Smuggler's Kiss (22 page)

I parted from Ann with much affection, embracing her and thanking her for having me to stay. I wished I could have given her some parting gift for all the care she’d lavished on me, but Will had left me no money, and I hadn’t thought to ask for any.

‘You can say your goodbyes all you like,’ said Ann cheerfully, ‘but you may be back later for all that. The run doesn’t always take place on the first night, nor yet the second.’

‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘But I’ve a good feeling about tonight.’

I set off full of eagerness. The bright day lifted my mood still further, and the walk was exhilarating. I had a packet of food and some water in a basket, together with my bright red cloak and a tinderbox. This last item Ann had come running after me with, telling me to tuck it into my basket ‘in case of need’. I hadn’t been able to imagine what I’d need a tinderbox for, but I’d accepted it without question, tucked it into the bottom of the basket and promptly forgotten about it. My thoughts were all on rejoining
The Invisible
that night.

I reached Hen Cliff much earlier than was necessary, found a relatively sheltered spot from which I could see both the beach and the surrounding countryside and settled down to watch and wait. The brightness faded as I ate my meal and the sun dropped towards the west. Soon it would be time for me to walk back and forth along the cliff top, to signal
The Invisible
. All seemed quiet and safe. I’d seen no one but a shepherd pass by in the hour or so I’d been here, and no one could approach the beach without me seeing. I just needed to wait for the landers to contact me to let me know they were in place to receive the contraband.

I unpacked my red cloak and laid it on the ground beside me. Wrapping my arms about my body, I rocked myself back and forth, hoping I could start to walk soon. It was cold and exposed up here.

I stroked the cloak, and as I looked back up again, I caught a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. I stared down at the beach, puzzled. Something had moved. What was it? A crab? A dog? I was certain I’d seen something.

The beach was a long stretch of rock and shingle, empty and deserted in the pale winter light. A fresh wind was blowing and there were white-crested waves rolling onto the beach. But I was almost certain it wasn’t the waves that had moved. I ran my eyes slowly along the beach, noting the large patches of seaweed and driftwood lying strewn across the shingle. The seaweed all lay in a long strip, marking the high-tide line. Except that now I looked more closely, it didn’t. Some was heaped further back in piles. That was where I’d caught sight of the movement.

Footsteps behind me and the sound of someone clearing their throat made me jump out of my skin, and slip dangerously close to the edge of the cliff. The man behind me grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back to safety.

‘Cousin Jacky’s arriving,’ he said with his eyes on the red cloak lying on the grass beside me.

‘I’m here to meet him,’ I responded as I’d been told. He nodded, apparently satisfied. I took stock of him. He wasn’t anyone I remembered seeing before, but then landing almost always took place under cover of darkness. He was a broad stocky man, not tall, but undoubtedly strong. He had a beard and wore a cap pulled down low over his eyes. I knew better by now than to ask his name or give mine.

‘Been here long?’ he asked.

‘An hour or so. You?’

‘Just got here.’ He nodded his head to a line of men walking down from the far side of the bay. ‘Those are our men. You seen anyone?’

I shook my head. ‘Only a shepherd. But just now, I thought I saw … ’

I looked back down to the beach, remembering that puzzling certainty I’d had that there was something out of the ordinary down there. Nothing stirred except a gull, walking along the beach.

‘What?’ asked the lander.

‘What could be making the seaweed move?’ I asked him.

He peered short-sightedly down into the bay and then shrugged. ‘The gull?’ he asked.

I sighed, an uncomfortable feeling still knotting itself in my belly. ‘Perhaps,’ I agreed. I got up and shook out my cloak. ‘Is it time?’ I asked. The day was already dimming. Soon they would no longer be able to see me from
The Invisible
.

The man nodded and made off to ready his men. I slung the cloak about my shoulders and began to stroll casually along the top of Hen Cliff. The wind caught at my cloak, making it billow out behind me like a flag. I smiled in satisfaction. I must be easy to spot through a telescope. I walked the full length of the cliff, turned and walked back. As I drew nearer the beach again, I looked down closely at it, still wondering what it was that had moved. I had no real apprehension that it was human, and therefore a danger to the venture. There were quite clearly no people on the beach. I stared at it for a long time, but saw nothing. And then, at last, when I was about to give up, a pile of seaweed twitched.

I frowned, staring down at the place where I’d seen movement. Could a seal be hiding on the beach among the seaweed? The hairs rose on the back of my neck. Not seals, but … could there be customs men hiding down there under the seaweed?

They would have had to have arrived hours ago and dug themselves down into the beach. All those hours lying in the cold damp shingle? Surely not. Was there a customs man in existence that was that dedicated?

I stood frozen with indecision on the cliff. What should I do? Raise the alarm? It was a drastic measure on so slight a suspicion. Everyone would be so angry with me if I were to postpone the run for nothing.

And yet. If there really were king’s men lying there, Will and Jacob and the others could all be caught. They could be hurt or imprisoned. And the valuable cargo lost.

At the thought of Will being shot or injured, I began to run. I ran in the direction the lander had taken, hoping to find him and to persuade him to search the beach. My feet flew over the sparse turf of the stony ground and my heart hammered in my chest.

If I was right and there was an ambush down there on the shore, then it would have been I who had drawn
The Invisible
straight into it. I had signalled to the ship that the coast was clear. But perhaps it was not.

I slipped and scrambled down the steep path that led from Hen Cliff to the bay itself. Once or twice I nearly missed my footing and tumbled, but I recovered and kept hurrying. At the bottom of the path, I ran along the back of the beach until I almost tripped over the landers who were lying in the long vegetation.

I cried out with shock, and one of them grabbed hold of me and clapped a hand over my mouth. I fought him. The light was fading fast now, the setting sun firing the sky in the west with reds and oranges.

I stopped struggling and the hand eased cautiously from my mouth. ‘What’s wrong?’ asked the man.

‘I gave the signal,’ I replied frantically. ‘But I don’t believe that the beach is safe! I saw movement.’

‘There’s no one there. We’ve checked,’ he said impatiently. ‘You’re putting us all in danger running around and screeching like that!’

‘I believe they’ve hidden themselves in the seaweed,’ I cried. ‘Will you not at least let me go and look? Otherwise you could all be caught and the cargo lost!’

‘Hidden in the seaweed? Are you mad?’ chuckled a man in a smock and straw hat.

‘Excise men are far too stupid for such a ruse!’ scoffed another, a tall thin man in baggy clothes.

‘There are too many of us,’ growled my captor. ‘We’re a match for them whatever they do.’

‘But they’ll be armed. They could have soldiers with them,’ said another. ‘Men could be lost.’

The man I’d spoken to earlier who seemed to be the leader looked around his men doubtfully. ‘Someone should go and look, to be sure,’ he said at last. ‘We need to warn
The Invisible
off if it’s true.’ A man looked out to sea, shielding his eyes with one hand and reported: ‘She’s in sight.’

In the end they let me go. I wrapped my cloak close about me and pulled my hood over my head to hide my features. Then I crunched out onto the shingle beach, my basket on my arm. My heart was hammering. If there really were excise men down there, what would they do when they realized I had rumbled them? Would they capture me or leave me be?

Trying to behave as a beachcomber might, I paused to turn over driftwood and seaweed and pretended to be hunting for items of value. I looked up once and saw
The Invisible
sailing straight towards the bay, her sails bellied out before her. I could clearly recognize her at this distance. Hurriedly, I bent and turned over another piece of driftwood. All the time I was drawing closer to those suspicious piles of rubbish above the tide line.

Before I even reached them, I trod on some shingle that gave way and grunted under my feet. Horrified, I stepped back. The stones had slipped where I’d trodden and I thought I could see a patch of blue uniform poking through. Was it merely a piece of old fabric? Or a dead body?

I stepped carefully around whatever it was, and crouched at the first patch of seaweed, carefully turning it over in my hands, piece by piece. I felt sick with fear.

I pulled away a strip that exposed a pair of dark eyes staring back at me in the gloom. I caught my breath and flinched back in shock, but not before the pile had erupted, a strong hand had shot out and grabbed my wrist.

I stifled a shriek of terror and tugged vainly. ‘Hush! You’ve no need to be frightened,’ said a hoarse voice rusty with disuse. He cleared his throat and spoke again. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘Lookin’ for stuff,’ I said, imitating the voices of the village girls I’d heard over the past weeks. ‘I ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong.’

‘Well, it’s far too late for you to be out. It’s getting dark! There could be trouble here very soon. Go home and say nothing to anyone! Do you understand?’

‘Yessir … ’ I said, backing away, the moment he loosened his grip on me.

‘Not that way!’ he hissed as he saw me retracing my steps. ‘Go further up the beach!’

I obeyed him, feeling sick with fear. It occurred to me there could be soldiers about that he didn’t want me to run into. If they’d got here before me, they could be concealed somewhere.

I struggled across the shingle as swiftly as I could, my feet slipping in my hurry to leave the beach. I found a path that led up behind it and began to run. I needed to tell the others there was danger. They might not have seen what I found. I reached a small hummock and climbed it, panting with exertion now.

Below me and to my left, I saw with a jolt of shock that the landers were now sitting huddled into a group. Crouched down, surrounding them, muskets trained, was a ring of three dragoons. Another soldier was waiting in the long grasses, his muskets trained on the beach. Where had they lain hidden?

Instantly, I dropped down into the grass myself, hoping none of them had noticed that I’d spotted them. This had been an ambush. We had a traitor among us. There was no other possible way that the soldiers could have known so precisely when and where the run would be.

Cautiously I raised my eyes to look once more. None of the soldiers were looking in my direction. I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. I realized none of the landers could now signal the ship. I turned and looked out to sea. She was close now. I could see every sail, every mast, and I could even make out tiny figures moving about on the decks in the dusk.

My friends were sailing straight into a deadly trap. And there was no sign of it from out in the bay. There was no one but me to warn them, but what could I do? My cloak was useless now that it was dark. I had no lantern.

I pressed my face into the damp, cold ground, panic gripping me. Then I gave myself a shake. I couldn’t give in, I had to do something. Think! I told myself furiously. What would Will do?

In a moment, I’d grasped my basket and was fumbling in it. At the bottom was the tinderbox that Ann had given me. Now I knew what that ‘need’ might be. I had a vivid memory of the gorse bushes that had been fired the night I’d been taken aboard
The Invisible.
A warning, bright enough to be seen from sea.

Abandoning my basket, I ran for the cliffs, clutching the tinderbox to me. I threw myself up the steep path, racing frantically upwards, leaping from rock to rock, to get the best possible footing on the steep slope. I had to get to the top before anyone saw me. Darkness was falling fast now, so I could hope no one would spot me, or think anything of it if they did. My breathing was coming in desperate gasps before I was halfway to the top of the cliff.

I paused and risked a glance behind me. No one was following. But out to sea,
The Invisible
had lowered her boats and was loading kegs and men into them. I had to warn them away before they reached the beach.

I turned and began to run upwards once more. By the time I reached the top, I was gasping raggedly and the sweat was pouring off me. Where was some suitable gorse? I needed a bush that grew right on the cliff edge and would be clearly visible from the ship.

I almost stumbled into a sharp bush in the dark. I dropped to my knees beside it, ignoring the prickles that stabbed into my knees and scraped my hands. With desperate, clumsy fingers, I fumbled with the tinderbox trying to get it to work. The first spark fell upon my cloak and almost set it alight. Beating it out with my hands, I tried again.

The first boat had left the ship now and was heading in towards the beach, loaded with incriminating evidence. Anyone caught with kegs of French cognac could be thrown into gaol. Worst of all, they might fight to defend themselves and lives could be lost.

Several more sparks flew, but failed to light the bush. At last, one landed on a branch and glowed. I bent over it, cursing the painful scratches I was getting, and blew softly on it. It glowed brighter and then caught in a tiny flame. The flame grew. It spread along the branch and began to crackle.

I’d done it. But was I in time?

I backed away and looked out to sea. The first boat was halfway to the beach. The second had left the ship. On the dark beach, I could see no movement at all; no sign that an untold number of men lay concealed in the shingle.