Black Waters (Strong Winds Series Book 5)

by Julia Jones

  Right as usual. Vile as she was, Madrigal hadn’t deserved this. Xanthe wished she knew the range of a revolver or how often someone would need to reload. More essential World War Two research, not done.

  The Viking had reached the water’s edge. She heard another crackle of shots and saw spray kicking up around the stern of Gareth’s workboat.

  She ran on. He was forcing Madrigal into the launch. Had his gun on her all the time. He was fit and relentless. Impossible to believe his age.

  He was starting his engine but Miranda had touched ground in the shallows. She wasn’t instantly able to rear up and roar away.

  The Viking let the engine idle, threw a kedge out from her stern and hauled off. Why hadn’t Madrigal grabbed that moment to try and escape?

  Little Luke, Anna’s step-brother, had explained something about the feeling of having a real gun pointed at you. Not the proxy in a video game but a gun that could fire actual bullets, which could rip into your soft flesh and sever arteries, shatter bone and make you bleed. Madrigal could be scared witless.

  Miranda was away now, heading towards the horizon, her wake a long, foam-fringed curve as the Commander steered for Godwyn.

  Xanthe knew she had to follow – even though she had a snowball’s chance in hell of even keeping them in sight. Gareth’s workboat was there, but it had been holed and there was fuel spilling across the water from the smashed outboard.

  The last of the dinghies to arrive – and therefore the easiest to take – was Black Star. She’d like to have taken Fritha, of course she would, but the Firefly was much heavier and would need several willing hands to push her off the shell bank. Anyway, Black Star was still Spray, the moment you looked beneath her colour and asked her to sail.

  A lovely, playful, little breeze; the last of the rainbows fading into memory; the white sails of distant dinghies beating back to Meresig or reaching for the Colne – it was an idyllic scene.

  Xanthe flung herself into the Laser as if she was launching a surfboard. It was a great start but the wind simply wasn’t there to keep up the power. She had everything adjusted in seconds, was in her own familiar dinghy ready to sail at the peak of her skill. And she was about as effective as a bath duck bobbing on a pond.

  What was the Viking’s plan? Was he intending to rendezvous with the lightship or was that course merely coincidental? He had a hostage and he had a vessel that was surely faster than the fastest police launch. But with cooperation from countries all around the North Sea you couldn’t really hope to escape unseen, not in daylight, and it wouldn’t be dark for hours yet.

  A puff and a surge, a half a degree directional change: Xanthe’s response was instant and instinctive. Her own dinghy was an extension of her own self. She could think, plan, sail. None of it fast enough to be any use to Madrigal.

  Tan sails in the distance – the gaffers were returning from their offshore race. And over to port, coming down the River Blackwater as fast as their restored engines would carry them, Xanthe saw the fleet of Dunkirk Little Ships. There were the white painted motor yachts, a couple of barges and that wonderful restored paddle steamer that could have been Joe Farran’s when he was a small boy making sandwiches. The skippers must have had heard the news of Madrigal’s abduction and had leapt on board their craft like knights of old dashing to the rescue of a damsel in distress.

  She spotted a police launch emerging from the Colne and was that possibly the sound of a helicopter drumming in the distant air? Miranda would be surrounded. Arthur Gold would surrender. They’d surely save Madrigal.

  For a moment she felt delight, then fear drenched her like an ice-bath. The Viking was ruthless. Now he would be desperate. The danger for his hostage would be extreme.

  Did people understand – would they offer space for negotiation? They didn’t know what he was capable of. Did Madrigal know? Her father was his business partner – maybe his criminal accomplice – but she wasn’t responsible for her parents. Xanthe could maybe calm the situation? She just needed to get there.

  Where was the wind when you needed it?

  But the motorboat had turned. No need for Spray to speed up, Miranda was hurtling back. She would reach Xanthe well before any of the others reached her.

  OMG – now she felt lonely; now she was scared. If she managed this well she had the chance to save Madrigal: if she messed up…she didn’t want to think of it.

  Stay calm. Think clearly. Find the words.

  “Xanthe! Help me…please!”

  Madrigal was calling out to her as soon as she was close enough. The Viking was driving slowly, almost casually, now. But he still had that gun and it was still pointed at his partner’s daughter. No wonder Maddie was hyperventilating, no wonder her face was like a creamy saucer holding her two enormous baby-blue eyes, drowning in tears. She was stretching out her hands as if she was praying and Xanthe was ashamed of herself for noticing her false nails, each painted white with a tiny red St George cross.

  “You can save me! He says he’ll let me go. Please Xanthe, I’m not a great swimmer. And it’s so far out…”

  He was letting Madrigal go?

  “Why?”

  “I am leaving these ungrateful shores but an English rose should never be transplanted.”

  Pompous git.

  “You’re running away from your crimes.”

  Stop it, Xanthe, she told herself. Don’t antagonise him. If he’s letting Maddie go, you have to make it easy for him.

  “Please, Xanthe, come alongside. Take me on board your dinghy. Help me. Please!”

  She didn’t trust Arthur Farran Gold. She didn’t entirely trust Madrigal Shryke either. But what choice did she have? She could hear the helicopter, the police boat, the engines of the Little Ships,

  “I’m not waiting any longer,” he spoke harshly.

  He looked ready to fire up Miranda’s amazing engine and be gone with a roar.

  “Yeah…okay…of course.”

  She noticed her own breathing change as she manoeuvred Spray alongside the sleekly-varnished hull of the powerboat. She was totally concentrating so as not to show her fear. She slipped her dinghy’s painter round a smart brass cleat but kept hold of the end so she could leave in a hurry.

  “Help me, Xanthe.”

  Madrigal didn’t seem to have control of her limbs – and yes, she did stink.

  “I can’t…quite…seem to…”

  “I won’t wait,” growled the Viking. He left the steering position and moved towards the two girls. He still had that gun.

  Xanthe let go of her painter’s end and steadied herself against Miranda’s gunwale as she reached up to help Maddie.

  Suddenly she had been grabbed and tipped into the cockpit and Madrigal was into Black Star and away.

  The Viking was smirking and his gun was on her.

  “Deportation time, Miss Ribiero. Sit quiet and we can make this easy.”

  He was moving back to the controls but not taking his eyes off her, those peculiarly level and direct blue eyes that hid his scheming soul. “The plebs will let us through with you on board.”

  “No-one was going to hurt Madrigal either.”

  She was so angry that fear didn’t come into it any more. But the Viking hadn’t noticed.

  “Her parents and I go back many years,” he answered, unctuously. “She persuaded me it was wrong to deprive them. I hold the bond of family sacred.”

  He didn’t expect her to have any answer. He pushed down hard on the chromium throttle and placed his non-gun hand on the steering wheel as Miranda leapt ahead.

  Xanthe leapt too. Backwards, to grab the varnished flagpole from its solid brass casing, then forwards, to crack it down onto his gun arm.

  He shouted and Miranda gave a wild lurch, tipping Xanthe over the low cockpit coaming. She didn’t feel the pain as his bullet winged her shoulder.
The impact of hitting the water at such a speed was enough to knock her out.

  There were vessels all around them now. Plenty of witnesses who saw the Commander of the Saxon Shore drive his powerboat direct and deliberate into the lightship’s metal side and who watched him perish in a pyre of flame and thick, black, billowing smoke.

  “Invoking Rule 69 doesn’t begin to cover it,” Griselda was shaking with her fury as she hauled Madrigal ashore. “You saved yourself at the expense of your fellow sailor. Then, when you must have seen her go over the side, you made no attempt at all to turn back and assist – in total contravention of the laws of the sea – let alone your common humanity. You are banned forever from my squad. And if we discover that that the money your family gave for our new academy was dishonestly earned, I’m prepared to tear it down brick by brick before I allow a future generation to be fouled.”

  “I think that you can safely allow the law to take its course.”

  June Ribiero didn’t look at Griselda or at Madrigal. She was gripping Maggi’s hand and watching as the air ambulance finished lifting her older daughter from the sea. The first of the Little Ships had been standing by throughout and there were paramedics on the shore who were in radio contact with those in the air. She’d been reassured that Xanthe was still breathing and her pulse was strong. She’d recovered consciousness and they would now be giving pain relief and heading straight for the nearest operating theatre. Xanthe’s father had said a hurried goodbye to his old friend, the Ghanaian Deputy High Commissioner, and was already on his way to meet them there.

  June was in shock but was holding herself together. She didn’t take her eyes from the helicopter but spoke as calmly as she could for the sake of the other children. She knew that what she had to say was important.

  “I came here today with a heavy heart. The trial of the gangland hit-men was on the verge of collapse as some key witnesses no longer felt confident about the safety of their families. I believe that what we have seen and heard this afternoon has finally removed that central threat and justice will be done. These were the men behind the mobsters.”

  The helicopter was gone; there were police and rescuers around the lightship and the smoke still poured from the burning powerboat. Maggi was clinging to her mother as desperately as her mother was clinging to her. They needed to leave now. Martha was there in charge and Anna had all the evidence.

  June managed to smile at everyone.

  “And don’t let’s be too hasty at Weymouth,” she said to Griselda. “You are training sailors from across the world and there may even be young hopefuls here who would benefit from every breath of encouragement that you are able to give.”

  Kelly-Jane put her arm around her friend and hugged her tight, but Siri didn’t speak.

  Research Notes

  The extended essay that Xanthe fails to write throughout this story is a central part of the International Baccalaureate Diploma which she’s chosen to study instead of A-levels. As she’s been so distracted by other matters during her time in Flinthammock I thought that perhaps I could help her with her bibliography.

  Clearly Xanthe’s tutor will already have given her a copy of Margery Allingham’s The Oaken Heart. This is an autobiographical account of the first years of the Second World War experienced in the village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy, which lies a few miles inland from the River Blackwater. Allingham was writing throughout 1940, when invasion was expected and security was a central issue. She chose, therefore, to disguise the names of her own and nearby villages. Tolleshunt D’Arcy was renamed Auburn, Maldon was Fishling and Tollesbury became Flinthammock. I have borrowed some of these place names together with names from Allingham’s first published work, Blackerchief Dick, a smuggler’s tale set on Mersea Island. Two other River Blackwater classics, Rev. Sabine Baring Gould’s Mehalah and Alfred Ludgater’s Mistress of Broad Marsh have similarly been plundered. I’ve reverted to early spellings for Osea and Mersea Islands and have shuffled some of the names on the Bradwell side of the river – all to reinforce the obvious point that this story is fiction.

  Xanthe, however, will need to stick to fact. She’ll want to find copies of J.P. Foynes The Battle of the East Coast 1939-1945 and Russell Plummer’s The Ships that Saved an Army: A Comprehensive Record of the 1,300 Little Ships of Dunkirk . If she’s still keen on using contemporary sources, Looming Lights by George Goldsmith Carter (published 1947) describes his experience on board a Channel lightship at this period and We Fought Them in Gunboats by Lieutenant-Commander Rober Peverall Hitchens (1944) is frighteningly atmospheric – though less directly relevant. Athough both these books are long out of print I’m hoping that Xanthe’s parents’ club, the Royal Orwell and Ancient, might have copies in their library.

  I was fortunate to inherit these titles, and many others, from my father and my uncle, both of whom served in the RNVR. Dad (George Jones) had poor eyesight so was mainly employed in organisational roles, including a stint in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Uncle Jack was in direct combat and was badly wounded in the Dieppe Raid of 1942. He needed to lash himself to the wheel of his MTB (Motor Torpedo Boat) in order to get his boat and his men safely home to England.

  While Xanthe is exploring her club library she’s sure to find a copy of Michael Frost’s beautifully-written Boadicea CK213: the Story of an East Coast Fishing Smack. It won’t help her with her extended essay, as it ends at the outbreak of the Second World War, but it will tell her yet more about the sailing and fishing qualities of a smack very like the Igraine. (In the interests of accuracy I should point out that it was the smack Iris Mary who sailed from Tollesbury to Ramsgate, offering assistance with the Dunkirk evacuation, and it was the Teasel who was sunk by a mine off Tollesbury pier.)

  A more recent title, which Xanthe will definitely enjoy, is Giles Milton’s Russian Roulette, which describes Augustus Agar’s extraordinarily daring use of a high-speed CMB (Coastal Motor Boat) in an attempt to rescue Paul Dukes (fellow MI6 agent to Arthur Ransome) by skimming across the surface of a minefield in the eastern Baltic. Agar was an outstandingly brave and talented Naval officer who has lent nothing more than his first name and his connection with Osea Island on the River Blackwater to the morally corrupt Augustus Gold of this story. Xanthe will find all her dislike of modern smuggling amply reinforced if she reads Tony Thompson’s Bloggs 19: the Story of the Essex Range Rover Triple Murders. I hope she’ll take the taste away with a re-reading of the most romantic and beautiful of all Dunkirk stories, Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose. I feel sure her parents keep a copy in their cabin.

  Readers who are sticklers for fictional accuracy (and quite right too) will have noticed that there has been an inexplicable gap in Xanthe’s school career. She was already doing her GCSEs in 2007 when the events of Ghosting Home took place, yet this story with its black Barbie dolls and Macbooks and increasing use of social media sits much more comfortably around 2010, the seventieth anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation. This was the year when I was doing my own research for a new edition of The Oaken Heart and was interviewing several non-fictional 80- and 90-year-olds in the Tolleshunt Darcy/Tollesbury area – none of whom bore any resemblance to the Farrans or the Golds. All I can say on the matter of dates is that Xanthe and the other Allies have not suffered some unknown educational calamity and lost whole years from their lives, it’s simply the author being slow. So please may I avail myself of arch-stickler Peter Dowden’s offer of leniency and plead for the use of ‘Narnian time’?

  Mentioning Peter Dowden makes me want to begin thanking all the people who have helped Xanthe and I through rather a difficult writing period, but first I have an important disclaimer to make. There is a gloriously scarlet light vessel moored in the Tollesbury Saltings and she does provide outdoor adventure for many young people every year. Her name is Trinity and she is managed by FACT (the Fellowship Afloat Charitable Trust). Initially I made contact with Andrew Eastham, the Principal of FACT. He
was ready to be welcoming – but I didn’t visit. At that early point in the story I had no idea whether Dominic and Martha and the Godwyn Companions would turn out to be helpful or not to Xanthe. I certainly didn’t want to muddle up my fictional characters with real people who are doing unambiguously good work. So I admired Trinity from the other side of the creek and allowed poor Godwyn to suffer difficulties and disasters as the fictional events unfolded.

  I kept Jenny Marx, an elderly Skipper dinghy, in Tollesbury marina whilst writing this book. I didn’t manage to sail as much as I’d liked (does one ever?) but she and I appreciated the friendly attitude of the marina management and so did Peter Duck, who spent a few days there after encountering a violent summer storm round the top end of Osea Island. I’m very grateful to Francis’s cousin Nigina Römer, a member of the Swiss sailing team, for her invaluable tips on sailing Laser Radial dinghies.

  The Blackwater is a lovely river and so is the Colne. I was lucky to meet Richard Haward, doyen of Mersea oysters, one bright January day on the Bradwell shore. I also benefited from helpful advice and information from the Maldon Oyster Company and enjoyed a memorable walk in the company of children’s literature aficionado, Elizabeth Williams, to investigate their racks. Recently I’ve been visiting the Pioneer Sailing Trust at Brightlingsea. This has made me more deeply aware of the past and present history of the area. It was unexpectedly thrilling to discover that Felicity Lees, their operations manager, shared my (and Xanthe’s) feeling for the transformative power of Tollesbury. Trinity, the real Godwyn, had been central to her sailing education and she even admitted to running across the saltings, leaping pools and channels, just as Xanthe does.

  Members of my family – Ned, Ruth, Bertie, Frank – came sailing with me and all of my family have enjoyed Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s classic Ha Ha Bonk Book as much as Nelson would. Frank, Georgeanna, Francis, Peter Willis, Peter Dowden, David Cooper, Lesley Simpson, Claudia Myatt, Megan Trudell, read, proof-read and commented on earlier drafts of this novel. And of those kindly souls it was the two I have never met in person – David Cooper and Peter Dowden – who were indefatigable in late night emailing or Facebook messaging to help me make sense of my story. Thank you both.