She had often thought of him reading her letters aloud to John, a little like having letters from home for himself, although John had told her he never received any.
How long would it take? What would he do? He had often said he would never become just another old Jack, yarning and “swinging the lamp.”
But it would be hard, perhaps for all of them. Bryan Ferguson had told her that he and her John had been pressed together here in Cornwall, and taken to a King’s ship in Falmouth. Bolitho’s ship. What had grown from that unlikely meeting was stronger than any rock.
Here on the edge of the little village of Fallowfield, it was not like Brixham or Falmouth. Farm workers and passing tradesmen were more common than men of the sea. But there would still be talk. Everyone knew the Bolitho family. And Catherine was in London, they said. There would be more ceremonies there; how could she endure it? There was gossip enough in any town or village. How much worse it must be in the city.
She heard her brother descending the stairs, the regular thump of his wooden leg. His spar, John Allday called it.
“Little Kate’s fast asleep.” He limped towards her. “Still thinking on it, Unis love? We’ll make it right for him, see?”
“Thank you for that, John. I don’t know what I’d have done-”
She looked into his face and froze, unable to move. She whispered, “Oh, dear God, make my man happy again!”
The sound of Bryan Ferguson’s pony and trap seemed louder than it had ever been.
She tugged at her skirt and pushed some hair from her face again.
“I can’t! I can’t!”
Nobody moved, nobody spoke. He was suddenly just there, filling the entrance, his hat in one hand, his hair shaggy against the sunlight.
She tried to speak, but instead he held out his arms, as though unable to come forward. Her brother remembered it for a long time afterwards. John Allday, who had rescued and won his only sister, was in the room, as if he had never been away.
He was wearing the fine blue coat with the gilt buttons bearing the Bolitho crest, which had been made especially for him, and nankeen breeches and buckled shoes. The landsman’s ideal of the English sailor, the Heart of Oak. So easily said by those who had not shared the horrors of close action at sea or on land.
John Allday held her close against him, but gently, as he would a child or some small animal, and touched her hair, her ears, her cheek, afraid he might hurt her in some way, unable to let go.
He thought he heard a door close, very quietly. They were alone. Even his best friend Bryan was silent, out there with his fat little pony named Poppy.
“You’re a picture, Unis.” He tilted her chin with the same care. “I’ve thought about this moment for a long time.”
She asked, “The officer, Mister Avery?”
Allday shook his head. “Stayed with the ship. Thought he was needed.” He held her away from him, his big hands cupping her shoulders, his eyes moving over her, as if he was only now realising what had happened.
She stood quite still, feeling the strength, the warmth of his hard hands. So strong and yet so unsure, so wistful.
“You’re here. That’s all I care about. I’ve missed you so much, even when I tried to be with you over the miles…” She broke off. She was not reaching him even now.
Suddenly he took her hand in his, and led her like a young girl to the nook where his model, his first gift to her, was carefully mounted.
“I was there, y’ see. All the while. Comin’ home, we was. We’d got the orders. I never seen such a change in the man.” He looked at her with something like anguish. “Comin’ home. What we both wanted.”
They sat down on a scrubbed wooden bench, side by side, like strangers. But he held her hand, and spoke so quietly that she had to put her head against his arm to hear him.
“He often asked about you an’ little Kate.” The sound of the child’s name seemed to unsteady him. “Is she safe? An’ well?”
She nodded, afraid of breaking the spell. “You’ll see.”
He smiled, something faraway. Perhaps another memory.
He said, “He knew, y’ see. When we went up on deck. He knew. I felt it.”
She heard her brother by the door, and thought she saw Bryan Ferguson’s shadow motionless in a shaft of light. Sharing it. As they had every right.
She found she was gripping his hand more tightly, and said, “I want you as my man again, John Allday. I’ll give you the love you need. I’ll help you!”
When he turned his face to hers there was no pain, no despair.
He said, “I was with him to the end, love. Just like we always was, from the first broadside at the Saintes.”
He seemed to realise that they were no longer alone. “I held him.” He nodded slowly. Seeing it. Confronting it. “He said, easy, old friend. Just to me, like he always did. No grief. We always knew.” He looked at her and smiled, perhaps truly aware of her for the first time. “Then he died, an’ I was still holdin’ him.”
She stood up and put her arms around him, sharing his loss, feeling such love for this one man.
She murmured, “Let it go, John. Later we shall lie together. It’s all that matters now.”
Allday held her for several minutes.
Then he said, “Get the others, eh?”
She shook him gently, embracing him, her heart too full for words.
A life was gone. Hers was complete.
Brush… brush… brush…
Catherine, Lady Somervell, sat facing the tilted oval mirror, her hand rising and falling without conscious thought, her long hair spilling over one shoulder. In the candlelight it looked almost black, like silk, but she did not notice.
The hour was late and beyond the windows the evening had darkened, the Thames revealed only by the light of an occasional lantern, a wherryman, or some sailor on his way to one of the riverside taverns.
But here in the Walk, there were very few people, and the air was heavy, as if with storm. She saw the candles beside the mirror shiver and stared at the reflection of the bed behind her. There were far too many candles in the room; they were probably the cause of the stuffiness. But there were always too many, had been since that night of raw terror. In this room. On that bed. She had overcome it. But it had never left her.
She continued to brush her hair, pausing only at the sound of a fast-moving carriage. But it did not slow or stop.
She thought of the housekeeper, Mrs Tate, who was somewhere downstairs. Even she had changed her way of life since that night, when she had been visiting her sister in Shoreditch as had been her habit. Now she never left the house unattended, and watched over her with a tenderness Catherine had never suspected. And she had never once mentioned it. Her own thoughts had been too full, too chaotic in those first weeks after the attack. Even then it had been like witnessing the horrific violation of someone else, not herself. A stranger.
Except on nights like these. Warm, even clammy, the thin gown clinging to her body like another skin, despite the bath she had taken before coming upstairs.
She hesitated, and then pulled open a drawer deliberately and took out the fan. Richard had given it to her after his ship had called at Madeira. So long ago.
She looked at the diamond pendant which hung low on her breast. It, too, was shaped like a fan. So that she would not forget, he had said. The pendant the intruder had turned over in his fingers while she had been helpless, her wrists pinioned behind her. She looked involuntarily at the nearest window. He had used the cord. He had struck her, so that she had almost lost her senses, when she had called him a thief. Outraged, like a madman. And then he had begun to torment her, to strip her there, on that bed.
She touched her breast and felt her heart beating against her hand. But not like then, or all those other times, when the memory had returned.
And afterwards… The word seemed quite separate from her other thoughts. Sillitoe and his men had burst into the room, and he had held her, protected her while her attacker had been dragged away. It had been like a sudden
