by Sara Fraser
The morning was again unusually fine and the skies overhead held only a few scattered puffs of white cloud which emphasized the clear blue of their background. The sea was calm and still, not a single foam-fleck disturbing its pond-like green surface.
Jethro felt the jingle of the gold guineas in his trouser pocket as he marched smartly away from the fort and he revelled in his unexpected freedom. The road to Portsmouth was empty for much of the way, and Jethro met no one as he passed the odd isolated farmhouse or labourer’s hovel, except for a solitary sea-booted fisherman, carrying over his shoulder a great black-grey bunch of writhing eels, threaded together by a ring of wire passing through their sinuous bodies. Even the turf-covered earth ramparts of the shore batteries at Eastney and Lumps Fort showed no signs of life, and their guns appeared to have been left deserted but for the swooping, wheeling, squawking gulls that abounded along the coastline.
The brisk walk made Jethro begin to sweat and under the immaculate finery of his uniform his skin felt stale and itched him uncomfortably. He grimaced at the memory of the vile body-odours of the barrackrooms, where one roller towel changed every Wednesday and Saturday had to serve for the needs of up to forty men, women, and children, and even those few individuals inclined to personal cleanliness found it increasingly irksome to wash any part of their bodies other than face and hands.
It was the sight of the bathing machines, of which there were several on the stretch of beach between Portsmouth and the derelict Southsea Castle, that put the notion of a swim into Jethro’s mind. The bathing machines resembled large slope-roofed sheds raised on great broad-rimmed wheels. They were dragged by horses far enough into the sea for the water nearly to reach their floorboards. Then a temporary plankwalk was set up to enable the ladies, and also those invalids whose prescribed treatment was immersion in the sea, to walk dry-shod to the machines. From the side that faced out to sea an overhanging awning shielded the female bathers from the lustful oglings of the passers-by. Jethro smiled in amusement. One of the machines was in use, and he guessed that the users were females when he saw on the parapet of Southsea Castle the flashes of sunlight reflecting from the lenses of several telescopes. As always, the voyeurs’ ingenuity was more than a match for the obstacles placed in the way of their pastime.
He went a little way past the castle, then stripped off his clothing, taking care to hide his money beneath the shingle, and ran naked into the waiting sea. Its coldness cut deep into his body but he welcomed it, feeling the stale sweat of weeks loosen and wash away. Taking a full breath, Jethro arrowed down through the clear water and swam along the hard-packed ridges of the sand bed, startling the feeding fishes and causing the tiny crabs to scuttle in sudden terror from his looming whiteness. He passed above a wide sea forest of waving dark fronds and let their soft feathers caress his body and wind their delicate traceries about his arms and legs.
Jethro surfaced and breathed vast draughts of salt-fresh air, cleansing the fetid stench of jail and barrackroom from his lungs and dived once more into the green limpidity. He went down and down, spiralling lazily like a creature of the deep until his fingers touched and sank beneath the ocean floor, and countless grains of sand swirled up to cloud his hands and arms, his head and shoulders. Again he rose to the light of the sun, exulting in the sheer joy of being alive. Using a fast crawl, he sent his hard body spearing through the water for hundreds of yards, then slowed and twisted to face upwards and float. Filling his sight with the blueness above him, so that all else was blotted from his senses but its soothing deeps. Time lost all meaning for Jethro, and it was as if he slept, so tranced was he by sea and air and cool colours.
*
Up on the parapet of Southsea Castle, William Seymour took his small spyglass from his eye and snapped it shut. Molly Bawn had told him the truth. Sarah Jenkins was in that bathing machine with Molly and another girl. Since he had met Molly Bawn, Seymour had done his utmost to make the girl infatuated with him, and had succeeded beyond all his expectations. For the first time in her life, a man had courted her and treated her like a gentlewoman. Practically every moment of her free time she had spent with her new admirer, who had constantly flattered her and shown her nothing but tender respect and kindness. Little by little, without arousing her suspicions, Seymour had extracted from the girl all that she could tell him of Sarah Jenkins’ doings in Portsmouth. He knew about the partnership with Shimson Levi, and the success of The Golden Venture. The only wrong information that the girl had given him was that concerning the mysterious letters. Molly assumed that they went to Arthur Redmond and she had artlessly told Seymour, whom she knew as William Brady, the same.
Seymour had stored each nugget of information in his mind and felt that now he knew enough to confront Sarah herself. The problem he faced was how to get her alone, completely alone. With the patience of an old campaigner, he had begun to dog her movements, sure that sooner or later his opportunity would arise. His financial position was good, thanks to Molly Bawn. He had told the girl that he was waiting for funds to arrive from an almost completed business transaction, and she in the fullness of her new-found romance had insisted on loaning him money until the mythical funds should reach him.
There was a flurry of splashing water under the awning and the peals of the girls’ laughter came clearly to his ears. He lifted his spyglass again and watched. In the water up to her massive hips was a mountainously fat woman, the proprietress of the machine, dressed in a black serge smock and a huge-peaked poke bonnet. She had hold of Molly Bawn and was making the girl lie flat on the water. Seymour stared appreciatively at the thrusting breasts and the lushly rounded belly, hips, and thighs that the flimsy, clinging, wet bathing gown only accentuated.
‘My oath! But you’re a toothsome baggage, little Molly,’ he thought. ‘I really think that it’s time you and I bedded down for a few nights.’ Up until now Seymour had made no pressing sexual advances towards the girl. Experienced in the ways of whores and camp-followers, he had sensed her overwhelming hunger to be treated with gallantry and courted romantically. To serve his own ends, he had willingly catered to this desire, although celibacy came hard to him. ‘But enough is enough,’ he murmured, as if to her. ‘Once I’ve got Sarah Jenkins where I want her, then I’ll have no more of this damned chivalrous nonsense. You’ll give me what I need, and damn quick too.’
Time passed and the sun began to sink lower. The air grew cooler and a fresh breeze came whispering over the Spit Sands, driving the warm air back from the beaches and chilling the bathers. The women re-entered the machine and the several men who had been watching them grumbled their disappointment, put away their spyglasses and telescopes and wandered off in their different directions. Sarah and the girls dressed quickly, joking and laughing amongst themselves. Sarah felt light-hearted and gay. The parcel had reached Henri safely, and she considered her self-imposed obligation to him had been fulfilled. The rest was up to him and his comrades on the hulk. She could do no more.
‘Here, Mother Spencer.’ She took her purse from her reticule and paid the bathing woman, who grunted her thanks and waddled breathlessly across the plankwalk to disappear in the direction of the town, riding a tiny donkey that visibly sagged beneath her great bulk.
The three young women strolled in a leisurely fashion in the same direction. Molly particularly was in high spirits and kept playfully pinching the third girl, Susan, who would pretend indignation and chase after her friend threatening revenge. Sarah laughed to see them so happy.
‘I’m sure Molly has got a secret lover,’ she mused. ‘And I’m contented for her because he must be a good man if he makes her as happy as she has been these last weeks.’
They were almost at the town’s defence perimeter when Sarah realized that instead of putting her purse back into her reticule, she had left it lying in the machine.
‘Oh damn it!’ she exclaimed, then called to the girls who were a distance ahead, giggling as they chased each other, ‘Go on without me,
I’ll be along presently.’ They waved, and with a smile of farewell Sarah returned along the pathway towards the beach.
William Seymour had been trailing the women discreetly and when Sarah turned back, he concealed himself behind some convenient shrubs and watched to see where she would go. He let her pass him and then, keeping well behind followed, using for cover the clumps of shrubs and bushes dotted along the fringes of the bogs that composed large areas of Southsea Common. Sarah went over the plankwalk and disappeared into the bathing machine. Seymour looked around searchingly. He made sure that there was no one in sight, then broke from cover and ran swiftly towards the plankwalk.
*
The drop in temperature roused Jethro from his drifting reverie. He shivered and trod water while he took his bearings. The current had carried him a good distance out to sea, and the tower of the castle looked like a toy fort.
‘It’s as well it turned out cold when it did,’ he smiled to himself. ‘Otherwise I would have gone dreaming, clean across to France.’
He struck for the shore, his legs and arms moving in perfectly executed strokes that covered the water with surprising speed. On the beach his pile of clothing was a vivid spot of colour upon the pale grey shingle and he shivered in the sharp breeze as he dried his head and body with the coarse army shirt. Once booted and dressed, he retrieved his money from its hiding place and putting his forage cap at a jaunty angle on his head decided his next move.
‘I’ll go into Portsmouth, drink a few glasses, eat a good meal, and then let fancy take me.’ Happier than he had been for a long time, he moved on.
*
Sarah found her purse lying on the narrow wall-bench and twitted herself for her carelessness. Humming a tune, she left the machine and started back across the plankwalk. Where it ended on the beach, a tall well-dressed man was leaning against the handrail, half-turned away from her and idly swinging a walking cane between his fingers. She hesitated momentarily, then took confidence from the obvious excellence of his clothes. The royal-blue swallow-tailed coat, the buff breeches, the highly-polished Hessian boots, and the lace at throat and cuffs were those of a gentleman, not some ruffianly footpad.
She went on, the pattens she wore to raise her satin-topped shoes from the damp beach tapping sharply on the weathered boards. She was almost up to the man when he swung to face her. He raised his glossy black beaver hat and bowed gallantly.
‘Good afternoon, Mistress Sarah Jenkins. This is indeed a pleasure.’
For a moment she thought that he must be one of the bucks who frequented The Golden Venture. Then the blond hair and the pale grey eyes brought recollection flooding back. She halted abruptly.
‘You’re the captain of dragoons,’ she exclaimed. ‘I met you in Bishops Castle.’
His thin lips curved in a cruel smile. ‘You are correct, my pretty.’
Sarah felt intuitively that this man’s sudden appearance boded danger for her. She forced herself to smile pleasantly. ‘I am happy to have met you again, Captain. But regretfully I have urgent business to attend to. I bid you good day, sir.’ She went to walk on past him but he moved the cane to block her.
‘Don’t hurry so, my pretty. I would regard your leaving so sudden as most unmannerly.’
She felt a tremor of fear, but struggled to stay calm.
‘Indeed, sir? Then you must feel free to regard it so. For I wish to go past.’
His smile widened, but did not reach his cold eyes.
‘You shall go past, mistress. That you can be sure on. But there is a little matter to discuss between us.’
‘It is not possible that we can have anything to discuss,’ Sarah retorted angrily. ‘Now let me pass!’
She struck the cane aside and again tried to move by him, but this time he used his body to crowd her against the handrail of the plankwalk and placed an arm on the rail each side of her to keep her there. Their faces were only inches apart and he noticed the tempting flawlessness of her skin and soft neck, and felt the gentle pressure of her full firm breasts where her tight coat bodice touched his chest. A hot spasm of excitement in his groin caused him to rest the full weight of his hips against her soft belly. His voice jerky with barely controlled desire, he said,
‘The matter we must discuss concerns a certain grave back in Bishops Castle, and what was in that grave.’
A sudden rush of nausea made Sarah close her eyes. The vivid memories of a rotting skull and the vile smell of the tomb overwhelmed her and bile rose in her throat to fill her mouth with its bitterness. Seymour grinned in triumph at seeing her reaction to his words.
‘I knew I’d guessed rightly,’ he told himself. ‘I knew it.’
The scented nearness of her desirable body coupled with his delight at his success combined to lift him to a pitch of heady excitement that heightened unbearably his lust to possess and degrade this woman, and caused him to take a wild gamble.
‘Listen, my pretty,’ he said urgently. ‘There’s no need for you to fear me, or the knowledge I have of you. We make a good pair. I’m no longer with the army and am fleeing from the authorities. Like you, I’ve left all my troubles far behind me and do not intend to let them catch up with me. We can trust each other, you and I. Because each of us could put the other into a convict-transport if we told what we knew to a magistrate. So let us join forces. We can make our fortunes together, and I’m man enough to keep you happy.’
His mouth clamped over her moist red lips and his hands moved greedily on her body. Sarah writhed and twisted in a frantic effort to get free. His mouth left hers and he bit the soft whiteness of her throat. She threw her head to one side and screamed with all the force of her lungs.
‘Shut your noise, you hell-bitch!’ he threatened, and whiplashed his hand backwards and forwards across her face.
She screamed again as he dragged her from the plankwalk and threw her brutally to the shingle. Before she could recover, he was on her, forcing her arms above her head and ramming her hands painfully into the shingle. Then, clamping them in one strong hand, he tried to rip the clothing from her heaving body with the other.
Jethro heard the first terrified scream and halted in shock. The second scream rang out and suddenly he saw the flurrying petticoats of the woman as she strained upwards beneath the straddling of the man. He shouted aloud and began to run towards the pair, scattering the pebbles from under his heavy boots as he pounded across the shingle.
Seymour’s loss of control had not deadened the instincts bred during years of combat. He heard the shout and the boots crunching the stones and his lust to rape was overlaid by the ingrained habits of survival. He came to his feet and dived for the elegant gold-handled walking cane that he had left propped against the handrail. Before Jethro reached him, his hands grabbed the cane and his fingers slipped a hidden catch in the intricate moulding of the handle.
Jethro, running at full tilt towards the woman’s attacker barely managed to twist aside from the lunge of the deadly steel rapier that slid from the interior of the cane. Even as his body twisted, Jethro’s own fingers reached for and found his hip-slung bayonet. Its triangular blade hissed from the greased metal scabbard and parried the next lightning-swift stroke of Seymour’s swordstick. Recognition came to each man simultaneously, and the shocked curses they uttered at the sight of each other might have been issued on the same breath. Jethro didn’t allow himself any further wonderment over this unexpected encounter. Instead, he read clearly the murderous intent in his opponent’s eyes and realized that he must kill, or be killed.
For a few moments, the two men circled warily, then Seymour sprang into the attack, his swordstick flickering in and out in a blur of sun-flashed steel. The young corporal could only retreat along the beach, windmilling his bayonet to set up a clumsy defence each time the deadly skill of his enemy came frighteningly closer to killing him.
Sarah had not believed her eyes when she had seen Jethro come to her rescue. Many times she had thought of the handsome fugitive
she had met at her father’s smithy, and of the attraction she had felt towards him. Many times also, she had day-dreamed about him, imagining circumstances in which she might meet him again. But never in her most extravagant fancies had she imagined he would come to her rescue in such a way as had first occurred. Watching fearfully as the two men clashed, parted and clashed again, she realized that Jethro was in mortal danger. He was so obviously outclassed as a swordsman by Seymour. Desperately she started to look about her for something to use as a weapon so that she might go to Jethro’s aid. Before she could find anything, another shout echoed in her ears and a slender young army officer came running from the direction of the castle.
David Warburton had been on his way to visit Jessica Ward when he had seen the civilian and the soldier fighting. Seymour had by now forced Jethro back to the next bathing machine. Both men were panting heavily and sweat ran down their faces.
‘Hey there! What’s happening here?’ David shouted as he neared them.
‘Help the soldier!’ Sarah screamed. ‘The other is a madman!’ Warburton halted and drew his sabre, then went on running. Seymour lunged and Jethro leapt back to avoid it. His boots landed on a small ragged heap of rotting seaweed and he slipped and fell heavily.
Seymour grinned savagely. ‘Now I’ll pay you out!’ he gasped, and drove his swordstick at the fallen man’s body. The sweat stinging his eyes affected his aim. The rapier point hit the brass plate of Jethro’s clossbelt. The slender blade bent sharply, shivered and snapped clean at the handle.
‘God rot your eyes!’ Seymour swore bitterly. He sprang back and glanced behind him. David Warburton was only yards away. The tiny nerve at the side of the murderous grey eyes throbbed erratically. ‘You’ll not escape me next time,’ Seymour hissed, and threw the useless handle at Jethro’s head.
David suddenly recognized his cousin. ‘William?’ he shouted incredulously. ‘What are you doing?’