As the day wore on, people began to gather at the inn, and it was once again bustling. Edwin sat at the table next to Morwenna with Robin, Duncan, and Hamilton Bounsell, and they were soon joined by the Ladies Wolfe-Chase. Toward sunset, the crowd was parted by the imposing frame of Mr. Wolfe, the blacksmith. He was garbed in his work clothes—a grey woollen waistcoat over a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his powerful forearms. A leather apron was tied round his waist, in the pocket of which were stowed a well-used tongs and chisel. Every piece of clothing was flecked with soot and singed around the edges. His short, dark beard often caught embers from the fires and so had an uneven quality to it, with craters where the cinders had burned away the hair. He had deep-set eyes that were black as coal. In his hand, he carried a small, soiled painting.
He passed by his niece and her wife and quickly said hello; then he handed the painting over to Morwenna.
“I found this behind my forge,” he said in his deep but surprisingly soft, warm voice. “It must have been blown there during the hurricane. I suppose there’re bits and pieces all across the village.”
“Oh, thank you very much!” said Morwenna, wiping the mud and soot from the small canvas.
The painting showed a handsome young man with flowing locks, a devilish smile, and wearing a faded-green crushed-velvet jacket with silver buttons.
“My Barnabas. He painted this a few months before he died.”
She turned the painting round to let the group see. When she showed it to Robin’s table, Edwin turned ashen. Without saying a word, he jumped to his feet, spilling several drinks. He glared at his mother across the room.
“Edwin?” Robin put his hand on the baker’s arm. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Edwin didn’t respond. He didn’t even look in Robin’s direction. He simply darted through the crowd and out of the Moth & Moon, pursued by his mother.
“Edwin?” she cried. “Edwin, stop. Whatever is the matter?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he ran away from the inn, in the direction of her house. His parents hadn’t yet found time to begin repairs to their home. The shutters had been ripped from the walls, and every window had been smashed. Half the tiles from the roof had been blown off, and some of them lay in pieces all around.
Ignoring the damage, he ran upstairs and into the bedroom and began tearing through the wardrobe, causing clothes to fly everywhere, landing in heaps were they may. The room was covered in shards of glass and leaves, blown in by the storm. The remaining curtains had been shredded and flapped mournfully out of the empty window panes, like tattered arms outstretched for lost loves.
“Stop that at once. What are you doing?” his mother demanded.
And stop he did, once he found what he was looking for. Unable to speak, he simply glowered at her, making her back away from him.
Upon returning to the Moth & Moon, Edwin barged through the crowd. He marched right up to Morwenna, who was still sitting with the painting.
“Do you recognise this?” he asked, thrusting a garment into the old woman’s hands.
She held the jacket for a moment, running her bent, wrinkled fingers across its faded emerald surface.
“Where did you get this?” she whispered.
“That’s mine. Give it back!” his mother shrieked as she tried to tear it from Morwenna’s hands.
His father must have seen them return and now held his mother back while Robin loosened her grip on the jacket.
“Mr. Farriner, where did you find this?” Morwenna asked.
“In my mother’s wardrobe. It’s been there for as long as I can remember.”
His mother stopped struggling. She turned on the assembled crowd, her expression savage and lips twisted into a snarl. The whole tavern was watching and listening now.
“Why do you have my husband’s jacket, Sylvia?” Morwenna asked. “My husband’s favourite jacket?”
“I picked it up after his father dropped it!” she cried, pointing to Robin. “I was on the headland that night. I saw them arguing. I saw Erasmus Shipp push Barnabas Whitewater to his death!”
The crowd gasped and murmured amongst themselves.
“That’s a lie,” Robin said, jumping to his feet.
“I’d expect nothing less from a pirate,” said Mrs. Greenaway in her haughtiest tone of voice.
“A pirate? What do you mean, a pirate?” Mr. Reed asked. “I won’t have you throwing accusations like that around in my pub, Sylvia Farriner.”
“Oh, but it’s not an accusation, is it, Mr. Shipp? Is it, Lady Wolfe-Chase?” his mother snarled.
Eva Wolfe-Chase stepped forward into the circle that had unconsciously formed around the scene. She held her head high and clenched her fists tight. A lady she might be, but fight she most certainly could. Knowledge wasn’t the only thing seamen respected; she’d had to learn how to handle herself as well.
“I heard you talking. Captain Erasmus Shipp was nothing more than a vicious pirate!” she roared.
“Mrs. Whitewater, is this true?” Mr. Reed asked.
Morwenna nodded. “He wrote about it in his journal. He captained a pirate boat he named the Fledgling Crow.”
The look on Robin’s face made it clear that she’d never revealed that before. While the crowd yelled and jostled, Eva strode into the centre of the breach, and quelled the crowd with nothing more than a tilt of her regal head and an icy stare.
“In 1726,” she called out, “a ship came to attack Blashy Cove. It was repelled by three vessels. Does anyone here remember that battle?”
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
“Everyone who was here at the time remembers it. The Battle in the Bay, we call it,” said Mr. Reed, still leaning on the bar. “It was the closest we ever came to being attacked by pirates. One of your father’s boats was sunk, wasn’t it?”
“That’s correct,” Eva replied. “The confrontation is mentioned in my father’s records. The attacking ship was captained by a ruthless man named Thomas Oughterlauney. He was intercepted by two Chase Trading Company boats and one other.”
“Another pirate vessel, if you believe the stories,” said Mr. Reed.
“That’s exactly what it was. Oughterlauney attacked and sank one of my father’s ships. The other had no choice but to break off the assault and rescue the drowning crew. The rival pirate ship damaged Oughterlauney’s vessel and pursued it out of the bay. That ship is mentioned by name in the company logs.” Eva turned to face Morwenna. “It was called the Fledgling Crow.”
Tuts and shouts of disbelief erupted from the older generation. The crowd had grown so loud that one could easily be forgiven for thinking the storm had returned.
“Giss on! What do you take us for?!” someone called from the balcony above.
“It’s true, I swear it!” Eva shouted, quieting the crowd once again. “Once the harbour is back up and running, I will send for the records and you can read them for yourselves. Don’t you see? Captain Erasmus Shipp saved this village from being sacked by pirates.”
The tone and flow of the villagers shifted. Those who were there, who had witnessed the battle first-hand, struggled to remember the details, trying to marry this new insight to what they knew. Edwin’s mother looked unhappy at this change of the crowd’s mood and stepped into the fore once again.
“He killed Barnabas Whitewater!” she bawled.
Gobs of hot saliva flew from the corners of her mouth like a rabid animal. The crowd was turning on itself now. Some of them—mostly the elder portion , the ones who had been alive when Barnabas Whitewater died—had been siding with his mother, while the rest—the ones who had grown up with or after Robin—were siding against her. With the revelation Captain Shipp might have saved their lives, some of them found their convictions falter. Nonetheless, the shouting and banging of fists on tables and feet on floors was growing louder, yet still that instinctive circle remained.
“Captain Shipp reached out and brave Barnabas strug
gled,” his mother screeched, spinning around with her arms spread wide, her shawl hanging from her limbs like ragged batwings, clearly revelling in the audience, in the attention, in the spite. “Erasmus Shipp had him by the arm. His coat came loose, and he stumbled back and fell. Fell to his death!”
The crowd roared again at this. Barnabas Whitewater had been well loved and his death had rocked the island. Decades of pent-up anger and resentment was beginning to spill out.
“Wait, WAIT!” Edwin roared at the top of lungs.
No one had ever heard the baker raise his voice before, and the volume and weight of his bark stunned them into silence. Edwin faced his mother now. “Did he stumble, or did Captain Shipp push him?” he asked quietly.
“He was pushed! He…he… Erasmus had him by the arm, they were fighting, yelling, Barnabas—beautiful, sweet Barnabas—he was putting on his jacket, he twisted, turned, tried to break free and he…he fell. He fell onto the rocks.”
The crowd was silent now, and the circle tightened. She looked trapped. She shrank into herself, becoming crouched; her red hair manifestly more wild and untamed than usual.
“Erasmus ran; he dropped the coat; he ran right past me. I was hiding behind the Wishing Tree—he never even knew I was there. I took the coat. It was his; it was Barnabas’s. It was all I had left of him.”
His father approached her.
“Sylvia? What do you mean it was all you had left?” he asked her quietly. “What was Barnabas to you?”
“I loved him. I loved him more than she ever could.” Pointing now to Morwenna, who sat shaking in her seat. “But he wouldn’t even look at me—I was too young for him. He only had eyes for her. So I had to settle for you.” She nodded towards her beleaguered husband, the casual venom in her voice confirming what everyone had always suspected. She’d never loved him. Not really.
“Why did you never say anythin’ about this?” Robin asked.
“Why would I? To ease your mind? Or hers?” she said, pacing towards Morwenna.
The crowd were on edge now, and Eva looked poised and ready to pounce on his mother if she attempted to strike Morwenna.
“The man I loved was dead. And now I know why. It was because of her. Erasmus must have told Barnabas she was your mother. That’s why they were fighting. That’s what caused him to fall. Then Erasmus ran away, ran back to his pirate brethren. It was justice that his boat sank. Justice that dragged your father to the bottom of the sea.”
She spat the words out of her cruel, twisted mouth like lumps of gristle. She had stopped pacing now and drew herself to her full height, lifting her chin and narrowing her gaze.
“I’m glad I never said anything,” she hissed at Morwenna. “I’m glad you suffered.”
Edwin stared at his mother in shock and disbelief. Silently, his father pushed his way through the crowd and left the building.
The people had fallen deathly silent, in particular, the elders of the village—Morwenna’s contemporaries. All this time, they’d said Captain Erasmus Shipp was a murderer and taken their vengeance out on his son. They passed their sentence and handed Robin’s punishment down the generations for their own children to administer. Edwin stared at Mrs. Greenaway, who was covering her mouth with her hand. She’d been twisted and turned and manipulated by his mother’s words. She—like all of them—had decried Robin, called him a menace, nothing more than the progeny of a killer, when in truth he’d never been anything other than kind and pleasant to each of them. One by one, the older folk of the village turned to each other.
“He fell,” they repeated.
“He fell.”
When he reached his house, Nathanial Farriner walked calmly through the shattered glass, dank leaves, and branches, and went upstairs. He fetched two large wooden boxes and quietly filled them with his wife’s clothes and belongings. Then he lifted them downstairs and placed them on the wet path outside, one by one.
Shortly afterwards, his wife returned, escorted by a visibly upset Edwin. Sylvia was unusually quiet. They stopped outside, and she pointed at the boxes on the ground, confused. Her clothes were stuffed haphazardly inside, leaves and glass mixed among them. Nathaniel hadn’t bothered to remove them from her garments before packing them. Water dripped onto them from the guttering overhead.
“What’s this?” she asked.
Nathanial stood in the doorway of their home, his arms folded.
“You have to leave. The village. I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here.”
He had expected her to scream, to argue, to fight with the same ferocity she had shown earlier. Instead, she simply snorted derisively. A half laugh of pure contempt. She said nothing. She simply turned and walked towards the harbour, leaving behind him, her son, and of all her belongings.
Chapter Twenty-Two
ROBIN’S KITCHEN WAS in a state of organised disarray. There hadn’t been much time lately to worry about domestic chores. He washed out some cups and took the whistling kettle off the hob. After excavating his chipped ceramic teapot from under a pile of plates, he warmed it with a little water from the kettle and added some tea leaves. The pot was white and decorated with an idyllic farming scene. It had been in the house for as long as he could remember. He assumed his father had bought it, or perhaps it even belonged to his grandparents. He hadn’t ever considered it before, but just recently, he found himself thinking a lot more about his past in general and his father in particular.
He kept his father’s journal on the pile of books by his bedside and read a little more of it every chance he got. The very first entry simply read ”Captain Jonas Shipp died today” and was dated 15th May 1717, roughly four years after Erasmus and his father had left Blashy Cove for the first time. There were scores of entries—missives regarding life on board ship, copies of maps of unnamed islands, and other bits and bobs. There was a single page dated 7th June 1726 that simply read “Home.” Thereafter the entries became more sporadic, with larger time gaps and fewer details. For the amount of times Robin remembered seeing his father with this journal, he had expected it to contain far more information. It wasn’t until he reached the latter part that he discovered why Morwenna had kept it hidden all these years. The final entries were a letter. A letter to him, written by his father. A letter he was supposed to read.
1st July 1740
My name is Erasmus Shipp. I have had this journal for over twenty years, and used it to keep notes, copy maps, and mark important events. I am writing these following entries for my son, Robin. There is much you need to be told, and I worry something may happen to me before you are old enough for me to talk to you, man to man.
I hope that someday you will read this.
I hope that you will understand.
I hope that you will forgive.
I was born in the village of Blashy Cove during the springtime of 1700. My father, Jonas Shipp, was a fisherman. My mother, Emily, was a seamstress. My earliest memory is of watching my father depart on a launch, heading towards a huge ship in the distance. I distinctly remember my mother with tears in her eyes, telling me to wave. I didn’t see my father again for three years.
He worked on a whaling vessel, and over the course of my childhood, he spent more time at sea than at home. He was distant, in place and in heart. I was frightened of him for most of my life. The coldness of the sea seemed to have seeped into his bones, draining the love and warmth from him.
I spent most of my childhood terrorising the other children of Blashy Cove. Those I couldn’t bully, I ignored. When I wasn’t fishing from the edge of the pier or parading about in a little rowboat, I was in the woods on the west of the island. I had found one large tree in particular—a walnut tree overlooking the graveyard- up which I had dragged some planks of wood to lie across its thick branches. From this elevated platform, I shouted my orders to the other boys below. Only a chosen few were ever allowed to join me up there.
Despite the number of boys who palled around with me and the number o
f girls I kissed, there was only one person who I truly considered a friend. A short, dark-haired girl named Morwenna Day. She was born a few months after me, and our parents were friends. Or at least, our fathers drank together in the Moth & Moon and our mothers spoke at the market. She wasn’t afraid of me. Or of anything else, for that matter. She dived off every rock the boys did, climbed the same trees, sailed in the same boats. She would never let me get away with anything. Called me stupid when I thought I was being clever. Laughed at me when I tried to impress her. Slapped me when I lied to her. She saw right through me. Right to the heart of me.
My mother tried to teach me how to read, but I was a slow learner, with little to no patience. It wouldn’t be until years later that an old sailor named Mr. Howe would teach me how to read and write on board the ship that would be my home for many years.
It was a bright morning in the summertime of 1713 when my father told me I would be accompanying him on his next voyage at sea. He had spent most of that year, and the previous one, teaching me the proper way to fish in the cove. I had always been interested in this, and had picked up some knowledge and—according to him—some bad habits. My mother had already packed my belongings into a canvas bag. I was scared, Robin. Very scared. But I didn’t show it. She handed me the bag and told me to open it. Inside—on top of my clothes—was a plain, navy-coloured peaked cap. She reached into the bag and lifted it out, picking a small piece of lint from the brim, then she placed it on my head and gave me a kiss on my cheek. The cap was too big, but she said I’d grow into it.
It was that very same cap which Robin wore every day, and he touched it reflexively.
Then both she and my father marched me out of our house and down the harbour. I saw the whaling vessel docked out past the lighthouse. How big it looked. How daunting. I boarded the little launch wordlessly, and watched as men with arms like tree trunks and faces like broken glass heaved the oars and pushed us through the calm waters. Despite the fear, I felt a sense of pride. My father trusted me enough to bring me with him. My mother was holding a handkerchief to her face, trying to force a smile as I waved farewell. I couldn’t have known it then, of course, but this would be the last time I would ever see her.
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