On the fashionable side of the square Belinda stopped again, suddenly uncertain.
'What is it?'
'I don't know.' She looked back, but the two crippled sailors had vanished; perhaps they had never been there. She shivered. 'He used to tell me about his men. But when you see them, like those two…' She turned again. 'I wish now I'd given them something.'
Lady Lucinda laughed and pinched her arm. 'You are peculiar sometimes.' Then she gestured at a carriage outside Belinda's house. 'You have visitors. Another reception, and me with nothing new to wear!'
They laughed and Belinda tried to dismiss the man with the out-thrust cup from her mind. He had had a tattoo on the back of his hand. Crossed flags and an anchor; it had been quite clear even through the grime.
The door opened before they had even mounted the steps and one of the maids stared at them with relief.
'There be a gentleman here to see you, m'lady!'
Lady Lucinda tittered. 'I told you!'
Belinda silenced her with a quick shake of her head. 'What gentleman? Make sense, girl!'
Someone came from the drawing-room at the sound of her voice and Belinda's heart almost stopped; the stranger wore the uniform of a post-captain, and his face was stern, as if he had been waiting for some time.
'I am sent by Lord Godschale, my lady. I thought it too important to wait for an appointment.'
Belinda walked a few paces to the great staircase and back again. 'If you believe so, Captain.'
He cleared his throat. 'I have to tell you, my lady, that I am the bearer of sad news. The packet Golden Plover in which your husband Sir Richard Bolitho was taking passage to Cape Town is reported missing.'
Lady Lucinda gasped, 'Oh, my God. I pray that he is safe?'
The captain shook his head. 'I regret, the vessel was lost with all hands.'
Belinda walked to the stairs and sank down on to them.
'Lord Godschale wishes to offer his sympathy and the condolence of every King's sailor in the fleet.'
Belinda could barely see through the mist in her eyes. She tried to accept it, to imagine it as it must have been, but instead she could only think of the two men she had just turned away. A penny, ma'am? Just a penny!
Her friend snapped at the maid, 'Fetch the doctor for her ladyship!'
Belinda stood up very slowly. 'No doctor.' Suddenly she knew; and the shock was overwhelming.
'Was Lady Somervell with him, Captain?'
The man bit his lip. 'I believe so, my lady.'
She saw Catherine in the darkness of Herrick's house, the contempt like fire in her eyes.
Even then, he would not come back to you.
At the end, they had still been together.
8. BREAKERS
BOLITHO sat on the bench below the Golden Plover's stern windows and stared out at the small, bubbling wake. One day passed very like the one before it, and he felt continually restless at being no part of the vessel's routine. It was noon, and on deck the heat would be scorching like the wind across an empty desert. At least down here there was some pretence of movement, the hull creaking occasionally to the lift and fall of the stem, the air stirring through the cabin space to help ease the discomfort.
At the opposite end of the bench young Sophie sat with one shoulder bared while Catherine massaged it gently with ointment she had brought with her from London. The girl's skin was almost red-raw where the sun had done its work during her strolls on deck.
Catherine had told her severely, 'This is not Commercial Street, my girl, so try not to lay yourself open to the possibility of being burned alive.'
The girl had given her cheeky grin. 'I clean forgot, me lady!'
Jenour was in his cabin, either sketching or adding to the endless letter to his parents. Keen was probably on deck; brooding about Zenoria, wondering if he were taking the right course of action.
Bolitho had had several conversations with Samuel Bezant, Golden Plover's master. The man came originally from Lowestoft, and had begun life at sea at the age of nine, naturally enough in that port, aboard a fishing lugger. Now that he understood he could speak with Bolitho without fear of instant rebuke or anger he had explained that most of Golden Plover's troubles had been caused by the navy. To begin with, he had welcomed the offer of an admiralty warrant. But as he had explained, 'What use is 'protection' if their lordships or some senior officer can take experienced seamen whenever they choose?' Bolitho knew it was useless to try and explain to any master what it was like for the captain of a man-of-war. If the press-gangs were lucky he might get a few good hands; he might even poach some prime seamen from an incoming merchant ship if her master was so mean that he had paid off his company even before the ship had reached her destination. To do so left those unfortunate sailors open to impressment, if the officer in charge of the party was fast enough. But mostly the new hands were either farm workers, 'hawbucks' as most seamen contemptuously called them, or those who might otherwise have faced the public hangman.
Bezant had said on one occasion when Bolitho had joined him to watch the vivid sunset off the Canary Islands, as they had crossed the thirtieth parallel, 'There's only the bosun left from the original afterguard, Sir Richard. Now the second mate's on the Rock I'm expected to run this vessel like a King's ship with men who have no feel for the sea!'
Bolitho asked, 'What about your mate, Mr Lincoln? He seems capable enough.'
Bezant had grinned. 'He's a good seaman. But even he's only been in the Plover for six months!'
Perhaps by the time the sturdy barquentine had reached Good Hope, Bezant would have led or bullied his mixed collection of sailors into one team, as much a part of the vessel he so obviously loved as the canvas and cordage that drove her.
Bolitho saw a splash as some unknown fish fell back into the sea again, probably trying to escape from hidden predators.
Since leaving Gibraltar there had certainly been a run of misfortunes. A topman had fallen from aloft during a heavy squall and his body had smashed onto the lee bulwark, killing him instantly. He had been buried at sea the following day. Bolitho had never known the man, but as a sailor himself he had felt the same sense of loss as Bezant had rumbled slowly through his well-thumbed prayer book. We commit his body to the deep…
There had only been one sighting of the strange ship's topmasts, the day after they had weighed anchor in the Rock's shadow. After that they had seen nothing; and only on rare occasions, usually just after dawn, had they seen the hint of land. A group of islands, like low clouds on the horizon, and another time a solitary islet like a broken tooth, which Bezant had described as an evil place where no man could survive and would in any case go mad with loneliness. Pirates had been known to maroon their prisoners there. Bezant had remarked, 'It would have been kinder to cut their throats!'
And all the while there remained the great presence of the African coastline. Invisible out of necessity; and yet each one of them was very aware of it.
Catherine glanced across the girl's reddened shoulder and saw his expression. Separate incidents stood out clearly as she gently massaged the ointment into Sophie's skin, and she wondered if he were sharing them.
The seaman who had fallen from an upper yard during the squall. And that other time when they had been sitting here, everyone unwilling to make the first move to turn in for the night, to be tormented again by the fierce, humid air between decks.
It had been very quiet and quite late, during the middle watch, Jenour had recalled.
They had all heard the sound of dragging feet on the poop overhead and then, it seemed an age later, the frantic cry of 'man overboard!' The master's door had banged open and Bezant had been heard bawling out orders. Back the foretops'l! Stand by to come about! Man the quarter-boat! Catherine had accompanied Bolitho on deck, astonished by the eerie quality which a full moon had given to the taut canvas and quivering shrouds. The sea, too, had been like molten silver, unending and unreal.
Needless to say, the boat had returned empty-handed. The crew had been more frightened of losing their ship in that strange, glacial glow than of leaving someone to drown alone.
