Turning the Stones (43 page)

‘But you will be a sitting duck. And there is no sign of Mr Guttery to reinforce you.’

The captain shrugs and ties his boots together. ‘I took my time getting here, and Mr Guttery is flash enough to find his way back to France on his own.’ He drapes the boots around his neck.

‘Captain, listen to me! It is no business of yours to be shot by Barfield. Where is the pistol you offered me?’

‘Do as I ask, Molly. Let me fight this out. I am used to it.’

‘I do not wish you to be killed! I have already witnessed that once before and it did not please me.’

His sardonic grin appears. ‘Doubtless I deserve to die, for I have more bad deeds to my name than I should like you to know. There will be nothing lost then if it should come to pass.’

‘Cannot the three of us go into the water between the mounts and swim the animals out to the boat as a screen.’

‘That will not answer. There is a surfeit of us and the pony and the mule are small as it is. A pair of camels would be ideal, but they come thin on the ground in Connaught.’

Eliza groans. She is sunk on the ground, her face a clammy grey. ‘You see,’ I press, ‘she cannot proceed unaided and I have not the strength to carry her. Give me the pistol, for you have not hands enough to manage Eliza, the animals and two weapons.’

He does not want to do it, but he cannot argue against my logic. He brings out the pistol from his pocket and says, ‘You must keep the hammer half-cocked. Should you need to fire, pull it all the way back, like this. You have only one shot.’ My hands are sticky. I wipe them on my petticoat, take the pistol and secure it beneath my waist-cord.

I am well acquainted enough with him to know that Captain McDonagh will not complicate a hazardous undertaking by admitting emotions into it – and, sure enough, without so much as a ‘Godspeed’, he assembles us between the shifting animals and springs forth, half dragging Eliza, and we stagger away between the twin shields of the mule and the pony towards the slopping breakers. The boulders cast shadows like
crooked teeth on the open ground. My heart is in my mouth as I barely prevent myself from stumbling over Eliza’s lagging heels – and then I do trip upon them.

‘Go on!’ I cry, trying to scramble to my feet in a tangle of cloth. I have stepped on Mrs Folan’s ancient mantle and it is torn and I must leave it behind as I run to the shelter of one of the boulders.

I crouch against it with my breath coming and going as effortful as a bellows. There is silence all around save for the soft thump of the animals’ hoofs on the sand and the squawk of seabirds. I steal a peek around the corner of the boulder and see that Captain McDonagh has reached the shallows. He glances towards me and I can sense his concern. That glance revives my spirits and spurs me to dash to the neighbouring boulder. I gesture in the captain’s direction to signal that I am in order and he gathers up the burden of Eliza to carry her through the water.

My confidence rises. I am sure I can make a successful run to the next boulder, which is three or four yards distant. I reach the lee of that boulder, and the next one, too. Only one more frantic sprint and I will come to the sea. My blood fizzes with intent. I will dive under the waves and use them as cover to reach the boat.

My hair is blowing in my face. As I raise a hand to subdue it, I realise with a chill that without the disguise of the mantle my identity is completely apparent to Barfield.

The surrounding quiet is punctuated by the distinct sound of a pistol being cocked. I glimpse a shadow at the edge of my vision. With tremorous hands I jump up and at the same time yank at the stiff hammer on the pistol.

Nothing happens. My pistol fails.

A shot clangs on the face of the stone. I see the puff of grit rise from the striking-point and my courage almost forsakes me.

Only then do I realise that the shot came from the direction of the sea. Has Captain McDonagh fired on me? He has come forward into range – but he is making a sign … he wants me to lie low. Oh God, he was firing to protect me, but now he is hopelessly exposed. My breathing is shallow, my heart squeezed tight by fear. There is a sound in my ears of wind, of waves, of my own blood washing in and out.

I sink on to my haunches and stare at the useless pistol. Did it jam? And then I hear once more – this time with startling clarity – the heavy click of the pistol’s hammer. He is aiming at my back, I sense that.

In the distance, but not very far away, Captain McDonagh is shouting in order to attract Barfield’s attention. The mule and the pony are wandering about with an air of confusion.

I feel very quiet. I anticipate an explosion, a tearing apart of my innards, a splintering of bone. I have the absurd notion that the effect of this outburst will be somehow countered if I remain utterly, quietly composed. Perhaps my amazing stillness will persuade him that time, and by extension the trigger, have been stopped.

I do not move, but Barfield does, coming from around the wall of turf to smirk into my face. At last I am face to face with him as I always knew I would have to be, even as I fled from him through the English countryside. He looks like hell. Sweating. Mud-streaked. There is a raw-looking cut on his cheek. And yet he retains the power to provoke in me a feeling
of ignominy. He has a terrible lunatic eye. I know that look of his. I have seen it before.

He laughs, in fact, and pipes in that voice whose littleness always takes me by surprise, ‘Put it away, little peach. Don’t you know better than to threaten your elders and betters?’

I look down at the pistol. My hand is stuck to the grip with Kitty’s blood. Now I see what is wrong. The hammer is only half-cocked. I had not pulled it back far enough. I pull it back. It is fully cocked.

Barfield giggles again. ‘You will not—’ I do not know what he meant to say, because I squeeze the trigger and shoot him before he can finish his sentence. The sound of the
boom
hurts my ears.

I climb to my feet and run towards the sea.

The
Cliona
, Bertraghboy Bay
May, 1766

Captain McDonagh hauls in the mooring stone and launches us on the turning tide. As we pass over the continents of weed shifting beneath the sea, he sets the dark brown mainsail, his back straining with the effort. The boat is called the
Cliona
. It heels beneath a westerly, and the sail bellies fatly between the booms. The sea swarms with a tangled mass of kelp, but the
Cliona
beats through it under the captain’s navigation and we sail forth among twisting channels. The boat is decked forward of the mast and I have made Eliza as comfortable as I can in the low cabin that lies beneath.

None of us speaks of what has occurred. I direct my attention to tasks – lighting a fire in the stone hearth outside of the cabin, bringing Eliza water from the keg that is stored under the aft platform.

At first it seems that we will achieve our rendezvous with the French ship before it weighs anchor, but quite quickly, while Captain McDonagh is piloting us towards the lee of one of the numerous small islands in the bay, the air darkens and dampens and the breeze begins to die.

Fog reaches out from the confusion of islets and rocks and a curtain of mist comes down on us. We slop to a halt.

In the muffled hush I can hear Eliza babbling with fever. I
mash a little of the dried fish with water, and crawl into the cabin.

‘Eliza,’ I whisper, ‘be a good girl and open your mouth a little. It is time for your supper.’ The spoon is too clumsy to use. I pinch the mash in my fingers and feed it to her. She manages to swallow a little, lapping it on her tongue like an infant, but her teeth keep chattering with cold and I can see that the effort of eating is too much for her.

I stretch myself out as well as I can and pull her to me in an embrace to warm her.

‘Em,’ she says into the hollow of my collarbone.

I stroke her hair. ‘I saw you at the George Inn in Reading,’ I tell her.

She nods and sighs.

‘I was shocked to see you with Barfield. Did he tell you that you were the only one who could make Johnny see sense and come back home?’

She coughs hoarsely.

‘You looked very frightened, I remember.’

She nods again. Her breathing is noisy. I think of her in the schoolroom, making a mess of her quill.

We rest without speaking for some while, listening to the cry of curlews and the lapping of the water against the hull of the boat.

I say, ‘I suppose it was not difficult, once Barfield had found out that I had bought a ticket to Reading on the night coach, to guess that I was on my way to Bristol. He knew I was travelling with funds enough to buy a passage abroad.’ There it is in my mind’s eye: a suede moneybag lying on the floor
of a bedchamber, where it has fallen from Barfield’s coat. ‘How did you follow me to Ireland, though?

Eliza stirs against me and opens her eyes. She whispers, ‘A boy directed us in exchange for half a crown and then some chairmen told us about a tavern. There was a barmaid there. She was wearing my pearls.’

The Breeze and Feather. Where I sold the necklace cheap.

‘The barmaid’s son saw you try to drown yourself. Only a guilty person would do something like that.’

‘But they must have told Barfield that I was alone.’

There is a long pause before Eliza answers. ‘I do not know. Mr Barfield conducted the interviews. They told him you had been picked up by a smuggler’s cutter. He tried to buy a place on a patrol of the revenue service to chase the cutter, but it could not be done.’

‘Still, he did not give up.’

‘He said that Sedge Court would be sold if Johnny could not be found.’ Eliza sighs heavily. ‘We could not lose Sedge Court, could we? You understand that. The Bristol revenue men, the bluecoats, told us that the master of your cutter came from Connaught. Mr Barfield hired a boat to chase you, but we were stopped by a revenue cutter not far from a coast and ordered to turn back. It had its own business with your boat. But we couldn’t turn back. There was a storm approaching and we had to go for shelter in a harbour town. Galway.’

Was it the
Vindicator
that ordered Barfield’s boat to desist? It was an interception that probably saved his and Eliza’s lives. Had they been hard on the
Seal
’s tail, they would have suffered the full blast of the storm that destroyed the
Vindicator
. I am sure it was easy enough in Galway for Barfield to find inform
ants who could tell him where the master of the
Seal
conducted his business. Poor Eliza. She would have had to travel into Connaught on bridle paths that were rotten in places and broken down. I can imagine her dwindling spirits.

I stroke Eliza’s damp hair. Her eyelids flutter and she heaves another huge sigh. ‘I was afraid that Johnny might have drowned in the storm. Is that why he is not here? Is he dead?’

‘He … did not drown.’ She does not notice my hesitation. I cannot tell her that he was killed. Not while she is in such a state of weakness.

She says, ‘Mr Barfield frightened me. He said he would not be sorry to be relieved of the burden of me. I was afraid of our guides, too. They were wild men. They fell into a dispute with us about money and left us alone. But we could see the outline of a hill that we had been told was near the settlement where the smuggler and you and Johnny could be found. Mr Barfield decided we should strike out for it. It took a long time to walk to the hill and I began to lose my strength. I felt a distemper come on me with painful cramps of the stomach and I could not stay on my pony. Then the pony ran away. It was only the thought of Johnny that kept me going. And then Mr Barfield said he was going to look for the way and did not come back.’

She swallows and grimaces as though her throat hurts. Her face has grown very pale and she has a withdrawn cast about her.

‘Rest now, Eliza. I will take care of you.’

The captain’s face appears in the doorway of the cabin. ‘How is she?’ he asks.

‘She is feeling cold.’

‘It is this damned fog. I cannot make out my outstretched hand in it.’ He stands up so that all I can see are his legs and then bends down again and says, ‘Here. Put this over her.’ It is his coat.

I come out on to the misty deck, shivering in the cold. Captain McDonagh says, ‘You know there is nothing supernatural about this, Molly. She contracted a fever in the bog. That is not unusual.’

I do not know what to think about the nature of Eliza’s illness. I say, ‘We will miss the ship, I suppose.’

He aims a rueful look at me and nods.

There is a sudden flurry of bumps against the bottom of the boat.

‘Do not be alarmed,’ Captain McDonagh says softly. ‘That is only some creature of the sea nosing about.’

He seats himself on the platform in the stern of the boat and blows on his cupped hands to warm them. He says in a disarming, easy way, ‘Why don’t you sit down here next to me, Molly, and if it occurs to you to mention the burden that has been on you, I shall not be sorry.’

I sit down slowly next to him. I am comforted by his presence.

He says, ‘I should like to know who it was that brought poor Kitty to her death. Will you give me that?’

*

I asked Johnny in a whisper to help me. Barfield was sprawled in a fat armchair at the end of the divan on which I was displayed, his bulging body like a sack of waste matter waiting to be thrown on to the night-soil dray. Behind his shaven head there was a window with curtains drawn. His breeches were
unbuttoned and there was a smarting pain between my legs and blotches on my thighs. My shift was pulled up around my waist and I felt with my fingertips that my stomach and arms were bruised and scratched. I had a stabbing headache. Was it caused by the champagne? Could one glass of champagne cause me to black out? Or had I been given a potion to render me insensible? It was with a sensation of nausea that I suspected I must have been ravished, too. My feelings about that I put carefully to one side in a neat pile, like clothes left folded on a riverbank while one attends to the laundering of oneself in cold, clear water. I had wit enough to know that nothing could be repaired or avenged without escaping from that chamber.