Something or someone had moved up ahead. It was no more than a flitting shadow, but anger, an emotion he was experiencing more of late when any threat to his new prosperity emerged, had Lionel break free of the hand Sawtell had kept on his shoulder. Leaping forward in the dark, an instinct that he hadn’t known he possessed guiding him, Lionel reached into a crevice formed partly by the end of the wall. Using both hands, his fingers finding clothing and getting a grip on it, he pulled a man out of hiding.
It was an undersized fellow but an enraged Lionel felt no guilt as he put a hand round the man’s throat and slammed him back hard against the wall, the skull making a dull thudding as it was knocked back. He could see now that it was Ben Morley, the groom from Adamslee House.
Beside Lionel now, Sawtell issued a terse order. ‘Let go of him, Heelan!’
‘He was spying on us,’ Lionel protested, keeping his grip on Morley’s throat, half-throttling him.
Moving fast, Sawtell drove an elbow hard into Lionel’s side. Knocked off balance and winded by the blow that could have stoved in his ribs, Lionel’s fingers were slipping from the groom’s throat when Sawtell’s right fist caught him on the jaw and he knew no more.
When he regained consciousness, he was lying on the quay. Lionel saw that Morley was standing with Sawtell and Willie, all three of them looking down on him. As his head cleared he recalled that it had been Ben Morley who, the first time Lionel had joined Sawtell, had brought a warning that John Nichol was waiting and watching for when they moved the smuggled goods from the cave.
Putting down a hand, which Lionel clasped, Sawtell pulled him to his feet, keeping hold of the hand as he spoke so low that only Lionel could hear, telling him. ‘We’ve worked together well, friend, and I want it to go on that way, but that won’t happen if you can’t learn to control this mad temper of yours. When I give an order I want it obeyed at once, understand?’
Feeling his bottom lip puffing up and what he took to be blood trickling from his mouth, Lionel nodded.
‘I need to know that I can trust you to do as I say,’ Sawtell went on.
‘You can,’ Lionel promised. He realized now that he had completely lost control when he had attacked Morley. Lionel hadn’t known that he was capable of such an explosion of temper, but then accepted that he never before had anything worth getting angry about.
‘Good,’ Sawtell was satisfied. ‘Now, John Nichol has given up his lookout. We move the stuff out of the cave tonight.’
Morley had moved away but he returned now, coming out of the darkness, having produced a string of ponies, complete with packs, as if by magic. Lionel wondered how Morley could supply ponies that were the property of his employer, the arrogant, stand-offish Sarai Adams, without arousing her suspicions.
Then he had no more time to consider this issue. The four of them, Morley leading the ponies, were heading for the cave. They went in single file, walking along the beach and passing the rocks from which Arabella, Sawtell and he had pulled the bodies on a night that seemed a million years ago on this still night in the pale moonlight that illuminated a calm sea.
A cold tingling sent itself up and down the length of Lionel’s spine as they went by the single, long and wide mound that was the final resting-place of the many dead from the Paloma. The day of the burial had been a moving experience that would stay with each and every villager until they went to their own graves. Looking, and no doubt feeling, strangely out of place among the local folk, Joby Lancer had stood a little apart, hands behind his back, head bowed. He must have known at least some of those over whom the Reverend Worther was saying prayers, but he had never mentioned them. If anyone near and dear to him had perished in the shipwreck, then Joby Lancer showed no grief. The face that his long hair framed that had fallen forwards as he’d bowed his head, had been completely expressionless.
They had sung hymns together, and then the choir from Worther’s church had sung a final, haunting tribute, their voices becoming disembodied in a mist of drizzling rain so that it was as if the angels were singing in the cloudy sky over a sorrowing Adamslee.
Lionel welcomed reaching the cave, where work would keep his body busy and slow down the thinking that was causing his problems. Recall of the burial prayers and the sweet singing reminded him that he was breaking the law: he was sinning.
Then his ambition came pushing through, and he was glad that it had when he heard Ben Morley tell Sawtell, ‘My mistress said not to get to the house afore two o’clock.’
At first Lionel found it impossible to believe. Sarai Adams, whom every man in the village desired because of her stunning looks, and every man, woman and child in Adamslee feared due to her great wealth and power, was part of Gray Sawtell’s smuggling ring.
Somehow this knowledge eased Lionel’s conscience. Knowing that the lady of the manor was involved made his own participation seem minor and justified by comparison. Sarai Adams couldn’t claim grinding poverty as a motive for her criminal activities, but Lionel Heelan most certainly could.
Pausing on the shoulder of a small knoll, Joby Lancer looked down to the cove where a raging sea had tossed him ashore. Now it was a peaceful scene. Small waves rippled in close together to gently and lingeringly kiss the beach. Backlit by the golden glow of a new day’s sun, two ageing fishermen were bent over nets they were repairing, and Lancer could see Ruth Heelan standing waist deep in the water. Her wading awkward from the crippled foot, Ruth had a huge basket on her back that was held in place by a leather strap across her forehead. Using a long pole with a hook at the end, Ruth was laboriously pulling seaweed to her before tossing it over her shoulder into the basket.
Apart from the industry shown by the lame girl, it was a desolate, indolent picture that was a reminder for Lancer that Adamslee held nothing for him. There was no work available in the village, but that didn’t prevent him from feeling a wrench at walking away. While his head was urging him to go, his heart begged him to stay with Arabella. The girl and he had become close. Perhaps their relationship had moved near to the mystical borders of love. But it had been unspoken. Lancer felt that words would dissolve the magic between them.
Neither of them, Arabella in particular, would have betrayed the trust of devoted, good-hearted Lionel Heelan. The local boy had a prior claim on the girl, and he could offer her total honesty. Arabella knew everything there was to know about Lionel, whereas Lancer had not told her one thing about himself, why he avoided any real mention of his past, and why he had been aboard the Paloma.
Someone other than he would be required to answer that question. As an army captain, Lancer had received many decorations for bravery, and had been mentioned in dispatches twice. Although he maintained an aloofness that his rank demanded, his men had liked and trusted him. Most of them had regarded him as a friend, albeit within the framework of a disciplined force. But was all that, an auspicious record, enough to balance out his desertion? It had been tough in the Crimea, but that hadn’t worried Captain Lancer, whose leadership and bravery had earned him the respect of both friend and foe.
It had happened outside of Sebastopol a little over a year ago. At the beginning of January, an unexpected and heavy thaw had set in so that the trenches were canals of mud on that cold, wet, and damp winter’s night.
To Lancer’s soldier’s mind, everything had been wrong about that night. With the French to the south of the British lines, Lancer and his men had lain in the lonely position in front of the advance trench. With muskets loaded and capped, they had been keeping a watching eye on every embrasure in front of them. But in the town the Russians had proved they were more intent on celebrating their New Year than they were fighting. They had lighted watchfires on the north side of Sebastopol, and illuminated the heights over the Tehernaya with rows of lights in the form of a cross that shone through the darkness with a pseudo-divine brilliance. At midnight the church bells in the city had begun to ring.
Able to sense the unease of his men, Lancer hadn’t been unnerve
d himself, but this unusual background to a battle area was off-putting, and he had since wondered if this had contributed to what had later happened.
Runners had come with warnings to be on the alert, and the advance posts had been strengthened accordingly, but the Russians were playing a game of nerves, a ploy to unsettle the British and French troops. At about one o’clock in the morning, after the people had come out of their churches, a mighty cheer had gone up. Lancer and those with him had guessed that something was about to happen, and it did!
The Russians had started the fiercest cannonade along their positions that the British had yet faced. The batteries had vomited forth floods of flame that came through the dense smoke like lightning breaking through thunderclouds. Night had been turned into day so that Lancer could see distinctly the batteries crowded with soldiers and the buildings in the city behind them. The round shot came in rapidly, ploughing up the ground behind them into furrows, or thudding as they struck the parapets. With the sandbags, gabions, parapets and fascines being knocked down, the British artillery had been forced under cover and could barely reply to the volleys.
Lying twelve paces apart, Lancer and his men were largely untouched as their position had been fifty yards in front of the trench on which the Russians were accurately laying their guns.
Under cover of the firing, a strong body had come pushing up the hill towards Lancer’s position. He had passed the word along the line: wait for his signal to fire, then retreat to the trench to rejoin their main force. The enemy had come on in strength, so Lancer had sent a man back to alert the field officer in charge to send up reinforcements from the other parallels at the rear.
On Lancer’s order his men had fired, cutting down a row of Russians. But they were sacrifices the enemy was prepared to make, and the enemy had come on, braving the fire, many of them dying. They had come over the escarpment as Lancer and his men had retreated into the darkness. But Lancer had halted his men when they had dropped back a short distance.
They had all been in bad shape. Their uniforms that had saturated during the thaw had frozen stiff again to become desperately cold and uncomfortable. He had realized that to retreat in an attempt to join their comrades in the trench would mean they would be cut down by Russian artillery before they reached their lines. Aware that it would be taking a chance, but it was the only move open to them, he had known that they had to go forward.
He had explained to his men that they must advance by going round the advancing enemy’s flank to take out at least one of their batteries. This would cause confusion in the other batteries that could well produce a lull in the cannonade that would allow the British and French troops to advance.
Having taken the Russians by surprise, they captured the first bunker without suffering any casualties. Under his instructions his men were disabling the cannon when disaster struck in what he later discovered was a direct hit by a French round shot.
On regaining consciousness, Lancer discovered that he had been taken to the French trenches. His injuries had been treated, and the French soldiers had given him coffee as soon as they realized that he was conscious. They had cooked some biscuits for him in pork fat; the smell had left Lancer in no doubt as to how hungry he was. Grateful, he had eaten and drunk feeling some of the exhaustion lifted from him as he had waited for his own soldiers to arrive to take him back to his own lines.
When they had arrived it was as an escort. Shaken to the core, he had found himself charged with desertion and cowardice in the face of the enemy. At first he had judged it to be a mistake and he had been amused. He had lost no time in asking for the men who had entered the Russian battery with him. They were his witnesses, and their testimony would see the charges dropped and an apology tendered.
But every one of them had died from the round shot that had been fired by the French allies who had not known that he and his men had moved ahead. Back in his own lines he was stripped of his rank and confined to await court martial.
It was totally unjust, but by the time he had voyaged under guard towards home on the Paloma, Lancer had resigned himself to a lifetime’s imprisonment at best, and execution at worst.
Sorrow over so many losing their lives in the shipwreck kept him from a selfish theory that his miraculous escape had been a righting of the wrongs that had been done to him. But he had seized the opportunity of an unorthodox reprieve and another chance at life. That was why he could not tell the villagers anything about himself. It was a matter of great regret that even Arabella had to remain ignorant. Until he studied the lay of the land, established some kind of new life, even a remark made in innocence could jeopardize his welcome but unexpected freedom.
Feeling bad about not confiding, at least in part, in the girl who had saved his life and with her mother had taken care of him, Lancer had no alternative but to leave Adamslee and start walking inland.
The town of Footehill was his destination. He had been told that work could be had at the town’s hiring fair. Lancer wanted to earn money to first recompense Arabella and her mother, and then to finance some kind of new life for himself. It pleased him to imagine that once he was solvent again he would be a free spirit able to walk the other way should the wind be blowing in his face. But he doubted that this would be a reality: Arabella Willard was already someone who would influence any decision he would make in the future.
A well-worn track uncoiled in front of him, winding its way like a drab-coloured ribbon through the rolling, treeless countryside. Spring had a tight enough hold on the day to warm him so that when he came upon a stream bubbling crystal clear from between rocks, he knelt beside it to splash the cool, invigorating water over his face. With his ablutions over, and not knowing when he would again find water, he drank deeply before moving on.
There was a vastness to the terrain that was green, pleasant, and offered a solitude that he was keen to embrace. It was his first opportunity to be alone since being rescued, and he welcomed the chance to do some deep thinking. But his spirits sank as he rounded a spur of chalky stone to find that he was about to share his newfound world of peace and quiet.
Up ahead a horse stood listlessly, its head drooping. A woman stood beside the animal, her head high, looking at him steadily without any trace of fear at being alone with a stranger in what was virtually a wilderness.
Having travelled the world as a soldier, Lancer had met many women, but none as stunning as the one who was coolly surveying him as she leaned one shoulder against the magnificent stallion. It would be an error to describe her as lovely or beautiful. In fact, an apt description eluded him. All that betrayed what was perhaps an underlying uncertainty in her was the way she tossed a whip from one hand to the other as he approached her.
‘He went lame,’ she said by way of greeting, and as an explanation of how she came to be standing there.
Nodding, Lancer sat on his heels to lift each of the stallion’s hoofs in turn. Still holding a back leg, which had a loose shoe that required the attention of a farrier, he was about to look up to tell her so when he felt something cool against his chin.
It was her whip, and she applied pressure to bring his face up so that she was looking down into it. A small smile put long white teeth on display, as she said, with the inflection of someone solving a perplexing puzzle, ‘You are the man from the sea – the only survivor.’
This was something that he would once have readily responded to, but there were too many problems in his immediate past and too much uncertainty in his near future for him to do so now. Not that he wasn’t interested: no man alive could fail to be fully aroused in her presence.
‘I’ve heard of you, of course,’ she was saying, still keeping the whip firmly against his chin. ‘But I don’t know your name.’
‘Joby Lancer, miss,’ he told her, raising a hand to move the whip away from his face so that he could straighten up.
She had been looking at him as if he was some kind of animal she was considering purchasing at a marke
t. Lancer took exception to her attitude. It may be that she exuded class and breeding, but in his day he had danced with the wives of generals and brigadiers, and had bedded more than a few of them. This self-assessment generated arrogance in Lancer, and he locked gazes with her. Maybe she was accustomed to addressing country yokels, but he wasn’t going to permit her to talk down to him.
‘That is my house up there.’ She pointed with her whip to a large house standing high on a cliff. ‘You have probably heard them speak of me in the village. I am Sarai Adams. My name is not spelt S a r a h, but S a r a i.’
‘The same as Abraham’s wife in the Bible,’ Lancer said, enjoying the fact that his knowledge rocked her off balance.
She quickly recovered her poise. ‘You are a rarity in these parts, Lancer, being able to read when most around here can do no more than make their mark.’
‘I can make my mark, Miss Adams,’ he told her with bold ambiguity.
Averting her gaze, she murmured something in such a low voice that Lancer had to strain his ears, and even then he couldn’t be sure. But it seemed to him she had complimented him by saying to herself in a whisper. ‘I’ll wager that you can’.
‘Where are you off to now to make your mark?’ she asked in a normal tone.
‘I’m heading for the hiring fair at Footehill. I am told there is always work to be had there.’
‘Oh yes, that’s true,’ Sarai Adams said scornfully. ‘You’ll find work mucking out the cowshed of some blockheaded, cider contaminated farmer, Lancer. A man like you can do better than that. What were you before they pulled you from the water?’
The Toll of the Sea Page 5