Something very strong took hold of her. Fanny struggled against it with the last of her strength but she was helpless in its grasp. She began to move much more rapidly and it seemed to her that her body was rising through the water. She wondered if she would see light at the top, green light like the light within the Thames, and opened her eyes.
Her head broke the surface and she tried to breathe. Seawater ran into her throat from the soaked gag and she coughed, expelling water though her nostrils. Whatever had hold of her held her up, It, too, was being swept along by the current.
A man was looking worriedly into her face. His concern was so great that Fanny mistook it for love before she recognized her rescuer. It was the French soldier Philippe. His hair was plastered to his skull and was darker than she remembered, but the Viking eyes were the same.
Fanny was choking, drowning in the open air on the water in Montagu’s gag.
“Good God,” Philippe said.
He pulled the gag out of Fanny’s mouth. She gasped and coughed, her lungs full of water. Philippe turned her body in the water, put his arms around her chest, and squeezed her chest. Water spurted out of her mouth.
The two of them sank beneath the surface. Once again Fanny could see him in front of her. His eyes were open, his hair stood out around his head, the sleeves of his white shirt ballooned around his arms. He swam upward, striving with his body arched, pulling Fanny with him. He was tremendously strong.
Their heads broke the surface. Fanny coughed again, but she could breathe now. Philippe held her up. “Kick,” he said. “Help me. Kick.”
Fanny rolled over onto her back and began to kick. The nightgown flowed in the water. There were ships all around, every one of them sailing away from her. In a moment she realized that she was the one who was moving, not the ships. The tide was carrying her and Philippe out into the Channel. They were being swept straight toward the hull of an anchored vessel.
“Now,” Philippe said. “Hold on.”
He seized the anchor cable and the two of them swung around it.
“Take hold,” he said.
“I can’t,” Fanny said calmly. “My hands are tied.”
She was surprised that she was able to speak. Until she did, she was not sure that she was alive. But now she felt Philippe untying the knots. Her hands were free. She seized the cable.
Philippe swung himself around so that he could look into Fanny’s face. His scar was not so vivid in this light. His face, glistening with seawater, was grim.
“Were you harmed?” he asked.
Fanny shook her head. Philippe looked deep into her eyes to make sure of the truth, then looked away. Now that he had saved her life, he was remembering her modesty.
“The boat is coming,” he said. “Hold on.”
Philippe’s boat, rowed by the sailors in their striped shirts, moved toward them very fast on the tide.
Fanny looked back at the Pamela. She was easy to find because there were lights burning in all her portholes and men were shouting and running up and down the deck and looking over the side.
The boat thudded against the stern of the anchored ship.
“I’ll get in first,” Philippe said.
He did so, then helped Fanny aboard. The nightdress clung to her body. She shuddered with cold. Philippe’s men had brought his cloak. He draped it around her shoulders and she hunched inside it, water running over her face. Now that her body was covered, Philippe was looking at her again. Fanny looked him straight in the eyes.
He did not waver, but held her gaze all the way back to the Pamela. The row back to the ship took a long time because the sailors were pulling against the tide.
On deck, Joshua Peters embraced her.
“Where is the Englishman?” Philippe asked.
With Fanny still in his arms, Joshua made a gesture with his head. “Overboard.”
“You saw him go?”
“Yes. If the tide took him, he’s halfway to England by now.”
“Or on the bottom. I must report to the count.”
Philippe lifted his hand. Fanny saw that he had saved the gag and another rag that had been used to tie her hands. Evidence. Fanny tried to speak, but coughed up water instead. After a moment she was able to talk again.
“We must sail on this tide,” she said.
Philippe was looking into her eyes again with the same expression he had worn when they were in the water together, as if he could not make himself believe that she was alive.
“If the man who attacked you is in France,” he said, “he will be brought to justice. Now I must go ashore.” “Do we have permission to sail?”
“I am not empowered to give you permission.”
A sailor stood waiting with Philippe’s hat and coat and boots and sword clutched against his chest.
“Your cloak,” Fanny said.
“You can give it back tomorrow,” Philippe said. “That will be time enough.”
As soon as Philippe’s boat reached the quay, Joshua gave orders to the crew to haul anchor and make sail. The noise this made—the boatswain shouting, the windlass shrieking, the ship groaning—must have carried clearly over the water, but Philippe did not look back.
Hugging his cloak about her, Fanny watched him through the broad stern windows of the master’s cabin as he marched away into the town.
16
The Pamela, sailing for England in a four-foot sea, creaked exactly as she had done in Fanny’s dream before Montagu pulled down the house in Catherine Street. Fanny fought against sleep as she tried to finish her supper, dry biscuits and a cold cod whose white flesh peeled away in big firm flakes. She had no appetite. A lantern swung overhead and the pewter trencher slid back and forth on the table.
Fanny was dressed now in her warmest clothes and wrapped up again in Philippe’s thick cloak, but still she trembled with the cold. The sea washed against the glass door in the stern through which Montagu had come the night before. Fanny watched it, shuddered, and turned her face away.
“Are you seasick?” Joshua asked.
“No, not seasick.”
“Don’t worry about the weather,” Joshua said, chewing his food. “The Pamela is happy in seas ten times worse than this.”
“I know.”
Her mind was elsewhere. Joshua had asked her no questions; he did not want to know what had happened to her in this cabin while he slept outside the door.
“Now that you own this ship,” he said, “you should know her particulars. She’s one of a kind, built in Sweden to my Uncle Giacomo’s plans. He wanted a ship that was faster and handier than a brig, which has two square-rigged masts. The Pamela has only one set of square sails, on the foremast. The mainmast carries a fore-and-aft sail. It can be hauled up without climbing the rigging, so we can handle the ship with a smaller crew. The Pamela has a keel length of eighty feet and a width of thirty. She has a steering wheel instead of a whipstaff, which means that you can steer the ship, if things are right for it, without trimming the sails. I wouldn’t hesitate to sail her among icebergs.”
Fanny listened dully. Joshua’s voice seemed far away.
He stopped talking and reached across the table and put his hand, crooked with old fractures, on her forehead. Her skin was hot to the touch.
“When was the last time you slept?” he asked. “I don’t know. Not since London.”
“Get into the bunk, Fanny. I’ll get you something hot to drink. We’ve got some special honey to put in it.”
He went out. Fanny shivered and hugged herself for warmth. She pulled the chair away from the table and got out her comb and hand mirror and started to braid her hair for the night. Halfway through, her brain stopped telling her fingers what to do and she had to start over again. She got into the bunk, covered up, and drew up her knees. The heavy blankets rubbed against her face like an unshaven cheek.
Joshua returned with the drink, honey and brandy mixed with hot water. Fanny took a sip and made a face when she tasted the bran
dy.
“Drink more,” Joshua said. “The honey is from Seville. The bees make it from orange blossoms. Can you taste it?”
Fanny nodded to please him. But she did not taste the orange in the honey. She closed her eyes.
She said, “Is this the bunk your uncle died in?” Joshua tapped the back of her hand where it held the cup. “Have some more toddy.”
Fanny opened her eyes. “Did he die in this cabin?” “Yes, but there are no ghosts aboard this ship. You know that. And no Englishmen either.”
“Do you think that Montagu drowned?” Fanny asked. Joshua adjusted the covers around her face and took the glass from her hand.
“Maybe,” he said. “Men like Montagu are hard to kill. The devil has his hand on them.”
“But he did go overboard.”
“I saw him go. He jumped through that hatch when I came into the room.”
“Jumped? Why?”
“I fired a pistol at him.”
“And missed?”
“Yes, but I had another one. I saw him in the water with my own eyes, Fanny. The tide was taking him out into the Channel.”
Fanny stopped trembling and closed her eyes. “Go to sleep,” Joshua said.
Her breath came very quickly. After a moment Joshua spoke her name, but she did not stir. She turned over onto her side and he felt her forehead again while he listened to her breathe. She flinched at his touch. Joshua drank what was left of Fanny’s drink, then blew out the lamp and lay down on the floor against the door, covering himself with his cloak. Fanny coughed in her sleep, a long string of sharp barks that sounded angry in the dark.
17
Not knowing where else to turn, Oliver sent Rose to Sir Cecil Lockwood to ask for help. It was a journey of twenty-five miles by coach to Chesham, and by the time Rose arrived she was nauseated by fatigue and sore in every muscle.
Sir Cecil Lockwood, interrupted at his supper, was full of ale and not glad to see her.
Sir Cecil was a rapid feeder. “Back from London in the middle of the night, madam?” he said with his mouth full. “What damn nonsense is this?”
It was a cold night with the usual rain glistening on the stones of Lockwood Hall, and Sir Cecil was dining alone with his dogs in a small upstairs room. They were big drooling dogs, mastiffs mostly, and there were about half a dozen of them. There was no fire; Sir Cecil relied on the heat radiating from the dogs’ bodies to take the chill from the air. One candle burned in the candelabrum. Sir Cecil left Rose standing by the table as he hacked meat off a cold leg of mutton with a sharp knife and stuffed it into his mouth with greasy fingers. When he wanted a drink of ale he wiped his fingers on the fur of one of his dogs before picking up the mug.
“I’ve brought you a letter from my husband,” Rose said.
“What? Sending you back for poor behavior? I won’t have you, missis. Do you think I can afford to feed another mouth? Well, I cannot.”
Rose put Oliver’s letter on the table. She was giddy from hunger, and the fatty aroma of the mutton made her close her eyes. While Sir Cecil looked at Oliver’s letter, turning it over with the point of his knife to examine the seal while he went on chewing his mutton, Rose slipped into a chair, giving one of the mastiffs a sharp kick in the ribs to move it out of the way. The joint of mutton lay under her nose. Sir Cecil had the only knife. Without asking permission, Rose tore a strip of the bloodless cold meat off the joint and put it into her mouth. Chewing his own mouthful, Sir Cecil glowered at her, but she hadn’t eaten since morning, and the food made her feel so much better that she tore off another piece before she had swallowed the first.
“If Barebones hasn’t put you out,” Sir Cecil said, “then what does he want? Money? Because he won’t get any.”
“It’s in the letter.”
Sir Cecil moved the joint away from Rose to the other side of his place and went on carving it and eating it, throwing bits of skin and fat to the dogs. When he finished, he rang for a servant.
“Take this up to her ladyship and her clergyman,” he said, handing the haggled joint to the footman who answered the bell. Rose uttered a tiny sound of protest.
“Wait,” Sir Cecil said. He sliced off a long sliver of meat, stabbed it, and handed it to Rose. “More ale for me,” he said to the footman. “And bring this lady from London something to drink too, before she goes back to her husband.”
Sir Cecil called one of the dogs and wiped both hands thoroughly in its fur. Then he read Oliver’s letter.
“You mean to say this man pulled Harding’s house down around his corpse and is now going to do the same to Barebones?” he said.
“He’s a terrible villain. I was asleep in the house when he came with his oxen—”
“Asleep in Harding’s house? Don’t you sleep with your husband?”
“Fanny is only a girl. She could hardly be left alone with her father lying downstairs dead in the hall.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Sir Cecil wasn’t interested in the details. “What killed Harding?” he asked. “Something fall on him?”
“No. As I said, he was already dead when the house was pulled down.”
“Already dead? What killed him?”
“He broke his neck playing football.”
“Playing football? Where was Barebones when all this was happening?”
“He was playing too.”
“And he let Harding get his neck broken? Doesn’t sound like Barebones.”
Rose ground the tough mutton between her back teeth and drank come cider from the cup the footman placed in front of her. “At the time my husband was … distracted,” she said.
“Who is this bloody man Mountagu? Is he one of the real Mountagus?”
“No. My husband says Montagu just took the name to make himself grand.”
“You’re sure he’s not from the wrong side of the old earl’s blanket? What did Harding say?”
Sir Cecil was paying close attention now. He did not want to take sides against anyone who was related, however illegitimately, to the Mountagus who were the Earls of Sandwich.
“Henry said the same as my husband.”
“Then it must be so. Harding knew what was what.”
Sir Cecil finished his ale and went outside onto a balcony and urinated over the railing. When he came back inside he moved the dogs around, calling first one and then the other and commanding them to lie down. Soon they were all panting in a circle around a deerhide rug on the floor. Sir Cecil lay down on its hairy surface, his usual napping place, and called the two largest mastiffs closer with smacks of his lips.
Before he closed his eyes he looked at Rose, who was still sitting quietly in her chair.
“Find a bed, Rose,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll see about Barebones.”
Next morning at breakfast, when Rose looked out the window, she saw two dozen strong young men standing in the park with their caps in their hands, looking up at Sir Cecil, who was talking to them from the back of a gray horse. All the dogs were with him too, as usual. Rose helped herself to breakfast, the only meal of the day that was eaten in the hall because Lady Lockwood came down for it.
Sir Cecil’s silent wife was at the table now in her peignoir and nightcap. A thin silent clergyman was seated beside her. He had fine features and the ashen complexion and wild look of a man whose heart has recently been broken. Though he could not have been more than thirty-five, his hair was mousy gray. Rose gazed at him in fascination. He was like the ghost of a young poet.
Sir Cecil came in through the French windows, leaving the mastiffs barking outside in their uncertain throaty voices. He saw Rose’s look of fascination.
“Gray sort of little man, isn’t he?” he said. “Wait till you hear his name. Introduce them, Lucy, go on.”
“Missis Barebones of London, may I present Mr. Edward Ash, late of Trinity College, Cambridge,” Lady Lockwood said.
“Later of the king’s whipping post,” Sir Cecil said, shoveling eggs and kidneys onto a plate. “Ash
. Suits the little gray sufferer.”
Ash ignored him. “Barebones,” he said. “Is that the Parliament fellow, Praise God Barebones, Oliver Cromwell’s friend?”
“A relation, I believe,” Rose said.
“He was her husband’s great-uncle,” Sir Cecil said. “Old Praise God had two brothers. The first was called Christ-came-into-the-world-to-save Barebones and the other was called If-Christ-had-not-died-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebones. They couldn’t very well call them both Christ, so they called one World and the other Damned. It was Damned Barebones who was Oliver’s grandfather. Oliver’s named for Oliver Cromwell, poor chap. Very pious Puritan family, the Bareboneses, but you wouldn’t know it to see Oliver in a sporting mood, eh, Rose?”
“Ah,” Ash said. He looked very directly at Rose, and for a longer time than was usual. Even though there was nothing male in his examination, she flushed.
Sir Cecil began to speak to Rose, but Ash did not remove his eyes from her.
“I’m sending you back to London with twenty lads that played football with Barebones,” Sir Cecil was saying. “They’ll do as Oliver tells them, as they think he’s one of King Arthur’s knights, but they must do it quick and get back here to plant my crops.”
Rose felt Ash’s eyes on her, like two spots of heat on the skin of her cheek. “Yes,” she said to Sir Cecil. “But I should like to stay here until it’s over.”
“Oh, no, madam,” Sir Cecil said. “None of that. It’s back to London and husband for you. Take Ash with you. You’ll need the help of heaven, and Ash knows what it is to suffer the scorn of the lash.”
“The lash of scorn,” Ash said.
“Is that what it’s called? You can show Rose your poor whipped back along the way, Ash. But remember, she’s a virtuous married woman and you’re the property of the Redeemer.”
Ash turned his steady blue stare on Sir Cecil. “Your Redeemer hears you,” he said.
Sir Cecil, washing down fried kidneys with a quart of ale and calling for bread and cheese, ignored him. Seeing Ash in profile, Rose realized that he was like a head carved on a coin, more perfect than flesh could be.
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