Bolitho 19 - Beyond the Reef (22 page)

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 would 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?

Catherine smoothed the hair from his face and said, “We will reach help. I know it.” She lifted the locket from his open shirt and looked down at it. “I was younger then …”

Bolitho twisted round. “There is none more beautiful than you now, Kate!”

There was such anguish in his voice that for a few moments she saw the youth he had once been. Unsure, vulnerable, but caring even then.

Bezant gave a great groan and cried out, “In the name o’ God, help me! ” And then in almost the next breath he shouted, “Another turn on the weather forebrace, Mister Lincoln—lively, I say!”

The seaman named Cuppage swore savagely and retorted, “Why don’t you die, you bastard!”

Bolitho stared at the sea. Endless. Pitiless. Cuppage was only voicing what most of the others thought.

Catherine said, “Why, hello, Val—have you come a-visiting?”

Bolitho bit his lip. He had not even seen Keen groping his way over the thwarts and between slumped, exhausted bodies. I am no better than Cuppage.

Keen tried to smile. “Allday says he can smell a breeze.” He shielded his eyes against the blinding glare of reflected sunshine. “But I can see no evidence of it.” He glanced at the others. “I fear Bezant’s wound has gone against him, sir. Ozzard told me he noticed it when he took him some water.”

“The wound has become mortified, Val?” There was little need to ask. Both he and Keen had known it happen often enough. Crude surgery, indifferent medical skills—it was said that more men died of their treatment than from the enemy’s iron.

Catherine watched them, astonished that she could still feel such pride at being here with him. Her clothing was soiled and clung to her skin from spray and perspiration, and left little to imagination. Even the wrap of canvas they had rigged to hide her bodily functions provided only the illusion of privacy.

But she could escape even that when she watched and listened to the two she knew best in this world. The man she loved more and beyond life itself, and his friend, who had seemingly gained extra strength from what he believed he had lost and left forever in England.

She knew what they were discussing but nobody else would even guess. And she was seeing it for herself, even if she never lived to describe it. The other man, the hero of whom they sang and gossiped in the taverns and ale-houses, the man who inspired courage as well as love by his own qualities of leadership, which he would be the first to doubt. He believed that many men envied him because of her. It would never occur to him that it might be the other way round.

She heard him say, “It must be soon then?”

Keen nodded slowly, as if the motion was painful. “We shall need the light. And if Allday is right about the wind …” He looked aft towards Bezant, now lost in merciful oblivion. “I think he knows, sir.”

Catherine said, “I will help.”

Bolitho gripped her and shook his head. “No, Kate, I will speak with Allday.” He glanced with sudden emotion at his flag captain. “He once cut a splinter out of Val the size of a baby’s leg when the ship’s surgeon was too much in the arms of Bacchus to care.”

She looked from one to the other. It was no longer just their private world. She was part of it now.

Bolitho released his hold and whispered, “Think of the house, Kate. Of that small beach where we loved each other until the tide drove us away.” He saw her eyes clearing. “It is all there, just as we left it. Can we allow it to desert us?” Then he was gone, touching a shoulder here, or murmuring a quiet word there, as he lurched his way aft.

Catherine wiped her face with a shirtsleeve and watched him. Filthy and dishevelled; but even a total stranger would know him for what he was.

Bolitho reached the sternsheets and said, “Are you certain about the wind, old friend?”

Allday squinted up at him, his mouth too parched to respond immediately.

“Aye, Sir Richard. It’s shifted a piece too. More westerly, I’d say.”

Bolitho crouched beside him staring at the sea, containing his feelings for this big, invincible man. If only they had a compass, or a sextant … But they had nothing, only the sun by day, the stars by night. Even their progress through the water was no more than a guess.

He murmured, “So be it.” He looked across and saw Jenour studying them.

“Take the tiller, Stephen. Hold her steady.” Then he waited for the others to rouse themselves. It was painful to watch. Those who had been asleep crept from the refuge of their dreams only to see all hope fade as they accepted the reality. Others stared around as if they still expected to hear the squeal of the boatswain’s call, the stamp of feet on Golden Plover’s deck.