Ebb tide

'That is what he sees you as,' Catriona threw in. 'However,' she added, putting her head to one side and looking at the portrait, 'I think you will be tolerably pleased.' And with that pronouncement she gathered up her skirts and swept from the room.

Frey and Drinkwater exchanged glances, the former's eyes twinkling. 'She is my harshest critic.'

'And yet the picture you painted of her is outstanding.'

'Oh that. She will not let me hang it. Since that day I showed it to you and Lady Drinkwater, it has stood facing the wall. I think when I am dead, Catriona will burn it,' he said, laughing and gathering up his brushes and palette again. 'They are strange creatures, women...'

And yet, thought Drinkwater, resuming his seat and the pose, you understand them infinitely better than I do myself.

'A little more to the left, sir ... No, no, just the trunk of the body...'

Again they fell silent. Drinkwater knew the uncomfortable thought could not be excluded from his mind, and that it must needs be uttered. He had never enjoyed complete intimacy with any other human being, not even Elizabeth, for there had always been that vast gulf created by his profession, his long absences and his ignorance of most of her life ashore. There had been the brief and torrid physical passion with the American widow, a moment of intimate joy so exquisite that its aftermath was a long and lingering guilt. The effect was to have prohibited a more destructive lust with Hortense Santhonax, for she had infected him with another sickness, that of discontent and wild longing. He had, by chance, captured a portrait of her when he took her husband's ship Antigone in the Red Sea, and it had lain like a guilty, reproachful secret in the bottom of his sea-chest for years until he had burnt it. It was ironic that she, perhaps the most beautiful of the women whom he had known, now lay under the ruined flint arch of the priory at Gantley Hall, alongside his wild and ungovernable brother Ned.

But perhaps men, at least that majority of men in his situation and from which Frey was excluded, never got close to women. It demanded the most noble sacrifice upon Elizabeth's part for her to comprehend all the complex workings of his seaman's mind. God knew she was a marvel and had done her best! That he was unable to understand her in her entirety was, he concluded, one of those imperfections in life that were profoundly regrettable, but equally profoundly unavoidable. The enigma resided in the eternal question as to why mankind troubled itself with the unattainable. He sighed. Providence had regulated the matter very ill, but that is why many men, he supposed, were often easier in the company of their own sex. He had been close to young Quilhampton and had counted him a friend. After James's death, for which he still held himself accountable, he had grown very friendly with Frey. That last escapade upon the coast of France had left them with more than the bond of shared experience, and he thought that the thing had coalesced when Frey had said that if Drinkwater handled Kestrel, he himself would fight her. In that odd moment of decision, they had become one, divining each other's thoughts as they engaged in their horrible profession of execution.

And so, in the circumambulatory nature of thoughts, he was returned to the central theme of his anxiety and unconsciously uttered a deep sigh.

'You seem to be in some distress, Sir Nathaniel. Is it the pose?'

'What?'

'Are you all right, sir?'

'No, if I am honest, I am far from being all right...'

Frey lowered his brush and stepped forward. 'Please relax, sir,' he said, alarmed. 'Pray invigorate yourself!'

Drinkwater smiled. 'No, no, my dear fellow, do not concern yourself. I am merely troubled by conscience. Invigorating myself at such a moment might prove fatal!'

Frey gave his sitter a steady, contentious look; what they had between them come to call, with reference to Catriona, 'a Scotch glare'.

'No, really. I am quite content to sit still a little longer.'

Frey stepped back behind the easel and resumed work. 'I cannot imagine why your conscience should trouble you, sir. I have not known another person with your sense of duty'

'That is kind of you, Frey, but it may be the essence of the problem. Duty is a cold calling. It induces men to murder, giving them licence without consolation. Have you any idea how many men I have killed?'

'Well no, sir.' Frey looked up, astonished at the candour of the question.

'No,' replied Drinkwater bleakly, 'neither have I.' 'But...' Frey began, but Drinkwater pressed on. 'One remembers only a few of them and they were almost all friends! James, for example ...'

'You did not kill James!' Frey protested. 'There were others, Frey...' 'I cannot believe ...'

'You do not have to. It is only I who need to know. And I don't...'

'But you once said to me that you did not believe in God, Sir Nathaniel, that matters were moved by great but providential forces. Providence has been good to you. This portrait, for example,' Frey said, stepping back and waving his brush at the canvas, 'is evidence of that. Surely the reward is to be enjoyed... To be appreciated...'

'You are probably right, my dear fellow. I was always a prey to the blue-devils. We drag these deadweights through our lives, and the megrims have been a private curse of mine for many years.'

'You have been lonely, sir,' Frey said reasonably. 'Perhaps it is the penalty for bearing responsibility.' He paused and worked for a moment of furious concentration. 'Perhaps it is the fee you must pay to achieve what you have achieved, a kind of blood-money.'

Drinkwater grinned and nodded. 'You are a great consolation, Frey, and I thank you for it. Alas,' he added sardonically, 'I think there may yet be unnamed tortures still awaiting me.'

'Apart from your rheumaticks, d'you mean?' Frey replied, returning the smile, pleased to see the lugubrious mood lifting.

'Oh yes, far worse than mere rheumaticks.'

For a further fifteen minutes, silence fell companionably between them and then Frey stepped back, laid down his brushes and palette, and picked up a rag. Vigorously wiping his hands he said, 'There, that is all I shall need you for. I think perhaps you had better pass verdict, Sir Nathaniel. Though I say so myself,' he added, grinning with self-satisfaction, 'I do believe 'tis you to the life.'

CHAPTER 16 The Rescue

14 July l843

The spectral faces of the dead came near him now, touching him with their cold breath. If he expected vengeful reproaches, there was only a feeling of acceptance, that all things came to this, and that this was all there was and would ever be. His mind rilled with regrets and great sadnesses, too complex and profound for him to recognize in their particulars, and in these too he felt touched by the unity of creation, reached through the uniqueness of his own existence.

In his dying, providence made one last demand upon him. There was someone near him, someone tugging at the oar with a frantic desperation which seemed quite unnecessary.

'Oh, God!' the man spluttered, thrashing wildly. 'Oh, thank God!' Dimly it was borne in upon Drinkwater that clinging with him on the oar was Mr Quier.

'Sir Nathaniel... 'Tis you ...' The oar sank beneath their combined weight. It's me, Sir Nathaniel... Quier, sir, Second Mate ...'

Odd that he should have known two men whose names began with that curious letter of the alphabet. Odder still that he should make the comparison now, in this extremity, a last habitual shred of rational thought. But he was feeling much warmer and he had seen Quilhampton a little while ago, he was sure of it. Or perhaps it was Frey... Frey and Catriona, yes, that was it, the presence of Catriona had confused him.

'The oar', he said with a slow deliberation, 'will not sustain us both...' Drinkwater felt the oar suddenly buoyant again, relieved of the young man's weight. Mr Quier, it appeared, had relinquished it and kicked away.

This was wrong. It was not what he had meant by his remark, but it was so difficult to talk, for his jaw was stiffened against the task. With a tremendous effort of will, Drinkwater hailed Quier.