‘As much as possible.’
‘Wise decision,’ said Briggs. ‘It’s a lonely life for a woman, being a sailor’s wife. Mrs Briggs has sailed with me often.’
‘Not easy with children, though.’
‘True enough,’ accepted Briggs. ‘It’ll be more difficult when Sophia starts her schooling.’
As if reminded, Richardson looked towards the cabin door.
‘Line should be up by now,’ he said.
Briggs rose, leading the way from the cabin. As they emerged on deck, Briggs saw Arien Martens, the German whom he knew to hold a mate’s certificate, helping the baby into a halter. As he got closer, he saw it had been carefully made from thin rope plaited and then fashioned into a tiny bodice that fitted over Sophia’s shoulders, looped criss-cross over her back and then connected with a tiny belt. From the belt another plaited line had been spliced around a metal ring, the other end connected to another metal ring that could run freely along a length of rope that had been strung between the two masts.
Sarah, who was crouched alongside the child, looked up at her husband’s approach.
‘Look what Mr Martens has made,’ said the woman, her delight obvious.
A great deal of care had gone into the construction of the safety line and harness, Briggs realised. He nodded to the sailor.
‘It’s first-class,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
The man jerked his head, almost the beginning of a bowing motion and then clipped the harness into place on the line. Pandering to the attention, Sophia ran the full length between the two masts and then turned, coming back. Briggs frowned, then saw that the connecting line against the bodice ran free along the belt, so that the child could move in both directions instead of having to call for assistance every time she got to the end of the line and wanted to return.
‘ Really first-class,’ he said again, to the man. ‘Mrs Briggs and I are most grateful.’
Richardson and the sailor moved forwards, towards the hatch over which Boz Lorensen was still hunched, straining to get the boat properly secured. Sophia continued to scuttle about the deck, looking around anxiously to ensure that the attention was still upon her.
‘I shall have no fear of Sophia being on deck in that,’ said Sarah.
‘No,’ agreed Briggs.
‘I regret not being able to attend church before we sailed,’ said Sarah suddenly.
‘So do I,’ said Briggs, recalling his decision that day on the way to the shipping office. ‘But it couldn’t be avoided.’
The time he had intended spending in worship had been passed instead in the attempt to find a replacement longboat. He looked to the stern; a holding stay had been looped through the empty davits. Beyond the vessel, he was suddenly aware of the increasing lightness in the sky. He could detect the skyline now.
‘Weather’s lifting,’ he said.
His wife moved close to his side.
‘I’ve got a feeling, Benjamin,’ she said.
He looked down to her curiously.
‘I’ve got a feeling that we have got an excellent crew, an excellent boat and that we are going to have an excellent voyage.’
He smiled, enjoying her extravagance.
‘This is going to be the beginning of a fine time for us,’ insisted the woman. ‘It won’t be long before it will be “Winchester amp; Briggs”.’
He laughed openly at her.
‘I fear there’s some way to go before that,’ he said. ‘We’ve not one voyage completed yet.’
‘I can’t see anything that can upset it, can you?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t.’
‘Then don’t be such a pessimist,’ she protested.
‘Better if one of us keeps a sound head,’ he said, in mock seriousness.
She gazed up at him, her smile became an expression of affection.
‘I feel so very secure with you, Benjamin,’ she said. ‘When I’m with you I never think any harm could befall me.’
He became truly serious.
‘I’ll see it never does,’ he promised.
‘Me! Me!’
They turned. Sophia was standing at the end of the line, arms outstretched and face twisted into the beginning of tears at being completely ignored.
Briggs went to her, unclipped the line and took her into his arms.
‘You too,’ he said, nuzzling the child’s hair with his face. ‘I’ll keep you safe, too.’
‘That’s great comfort to me,’ Sarah said.
He looked at her, not understanding.
‘Knowing how well the children would be cared for if anything happened to me,’ enlarged the woman.
He looked over the child’s shoulder as Richardson moved back along the deck.
‘Getting better,’ said the first mate, looking out to sea.
‘Aye,’ said Briggs. ‘Prepare to sail.’
Frederick Flood decided it would have taken someone far more astute than any at the enquiry to notice a difference in his demeanour. That there was a difference he accepted readily enough, for just as he had earlier recognised his confidence, he now made a conscious effort to be honest with himself. It was his confidence that had suffered from Dr Patron’s visit to his home the previous evening. But just his confidence; certainly not his conviction that crime was at the root of the Mary Celeste mystery. The analyst was an incompetent fool who had clearly carried out the wrong experiments. The Attorney-General had had no scientific training but he had gained a passing knowledge during his long career. Solvents rather than water would have proved the particles to be what they unquestionably were, blood. It would have been impossible to take up the samples without taking metal scrapings at the same time. And of course those minute metal pieces would have rusted, submerged, as the man had conceded, for nearly a day in water. Once he had identified carbonate of iron, the idiot had considered his search over.
Flood frowned, hunched over his papers. Had he not kept Patron’s examination absolutely secret, Flood would have suspected him of collusion with either Winchester or Morehouse and accused him of something far graver than incompetence.
He sighed. A realist, he accepted that nothing was to be achieved by recrimination. The evidence — the damning, clinching evidence which he had this day intended to announce to the enquiry and shatter all these carefully rehearsed accounts of derelict ships on the high seas — had been destroyed. It merely made his job harder; harder, but not impossible.
He shifted his attention, to where a scrap of cloth at the top of his bench covered against casual examination the exhibits he intended introducing. The now useless sword was there; and something else, which might have as upsetting an effect upon today’s witness as he had hoped the weapon would do.
His gaze continued on to where Oliver Deveau, first mate of the Dei Gratia, was moving to the end of his evidence-in-chief, guided by the lawyer Pisani. Without the positive identification of blood, which would have shown the man’s evidence to be nothing more than perjury, there was only one course left open to Flood. By the expertise and cleverness of his cross-examination he would have to make the court aware of the utter impossibility of what the Dei Gratia crew were claiming. And if such an admission could be obtained, this was the man from whom it should come. By his own evidence, Deveau had conceded that it had been he who first stepped aboard the Mary Celeste on December 5. If heinous work had been done that day, then Deveau had been actively involved.
No one had noticed his slight lessening in confidence, realised Flood, as Pisani sat down and Cochrane invited him to take up the questioning. Deveau was clearly ill at ease; more frightened than Morehouse had been the previous day. Occasionally the man’s hand strayed up to his beard in a vague, combing motion and he felt his hair several times, as if assuring himself that it was not disarranged.
The inability to attack immediately with positive proof of bloodstaining was monstrous, decided Flood, as he
