by Julia Jones
Then he noticed that Helen’s friend had a gun. A gun which she was pointing at him.
“Give Miss de Witt your phones then go below,” she said to him and Mike. Drie Vrouwen’s engine was dawdling in neutral. “You have no idea whether my weapon is real or fake but you cannot ignore my power over the child in that kayak. She is so close to the barge, so unsuspecting. My name is Elsevier and I am your Kapitein. You don’t EVER call me Elsie. We need additional crew for our trip and you have been selected. Go down into the cabin and the child will join you.”
“I won’t let her hurt Engel, truly,” said Helen. She looked rather white but she didn’t look surprised.
“But I can’t,” Luke said. “My family expect me to meet them at the hospital.”
“You’ll be a few days late, that’s all. A few days late, I think you’ll agree, is preferable to arriving many years too soon – especially as you’d be arriving via the post mortem entrance.”
Her rasping English was better than Helen’s. There was no possibility that they hadn’t understood her correctly.
“Please give me your phones and do as she says,” said Helen. “She’s dramatic and bad-tempered and she likes to act a scene. It’s only for the Noordzee crossing. One day. Two at the most.”
Mike sat down where he was. This was his daughter they were threatening. There was no way he was letting her out of his sight.
Okay, thought Luke. That was passive resistance. They’d done Gandhi at school. He sat down as well. Never had a gun pointed at him before. Not for real.
The River Deben looked huge now it had been filled by the tide – and so empty. There were no racing dinghies today. No cyclists or walkers on the river wall. No rescuers. What wouldn’t he give to see the three distinctive masts of the junk Strong Winds…
Elsevier ran at Mike and pushed him overboard. Drie Vrouwen’s side decks were narrow and her guard rails low. He was caught completely by surprise.
“We’ll keep the boy, coward,” she shouted after him.
Helen grabbed Luke and pulled him towards the cabin. He fought her as hard as he knew how. Kept trying to grab onto things but she was faster that he was, tall and strong. She must have noticed last night which pocket he used for his phone as she had it out immediately.
Elsevier looped him with a rope as if he’d been a wild bullock. She dragged him to the companionway and pushed him down for Helen to finish off. Luke kept on fighting though he knew that he had lost.
“I can explain,” said Helen. “Later. I have to tie you up for now.”
The cabin must previously have been a hold. There were two stout metal poles to reinforce the roof. Helen had him securely fastened with a few efficient movements.
“You’re well in practice then,” he said, bitterly.
She looked as if she wanted to answer but then there was a shout from on deck.
“To me, girl,” Elsevier called down. “The fools are giving themselves up!”
Her dad wasn’t a good swimmer and he was wearing all his clothes. Angel had no idea how he could have fallen overboard but she managed to haul him onto the front of the kayak just like the instructor had hauled her. She remembered to smile at him and talk reassuringly as well.
“The woman on that boat has a gun,” he said, as soon as he had caught his breath. “She tried to force us below; to press gang us for their North Sea crossing. Paddle for the shore, Angela. Quick as you can. We must fetch help.”
“Where’s Luke?”
“Still there. Hurry. We have to call the police.”
Her paddle stayed motionless across the cockpit rim.
“No way am I leaving Luke. Not like I left his dad. You go ashore if you want.”
Should he? His phone was drenched of course but he could swim and then he could run. He could get someone with authority to stop these madwomen before they reached the end of the river. But how could he leave the children?
He couldn’t run his hands through his hair or pull his beard whilst balanced on the front of this kayak. How could he think?
“Listen, Angela,” he said. “Here’s the plan. I want you to paddle towards their boat and I’m going to wave my handkerchief. No I’m not, it’s a tissue. I’m going to hold both my hands up and you’re going to put me back on board. I solemnly promise that I’ll take care of Luke. I’ll be climbing up and talking to them, surrendering – whatever it takes – and I’ll push the kayak away with my foot. Then you head straight up to Woodbridge and call the police.”
“You said she had a gun…”
“My darling, I don’t believe she’ll use it. And…I can’t think what else we can do.”
“We both go back to keep Luke safe.” The barge was moving away but not fast. It was tough paddling the kayak with someone sitting on the front. Her dad was trying to balance. He’d never been athletic at all.
“Then no-one knows where we are. We’ll have to go to Holland with them.”
“Dad, I don’t want to be shot.” The terror of it gripped her. Her whole body felt weak and her hands sweating. Tiny specks of light beginning to dart across her vision, the smell of honey…
“Dad…I’ve got that feeling…I think I’m going…”
She was about to have a seizure. Out here in the middle of the empty river with her wobbly dad on the front of her kayak.
“Help!” Mike shouted to the lunatics. “Wait for us. We’re coming back!”
Then he leaned forward and started scooping water with both hands as he felt his daughter’s body slump behind him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Deben Bar
Thursday 6 November, dark of the moon
Helen, Luke
The ebb had settled in: the wind was undecided. Sudden gusts, mainly from the north and north-east, blackened the surface of the water: died to nothing then returned, slightly stronger every time.
A three-masted junk, hurrying up the river while there might still be enough water to make a surprise detour into Fynn Creek, had given up sailing and was motoring hard in the opposite direction to Drie Vrouwen. Two dark-skinned girls and a boy waved from her cockpit. Elsevier didn’t bother to acknowledge them.
Helen was below, sorting out their wet and angry captives, feeling more and more convinced that they were going to be more trouble than they were worth.
“Can’t we put them ashore somewhere?” she called up to Elsevier. “I’ve taken their phones and there are plenty of places that aren’t near houses or roads. We’d be long gone before they found anyone to complain to. And what have they got to complain about? The other people in the creek saw them come on board quite willingly. The girl sent a message to her mother. Then she had a seizure in the kayak. That wasn’t our fault.”
Naturally she was speaking in Dutch. She forgot that Elsevier didn’t know that the man would understand them.
“You think no-one will have noticed that the lion of the Stavoren has gone?” the older woman replied. “You think the English are so stupid they won’t have made the connection between a Dutch possession being taken down and a Dutch barge leaving? If this riff-raff are no use as crew, we’ll keep them prisoner in case we need to bargain. Then dispose of them once we’re home. I’m not stopping now.”
Helen had padlocked Mike to the second metal post with the stolen trailer’s chain around his middle. She had allowed him his arms and legs.
“I don’t think you’ll attack me. Here’s a towel for you to use before I tie your hands. I’ll find you some dry clothes. They’ll be my mother’s, unfortunately.”
“Is she ill,” Luke asked. “Or was that another lie?”
“She’s ill,” said Helen.
So now Mike was wearing large and unattractive trousers, a peasant blouse and a smock. Hendrike was stout and unstylish: he was small and rather thin. The only thing Helen couldn’t find were
shoes to fit. Her mother had several pairs of wooden clogs but they were too small. Slip-on sandals were the best she could manage, with thick knitted socks. Mike looked stupid but he was talking sense.
“Does your friend with the gun not realise that your own country will hand you back if you’ve committed a crime over here? We’re all part of the EU. We have agreements.”
“She’s not my friend. She’s my mother’s friend. I’m co-operating with her because I want to get home. After that I hope I never see either of them again. And, no, of course she doesn’t think like that. She thinks she can get away with anything. They want to rerun the seventeenth century but with women in charge. My mother’s simply lost her mind but Elsevier wants to be a dictator. I’ll spoil it for her if I can.”
“Elsevier! Wreken de Dame! Stavoren! Now I understand!”
Helen was ordered on deck at that moment. They had reached the mouth of the river where there were banks of shifting shingle. The Kapitein needed her to keep checking that they were following a dead straight line between the two crucial channel buoys. The north-westerly wind had strengthened and was helping the ebb tide to push them out fast. If they ran onto the shingle they were going to hit it hard.
“What was all that about?” asked Luke. Mike and Helen had mainly spoken Dutch but he’d been watching Mike’s body language and he’d heard the tone of voice in which he’d repeated that name. He was sore and grumpy and miserable but he supposed he might as well try to understand what was going on. “What’s so special about Elsevier?”
Mike tried to step forward as if he was standing on stage answering a question from the audience. He forgot he was tethered round the middle so he almost fell over. Luke didn’t laugh.
“There are two Elseviers. Lots more of course but two that matter to us. This one is the lunatic politician who wants every-one thrown out of the country if their ancestors haven’t lived there for at least three hundred years. I can’t think why I didn’t recognise her at once in her hat and cloak. I suppose I hadn’t expected to find her pointing a gun at me in the Deben.”
Luke hadn’t expected anyone to be pointing a gun at him anywhere – outside of a Play Station or an X-box or his own Nintendo screen.
“The other Elsevier,” Mike carried on – this was his specialist subject – “was the captain of a ship that was captured at the Battle of Sole Bay – May 28th 1672 (old style). She was the Stavoren, built in Edam, named for a trading town on the Zuider Zee, and sailing with the Amsterdam Admiralty under the overall command of the great Michiel De Ruyter. Take the old road to Ipswich and you can see her figurehead outside the Red Lion pub. Or, you could see it there. I’m guessing that this Elsevier stole it last night as some sort of nationalist publicity stunt. And we’re helping her to transport it home.”
“The Crimson King…” breathed Luke. He was remembering the teeth and the claws and the fury of that creature struggling to break free. “You think he’s on this boat with us?”
Mike wasn’t listening. He often didn’t when he was working out a theory.
“So, Elsevier shares a name with the Stavoren’s captain therefore she thinks she’s justified in snatching back what was captured all those years ago. She’s not, of course. It was taken fairly and sold on legitimately. But how that girl and her mother are involved I can’t think. They’re de Witts. They should be on the side of peaceful trade and the rule of law.”
“I think Helen’s mum’s a witch,” said Luke. “I heard things in the night when I was sleeping on Lowestoft Lass. They had a cockerel and they lit loads of candles. And Ben didn’t like her.”
Mike was beginning to object that that didn’t necessarily prove sorcery but then Angel began to cry. She was tied to the same post as Luke. She couldn’t reach her dad and he couldn’t reach her. She hadn’t understood all that they were talking about, especially the stuff in Dutch, obviously, but she always felt emotional after her seizures and needed reassurance. She’d been limp when they’d carried her down so it had been easy for Helen to wrap the rope round several times. Helen, who she had thought was her friend.
Angel wanted her mum. Her mum who was so annoying and such a fusspot and got everything wrong and never understood – but who would be holding her close and stroking her as she came back to normal.
Mike looked desperate. His hands were twisting and he was pulling at his chain. Luke would have tried patting her or something but he hadn’t any hands.
This was a different Ants from the one he was used to seeing spitting and kicking in the school playground. Or the one who’d bitten him at the community pool. He tried to think of something reassuring that he could say though in their current situation there wasn’t exactly much that came to mind.
An unfamiliar grinding noise. Drie Vrouwen’s engine roared. They felt her slowing to a stop. Elsevier was swearing – though not in English.
“Shut up, Ants,” said Luke. “We need to listen.”
There were feet running urgently along the deck. The noise surrounded everything inside; a sliding, scraping noise; percussive against the metal hull. Luke recognised the sound of shingle.
They could hear Helen shouting in Dutch from the foredeck. Mike listened and translated.
“The barge has struck a spit. The bows are free; she’s caught by the stern. The de Witt girl says there’s deeper water immediately ahead.”
The sound of the engine changed. Put into reverse? Full throttle. Straining.
The pebbly sound wasn’t scraping the hull any more. That didn’t need translation.
“Stuck fast,” said Luke.
Mike nodded. Angel began to breathe very quickly and wriggle inside her ropes as if she was possessed. She could have been going to get free but the next moment Helen was there, untying them all.
“You have to come and push,” she said. “We have to shift the cargo forwards.”
“What if we don’t?” said Luke.
“Then we’re wrecked together. Get on deck and do it.”
She didn’t wait for their response. She hurried to a side cabin and unlocked the door.
“Mother,” she said, controlling her voice into a supplication. “We need your power. Come to the foredeck please. Be our lady.”
“Get up there. Quick!” she told the rest of them.
Angel was out of her ropes and scurrying up the steps. Mike and Luke looked at each other, shrugged and followed. Hendrike lumbered behind. Her white hair was loose and she was wearing some sort of robe. She was muttering, ignoring everyone, making gestures without meaning. Luke understood now what sort of ‘ill’ Helen had meant.
Outside the sea was churning past. He recognised the red-painted buoy which marked the Deben Bar, the shallowest point of the river exit. He turned and looked back over Drie Vrouwen’s port quarter. There was Bawdsey Manor – his home – where the rest of his family would arrive in just a few hours’ time.
That made his heart thump and his breath get a bit tight and he thought that it might be him who might start crying next. So he blinked a couple of times and looked ahead.
He’d watched boats of all sorts coming in and out of this river. He knew that the barge was on the correct side of the buoy. She should have been okay. Except she wasn’t – and the tide was running out so fast.
He’d heard the older ones talking about the way the shingle had shifted when there’d been gales and high tides in October. Donny’d said he’d only be taking Strong Winds in and out of the river on the flood until he was certain that the entrance had stabilised again.
Drie Vrouwen’s wooden rudder was wedged. This was the ebb. She’d be stranded soon.
Elsevier was already cutting the ropes that bound a wrapped object to the cabin roof. Luke recognised the tarpaulin. It was his dad’s tarpaulin from Lowestoft Lass. When would he stop feeling shocked by all of this stealing?
Hendrike went immedia
tely to the foredeck and stood there arms outstretched. The wind was pressing her robe and her hair from behind her as if she was a bellying sail. She was shouting some sort of incantation.
“There is no-one here to rescue you,” said Helen to the three of them. “We must all push together.”
“Or someone goes overboard and we lighten the ship that way.” Elsevier had her gun out again. They still couldn’t see whether it was real. Her dark cloak was whipping in the wind, her feet firmly one before the other, her left arm crooked to steady the gun, her right hand curved around the handle, her eyes squinting along the barrel, her finger on the trigger. She swivelled to point at Luke.
“You have the choice,” she said.
The afternoon sky was already dark, the tide was foaming past. There was a terrible sense of urgency.
Mike broke first.
Then Angel almost as quick.
They did as Helen ordered. They got behind the bundle that must be the stolen figurehead and began struggling to push it forwards. Luke gave in and joined them, Elsevier was beside him all that time. With that gun. He couldn’t look away from her.
Helen ran to the stern, lashed the tiller and put the engine ahead, full throttle, then she hurried forward again to add her slim weight to theirs. Together they pushed the lion as far as it could go towards the bow.
Drie Vrouwen shuddered, plunged, heaved herself free of the invisible obstruction and was moving ahead once again.
Elsevier twirled her pistol round her right forefinger then replaced it in her leather belt. She couldn’t have done that if it were loaded with live bullets. Could she?
She strode astern and took the helm. They passed close by the red bar buoy and carried on as far as the Woodbridge Haven. This was a red and white buoy, bright against the racing grey-brown sea.
“I know this one,” said Luke to Mike and Ants. “It’s called a safewater mark and it’s to help you find the entrance to the river. I’ve been out here before, with my friends. That’s our house back there.”