross when the tide was high. No wonder he and Michael had never bothered with this creek, seen where it met the river, it would appear to be just a muddy little backwater.
‘You can’t see the lime kiln from the main river, can you, Grandad?’
‘No. It’s all overgrown for one thing, and for another, Stapleton’s Creek tucks around behind that hill.’ He tapped the chart again.
‘What’s all this about, boy?’ Grandad looked quizzically at Zaki.
‘Have you seen the little Falmouth workboat anchored by the town moorings?’
‘I’ve seen ’er. Pretty little craft.’
‘How deep do you think her keel is?’
‘Not much. Those boats was made for workin’ in shallow water – not more ’n a metre.’
‘So she could get up that creek at high tide?’
‘Easy.’
‘And she could lie there and nobody would see her?’
‘Reckon she could.’
‘I can see you’ve got the wind in your sails, boy, but I wonder if you know where you’re headin’.’ Grandad straightened his back and poured himself another mug of tea.
‘That’s the bit we call Dragon Pool,’ said Zaki, showing Anusha where they usually anchored. ‘When we were last there, Curlew could have been in the creek and we would never have known.’ Anusha gave a little nod to show she understood the significance of this information.
Zaki turned back to Grandad. ‘The ruined cottage . . .’
‘What of it?’
‘You said a woman was living there.’
‘Years ago.’
‘What was she like? Did you ever get a good look at her?’
‘I told you before, she never spoke to nobody.’
Zaki could tell by the closed look on his grandfather’s face and by the tone of voice that he had no wish to continue this conversation but Zaki was determined to press on. There was something his grandfather was keeping from him. Of course, it made no sense to connect that woman who lived in the cottage years ago and the girl, except . . . except . . .
‘Was she young? Old?’
‘Young,’ conceded Grandad grudgingly. ‘Pretty, some said.’
‘So you knew people who saw her?’
‘Oh ay – knew. An’ little good it did them.’
‘What happened?’ It was Anusha who asked, her eyes alight with curiosity. Grandad placed his mug of tea on the table. He drew out a chair and sat facing Zaki and Anusha. He looked sternly from one to the other.
‘There was a Plymouth boat – Silver Harvest, she was called – belonged to three brothers. Hard men – heavy drinkers, and out for whatever they could get. Well, everybody knew the story of Maunder and Stapleton and there was always talk of lost treasure, but no one never found it. Now these three brothers got it into their heads that the treasure must be hid in the old cottage. Happen one day there was a number o’ boats in the Orme waitin’ for a bit o’ weather to blow over – Silver Harvest among ’em. The three brothers decided to go treasure huntin’. They climbed up to the cottage with pickaxes and shovels and the like and began tearing the place to pieces. The woman of the cottage surprised them at it and ordered them to stop, but they just laughed in her face and kept right on at it.’
Grandad gave a little shake of his head and took a sip of tea.
‘That’s awful,’ said Anusha.
Grandad stared hard into his mug and when he looked up there was something like fear in his eyes. ‘Then,’ he continued, ‘they said she cursed them.’
‘Did they find anything?’ asked Zaki.
‘Of course not. Why would a woman live on her own in a tumbledown cottage if she had a pile of treasure?’
‘But what did they say about her, about the woman, what she was like?’ asked Zaki.
‘Young, no more than a girl, they said, but wild. And they weren’t going to let some wild girl
stand between them and the treasure. Next time they’d make sure she didn’t catch ’em.’
‘And?’
‘There was no next time. They was all killed.’
‘Killed?’ gasped Anusha. ‘How?’
‘Different ways. One at a time.’
Zaki glanced at Anusha, who was staring, wide-eyed, at Grandad.
‘The oldest brother went first. They was liftin’ crab pots and he was haulin’ in the line when somethin’ gave the rope an almighty tug and he was pulled clean out of the boat. Before the others could grab a hold of him he was dragged underwater. When he bobbed up again he was dead – drowned.’
Grandad twisted his mug on the table.
‘Middle brother was next. Everyone knew he was fond of oysters an’ someone left him a present of a couple of dozen on the Silver Harvest. Must’ve been poisoned. At any rate the oysters was blamed when he took sick. Never recovered, though it took him six days to die.’
‘And the youngest?’ asked Zaki.
‘Well, stands to reason no one’d go fishing with him. Went off on his own one day and was never seen again. They found the Silver Harvest; she was driftin’ two miles off the mouth of the Orme.’
‘They could all have been accidents,’ protested Zaki.
‘Could’ve been,’ grunted Grandad.
‘What happened to the woman?’ asked Anusha softly.
‘No one ever bothered her again. We saw her from time to time, standin’ or sittin’ at the top of the cliff, lookin’ out to sea. Like her was waitin’ for someone who never came home.’
Zaki looked down at the chart. There it was – ‘Ruin (Conspic)’ – Conspicuous. The cottage was on the chart because it was a conspicuous landmark. She wasn’t hiding; she chose to live alone but somewhere conspicuous. And yet, no one really knew anything about her. And did his grandad really believe that she could curse people, cast spells? This was not the same person, Zaki reminded himself. If she were still alive now, she’d be an old woman, not a young girl. But there had to be a connection – didn’t there?