Bolitho tried to gauge the sun’s position but his eye was too painful.
Two things were uppermost in his aching mind.
They were through the reef and into calmer water. And they were quite alone.
The big grey house below Pendennis Castle seemed cool and refreshing after the heat of late afternoon. The girl loosened the ribbons of her wide straw hat and allowed it to fall on her shoulders, to lie across her long, sun-warmed hair.
How quiet the house was. She guessed that Ferguson and his wife and the servants were probably having a meal before evening church; in the meantime she had enjoyed the peace of her walk along the cliffs and down the steep track to the little curving beach where she liked to look for shells. Ferguson had warned her about the cliff path and she had listened dutifully to his advice, all the while thinking of Zennor, where she had been born. After those cliffs this walk had been easy.
Because it was Sunday she had barely seen anyone except a coastguard who had been peering out across the shimmering bay through his long brass-bound telescope. He was friendly enough, but Zenoria felt they were all watching her whenever she went into town. Curiosity perhaps, or was it the usual suspicion cherished by the Cornish for ‘strangers’, even those from a different part of the same county?
This house, too. She crossed to a small table, the wood of which was so dark with age and polishing it could have been ebony. She watched her hand as she placed it on the great family Bible, and saw the wedding ring with something like surprise. Would she never get used to it? Might things never change, so that she would never be able to give freely of the love Valentine needed from her?
She opened the massive brass locks and raised the cover. Like the house, so much history. It was somehow awesome – frightening, she thought.
They were all there, written in by hands unknown. A family’s record, like a roll of honour. She gave a small shiver. It was as if the same portraits that matched these names were watching her, resenting her intrusion.
Captain Julius Bolitho who had died a young man of thirty-six. She felt the strange apprehension again. Right here in Falmouth during the Civil War, trying to lift the Roundhead blockade. She had seen the castle this afternoon, hunched on the headland. It was still a place of menace.
Bolitho’s great great grandfather, Captain Daniel, who had fallen fighting the French in Bantry Bay. Captain David, killed fighting pirates in 1724, and Denziel, the only one until Sir Richard to gain flag rank. She smiled at the way she had come to absorb and understand the terms and the traditions of the navy.
And Bolitho’s father, Captain James, who had lost an arm in India. She had studied his portrait closely, seen the family likeness found once more in Bolitho. Her mind seemed to hesitate, like guilt. In Adam too.
And now a separate entry in Sir Richard’s own sweeping hand, on the occasion when Adam’s name had been changed to Bolitho, asserting his right to all that he would one day inherit. On the same page Bolitho had also written, ‘To the memory of my brother Hugh, Adam’s father, once lieutenant in His Britannic Majesty’s Navy, who died on 7th May 1795. The Call of Duty was the Path to Glory.’
Zenoria closed the Bible with great care, as if to keep its memories undisturbed.
And what of the women? Waiting for their men to return, wondering every time, perhaps, if this parting was the last one?
Zenoria thought of her husband and tried to discover her innermost feelings. She had been unable to give him what he truly deserved. She was not even certain that she loved him. Adam had made it clear that he thought she had married Keen out of gratitude for what he had done to save her person and restore her good name. Was that all it had been, then – gratitude? Did Valentine really understand what it had been like for her; why she was incapable of any sexual response after what had happened to her? When he had entered her she had wanted more than anything to please him.
Instead she had felt pain, terror, revulsion; and had expected him to lose patience, to thrust her away in disgust, to behave with brutality. But he had done nothing: he had accepted it, and blamed himself. Perhaps when he came back … How many times had that gone through her mind? It was torture, so that as the weeks had dragged past she had almost come to dread their reunion.
If Catherine had been here, it might have been different. She would have been compassionate; she might have had wisdom to offer. Zenoria turned and stared around the big room. I must keep faith with him. She imagined she could hear the words rebounding from the cool stone.
There was a sound of horses in the stable yard. Matthew perhaps, getting a carriage to take Ferguson and his wife down to church. She stiffened. No, not horses, just the one, and from the clamour of its stamping hooves it was difficult to calm and must have been ridden hard. A visitor then.
Then she heard Ferguson’s voice, hushed, hesitant, so that she could not grasp the sense of his words. Someone came around from the courtyard, and disappeared towards the front of the house; there was no mistaking the gold lace and cocked hat, the jingle of the sword Adam always wore.
She touched her breast and felt herself flush. But he was supposed to be at Plymouth now … She glanced at herself in the mirror and was dismayed to see the sudden pleasure in her eyes.
The outer doors opened and closed and she turned to face him as he came in.
‘You surprise me again, Captain Adam, sir!’ He ignored her teasing humour. She felt her body chill in spite of the warmth. ‘What is it, Adam? Are you in trouble?’
He did not speak but threw his hat on to a chair; she saw the dust on his boots, the leather stains on his breeches, evidence of the haste of his journey.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and gazed at her for what seemed like an age.
Then he said quietly, ‘I am the bearer of bad news, Zenoria. Try to be strong, as I have tried to be since I was told of it.’
She did not resist as he pulled her gently against him. Later she was to remember the exact moment, and knew it had not been out of tenderness but the need to hide from her face while he told her.
‘It is reported that the barquentine Golden Plover, while on passage to Cape Town, struck a reef off the west coast of Africa.’
She could hear the hard, fast beating of his heart against her cheek. He continued to speak in the same empty voice. ‘A small Portuguese trader was stopped by one of our ships. It told them the news.’ He paused, counting the seconds as a good gunner will measure the fall of shot. ‘There were none saved.’
Only then did he release her and walk blindly to one of the portraits. Probably without knowing what he was doing his fingers touched the old family sword in the painting. Now it would never be his.
‘Is it certain, Adam?’
He turned lightly, as he always did. ‘My uncle is the best seaman I have ever known. The fairest of men, loved by all who tried to know him. But … she was not his ship, you see?’
She tried, but she did not understand. All she knew was that her husband, who had given her everything, was now only another memory. Like all those who haunted this house, and were named in their roll of honour.
Adam said, ‘I have asked Ferguson to tell the servants. I did not … feel capable. By this time tomorrow, all Falmouth will know.’ He thought suddenly of Belinda. ‘As all London knows now.’
He seemed to reconsider her question. ‘There is always hope. But it may be unwise to dream too much.’ He faced her again, but seemed distant, unreachable.
‘I have called for a fresh horse. I must ride to the squire’s house without delay. I would not want Aunt Nancy to hear it on the wind like common gossip.’ For the first time he showed his emotion. ‘God, she worshipped him.’
Zenoria watched his distress with pain. ‘Adam – what must I do?’
‘Do?’ He wiped his face with the back of his hand. ‘You must remain here. He would have wished it.’ He hesitated, realising what he had said, and what he had omitted. ‘So would your husband. I am sorry … I will ask Mrs
Ferguson to keep you company.’
A horse was being led into the yard, but there were no voices.
‘Please come back, Adam. Neither of us must be alone.’
He looked at her steadily. ‘I liked your husband very much. I also envied him to an unhealthy degree.’ He came to her again and kissed her forehead very gently. ‘I still do.’
Then he was gone and she caught sight of Bolitho’s one-armed steward standing out in the dusty sunshine, staring at the empty road.
She was suddenly alone, and the pain of bereavement was unbearable.
She cried out, ‘Are you all satisfied now, damn you? There he rides, the last of the Bolithos!’ She stared about her, blinded by hot, unexpected tears. ‘Is that what you wanted?’
But there was only silence.
She did not know what time it was or how long she had managed to sleep; it was as if someone had spoken her name. She slipped out of bed and moved to the window. The night was warm, and a bright half-moon spilled a glittering silver cloak down from the horizon until it was lost beneath the headland.
She leaned further from the window so that her robe slipped from one shoulder, but she did not notice it, nor think of the livid scar which was revealed there. A mark of endurance, but to her it was a mark of shame, of sick humiliation.
She could smell the land, the sheep and cattle, and thought of the ideas Catherine had shared with her, plans which would have brought life back to the estate.
Then she heard it; not words but something else, a soul in pain. She glanced round in the darkness. She had not heard Adam return, and had imagined him to be passing the night at Roxby’s house.
The next moment she was on the big landing, her bare feet soundless on the rugs, her candle lighting up each stern face on the wall: ships burning, men dying, and Bolitho’s own words in the Bible as every portrait slid away into the shadows.
Adam was sitting at the table, his face buried in his arms, sobbing as if his heart were breaking. His hat and sword and the coat with its gleaming lace were flung across a chair, and there was a smell of brandy in the air.
He looked up sharply and saw her with the outstretched candle. ‘I – I did not mean to wake you!’
Zenoria had never seen a man cry before, and certainly not from such depths.
She whispered, ‘Had I known I would have come earlier.’ She saw his hand hesitate over the brandy and added, ‘Take some. I think I might quite like a little myself.’
He wiped his face roughly and brought another goblet, and watched her as she placed the candle on the table and curled up on the rug in front of the black, empty grate. As he passed he lightly touched her hair as he might a child’s. He stood looking at the Bolitho crest and fingered the carving, as others had done before him.
‘What happened?’ Zenoria felt the brandy ‘searing her throat. She had only tasted it once before, more as a dare than for any other reason.
‘The squire was very kind to me.’ He shook his head, as if still dazed by what had happened. ‘Poor Aunt Nancy. She kept asking me how it must have been.’ He gave a great sigh. ‘What could I tell her? It is a sailor’s lot. Death can lie on every hand.’ He thought suddenly of Allday and his quaint comments. ‘An’ that’s no error,’ as his old friend would have said. Thank God they had been together, even to the end.
He said abruptly, ‘I am no company, dear Zenoria. I had better leave.’
She leaned over to replace the goblet and heard him exclaim, ‘What is that? Did they do this to you?’
She covered her bared shoulder as he dropped on his knees behind her; he carefully moved her hair to one side and felt her tremble as light played on the top of the scar.
‘I would kill any man who laid a finger on you.’
She tried not to flinch as he lowered his head and kissed the scar. Her heart was beating so hard she thought it would alarm the whole house. But she felt no fear; where there had been disgust, there was only an awareness which seemed to consume her completely. She could not even resist as he kissed her shoulder once again, and touched her neck with his lips. She felt him pulling at the cord around her shoulders, and only then did she attempt to fight it.
‘Please, Adam! You must not!’
But the robe fell about her waist and she felt his hands caressing her as he kissed the terrible scar that ran from her right shoulder to her left hip.
With tender strength he laid her down and gazed at her body, pale as marble in the filtered moonlight, and his hands gave persuasion to what they both now realised was unstoppable, as it had been inevitable.
She closed her eyes as he held and imprisoned her wrists above her head, and heard him whisper her name again and again.
She waited for the pain, but she returned his kiss even as he entered her and they were joined.
Later he carried her upstairs to her room and sat near her, watching her until the sun began to drive away the shadows.
Only then did he finish his brandy and leave the room.
The candle had long been gutted when the first sunlight touched the big room and lingered on the family Bible, with its memories of dead heroes and the women who had loved them.
They were all ghosts, now.
* * *
10
Poor Jack
* * *
TO ANYONE UNUSED to the sea’s ways its sudden change of mood, which had followed the jolly-boat’s precarious passage through Hundred Mile Reef, was impossible to believe. The squall had departed and had not returned, and the vastness of this great ocean stretched away on every bearing, unbroken, and in the noon sunshine, like blinding glass.
Bolitho climbed forward into the bows where a small canvas awning had been rigged to provide the barest of privacy for the two women. Catherine was waiting for him there, her borrowed shirt dark with sweat, her forehead showing signs of sunburn as she watched him over the slumped shoulders of the resting oarsmen.
She took his hand and guided him down to the bottom boards so that he could rest his back against the curved side.
‘Let me see.’ She held his face in her hands and gently prised open his left eyelid. Then she said, ‘I’m going to put a bandage over it, Richard.’ She kept her voice very low so that nobody else could hear. ‘You must rest it.’ She looked aft where Allday sat at the tiller, as if he had never moved. She had to give herself time, so that she would reveal no despair to Richard. Three days since the Golden Plover had slid from the reef. Hours of work on the oars, and rigging the solitary mast and sail to stand away from the reef’s fierce undertow, and set some sort of course for the mainland. For all they had seen or done they might have remained stationary. She tried to picture how this small, eighteen-foot craft would appear to an onlooker, had there been one, while it rode sluggishly to a canvas sea-anchor and the men rested. Probably like a crumpled leaf on an immense, motionless lake. But here, in the boat’s over-crowded interior, it was something very different. Apart from the seaman named Owen, who had been the masthead lookout at the time of the mutiny, there were two other hands from the doomed Golden Plover: Elias Tucker, a frightened youth who came originally from Portsmouth, and Bill Cuppage, a hard man in every sense, with a harsh northern accent. Including the wounded Bezant, who hovered between delirium and bouts of agonised groaning, there were thirteen souls in all.
She raised a length of dressing cut from a petticoat and tied it carefully across his forehead to cover his salt-reddened eye.
Bolitho touched it and exclaimed, ‘Water! You’ve used fresh water, Kate!’
She pulled his hand away. ‘Rest a little. You cannot do everything.’
He lay back while she slipped her arm beneath his head. Her words had reminded him of Admiral Godschale. What might he be doing now, with Golden Plover probably reported missing? He sighed as she raised some canvas to shade him from the relentless sun. Three days, with no end in sight. And if they reached land, what then? It might be hostile, for this was slave territory where any white sailors wou
ld be seen as enemies.
He opened his sound eye and stared along the boat. They were divided into two watches, pulling on the oars after dusk, and waiting to reset the sail at the touch of even the smallest breeze. He saw Allday looking at him, still brooding perhaps about being ordered to take the tiller at all times because of his old wound. Ozzard too, stooping down over a satchel checking the stores that remained: a small man who seemed to have gathered unsuspected strength in his new role of purser. Bolitho’s secretary, the round-shouldered Yovell, was resting across the loom of an oar, his hands bandaged like Jenour’s from the hard, back-breaking work at something he had never trained for. His coat was split down the seams to show the extent of his efforts.
Tojohns, without whose strength at the oars it was unlikely they would have made more than a few miles; and Keen, who was crouched beside Owen, his eyes moving around the boat as if to measure their chances of survival. Bolitho raised his head very slightly and felt her stiffen against him. She knew what he was looking for.
Bolitho saw it: the shadow, their constant companion since the wreck. Usually no more than that, but just occasionally it would show its sharp dorsal fin as it glided to the surface, dispelling any hope that it had tired of the hunt.
He heard her ask, ‘What do you think happened to the other boat?’
It was hard even to think. ‘The bosun might have decided against following us through the reef. His was the larger boat, and carried far more people. He may have decided to remain on the other side, and then head for land.’ In his heart he knew that the big cutter might have suffered the same fate as the mutineers, and had either capsized in the breakers, or foundered on the reef. The sharks would have left no one to tell the tale.
He said, ‘There would have been precious little to eat and drink but for your preparations. Cheese and ship’s biscuits, rum and brandy – many have survived on far less.’ He tried to focus his eye on the two barricoes which were lashed on the bottom boards between the thwarts. Fresh water, but shared among thirteen, how long would it last?
Beyond the Reef Page 16