But Robert, who was odd but no fool, could see that his father hadn’t yet grasped the point.
“It’s not just an exercise, Father,” he said.
“Of course not.”
“It’s practical,” Robert persisted, “For example. Match your firm dates to shipping records and you can track down the crew of the rescue ship that took Sir Owain to safety.”
Suddenly, Sebastian understood.
It was brilliant. With patient analysis, Robert had deconstructed the author’s method and performed a fractional separation of fact and fiction, with a precise grading of all the shades in between. It was detailed and obsessive, and-professionally speaking-a significant piece of detective work.
“That’s very impressive, Robert,” was all he could say. “Thank you.”
“And I don’t want the money,” Robert said. “It’s my contribution. To help us get by.”
Happy now, Robert went back to his room.
Alone, Sebastian paced for a while. Then he added a piece of coal to the fire, which was beginning to die. He wasn’t ready for sleep yet, and with the fire gone the room would quickly lose its heat to the night. This was one of those occasions when he could be dazed by Robert’s flights of intellect.
He thought he might tell Elisabeth. But when he went to check, she’d turned out her light. He backed off quietly, not wanting to risk disturbing her.
Back in the sitting room, he picked her rug off the chair and shook it out. Elisabeth’s recovery seemed worryingly slow. Sebastian wasn’t sure whether to blame her actual injury or the degree to which it had shaken her, but he’d seen no real improvement since the day he’d brought her home. She hardly slept. Any movement or disturbance during the night would cause her pain.
He took the poker from the grate and gave the fire one last rake-over. Then he wrapped the rug around himself and settled into a chair for the night.
The river now widened so that in places it looked like a long lake; it wound in every direction through the endless marshy plain, whose surface was broken here and there by low mountains. The splendor of the sunset I never saw surpassed. We were steaming east toward clouds of storm. The river ran, a broad highway of molten gold, into the flaming sky; the far-off mountains loomed purple across the marshes; belts of rich green, the river banks stood out on either side against the rose-hues of the rippling water; in front, as we forged steadily onward, hung the tropic night, dim and vast.
No less than six weeks were spent in slowly and with peril and exhausting labor forcing our way down through what seemed a literally endless succession of rapids and cataracts. For forty-eight days we saw no human being. In passing these rapids we lost five of the seven canoes with which we started and had to build others. One of our best men lost his life in the rapids. Under the strain one of the men went completely bad, shirked all his work, stole his comrades’ food and when punished by the sergeant he with cold-blooded deliberation murdered the sergeant and fled into the wilderness.
THIRTY-FIVE
The Trafalgar tavern, on the Great Bend in the Thames at Greenwich, was a large Georgian inn with dining rooms downstairs and a ballroom above. It had balconies and a terrace that overlooked the river, and to save her from waiting alone on the public embankment, the management allowed Evangeline to take a seat and watch for the ferry from there. The balconies were said to be copies of the stern galley of the HMS
There was a train off the rails at Deptford, so she was hoping to see Sebastian Becker among the Greenwich steamer’s next batch of passengers. They had agreed a time to meet, and he was late.
A waiter came out onto the terrace. He wore a long white apron, like a Parisian
“Nothing, thank you,” she said. “I see a mist beginning to rise. Is it likely to get much worse?”
“I daresay it will,” he said. “On the other hand, it may not.”
“Does it interfere with the steamer service?”
“Sometimes it do, sometimes it doesn’t.”
“That’s very helpful,” she said. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he said, and went back inside.
Evangeline’s law chambers handled some maritime business, and through records and by telegraph she’d been able to make some progress in fleshing out the real-life details of Sir Owain Lancaster’s movements at sea, as deciphered by Becker’s son from the man’s fictionalized narrative.
Though there was nothing improper about it, there was a clandestine element to her support for Becker’s inquiries. She preferred not to have it known that she was helping him, or how he’d managed to trace her. Evangeline’s arrest at the Downing Street protest had been the result of an early militancy; she’d been swept up in the Women’s Social and Political Union when a stenography student, and, at that young age, she’d been eager to compel change by the most immediate means. But now the nature of her employment put her in an awkward position, forcing her to balance conscience and necessity. Three years ago she’d given up the WSPU for the more pacifist Women’s Freedom League. She remained committed, and continued to wear the discreet badge of her allegiance. But she’d break no more windows, and would take care to avoid the risk of another arrest. It was wrong that her employers might dismiss her for political reasons, but dismiss her they would.
Looking toward the Pool of London from the Trafalgar’s terrace, she thought she could see a plume of white. She suspected that it might be from the smokestack of the London Bridge passenger steamer, but it was hard to be sure. The smoke was barely distinguishable from the general heavy mist that lay across the busy waterway today. The vessels that had passed close to the inn on their way upriver had weight and substance, their timbers groaning faintly as they glided by almost close enough to hail; ships farther off were more like pencil sketches of masts and rigging, lightly made on coarse paper.
Through the naval register, Evangeline had traced the British merchant vessel stationed off the South American coast and assigned to transport and collect the Lancaster expedition party. Its captain now had another command, and was at sea. But the master’s mate had been injured, and retired from the service; a former navy man, he taught navigation and seamanship to officer cadets at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.
It was, indeed, the steamer. As it came about to the pier, Evangeline made her way through the inn to the river walk, and was almost at the pier gates when Sebastian Becker emerged through them.
“I know I’m late,” he said when he saw her. “Forgive me.”
Evangeline said, “I was curious to see who’d come rolling in first. You or the fog.”
Sebastian saved his explanation. He saw no reason to burden Miss Bancroft with his troubles. His wife had suffered a bad night, and he’d felt unable to leave her without first arranging for one of the Evelina nurses to call by.
From the pier it was no more than two hundred yards’ walk to the West Gate of the Royal Naval College. Built as a hospital on the site of a palace, the complex had been run down as such and its great Corinthian halls and domed buildings converted to other uses. All of the pensioners were long gone, and a part of the college was now
