Taking Liberties (57 page)

‘
You
can't come,' Makepeace said. ‘Not with your leg.'

‘Damned if I go without it,' he said. ‘And I tell you something. That boat out there? She is French.'

‘I don't care if she's Chinee,' said Rachel. ‘Are we going?'

They took the heavy longboat, Zack rowing with Josh, Makepeace with Rachel, de Vaubon taking two oars. Its bottom scraped loudly on the shingly sand as they pushed her into the water and they all glanced back at the Pomeroy, which remained silent.

As they went under the dark loom of T'Gallants, they heard a quiet cackle from Zack. ‘Want to wave to your sweetheart, Gil?'

Makepeace heard Rachel muttering, ‘Poor woman. John Paul Jones went after the wrong earl, I reckon. He could have this 'un, and welcome.'

Once they were in open sea, the moon seemed to shine on them as if it had picked them out for special illumination. The only sound was the quiet, rhythmic clunking of rowlocks and the hiss of blades. The tide was with them but Rachel was setting a rate that caused Makepeace to doubt whether she herself could keep up with it for long. It was over ten years since she'd rowed her small boat around Massachusetts Bay and she was no longer as muscular as she had been then. Or as young.

I'll get there if it kills me.

The heat from their mouths rose as steam into the air as they leaned back in a pull.

Andra. It was just possible. Might be.

She risked looking behind her and missed her stroke, making Rachel swear. They'd come a long way but there was as much to go again. She could make the boat out now even though it had lowered its sails. She'd dropped anchor. She was bigger than either the
Lark
or
Three Cousins
, bigger even than de Vaubon's
Margot
. A cutter, rigged fore and aft, very swift by the look of her.

And eight gun ports: sixteen cannon. She could blow Nicholls out of the water.

She prodded de Vaubon in the back with the toe of her boot. ‘Recognize her?'

He looked behind him. ‘A year ago I ordered a cutter like her from the Gruchy boatyard.'

‘See!' Rachel said, rowing harder.

‘Is that her?' Makepeace insisted.

‘Perhaps. But I do not like the white sail.'

No smuggler worth his salt put his vessel under white canvas: it was too noticeable by night.

It could be, though, Makepeace thought. And Andra could be aboard.

The wish was so intense she became angry.

I've never been first with him, never. Put me beside some alchemist with a plan to stop fire-damp and see who he'd choose. Blast him, he was so . . . admirable. His miners had better housing, better pay, better conditions than any in the North-East.

And who was the first down the mine with a dog on a long leash to check for gas? Never a thought for her and his children if he blew himself up. Haunted by the death of his brother, shredded by an explosion years before.

Dear God, he was a lovely man.

The skin was coming off the cushions of her palms; she arched her hands so that she could keep on rowing. And, blast him, he was a magnificent lover. Oh, Andra.

A hail came over the water. ‘Who are you?'

Rachel gave a sob of gratitude. ‘Who d'you bloody think?' she called.

Boarding nets came rolling down the cutter's side. Men were clambering down to help them up. Makepeace saw Rachel and Jan Gurney entangled in netting and each other before somebody's helpful hand under her backside hoisted her over the side onto the deck.

The mast lantern swayed in the gentle swell so that light swept over a bewildering press of faces and then left them. Somebody, she thought it was Eddie Gurney, was shaking her hand; an unknown Frenchman was kissing her on both cheeks; de Vaubon was being embraced by other Frenchmen; Zack was chattering to his grandsons . . .

‘Howay, pet,' said a voice behind her.

She stood where she was. ‘Where've you been, you
bastard
?' she said and heard her husband laugh. Then she turned.

A grim, stocky man, like a pugilist with his breadth of shoulder and his broken nose. Curly hair grizzled at the edges, dark eyes set deep under black eyebrows. Whatever the quality of his coat it was always reduced to the same shape by papers, tools and plans stuffed into the pockets, as they were now.

One part of her mind asked what all the fuss was about, even while her breath was snatched away. She wanted him so much she dare not touch him.

‘Got the cure for fire-damp yet?' she asked him, nastily.

‘Na, pet,' he said, ‘but we're nearer doon the road to findin' it.'

‘And the Paris women are pretty, I suppose?'

‘Bonniest I've evor seen,' he said, ‘but there wasn't one it'd be etornity to stay away from.'

‘Like me.'

‘Like you.'

What was it about him that could melt her into liquid? ‘I've missed you so much,' she said. ‘We've got ourselves in a fine old mess without you.'

She leaned her head against his shoulder and felt his arms go round her. He was here. He would manage things now; he always did.

Jan Gurney came up to hustle them below for a conference. ‘Dear goodness, what you women been up to? Got your voolish selves into a might of trouble, seemingly.'

‘Voolish?' she said, happily. ‘Who're you calling vools? Where've you
been
?'

Rachel, euphoric, slapped her husband hard and asked the same question.

Men were left on watch while the Babbs Cove contingent went below, fitting themselves round the long table in a cabin that smelled of new wood and bilge. Light from a single overhead lantern showed tired, russet Devon faces. Jan Gurney broached one of the barrels lashed in tiers to the bulkheads, and beakers were handed round so that the company could drink to its reunion in brandy of horrific proof.

Jan had aged. ‘We lost the
Lark
and the
Cousins
,' he said. ‘And Davy Salmon and Tommy Crabbe and young Sammy Kingcup.'

Rachel's eyes closed tight.

‘Storm it was, done for
Cousins
. Just out from Cherbourg. Sleet and snow come on sudden. Never seen the like of 'un. Blow, blow, blow, fit to tear your hair off, swept young Sammy overboard—he were gettin' down the tops'l. She started to fill. We got all the rest off somehow—an' if ever there were a miracle, it were then.
Lark
weathered the point.'

He looked across at de Vaubon. ‘That's a wicked coast of yourn, Gil.'

De Vaubon nodded.

It had been an appalling storm and appalling luck. They'd glimpsed the light at Gruchy, always kept burning by de Vaubon's retainers for their master's return as well as the smuggling fraternity they served, but as
Lark
was about to drop anchor she was holed beneath the waterline by a mast from a vessel wrecked further down the coast.

‘Worse nor a bloody batterin' ram,' Jan said. ‘Started sinkin' there 'n' then we did, and I thought it was up with the lot of us but your Gruchy lads, Gil, they got us a line and we went ashore one by one holdin' on to the bugger. My soul, I never seen waves like 'un.'

That was when Davy Salmon and Tommy Crabbe had been swept away.

Eddie said: ‘Found 'un both two days later when the wind dropped, lyin' in deep water just outside the harbour. Strangest sight I ever did see, you could tell their faces as they lay on the bottom, it was that clear.'

‘In your churchyard now, Gil,' Jan said.

A swing of the lantern showed their faces and compassionately hid them again. Rachel shook her head, spraying tears. ‘How to tell Sammy's ma, I don't know.'

‘How to tell any of 'un,' Jan said, heavily. ‘Nor how to tell Ralph us've sunk both the bloody boats. That's us ruined.'

They'd been marooned in a country at war with their own. It could have been worse; they were in a lonely area and sheltered by people of their own kind who would no more have dreamed of giving them up than would Babbs Cove if the position had been reversed. The European union of smuggling kept them safe—but boatless.

‘So you took my nice new cutter,' de Vaubon said.

Jan looked at him. ‘It was either that or take out French nationality. I ain't saying your Norman maids ain't pretty, but, well, Rachel may be a ugly old crow but I'm used to 'un.'

Rachel hit him.

They'd had to wait, Jan said. The cutter was still being built—under difficult circumstances. ‘If King Louis'd seen 'un, he'd have commandeered her for his bloody navy. Boatbuilders mostly had to work o' nights.'

‘Bloody cold it was, too,' Eddie said. ‘They couldn't use the metal without the skin came off they bloody hands.'

‘Then Andra turns up,' said Jan. ‘Tells us he's married to the Missus, and can we help 'un.'

‘More like he helped us,' Eddie said. ‘Wunnerful with his hands, Andra. Got that bloody mast stepped in a lick.'

Makepeace patted her husband's hand. The honorary smuggler. Send him anywhere and he fitted.

It hadn't been easy to persuade the Gruchy people, complaisant though they were, into allowing Englishmen to sail off with their master's brand-new boat. ‘Some of 'un's come with us, Gil, to help ee sail 'un back and see we didn't steal 'un,' Jan said. ‘We couldn't let 'un wait to tan the sails. Nor christen her.'

It was a measure of the Devonians' desperation and courtesy that they had set sail for England in a nameless, and therefore unlucky, boat. But to christen her themselves meant de Vaubon would have been stuck with what they called her for all time; changing a vessel's name was the unluckiest thing of all.

Jan had finished talking. What he and his men had endured: their losses; the weeks of frustration and waiting, being hidden from the watchful eye of French authorities; the long and arduous tack home in bitter weather—the account of these things would have to wait.

‘So our women been acquiring men, seemingly,' he said, looking around.

Makepeace's and Rachel's account of the situation at Babbs Cove took longer, and the discussion on what was to be done about it longer yet.

As she talked, Makepeace realized that she might have expected disapproval, even anger, from these men on hearing that their wives and daughters were helping to conceal twenty-one runaway prisoners of war.

There was none. Surprise, some jokes showing slight sexual suspicion, perhaps, but no condemnation. It was accepted that their women had become enmeshed in the Missus's and Ladyship's concerns as much as she and Ladyship had become enmeshed in their women's.

As for helping de Vaubon, their mutual past was so entangled with favours done and received that there could be no accounting of who owed what to whom in the generalized debt. It would be another venture in the chore of their lives. Dealing in contraband, outwitting the Revenue, overcoming their greater enemy, the sea: this was everyday business to them. The abnormal was their normality.

Flip a metaphorical coin with the King's head on it, Makepeace thought, and on the obverse you would find the face of Jan Gurney, or Zack, or Eddie, or any of them, men who felt as free to break the law as the great landowners of England considered themselves free to make it.

Muscled arms gleamed bronze in the lantern's swing. Callused hands, hard features, were illumined and darkened. Josh, sitting on Makepeace's other side, was tracing cut-throat silhouettes on the wood of the table in spilled brandy. Without thinking, she rubbed them out with her sleeve.

But he's seen it, she thought; Josh always sees. These men could kill if it came to it. Given the choice between killing and capture, they'd kill.

The question was: If they were resisted by one of their own; if one of their women, say, was disobedient, mutinous, displeased them, would they dub her mad and condemn her to the long death of confinement? Or was that a refinement only of England's ruling class?

That
was the question and it was time to ask it.

KEMPSON-JONES certified Mrs Green's death as natural and returned to his breakfast.

Diana remembered that there was a process called laying-out which must be gone through; when Aymer died a woman had been fetched from the nearest village to perform it.

‘Can you lay people out, Kitty?'

‘No, I can't, ma'am. It ain't my place.'

‘Run down to the village and ask Mrs Hallewell at the inn if she knows someone who can do it.'

The girl was flustered. ‘I can't, your ladyship.'

‘Why not?'

‘I'm not supposed to leave you alone, your ladyship. In case you need anything, like.'

It had begun; she had acquired a keeper already.

‘Then ask the Countess to come to me here. One presumes you can leave me alone while you go downstairs and up again.'

She was putting on the old disguise, she could feel it stiffening on her face, hear her voice adopt boredom. Dignity was the only resource they'd left her.

Not again, she thought. I can't go through it again.

Alice was surprisingly helpful. ‘I'd forgotten the poor soul was still lying here. Presumably there's someone in the village who can build a coffin and make the arrangements. I suppose it is for us to pay for the funeral.'

‘I suppose it is. Zack Lewis in the village can turn his hand to everything. He would know who could lay her out.'

‘I'll get Tinkler to send for him. He can do the measuring or whatever it is one does.' Alice looked at the sheeted figure in the bed and shuddered. ‘Where do we put her?'