Ebb Tide (18 page)

'Please sit down. Do you know what manner of ship is in distress, Mr Vane?'

'No, ma'am. But I've the trap outside. We can soon run down to the shingle and take a look.'

A moment later Drinkwater re-entered the room in his hessian boots and cloak. He bore in his hands his cocked hat.

'You will need gloves, my dear.'

'I have them, and my glass.' Drinkwater patted his hip. 'Come, Vane. Let's be off.'

Vane put his glass down and a moment later Elizabeth stood alone in the room. She turned, made up the fire and resumed her needlework.

'Can't see a damned thing!'

Drinkwater spoke above the roar of the wind which blew directly onshore and was much stronger than he had anticipated. They stood on the low shingle escarpment which stretched away to the north-east and south-west in a pale crescent under the full moon, its successive ridges marking the recent high tides. The shallow indentation of Hollesley Bay, 'Ho'sley' to the local people, was an anchorage in westerly winds, but in the present south-easterly gale, washed as it was at this time in the moon's life by strong tides, it could become a deathtrap.

'Well, Vane, there are no more rockets going up ...'

'No, sir.'

'And that's all you saw?'

'Aye. I didn't waste time coming down to take a look, remembering your orders, like.'

'Quite right.' Drinkwater swept the desolate tumbling waters of the bay with his glass once more, then shut it with a snap. 'Well, 'tis possible she was farther out and may have got into Harwich.' He waved his glass to the southward.

'Aye, Captain, that may well be the case.'

Drinkwater remained a moment longer, his cloak flapping round him like a dark flag, and then he turned to Vane. 'Well, Harry, we've done our best. If any poor devil is out there, there's precious little we can do for 'em. Let's to bed!'

'Right, Captain.'

And with that the two men turned and stumped up the shingle beach towards the waiting trap, the stones crunching under their boots.

Susan Tregembo woke them the next morning with the news. There had been a wreck in the night, a lugger, it was thought, though not much of her had been washed up and rumour said she had knocked her bottom out on the Cutler shoal in the dark, though how anyone knew this only compounded the mystery. This conjecture had been brought by Michael Howland who worked for Henry Vane and whom Vane had sent down on one of the plough horses to ride the tide-line between Shingle Street and Bawdsey soon after dawn.

'Have they found any of the poor devils?' asked Drinkwater, sitting up in bed, eyeing the coffee pot that Susan seemed reluctant to settle in its usual station.

'Yes, Captain, and there's a note for you.' She set the tray down and handed Drinkwater a folded paper. He reached for his spectacles and recognized Vane's rounded hand.

                Home Farm

                About 6

Sir,

I have had from my Lad Howland some Sad News that Four Bodies came Ashore between the Towers at Shingle Street. He is much Frighted, but I am gone to get Them. One he says is of a Woman. Will you send to the Justices or What ought I to Do?

Y'r Serv't

Hen. Vane.

Having dismissed Susan with orders for his horse to be saddled, Drinkwater pulled on his breeches, dressed and drank his coffee. Twenty minutes later, after a quick breakfast, he was in the saddle, urging the horse past the gaunt ruins of the old priory which rose, ivy-covered, in the grounds to the rear of the Hall. He had no time for such antiquities this morning, for on horseback Drinkwater was as awkward as Vane in a drawing-room. He loathed riding, not merely because at his age the posture of sitting astride pained 'his rheumaticks' sorely, but because he had no expertise in the saddle. A passion for horses had killed his father, and his brother Edward had loved the damned beasts, but Nathaniel had disappointed his parent in having no natural aptitude for them, and an early fall had so knocked him about that his mother had insisted that Ned might ride because he enjoyed it, but Nat should not if he did not wish to. Nat had never wanted to since, but there had been a wild and tempestuous ride from Tilsit to Memel...

'By God!' he muttered, bobbing up and down as his nag trotted and his hat threatened to go by the board, and remembering how Edouard Santhonax had tried to prevent Drinkwater bringing
Patrician
back from the Baltic with the news of the secret treaty between Tsar Alexander and Napoleon, and how he had fought Santhonax in the Dutch frigate
Zaandam.
'That mad dash all ended here in Ho'sley Bay!'

He had killed Santhonax in the fight, revenging himself upon the Frenchman who had so savagely mauled his shoulder ten years before in an alley in Sheerness. And he had thereby widowed Santhonax's wife, Hortense ...

But enough of that. Such thoughts plagued younger men than himself, though he had seen Hortense a year ago when she had come to him like Nicodemus, by night. Damn the woman for a witch! She had inveigled out of him a pension on the grounds that she had performed a service to the British government. Drinkwater had been obliged to pay the thing himself. One day Elizabeth must find out and then there would be the devil to pay and no pitch hot enough, by God!

He found Vane and his two men with a small cart from the farm. They had already loaded two of the bodies and were handling the third as Drinkwater approached. Drinkwater forced his horse down the shingle towards the breakers that still crashed with a mighty roar. But the wind had dropped, and although the air was full of the salty tang of spray, it was now no more than a strong breeze.

A few pieces of black painted wood were strewn about the beach, and a large grating around which some small kegs had been quickly lashed told how the four had come ashore.

'When Michael found 'em, they were all tied to that,' Vane explained, coming up to Drinkwater's horse and pointing to the extemporized life-saver.

'They are all dead, I presume,' Drinkwater queried.

'Come and see, Captain.'

Drinkwater dismounted and Vane took his horse's reins as they walked across the shingle. The third body had just been put on to the cart and the men were returning for the fourth. By the feet, he could see it was that of a woman, though a shawl had been thrown over her face. Drinkwater bent and drew back the shroud.

Underneath, the vacant face of Hortense Santhonax stared unseeing at the sky. She was as white as the lady in his dream.

'Why do they have to come here?' Elizabeth asked, as she watched Vane's men carry the corpses into the lower barn.

'We shall bury them in the priory,' Drinkwater said shortly, his face grim.

'It is very sad ...'

'I can only think they must have been trying to run into the Ore, though to do so in a south-easterly wind would have been sheer foolhardiness ...' He was thinking out loud and Elizabeth held her peace. If she was bewildered by her husband's idea of burying the victims of the storm within the grounds, his next remark astonished her.

'I want the woman brought up to the house. Susan shall lay her out...'

'But I have sent for old Mrs Farrell. She always ...'

'No,' Drinkwater said sharply, 'Farrell may do the men, but Susan shall see to the woman.'

'But why...?'

'Because I say so.'

Elizabeth looked sharply at her husband and was about to remonstrate when she caught sight of the expression on his face as he turned away. On rare occasions, he still considered himself upon a quarterdeck and she was usually quick to disabuse him of the idea, but there was something different about this.

Elizabeth held her peace until the late morning, when the woman's body had been brought up to the Hall. Vane's men were busy sawing up planks for the coffins and Drinkwater was drafting a statement to send into Woodbridge after it had been attested to by Vane. Elizabeth went into the parlour where Susan was laying out the wretched woman.

'Oh, ma'am, you didn't ought to ...'

'It's all right, Susan, I'm no stranger to death. I had to do this for my father ...'

Susan seemed about to say more but held her peace and worked at loosening the woman's clothes.

'She was very beautiful,' Elizabeth remarked sadly.

'But for this,' said Susan, lifting a heavy tress of hair which had once been a glorious auburn but which now contained strands of grey. She exposed the right side of the dead woman's head.

'Dear God!' A coarse scar ran in heavy seams of fused flesh from under the profusion of hair, over the line of the jaw and down her neck. The right ear was missing. 'The poor woman.'

'Looks like a burn,' said Susan, rolling a pledget into the mouth and forcing the jaw closed. 'Mistress, I have to move her to reach her lower parts.'

'Let me help.'

"Tisn't necessary, Mistress, really 'tisn't.'

'It is quite all right...'

Elizabeth sensed Susan's resentment at her interference. It was unlike the woman, with whom she had enjoyed a long and amicable relationship. Elizabeth began to sense something odd about the whole business and said, 'I wonder who she is? She is well dressed for travelling. This habit is exquisite ...'

'Mistress, I...'

'What on earth is the matter, Susan?'

"Tis the Captain, Mistress ...'

'The Captain?' quizzed Elizabeth, frowning. 'What on earth has he to do with this matter?'

Susan shook her head and said, 'If you wish to help, Mistress, take her camisole off. 'Twill be there if 'tis anywhere.'

'Susan! What in heaven's name are you talking about? What will be there?'

'It would have been better had you not known, my dear.'

Elizabeth spun round to see her husband standing just inside the parlour door. Both she and Susan sought to interpose themselves between Drinkwater and the pale form lying half exposed upon the table.

'Well, Susan?' Drinkwater addressed the housekeeper.

'Nothing yet, sir, but I haven't had time to ...'

'Nathaniel, what is all this about?'

'
Who
is all this about, my dear, would be more correct.'

'You know her, do you not?' Elizabeth's question was suddenly sharply charged with horrible suspicions.

'I do, yes. Or rather, I knew her. Once.'

'Shall I go, sir?' Susan asked anxiously, aware of the gleam in her mistress's eyes.

'That is not necessary,' Drinkwater said flatly. 'I have entrusted you to search her and you know enough to have your curiosity aroused. Such titillation only causes gossip. You would be prudent not to make too much of what you hear, and to speak about it only between yourselves.' He smiled, a thin, wan smile, so that Elizabeth's initial suspicion was at once confirmed. Yet she also felt strangely moved. There was much about the life her husband had led that she knew nothing of, but she sensed that if he had deceived her with this once lovely creature, there would have been more than common infidelity about it.

'She is, or was until last night, a sort of spy,' Drinkwater began, addressing Elizabeth. 'She peddled information and acted as a go-between. Her presence aboard a wrecked lugger in Ho'sley Bay argues strongly that she intended coming here ...'

'Here? To see you?' Elizabeth asked.

'Yes.' Drinkwater sighed. 'It is a long and complicated story, but many, many years ago she was among a group of
émigrés
we rescued off a beach in western France. Some time afterwards, while resident in England, she turned her coat and married a dashing French officer named Edouard Santhonax. It was he who gave me the sword-cut in the shoulder.' Drinkwater touched the place, and Elizabeth opened her mouth in astonishment.

'Later, he was sent out to the Red Sea where, by chance, I was party to the seizure of his frigate which I afterwards commanded ...'

'The
Melusine
?' asked Elizabeth, recalling the sequence of her husband's ships.

Drinkwater shook his head. 'No, it was some time after that...'

'The
Antigone
?'

Drinkwater nodded. 'But her husband and I were to cross paths again. It is odd, but I fought him not far ... no perhaps', he said wonderingly, 'on the very spot where she drowned. Just offshore here, some few miles off the Ness at Orford. I killed him in the fight...'

'Then you made a widow of her.' Elizabeth looked at the face now bound up with a bandage.

'Yes.'

'That is terrible.'

'I do not deny it. But had I not done so, there is little doubt but that he would have made a widow of you.'

Elizabeth considered the matter. 'How very strange.'

'That is not all.'

'You mean you ...'

'I have seen her since,' Drinkwater broke in, 'the last time less than a year ago, in April...'

'Nathaniel!'

'She came aboard
Andromeda
while we were anchored off Calais. She laid before me information concerning the intention of some French officers to liberate Napoleon after he was sent into exile.' He paused and gave a wry smile. 'It may sound extraordinary, but one might say the world owes the present peace, at least in part, to Hortense Santhonax ...'

They looked at the corpse with a curious fascination, the silence broken suddenly by a faint escape of gas from the body which moved slightly, startling them.

'Oh, Lord!' giggled Susan nervously, pressing a hand to her breast.

Drinkwater's expression remained grim. 'Come, Susan, search the lining of her habit.'

'Do you look for papers, Nathaniel?' Elizabeth asked.

'It occurs to me that she might have been carrying them, yes.'

'But the war is over.'

Yet she intended to come here. Unless she came on her own account, she must have had a purpose.'