Bring It Close

by Helen Hollick

  To My Readers

  A personal message from Helen Hollick

  Writing can be a silly occupation. Solitary, often hard, tedious work for few rewards. But it is compulsive, and those few rewards can be great indeed: seeing your novel on a shelf in a bookstore; receiving an e-mail from an appreciative fan; a fabulous review; a nomination for an award. There is the sheer pleasure of starting with a blank page and experiencing the excitement of bringing a character to full and glorious life. Of delving beneath the facts of what happened and when, and filling in all the missing bits of why, how and with whom. That is the joy of writing!

  Having a book published, however, is not always plain sailing. Several years ago my backlist was dropped by William Heinemann – historical fiction had gone out of fashion – and simultaneously my agent abandoned me. I was on my own and facing the prospect of not writing another novel. I spent two weeks sobbing, then pulled myself together and set out to find an alternative publisher.

  I discovered an independent company who, as a part of their small mainstream imprint, took my backlist and my new venture: the first of the Sea Witch voyages. There were hiccups, but the office staff were enthusiastic and I had high hopes for the future. Sadly, the current economic climate is not kind to small firms, and for a second time I found myself facing the prospect of being out of print. I had four choices:

  Give up writing

  Find an alternative mainstream publisher

  Go self-publish (produce my books myself)

  Find a company that provided assisted publishing

  For me, 1 was not an option. I cannot give up writing, not while I still have a story in my head to share. Choice 2: I am mainstream published in the US and other countries, but approaching a similar UK publishing house, with their full lists and tight printing schedules, could have resulted in my novels being unavailable for several months. I have many friends who would be so disappointed to see them temporarily disappear, as would I. Lacking the technical knowledge, or time, to go self publish was not viable or practical, although the thought of running my own company was tempting. However, excited by the prospect of being in control of my destiny – and my books – I decided to opt for choice 4.

  I have known Helen Hart of SilverWood Books for several years and it was therefore an easy choice to send my precious novels into her good care, confident she would produce quality editions, quickly and efficiently.

  Transferring my list of seven books has been hard and dedicated work, not just for me, but for the team at SilverWood Books, my graphic designer Cathy Helms of AvalonGraphics, and my editors Jo Field and Michaela Unterbarnscheidt.

  Nor have the production costs been cheap – more on the ‘gulp’ level – but it’s been worth it… I love my characters and have great respect and fondness for all my followers, fans, friends and readers. Your encouragement and enthusiasm was all the incentive I needed to make the decision to keep my characters alive and well. And in print.

  For that, I thank you.

  To Jo Field,

  author, editor and such a very dear friend. Jesamiah and I do not know what we would do without you, m’dear.

  Published in paperback 2011 by SilverWood Books of Bristol

  www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk

  Text copyright © Helen Hollick 2011

  Illustrations © Avalon Graphics 2011

  eBook by www.bristolebooks.co.uk

  The right of Helen Hollick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright holder.

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-906236-62-5

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Paperback is set in Palatino Light by SilverWood Books

  Printed in England on paper from responsible sources

  Bring it close

  – an old term for a telescope.

  An instrument used to bring what is far away nearer, or to make that which is indistinguishable, clear.

  October 1718

  Part One

  Nassau, the Bahamas

  Thus it began...

  In the place where the living are not dead and the dead are not alive, Time ceases and blends with the void of Forever, the two merging like painted colours weeping in the rain.

  In that place there are many, but all are alone. Those who have no reason to be there cross the still, deep River and step ashore into the peace that is Eternity. Others sink into the desolation and oblivion of the Nothing. Some stand and shout their anger, or shed tears for their weak frailties, but learn nothing from their mistakes.

  Some endure their regrets, and a few, just a few, choose to be patient and to wait and watch, and hope for a chance to return.

  There, in that place, stood a man who waited, and while he waited he watched his son, who was among the living. And as he watched, he remembered. And in remembering he grieved bitterly for what he had and had not done.

  “I would that I could speak to him,” the man said to the ageless woman who stood a pace behind. He turned to her, anguish corrupting his tired face. “I would that I could undo what was done.”

  “It would be difficult. He is alive and you are dead,” the Witch Woman said, with an ache of pity and compassion in her heart.

  “Difficult?” He paused and gathered the courage to say what was in his thoughts. “Difficult. But not impossible?”

  The Woman, the Witch, smiled, the power of her love sending the comfort of Light through the dismal shroud of Darkness that was tormenting his troubled soul.

  “Difficult,” she said, “but not impossible.”

  One

  Tuesday, 1st October

  Jesamiah Acorne, four and twenty years old, Captain of the Sea Witch, sat with his hands cradled around an almost empty tankard of rum, staring blankly at the drips of candle-wax that had hardened into intricate patterns down the sides of a green glass bottle. The candle itself was smoking and leaning to one side as if drunk. As drunk as Jesamiah.

  For maybe ten seconds he did not notice the two grim-faced, shabby ruffians sit down on the bench opposite him. One of them reached forward and snuffed out the guttering flame, pushed the bottle aside. Jesamiah looked up, stared at them as vacantly as he had been staring at the congealed rivers of wax.

  One of the men, the one wearing a battered three-corner felt hat and a gold hoop earring that dangled from his left earlobe, leant his arms on the table, linking his tar and gunpowder-grimed fingers together. The other, a red-haired man with a beard like a weather-worn, abandoned bird’s nest, eased a dagger from the sheath on his belt and began cleaning his split and broken nails with its tip.

  “We’ve been lookin’ fer you, Acorne,” the man with the earring said.

  “Found me then, ain’t yer,” Jesamiah drawled. He dropped his usual educated accent and spoke in the clipped speech of a common foremast jack. He was a good mimic, had a natural talent to pick up languages and tonal cadences. Also knew when to play the simpleton or a gentleman.

  He drained his tankard, held it high and whistled for Never-Say-No Nan, a wench built like a Spanish galleon and whose charms kept her as busy as a barber’s chair.

  She ambled over to Jesamiah, the top half of her partially exposed and extremely ample bosoms wobbling close to his face as she poured more rum.

  “What about your friends?” she asked, nodding in their direction.

  “Ain’t no friends of mi
ne,” Jesamiah answered lifting his tankard to sample the replenished liquor.

  The man with the earring jerked his head, indicating Nan was to be gone. She sniffed haughtily and swept away, her deep-rumbled laughter drifting behind as another man gained her attention by pinching her broad backside.

  “Or to be more accurate, Acorne, Teach ‘as been lookin’ for yer.”

  Half shrugging, Jesamiah made a fair pretence at nonchalance; “I ain’t exactly been ‘iding, Gibbens. I’ve been openly anchored ‘ere in Nassau ‘arbour for several weeks.” Since August in fact, apart from a brief excursion to Hispaniola – which Jesamiah was attempting to set behind him and forget about. Hence the rum.

  “Aye, we ‘eard as ‘ow thee’ve signed for amnesty and put yer piece into Governor Rogers’ ‘and,” Gibbens sneered, making an accompanying crude and explicit gesture near his crotch.

  “Given up piracy?” Red Beard – Rufus – scoffed as he hoiked tobacco spittle into his mouth and gobbed it to the floor, “Gone soft ‘ave thee? Barrel run dry, ‘as it? Lost yer balls, eh?” Added with malice, “Edward Teach weren’t interested in fairy-tale government amnesties, nor ‘ollow pardons.” He drove his dagger into the wooden table where it quivered as menacing as the man who owned it.

  That’s not what I’ve heard, Jesamiah thought but said nothing. He had no intention of going anywhere near Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, though Black Heart would be as appropriate. Even the scum and miscreants who roamed the seas of the Caribbean in search of easy loot and plunder avoided the brute of a pirate who was Blackbeard.

  Aside, Jesamiah was no longer a pirate. As Gibbens had said, he had signed his name in Governor Rogers’ leather-bound book and accepted His Majesty King George’s royal pardon. Which was why he had nothing better to do than sit here in this tavern drinking rum. Piracy, plundering, pillaging, none of that was for him, not now. Now, Jesamiah Acorne, Captain of the Sea Witch, had a woman he was about to marry, a substantial fortune that he could start using if only he knew what to spend it on, and the dubious reputation of becoming a respectable man of leisure.

  He was also bored.

  “You owe him, Acorne,” Rufus said. “Teach wants the debt paid.”

  Jesamiah raised the tankard to his mouth pretending to drink. He had been drunk but he had become stone cold sober the moment these ruffians sat down at the table. Only he was not going to let them know it; safer to pretend otherwise, for Gibbens, Teach’s boatswain, and Rufus, were trouble. Anyone who willingly sailed with Teach was either as crazed as a man who had quenched his thirst with salt water, or had brains boiled dry by the sun. In the case of these two dregs both instances applied. They were lunkheads who punched first and asked questions after. If they assumed Jesamiah was drunk they were less likely to err on the side of caution.

  Two more men slithered from the smoke-grimed shadows and sauntered up to stand behind Jesamiah. He could smell the nauseating stink of their unwashed bodies and the badness of their breath. He winced as one of them prolifically farted.

  Gibbens sneered, showing a ragged half set of black teeth. “Our Cap’n wants what you owe, Acorne. You sank our ship. You’ll be payin’ us for ‘er. One way or t’other.” He nodded, a single discreet movement towards the two men behind Jesamiah – and all hell broke loose.

  As one of them went to grab at his shoulder Jesamiah was coming to his feet, his right hand drawing the cutlass at his left hip, the blade slung from a bronze-buckled strap aslant across his chest. The bench he had been sitting on tipped over, and with his left hand he lifted the table, crashing it onto Rufus and Gibbens who were a heartbeat too late in reacting

  Jesamiah’s reflexes were honed to a quick and precise speed. Half turning to his right in one fluid movement, he swung the cutlass upward and slashed the face of one of the men behind. Blood fountained in a gush of sticky red accompanied by a cry of pain and protest. He continued the turn, the blade, reaching the end of its arc, came down and forward again through the weight of its own momentum, amputating the arm of the second man as efficiently as a hot knife goes through butter.

  Stepping aside to wipe the blood from his weapon on the coat of one of the fallen men, Jesamiah dipped his head in acknowledgement to Gibbens and Rufus, who were scrambling, furious, from where they had been pinned behind the table.

  “Tell Teach if he wants to speak to me he’ll ‘ave to come in person. I don’t deal with his monkeys.” Jesamiah sheathed the cutlass, bent to retrieve his hat from where it had fallen and, flipping a coin towards Nan, sauntered from the tavern as if nothing had happened. His mind, however, was racing.

  Teach was not a good enemy to be having. He was unpredictable, savage and vindictive. Rumour had it that he had shot his own mother for the price of a bottle of rum. Once a week, to keep his crew in order, he hanged or shot one of them. But Jesamiah was an optimist where the sea and piracy were concerned. Teach had one failing – he was usually as drunk as Bacchus. If he shot you, you were unlucky – nine times out of ten he was aiming at the blurred image of his inebriated double vision. All Jesamiah had to do was stay sober, keep out of the way and watch his back.

  Hah! All!

  Outside in the cool air of the starlit night he leant against a wall, his head back, eyes closed, willing the breath that was catching in his throat to calm, waiting for the pulsing blood flow scampering around his body to ease.

  ~ Are you all right luvver? ~

  Into his mind, the voice, with its lilting Cornish accent, of his woman, Tiola – said not as Tee-oh-la, but Teo-la, short and sweet. Like her. She had been helping the wife of the captain of the Nassau Militia give birth to a first child. Had been there all day, all evening. Would probably be there all night. She had been with another woman last night – one of the beach-dwelling whores. And the night before that with one of Governor Woodes Rogers’ servants who had taken a tumble and broken his leg. Two days and nights and Jesamiah had not seen Tiola. It was all very well, her being a healer and a midwife, having this gift of Craft – witchcraft, for all that she did only good and not harm. These prolonged absences were not doing him any good though, were they?

  ~ A minor disagreement. It was nothing. When are you coming home? ~

  He was used to this way of communicating with her now; telepathy, she called it. She was full of fancy words and ideas that no one else had ever heard or thought of. And he had no comprehension of, half the time.

  ~ A few more hours. ~

  ~ I want to talk. ~

  ~ We will. ~

  When? he thought to himself, shielding it from her. He was practised at that too, not permitting her to hear all that he was thinking. When will we talk? ~ I need answers, Tiola. I need answers to these questions that will not lie still in my head. ~

  He wanted to know about his father. His dead father and the bastard of a half-brother who had turned out not to be a brother at all. He had discovered part of the truth, exposing the deceptions he had grown up with only a handful of weeks ago. The pain that the knowledge was causing and the hurt inside him were spreading like a canker. But how did you uncover the invisible and discover the impossible?

  Tiola’s voice in his head shared his grief and understood his feelings of betrayal. ~ I cannot answer your questions, my luvver. Your past is yours not mine, I am not able to reveal it. Only you can search for and find what you seek. ~

  Disgruntled at her refusal to help, he shoved himself from the wall and wandered along the dim-lit alleyway that reeked of pitch and smoke from the few sparsely placed torches set in the wall sconces, and of other more unsavoury smells that were best not identified. He kicked at a discarded gin bottle, shattering it with a tinkle of breaking glass against the far wall. Said aloud; “This has got to stop, Tiola. I never see you.”

  He neither heard nor saw the flicker of movement rushing from a darker, narrower alley to his left. Felt the crunch of a fist making contact with his belly and a boot connecting with his ribs as he sank to his knees, gasping fo
r breath.

  Sod it, he thought as he realised he could not fight against four men, two of whom were already pinning his arms behind his back with such force that he cried out. He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth and braced himself for what was to come.

  Bugger, he thought again as another blow thudded into his side. M’ribs still ain’t bloody mended from the last drubbing I got.

  Two

  There was nothing he could do except grit his teeth and take it. When the pressure on his arms eased and his captor released him, Jesamiah slumped forward face down waiting for the kicking or battering that he guessed would be coming next.

  What he did not anticipate was the sound of running feet, an authoritative call of “What’s goin’ on ‘ere?” More running feet as his assailants hoofed it, and then the close proximity of a woman’s perfume.

  A linen kerchief dabbed at the blood dribbling past his eye and down his cheek.

  Fleetingly he hoped it was Tiola, but she never wore exotic perfume or expensive silk gowns that rustled as she moved. He opened one eye, squinted at the very pretty woman kneeling beside him.

  “You ‘appened t’be ‘ere and the militia were fortuitously passin’ by just in time eh, Alicia m’darlin’?” he croaked, the breath heavy in his aching belly. Added, “You’ll get that fancy ‘ankie all bloody, y’know. Ouch!”

  She continued to dab. “Tch. You always were a baby, Jesamiah Acorne.” She put her arms around his waist, helped him to his feet and guided him to a side door near the well-lit end of the alley. “You had better come to my lodgings: that cut needs tending.”