Smugglers' Summer (25 page)

Julia screamed.

At last she reached the clearing by the chapel. Julia was standing against the door, her arms spread as if to defend it against all comers. Sir Tristram was nearly at her side, his mouth open, his voice indistinguishable from those of the four smugglers, who were all still shouting. They had drawn pistols and cutlasses and were advancing in a semicircle on the chapel. Octavia recognised the piratical face of the one-eyed Yorkshireman, and hook-handed Dan Small.

Julia’s high voice cut through the clamour.

“James, jump!”

Everyone fell silent. There was a rustling in the bushes.

“Good-bye, my love!” called James.

The sailors rushed towards the sound. Sir Tristram and Julia ran after them. Octavia followed slowly, still breathless, a grin dawning.

By the time she joined the others at the top of the cliff, the smugglers and Sir Tristram were all in whoops. Julia alternated between scolding them and calling words of encouragement towards the river.

Octavia looked down. James Wynn sprawled on his back in the mud, his legs buried above the knees. As she watched, he attempted to lever himself up. His arm sank in to the shoulder and he pulled it free with a great deal of difficulty and a horribly glutinous noise.

“Help him!” wailed Julia.

Biting her lip to stop herself joining the laughter, Octavia hurried to her cousin’s side and put an arm about her shoulders.

“We’ll rescue him, never fear,” she promised. “The tide is still ebbing so there is no immediate danger. Oh dear, whatever possessed him to jump over?”

“Sir Richard Edgcumbe escaped that way,” said Julia with injured dignity. “I shall never believe another romantic legend as long as I live.”

“I was afraid you had misinterpreted the story. Sir Richard only threw his cap over, and even then he must have known it was high tide for his enemies would never have been misled by a cap lying on the mud!”

“James said they are Bow Street runners come to arrest him for the article he wrote, so I told him he must swim across the river and find somewhere to hide.” Julia burst into tears. “And I was so afraid he would drown and now everyone is laughing at him and they will catch him and take him away to prison.

“No, Ju, they are smugglers! They think he is a spy for the Customs and Excise. Sir Tristram will tell them he is not, as soon as he stops guffawing.” She glared at the baronet.

“But why should they think he is a spy? And why should they believe Sir Tristram that he is not?”

“He has been seen talking to Lieutenant Cardin. It seems everyone at Cotehele knows James is here, and probably why, but the smugglers misunderstood what some old man said. I daresay he was jesting about our suitors.”

“How odious! Tavy, do not stand here talking, we must save poor James! What shall we do?”

Except for occasional chuckles, the men had stopped laughing. The smugglers were listening to Sir Tristram’s assurance of Mr Wynn’s innocence, at least as far as their suspicions were concerned. He was being as tactful as possible about the real reason for James’s presence in the chapel, but inevitably they guessed the truth. Dan Small winked at Julia, to her fury.

“Pay un no mind, missy,” advised the Yorkshireman kindly, enveloping the girls in a cloud of rum fumes. “Us’ll fish thy lover out, never fear.” He turned to Octavia. “Us be right good rescuers, bain’t we, missy?”

“We plumb fergot as the lieutenant ‘ad other good reasons for comin’ ‘ere, miss,” added Dan Small, with an apologetic wave of his hook.

Octavia flushed at Julia’s astonished look. She had never mentioned that the sailors who had rescued her from the waters of the Plymouth Sound had been smugglers, and she had forgotten that they had witnessed Mr Cardin’s impassioned promise to wait for her.

“They seem to be acquainted with you as well as with Sir Tristram,” Julia said acidly.

One of the respectable-looking seamen reminded Dan Small that they had come to see the captain.

“Us brung un some do’s,” he added.

Sir Tristram persuaded them that it was not safe to approach his hiding place in daylight, but as the tide would not turn till after midnight, they might come back after dark.

“Jack is much improved,” he assured them, “but one arm is very weak. I doubt he’ll go to sea again.”

“Captain Day would be dead,” Octavia interrupted, “if Mr Wynn, who is stuck down there in the mud, had not doctored him. Do let us go to his aid.”

Julia, who had been listening in mounting astonishment and indignation, snorted in a sadly unladylike manner.

“I do not care to know about your havey-cavey goings-on,” she said coldly, “but since you are all too busy discussing Captain Day’s health, I shall doubtless find someone at the quay to assist me.” She turned on her heel and set off down the path, then spoiled the effect by running back to call down to James a promise of prompt rescue.

Sir Tristram glanced down the cliff, and such an expression of unholy glee entered his eyes that Octavia was afraid he would start laughing again. She pinched him.

“Come on!” she hissed. “We cannot let her go alone.”

They all headed back down the path towards the quay. Fortunately Julia’s notion of a rapid walk was much more ladylike than her snort, since Octavia was unable to manage more than a strolling pace. Sir Tristram strode ahead; the four sailors ambled behind, in no great hurry to deliver their victim from his predicament.

When Julia and Octavia reached the quay, Sir Tristram was explaining the situation to the fishermen, and to a crowd of amused wharf and farm labourers who had come out of the alehouse.

The salmon fishers shook their heads. It was nearly low tide; the boats, shallow-draughted as they were, could not be launched for an hour or two, and if they could, it would be impossible to row in close enough to the gentleman to pull him out.

The seamen refused to allow that a mere river could stop them. As soon as rivalry entered the picture, they were full of zeal for the rescue. Their boat, the
Seamew’s
gig, was resting on mud but there was water still at the end of one dock, which had recently been dredged. Enlisting a couple of the sturdiest wharfmen, they pulled it bodily from the riverbed and lowered it again in a couple of feet of water.

The fishermen, meanwhile, not to be outdone, had put on their thigh-boots and waded ankle-deep into the mud to push their dory riverward. Julia ran along the quay, insisting that she must go too, and Octavia, with a tired shrug, followed her. She would have preferred to sit and watch the whole affair, but thought it best not to let her cousin go alone.

Three of the smugglers had climbed into the gig, and its keel was touching bottom. Nonetheless, the Yorkshireman swung the girls into it, followed them, and pushed off hard with a boathook. They slithered into deeper water. The fishing dory came after them, with Sir Tristram, resigned, sitting in the bow.

The tide was slack. Rowing against the Tamar’s current, the gig with four oarsmen soon outdistanced the dory. They swung round the grassy curve and the cliff came in sight. At its foot, helpless as a fly in a spider’s web, James Wynn lay patiently in his sticky trap some twenty feet from the water’s edge.

“He does not seen interested in escaping,” observed Octavia. “I expect he is rehearsing his next article in his head.”

“James!” cried Julia.

At the sound of her voice, he raised his head a little, then lifted his arm to wave. This gesture pushed his upper body downwards, so he quickly lowered it again.

The fishermen came up beside the smugglers, oarsmen sculling gently to keep their place.

“Un be too var to reach wi’ the boathook,” confirmed one of the fishers with gloomy satisfaction. “Be a tidy while afore tide’ll be up enow.”

“Can none of you throw a rope’s end accurately enough to reach him?” Sir Tristram demanded irritably of the smugglers. “Fine sailors you are! Jack Day would be ashamed of you.”

Octavia thought this somewhat unfair to the Yorkshireman and Dan Small. The missing eye of the one must impair his aim and the missing hand of the other make it difficult to throw at all. However, one of the others found a small coil of rope in the bilge and stood up, preparing to toss one end.

“Wynn, we shall throw a rope to you,” called Sir Tristram. “You had best cover your face, but be ready to seize it.”

It took four attempts, and James’s antics had sunk him several inches deeper before he had a secure hold on his lifeline. The fishermen were shaking their heads and hiding grins, but they said nothing as the smugglers began to haul on the rope.

With a gurgling swish he came free. He slid smoothly across the mud towards the gig, and the gig slid smoothly towards him through the water until the keel slid smoothly into the mud and stopped.

Dan Small cursed and tried to push off with the boat-hook. It sank into bottomless ooze. He had to stick his hook hand into one of the benches and pull with all the strength of his overdeveloped right arm to retrieve it. The others philosophically ignored the chortles of the river boatmen. They dragged James up to the side of their stranded craft and lifted him in.

Julia embraced him, filth and all.

He was shivering in the blustery wind, but apparently quite unaware of the ridiculous spectacle he had made of himself. He had an innate dignity, or perhaps, thought Octavia, an innate lack of dignity, which protected him from self-consciousness. He thanked the smugglers for rescuing him, without the least suggestion that they had been responsible for his problem in the first place.

“Now we shall pull them off,” said Sir Tristram to his crew.

The old man took up his oars. The other two looked doubtful and shook their heads.

“Tide’ll float ‘em in a while,” one of them pointed out.

“There is still half an hour till low tide!” The baronet was clearly growing impatient with the whole business. “Go in closer and take their rope, then row downstream. They cannot possibly pull you onto the mud with them.”

“Pray do bring us off!” pleaded Octavia. “Mr Wynn is chilled to the bone and must not wait for the tide.”

“Fer missy’s zake,” urged old Ned Poldhu.

The two younger fishermen gave in and soon both boats were heading back to the quay.

The Edgcumbe Arms, being only an alehouse as the landlady apologetically explained, could not provide better than an attic chamber for Mr Wynn. To this she promised to bear her own tin bathtub and plenty of hot water. Octavia with difficulty persuaded Julia to leave her beloved to the landlady’s ministrations. It was past time to change for dinner and Julia herself was sadly in need of a bath.

They left Sir Tristram talking to the smugglers and walked wearily up the drive.

They all arrived at the dinner table several minutes after the gong had sounded. Lady Langston accepted their apologies and excuses with unruffled calm.

“You will not make a habit of it, I know,” she said. “I have received a communication from Lord Edgcumbe. He brings a party here again the day after tomorrow and it will not do to be late for dinner while he is here. Fortunately Mrs Pengarth returned this afternoon, in time to make all the arrangements."

Julia looked as if Mrs Pengarth’s return brought her no comfort. With their host and his guests about the place it would be difficult or impossible to continue her meetings with James.

Octavia saw her distress and squeezed her hand. “Do not worry,” she whispered, “I have an idea. I will tell you after dinner.”

“There is a great deal you must tell me!” Julia whispered back.

Miss Crosby frowning her disapproval of this furtive exchange, they both sat up straight and applied themselves to their plates.

Sir Tristram was distrait. He several times answered Lady Langston at random and ate what he was offered without his usual wholehearted enjoyment. When the ladies withdrew he did not go with them as was his custom, but asked Raeburn to bring the brandy.

The girls went to the spinet, where under cover of Julia’s idle strumming Octavia explained her idea.

“James shall come the day after tomorrow to stay here!” she declared. “Only think, Lord Edgcumbe will suppose him a guest of my aunt, and she will believe he is a member of that party! I am certain she does not recall his name, for she told me so weeks ago and I made sure not to mention it."

“Tavy! Do you really think it is possible? I am so afraid he is going to be ill after what happened today, but if he was here I could nurse him.”

“You will have to be careful. You must pretend to be strangers."

“At least he will be better off here than at that tavern or in the chapel. But when I asked you to post that letter in Plymouth you were unwilling to help us. Why have you changed your mind?”

Octavia pictured James lying on his back in the mud. Julia had not seen him as either ridiculous or pitiable, though he could scarcely have appeared to his beloved in less gallant guise.

“I have come to the conclusion that you will suit very well,” she said. “We shall endeavour to convince your mama that he is an eligible gentleman, and then we shall go to work on your papa. After all, he cannot keep you here forever, and when you are back in London you may discover to him that James is to inherit land. Do you suppose you might persuade James to give up the excesses of rhetoric? Sir Tristram said that his views are actually perfectly acceptable when stripped of flowery verbiage.”

“I shall try!” Julia assured her grimly. “When we are married he may go back to his sonorous periods. But I fear Papa will never accept him as long as Sir Tristram continues to seek my hand.”

Octavia did not want to think about Sir Tristram. “Let me tell you about Captain Day,” she proposed.

“Yes, do! What is all this mystery that has been going on under my nose? It is monstrous provoking in you not to have let me into the secret!”

“It was not our secret. Captain Day’s life was at stake! But now the worst danger seems to have passed, so there is little risk from a slip of the tongue."

Julia was offended at the suggestion that she could not govern her tongue, but the story fascinated her.

“And he is related to Lord Edgcumbe!” she marvelled. “Well, if the earl is to introduce the captain to the company without arousing suspicion, he will scarce quibble if we do the same for James!”