by Diana Norman
Until the afternoon when Tobias rowed out to join her. She saw him pulling across the bay and knew that God hadn’t finished with her yet.
As he came alongside, she said, ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’
Silent, he picked up a newspaper from the thwarts and handed it to her. It was the London Gazette, displaying as much excitement as that sober journal could over the news that, in Paris, Danton had gone to the guillotine. Among those who’d gone with them was listed the name of de Vaubon.
‘Have you told him?’ she asked at last.
‘No.’
No, it was her job; her job to fight blackness and pain on her own account in order to inflict them on an eleven-year-old boy. ‘I don’t know how,’ she said.
Jacques was in the inn yard, hammering a piece of metal.
They sat together on the mounting block while she held his hand and told him. ‘He was the bravest man I ever knew,’ she said. It was true but at that moment it didn’t help an exiled motherless boy who would never see his father again.
What did help, a little, was that Babbs Cove went into mourning with them. Its men and women had known Guillame de Vaubon longer than had Makepeace and much longer than had his son; he’d been their smuggling ally on the other side of the Channel. They’d sailed alongside him, outwitted the excise with him, hidden him when he was wounded, nursed him back to strength, danced at his wedding to Diana, toasted the birth of his son.
What’s more, they wanted to talk about him. Left alone, Jacques might have endured by shrinking into himself. Instead, every evening, his father came alive again in the Pomeroy Arms as his loving fellow-smugglers resurrected the man with tales of his daring, his seamanship, trickery, how he’d foiled this bloody ’ciseman or that, the fortune he’d earned—and spent among them. Her eyes blurred with tears, occasionally laughing, Makepeace saw her old friend before her again, one foot on a chair, making one of his vainglorious speeches. Jacques cried and laughed with her.
The following days they spent together in her boat, fishing, so that the boy could have some quiet. ‘He died for liberty, didn’t he?’ he’d ask.
‘He did,’ she’d say. The truth comforted the boy; it didn’t comfort her.
At the end of the week, he decided that he ought to get back to his machines. Which was a good sign, she felt, though it left her lonelier than ever.
She quarrelled with Jan when he decided to make another voyage to Gruchy. ‘You shan’t go,’ she shouted at him. France had taken nearly everyone she loved without giving them back, and crossing the Channel in good weather through a Royal Navy’s blockade carried a high risk of being caught by one side or the other.
She might as well have argued with the tide; he went anyway and she knew it was as much an attempt to get news of Philippa and Andrew as for the silk and brandy he’d bring back. ‘Young Pippy’ was a favorite in the village and Jan was still shocked at the perfidy of ‘they Thurlestone buggers’ in taking her over to France when he had refused for her safety’s sake.
For once, her fear was groundless. He and his men were back in three days, their boat laden with contraband. The only news he had of Philippa was stale—she’d arrived at Gruchy, been supplied with an identity and taken the diligence to Paris—all of which they knew already.
The people at Gruchy said that, on arrival, Andrew had also taken the diligence to Paris and had also not returned.
‘Don’t ee worry, missus,’ Jan had said, ‘they’ll turn up. The Froggies is getting fair sick of that Terror over there. Old Fallon do say as he has to feel his head of a morning for fear they’ve chopped it off in the night. ’Twill stop soon, I’ve no doubt, the war’ll be over and young Pippy’ll come sailin’ home large as life and twice as natural.’
‘Bless you for going, Jan,’ she’d said. ‘But Pippy isn’t coming back.’ She’d absorbed that fact now. She didn’t feel anything. Sponges didn’t.
It was two days later that Tobias came back from Plymouth with a newspaper folded to an item on its inside page. He handed it to her and she shrank from it. ‘No, I can’t bear it.’
‘You can bear thith,’ he said. ‘Good or bad, I ain’t sure.’
It was a scandal sheet called About Town and the article was headed: ‘Guilty Flight!’
Underneath, it ran:
‘The Mayfair magistrate has been called to the home of Lord Ffoulkes, a friend of Mr William Pitt and a luminary of London society, to investigate a matter of missing jewels believed to be valued in the region of £3,000. His Lordship has been travelling abroad for some weeks. His return may be rendered dismal by the discovery that not only his jewels but his wife has disappeared. It is this organ’s sad responsibility to inform him, on good authority, that Lady Ffoulkes was last seen boarding a vessel bound for Canada in the company of Sir Boy Blanchard, formerly a close acquaintance of her husband. Lady Blanchard is reported to be distraught.’
There was a lot more, but Makepeace’s eyes were already stretched in their sockets. ‘Blow me,’ she said.
‘What about that now,’ Dell said in disgust. ‘Ah, well, the poor lad’s well rid of the faithless devils, even for three thousand shiners.’
‘Yes,’ said Makepeace slowly. ‘Yes, he is.’ But would Andrew see it like that? He’d loved Blanchard, he’d loved Félicie; the betrayal was profound.
‘And Canada now,’ Dell said. ‘Isn’t it all snow and grizzly bears?’
‘I hope so,’ Makepeace said. ‘I certainly do hope so.’
She needed to think about it, so she took to her boat and, because it was a hot day, rowed round to the cave below T’Gallants, the sea portal to the house, hidden from revenue-greedy eyes by a massive tapestry of gorse and brambles hung over its entrance.
The bales of silk and lace her smugglers had just brought back had been hauled up the shaft that led from the cave and stored in one of T’Gallants’s many secret cupboards to keep them dry. A comforting number of brandy casks were still piled on the shelf out of the way of the tide.
She tied up the rowing boat and sat on the shelf, absentmindedly nudging hermit crabs into a scuttle and annoying sea urchins by gently poking a finger into the waving fronds of their antennae. It was cool in the cave and its quiet was emphasized by the slight slap of water against the rock edge.
She had no difficulty in imagining Blanchard a betrayer—who knew it better than she did?—but that he’d abandoned everything in order to indulge an adulterous passion confounded her. He was, had been, the man about town par excellence. Grand society was, had been, the milieu he swam in. In his case, to throw that away was like a dancer amputating his legs.
And all for the sake of Félicie? Makepeace had no opinion of that young woman’s intelligence; she was persuadable. Granted, she was also lovely but it had always seemed to Makepeace that Blanchard’s appearances with her on his arm had displayed something like calculation, a-look-at-the-prize-I-could-capture-if-I-pleased rather than the swoon of a man besotted.
Perhaps, by running away with her, Blanchard was depriving Andrew of yet another thing of value—yet at such cost to himself. Makepeace didn’t know what prices were like in Canada but even jewels worth three thousand pounds wouldn’t last that couple forever—not in the style they were used to.
And if I know this, Blanchard knows it. No, there’s something else. Our Sir Boy has burnt his boats somewhere along the line and escaping to Canada with Félicie and her jewels is his only option.
Was he overspent, she wondered. Was Canada preferable to a debtor’s prison?
Or . . . a tiny worm of hope broke through the dead, protective wall with which Makepeace had surrounded herself . . . had Blanchard reason to believe that Andrew was on his way home? Andrew coming back, indeed, to be told by every servant in his house that Blanchard had been swiving his wife?
Makepeace sat up straight. It might be that, oh God, it might be that. Blanchard was part of The League. The League, because of its contacts, received news from France days before it ap
peared in the press.
It could be, it could be. And if Andrew returned, he might have Philippa with him.
In that moment, the reflection of light on water wobbling over the perimeter of the cave’s rocky shelf was more beautiful than she’d ever seen it. She shut her eyes to it; don’t think, don’t hope. Remain a sponge—it doesn’t hurt so much.
And yet, she thought, I’ll have to do something sooner or later. We can’t stay here forever, the boy needs more scientific education, university, a life.
Also, she had to do something for her shamefully neglected third daughter. Sally’s letters showed she was happy and settled in Northumberland but arrangements would have to be made. . . .
If Andrew Ffoulkes were to come home, she thought, he could persuade his friend Prime Minster Pitt to absolve Jacques of the crime of being his father’s son. But—and here numbness enfolded her again—Andrew wasn’t coming back any more than Philippa was. It had been foolish to think so.
Where to go then?
Desultorily, Makepeace’s mind explored the globe. Europe was no good, France having invaded most of it. Or was Germany still free? Yes, she rather thought it was. She seemed to remember Andra telling her Germany was bulging with fine scientists. She could take Jacques there.
On the other hand, since she had to go with the boy, she didn’t fancy spending what remained of her life in a country where she couldn’t speak the language. And would Sally like it?
America then. Home. Well, it used to be home until the patriots chased her out. Bloody revolutionaries get everywhere, she thought mildly. Perhaps it had improved now it was the United States. Ben Franklin country. Andra had liked Ben Franklin, one of the great enquiring minds, he’d said. Dead now, like Andra, but perhaps his scientific torch had been passed on. . . .
America. She supposed there was a neat inevitability that she should end her days in the country in which they’d begun, the completion of a long and eventful circumambulation which had left her no wiser as to why men chose to kill each other than when she’d set out.
Not yet, though. For a while they’d stay here, in Babbs Cove, where her mind could vacillate, like the light of this cavern, in a limbo of tranquillity.
From which she heard a shot sounding across the bay. The lookout always on guard had fired warning of a visitor.
In one second she was on her feet, the next she was in the boat and rowing like a mad thing. It would be a vessel from France. She’d conjured it up. Andrew . . . Philippa . . .
The great matted curtain over the entrance of the cave hampered her exit and she had to scrabble at it before the prow was free and she could get the boat through.
The bay was empty. The visitor, whoever it was, had not come by sea.
Wearily, she thought of bailiffs arrived to arrest Jacques. Well, the lane was always blocked, there would be time for Tobias to drag the boy from his steam engine and hide him until the stranger went away or was certified as friend, not foe—a circumstance of which the village would be notified by yet another round from the sentry’s firelock.
She heard it. All’s well.
There was a conveyance outside the Pomeroy Arms, though at this distance and from this angle she could not see exactly what it was, except that it gave the impression of being small and shabby. Neither could she see what or whom it had brought to the inn’s door. Obviously, whoever it was had satisfactorily proved their credentials.
By the time she’d rowed ashore, the conveyance was gone.
Dell was standing in the forecourt, looking for her, a letter in one hand and an empty beer mug in the other.
‘It was an Irishman come in a gig but ye’ve missed him.’
Her heart raced. ‘A big man?’
‘No, no, little runt of a fella, and I was to give you this.’
Having resurrected Makepeace’s life and then buried it again, she handed over a letter: ‘He wouldn’t stay but I was to say that the delivery came from a certain Mick Murrough as promised. That’s what he called ’em, “delivery as per promised.” Funny little fellow he was, a Kerry tinker from his pots and pans and accent but thanked me for the ale polite enough. Anyway, I took them in for didn’t they ...’
But Makepeace had split the seal and was reading. The writing was copperplate and the message not long enough.
‘I set the tinkers to finding them, for an Irish tinker goes around every back door to mend the pots and listen to the clack, also he can steal the sugar out of a punchbowl. So here they are. I keep my promises, missus.’
Finding what? Who? What promises?
‘... and both of them thin as death on wires, poor things ...’ Dell was still rattling on.
Makepeace pushed past her into the inn.
The slave and her child stood in the middle of the taproom floor, his arms wrapped round her legs, her arms circling his head and her huge, terrified eyes glancing left and right for enemies.
Makepeace sank to her knees, sobbing in gratitude.
THEY had to get Dick Tucker, the blacksmith, down from the farm to take the collars off. The woman’s was fairly easy, a thick iron thing with a hasp that only needed one hammer blow, though she kept shying when they tried to make her keep still for it. When at last she bent across the sawing horse they used for an anvil, her thin bodice gaped and showed burns on the top of her breasts.
The boy’s was more difficult because it was fine silver and fitted his little neck more closely. While it was being filed, he clung to his mother and when Dell wanted to take her away to dress her burns his breathing became panicky and Dell had to let her go.
Jacques tried talking to them in French but their faces remained dull from incomprehension. The only person they didn’t shrink from was Tobias. ‘Reckon they know my neck had a collar one time, too,’ he said.
‘Have they said anything? Can you understand them?’ Makepeace asked.
He shook his head. ‘They ain’t from my part of Africa. From the collarth, I’d reckon they were thold apart—look at hith jacket, velvet. I don’t like to think where they put her.’ He took Makepeace’s hand. ‘They the oneth from Brithtol, do you think?’
She smiled back at him. ‘Perhaps.’ She hadn’t seen the running woman’s face and a terrified child had the ubiquity of all terrified children. Whoever they were, they belonged together and had been reunited, one tiny atonement for the great wrongdoing.
‘Thomebody’ll be looking for them,’ Tobias said.
‘They won’t bloody get them,’ Makepeace said. Sir Mick and his tinkers had plucked these particular brands from the burning and, by Christ, she’d kill to stop them being thrown back into it.
She was alive now, energy practically sparking from her finger ends. There were days when God permitted miracles and this was one of them. She had plans to make; she couldn’t think why she’d been so lazy.
‘We’ll stay on for a bit,’ she said. ‘The four of us’ll move up to T’Gallants, give the place an airing. I’m expecting somebody.’
By this time half the village had come to see the newcomers and was watching them drink the soup that Dell said would hold them until supper. Jan Gurney’s wife shook her head over them. ‘Poor liddle buggers, thin as a rasher of wind both of ’em.’
‘We’ll feed ’em up,’ Makepeace said. ‘Rachel, tell Jan and the lads I’m expecting somebody. He may come by boat. But I suppose I’d better warn the farm as well, in case he arrives by road.’
Rachel was interrogative. ‘Ooh-ar?’
‘Irishman,’ Makepeace said.
‘Not more bloody Irish,’ Rachel said. ‘Us’ve got enough with Dell.’
‘’Fraid so. He said he’d meet me here—and he’s one as keeps his promises.’
‘Wait for me now, Mrs Hedley, because if I go, I’m coming back.’
And though the days slipped by, sweet assurance stayed with her. She reopened T’Gallants House and moved into it with her new family.
Tobias came up to help her, so did Rachel Gurney
who was intrigued by this couple without a past. ‘What be us going to call ’em?’ she wanted to know. ‘Eve and Abel, I reckon.’
‘We ain’t calling them anything,’ Makepeace said. ‘We’re going to wait until they can tell us who they are.’ For her, their name was Deliverance and always would be.
Their trust was slow in coming but Tobias said it would eventually. ‘Little ’un’ll learn before she does,’ he said.
He was right, he usually was. Jacques managed to persuade the boy to go with him and see his experiments at the inn by making steam engine noises and pointing. The woman watched from the window with Makepeace’s restraining hand on her shoulder as the two boys crossed the bridge that lay between T’Gallants and the village. Her fists were clenched.
‘He’ll be back,’ Makepeace told her. ‘I promise he’s coming back.’ The woman stayed at the window until she saw the boys returning, then the tension went out of her. She turned, walked to the kitchen and came back with a broom and began sweeping the hall in the first brisk movements Makepeace had seen her make. She looked up and nodded. Makepeace nodded back.
They were good days. Makepeace saw them draw in from the seat under the great window in the hall, watching the shadow of her house fall over half the village as the sun slid down behind it, looking and waiting for a sail as she had looked and waited for so many.
He’s late making his entrance, she thought. Damn actor.
But she never doubted that he would make it; she’d doubted him too much in the past.
I should never have let him go. When he’s back, I won’t, ever, and the Reverend Deedes can stuff that in his offertory box.