‘Stay below!’ John ordered a frightened Julia. One of his crew had already been washed overboard and lost; a woman and child on deck in these conditions would stand no chance at all.
He left them in the cabin huddled together on the narrow bunk, Julia trying to sing to Nancy to keep her spirits up, though her voice was barely audible over the creaking of the timbers and the moaning of the wind in the rigging.
The wild wind whipped around him in a frenzy as he yelled orders to his exhausted crew; the deck heaved, awash with water, beneath his feet. John cursed himself for having persuaded Julia to make this voyage with him. Bad enough to have to fight to save his ship and crew; knowing the lives of his wife and child lay in his hands was an added weight of responsibility. If the ship should founder…
He pushed the thought aside, concentrating on the battle in hand. But for all his efforts the relentless winds and currents drove the Guinevere closer to land – and the unseen dangers of the rocky coastline. Bone tired, drenched to the skin, John feared the worst.
And then by some miracle the wind dropped for a moment and he saw it. A light shining out into the darkness. And another… and another. Harbour lights! Praise be to God! Salvation was at hand.
With renewed vigour he issued orders to direct the storm-tossed Guinevere towards the lights. Closer they came, closer and closer.
Suddenly, with a terrifying crash, the prow hit solid rock. For a moment, as the boat shuddered violently, he was so startled he could not imagine what had happened. Then, in a flash, he knew.
The bobbing lights were not the lights of a harbour or safe haven. They were the sirens of the Cornish coast, luring the unwary mariner straight on to the rocks. These lights were the work of evil men.
The wreckers.
* * *
The ship bucked violently and John knew there was nothing more he could do to save her. All he could do now was try to save his wife and child. He rushed below, slipping on the sea-drenched companionway and landing in a heap before the cabin door. He pulled himself to his feet and wrenched it open. The first impact with the rocks had put out most of the lamps; by the one remaining he saw Julia clinging to the bunk, Nancy in her arms.
‘Come with me!’ he yelled.
He took Nancy from her mother and somehow got the pair of them on to the sloping deck. Above them in the rigging men screamed and swore. Another gigantic wave slammed into the ship, she thudded once more against the jagged rocks and he heard the sickening sound of splintering wood. The Guinevere was breaking her back. Soon she would be torn apart. He had to get Julia and Nancy into a boat and pray they could reach land without being overturned.
And then, by some miracle, the moon emerged from the thick bank of cloud and a shout went up.
‘The water’s shallow here! We can wade to land!’
John’s heart leapt. Perhaps there was a chance for them after all! One of the crew was indeed out of the ship and seemed to be standing waist deep in the water. There must be a sand bar beneath the rocks! With luck it would stretch to the beach!
The men swarming in the rigging clambered down, shouting their relief and throwing themselves into the water. John put Nancy in Julia’s arms, helped her along the sloping deck to the point closest to the shallows.
‘You can make it to shore here, my love. Just follow the others.’
‘John – come with us!’ she begged, shrinking back from the icy water.
‘I have to make sure none of my crew are trapped. I’ll see you on shore. Take care, my love.’
He helped her over the side, his heart contracting as the sea seemed to swallow her momentarily. Then she found her footing and began to wade towards the shore, Nancy held high in her arms.
And then the shouts began, and the first rocks came screaming through the air. In all the tumult he had scarcely noticed the lanterns that now bobbed on the shoreline; it had not occurred to him for a moment that the wreckers would attack the defenceless survivors of the ship they had lured on to the rocks. Now he watched in helpless horror as the deadly missiles struck them down and the air was filled with their screams and cries. The wreckers were stoning the survivors to ensure that none of them reached the shore alive and able to testify to the evil work that had been wrought here this night.
John threw himself into the water in an attempt to reach Julia and protect her. He floundered through the hail of missiles and saw that some of the wreckers were themselves waist deep in the water and beating those who had survived the missiles about the head and face with rocks and stones. Men fell about him, screaming for help, but he ignored them, his only care for his wife and child.
He had almost reached them when a rock caught him full in the face. He fell back, his eye gushing blood, his gaping mouth filling with sea water. For a moment he threshed helplessly, then found his footing again, stunned but unaware of any pain, so intent was he on reaching Julia and little Nancy.
Julia had stopped, frozen with fear, torn between braving the hail of rocks and being driven back into the icy waves. He managed a step towards her, calling out her name. Then a rock caught her, she stumbled, and he saw Nancy slip from her arms.
‘No-oh!’ he screamed, redoubling his efforts to reach them.
Another rock hit him, and another. John’s head swam, blinded by blood he struggled on, his legs useless beneath him. And then the wreckers were upon him. He had no weapons with which to fight them, no remaining strength. He fought for his life and the chance to save his wife and child there in the foaming surf and knew he had no chance of winning.
‘Julia!’ he gasped as the salt water filled his mouth once more. It was the last word he would ever speak.
* * *
Every last member of the crew of the Guinevere died that night, stoned to death before they could reach land or driven back into the water to drown. The wreck was stripped to the bone; by the time the alarm was raised and soldiers and customs officers reached her, everything of value had gone, even the sails and the rigging. The wreckers had not gained the haul they had anticipated, for they had thought it was a cargo vessel they had lured on to the rocks, but they swooped on it greedily anyway, knowing that packets sometimes carried bullion and hoping perhaps for valuables amongst the mail.
The pickings were thin. The entire crew of the Guinevere were lost for a few baubles, a length or two of torn canvas and a brass bell.
But Julia did not die that night. And though Julia was to spend twenty years mourning her, neither did little Nancy.
Nineteen
‘You were found wandering on the beach the morning after the wrecking,’ Joshua said. ‘God alone knows how you survived. Everyone else on board the ship that night died, stoned to death in the shallows or held under the water until they drowned. The cove was littered with bodies for days, Papa said, for more were washed up with every tide. The wreckers had made certain there was no one left to tell the tale – no one to identify them as the perpetrators of such wickedness.’
For long moments I was silent, my hands pressed over my mouth, trembling, shocked to the core. I had heard of wrecking, of course, but thought the stories to be exaggerated.
‘It’s beyond belief that any human being could behave so towards others,’ I said at last.
‘It goes against every tenet of my ministry to say it, but I truly believe they are beyond redemption,’ Joshua agreed. ‘To lure ships on to the rocks for the sake of robbing their cargos is wickedness enough, but worse, I think they actually enjoy the suffering of their victims.’
‘Yet somehow I survived,’ I mused. ‘And Julia too. If I was on board the ship then surely so was she. How did we both escape when everyone else died? It makes no sense.’
‘Perhaps you had gone alone on the voyage with your father, the sea captain,’ Joshua suggested. ‘When the ship was lost Julia would naturally assume you had been drowned.’
‘I can’t believe she would have not been with me,’ I argued. ‘And in any case, she said she saw me die.�
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‘Maybe she is confused about that,’ Joshua said gently. ‘You say she claims not to be able to remember her past. Maybe that’s because she feels guilty about letting you go alone. And maybe she has imposed false memories too to help her cope with that guilt.’
‘Maybe.’ I could not argue with the logic of it, yet for some reason it did not sit easily with me.
‘I have to say Papa doubted the whole story,’ Joshua went on. ‘He found it hard to believe that a tiny child could have survived not only the waves but also a night on the beach, drenched through and exposed to the elements, and be found alive next morning. I think it crossed his mind to wonder if you were ever really on the Guinevere at all. He thought it possible that someone had wanted to abandon you and seen their opportunity when the ship was wrecked.’
My hand flew to my throat. ‘Did he not try to find out then if anyone in the village knew me?’ I asked.
‘He did, of course. And when he had established that no one recognised you and no one missed a little girl, he went on to try to discover if you had any living relatives in Falmouth, the wrecked ship’s home port.’ Falmouth. How often, it seemed, I had heard mention of Falmouth in the last months.
‘And what did he learn?’ I asked.
‘That the master of the Guinevere, a John Fletcher, did indeed have a little girl of about your age, and since his house was locked up and empty, it was assumed that his wife and child must have sailed with him. But no relatives of either the captain or his wife could be traced. There seemed to be a web of mystery surrounding them and they kept very much to themselves. Even the wives of the other sea captains who were your mother’s neighbours knew nothing of her background or where she came from.’
Given the circumstances, that was understandable, I thought. Julia and John must have lived in fear of Francis coming after her if he had discovered her whereabouts. But there were still so many unanswered questions…
‘Is it possible that Julia was waiting with me on the beach and when she saw the wrecking she was so distressed that she lost her mind and ran away, leaving me there?’ I pondered, returning to the puzzle of how the two of us had managed to escape with our lives when everyone else on board the doomed ship had drowned.
Joshua shook his head. ‘Why would she have been on that very beach? John would not have intended to make land there with all the dangerous rocks, and so far from Falmouth.’
The irony of it struck me again.
‘It’s such a coincidence,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Tom comes from Falmouth.’
‘Tom?’
‘The young man you met when you came to visit me at Morwennan.’
‘Ah.’ Joshua’s expression became petulant. For a moment he looked like a spoiled child who has seen his favourite toy snatched by a playmate. ‘I think you should be wary of him, Charity.’
I frowned. ‘Wary? Why?’
‘How much do you know of him?’ Joshua asked.
‘Not a great deal,’ I admitted. ‘Well – next to nothing, to tell the truth.’
‘Exactly.’ Joshua nodded sagely. ‘You are very vulnerable at the moment, Charity, and I don’t want to see you hurt.’
I bowed my head, not wanting to admit to Joshua just how involved with Tom I already was.
‘How do you know he is not one of Francis’s gang?’ Joshua persisted.
‘No – he’s not!’ I said quickly. ‘I thought the same at first, and confronted him with it, but he assured me he was not. He says he has his own reasons for associating with Francis…’
‘Ah-ha! And you don’t know what those reasons are?’
I shook my head.
‘Then you must be doubly careful, Charity. Perhaps it is no coincidence he comes from Falmouth. Perhaps there is a very real connection – through John Fletcher.’ He broke off, reddening, and I knew in an instant what he was implying.
Sailors were well known for their lack of fidelity. John Fletcher could have fathered other children by other women – or even by Julia herself. With a jolt I found myself remembering what Julia had said – that she had lost not one child but two or more. Had there been others, left behind for some reason when she had sailed on that fateful last voyage? Had Tom come to Morwennan searching for her? Certainly there was something about him that was very mysterious. Could it be that he was my brother?
No! It was too ridiculous to contemplate. Joshua had only made the suggestion because he was unbelievably jealous of my feelings for Tom, and I… my imagination was working overtime. Hardly surprising given all the unlikely things I had discovered in the past months and was still learning, even today. I would not give such a possibility a second thought, for there was not the slightest scrap of evidence to suggest it might be so.
But, for all that, I remembered the instant attraction I had felt for Tom and shivered.
‘What I don’t understand,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘is why your mama and papa never told me any of this. Why did they keep it a secret?’
‘They thought it would upset you,’ Joshua said.
I laughed, a small hollow sound. ‘It upset me to think that I was a foundling, abandoned by a mother who did not want me! Surely it would have been better to tell the truth as they knew it – that my parents were drowned.’
‘But wrecking is such a terrible thing,’ Joshua said – trying to make excuses for the incredible omission, I knew.
‘My parents were the victims, not the perpetrators,’ I responded tartly. ‘And what could be more terrible than believing your mother left you in a bundle on a doorstep?’
Joshua flushed uncomfortably, and I rushed on: ‘And why did they call me Charity? If Dr John spoke to people at Falmouth who knew me, he must have learned that my real name was Nancy. Why did they take even that away from me?’
‘Nancy?’ Joshua repeated, looking at me quizzically. ‘It’s a pretty enough name. I don’t know if I could get used to it though. You will always be Charity to me.’
‘Exactly!’ I fumed. ‘They called me Charity so that I would never be able to forget that I was a burden on the parish. That is so very like them.’
‘They were good to you,’ Joshua said. ‘I won’t let you talk about them so, Charity.’
‘Nancy!’ I corrected him furiously. ‘My name is Nancy!’
‘Very well… Nancy,’ he said, looking so crestfallen that my anger died as quickly as it had come.
‘Oh, Joshua, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Of course you can still call me Charity. It’s what I still think of myself as anyway. I couldn’t get used to a change of name either – not after so long.’
An impish smile lit his eyes.
‘You do look like a Nancy.’
‘And how do Nancys look?’
‘Oh – happy, pretty, the way you always looked when we were children, skipping along, your hair loose over your shoulders… And the way you look now.’
He broke off, his flush deepening. He had said more than he meant to, I knew; revealed more of his feelings than he was comfortable with. Dear, dear Joshua.
‘Do you really have to go back to Morwennan?’ he asked.
‘I do.’
‘Then promise me you’ll be careful, Charity… Nancy! Don’t take the slightest risk with those people, and do nothing until you hear from me.’
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know yet.’ Joshua’s face was very serious, very determined. ‘But I’ll think of something. I can see how important this is to you, and that makes it important to me.’
I took his hands in mine and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Thank you. Oh, thank you. I knew I could rely on you, Joshua.’
He coloured again – from pleasure this time, I thought.
‘I’ll do my best, really I will. And Charity – if you are at all worried, go to Jem. I’m so far away, damn it, but he’s within striking distance. He would help you, I know.’
‘He’s not you,’ I said.
‘N
o, but you were brought up as his sister too, even if you didn’t really get along the way we did. And he’s quite an influential man these days – certainly doing well for himself from what I could see of it. Promise me you’ll go to him if you think you are in the slightest danger.’
‘I promise,’ I said, to satisfy him.
But I was thinking I would have to be at my wits’ end to turn to Jem, brother or not. And in any case, I would never turn my back on Julia and Charlotte.
* * *
I returned to Morwennan with mixed feelings indeed.
I had learned a great deal but not enough. I had enlisted Joshua’s help but I did not know how long it would be in coming. As for the house itself, I dreaded being once more under its dark oppressive spell, but longed to see Julia and Charlotte again and assure myself that they were safe and well. Not, of course, that any physical harm was likely to befall Charlotte. Her father adored her and would defend her, I felt sure, with his life. But, with so many secrets under that roof, I feared for the effect they might have on her should she stumble across them, and as she grew up and became more and more independent and aware, the likelihood of such a thing happening grew ever stronger.
As for Julia… she was, I felt, in constant danger. Why they had kept her there for so long, alive but incarcerated, I could only guess at. But if she became a danger to them, then they had nothing whatever to lose by disposing of her as ruthlessly as they had kept her prisoner all these years.
As the carriage descended the steep incline beneath the trees the sense of being trapped myself closed in on me once more. The trees were bare now for winter, no heavy foliage blotted out the sun, and yet the darkness and the sense of oppression remained.
I found myself remembering the recurrent dream that had plagued me for so long before I ever came to Morwennan. Not once since I had been here had I dreamed that dream. It had been eclipsed by the reality. But it was strange, was it not, that it had happened at all when I had never set eyes on the place, never in waking life ever experienced such a feeling. It was, I thought, as if Julia had somehow been reaching out to me, relaying her own despair on some esoteric level. It was as if in those dreams I had become my mother.
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