Newt's Emerald

Chapter Nine All at Sea

Truthful woke with a start as she felt her stomach climbing up into her mouth, stopping just short in her throat. A wave of giddiness swept through her, and for a second she was disoriented, then the pain in her wrists and ankles reminded her of the ropes, and she felt Harnett’s back against her own.

“How . . . long have I been asleep?” she whispered, screwing up her eyes against the faint rays of light that were sneaking through the uncaulked lid of the barrel. She felt absolutely terrible. Her throat was parched and sandpapery, and her stomach very uneasy. “How did I fall asleep?”

“I think three or four hours, perhaps even more,” replied Harnett, in a hoarse whisper. “I’ve been asleep too. There was more than a little brandy left in the bottom of this cask, we were mazed by the fumes. But there’s a wind blowing out there now. You can feel it through the cracks, and it’s cleansed the air in here. Mind you, I’ve the devil of a hangover.”

“So have . . . I think,” said Truthful, a dull throbbing in her head coming in to join the dryness of her throat. “I’ve never had one before.”

“Bad time to start,” muttered Harnett. “I think we must already be entering the Thames Estuary, judging from the swell. They’ve got a fair wind to carry us away, too, damn their eyes.”

“And it will only strengthen over the day ahead,” said Truthful, instinctively. She could feel the nature of the wind, deep inside herself. It was steady enough now, but there was more to come.

“How can you tell . . . ah . . . you have weather magic?”

“A little,” said Truthful. “It runs in the family.”

“Could you do something to slow us down or hold us back?” asked Harnett eagerly. “I am sure my . . . my friends will be in pursuit, but time is of the essence. Could you reverse the wind, perhaps?”

“I have only a little, local power,” said Truthful regretfully. “Not enough to turn a sea-wind so firmly established.”

She could feel the strength of the breeze in her bones, but the sounds of the ship also confirmed it, the heel of the deck and the crack of canvas filling overhead.

“Do you think your friends will be able to rescue us?”

“They’ll try,” grunted Harnett, who seemed to be engaged in some form of contortionist’s exercise. “It depends on whether there was a ship at hand to be commandeered, or if the Navy could be roused to act, if the word was got out quickly enough. But we can’t depend on it, I’m afraid. I have a knife in my boot, a sghian dhbu from a Scottish friend, but I can’t reach it. My arms are wrapped right down to the wrists. What about you?”

“I’m only tied around the elbows,” replied Truthful. “If I wriggle down a bit, I can move my arms a little.”

“Good!” exclaimed Harnett. “Now, if I move my legs back towards you as far as they will go, do you think you could twist around and reach my boot-top?”

“I can try,” said Truthful determinedly. She felt Harnett twisting his legs around, and started to wriggle around herself, only to pause as there was a sudden loud snapping noise.

“Good God!” cried Harnett. “Was that the rope?”

“Ah, non,” muttered Truthful, regretting the eagerness of her wriggling, for the snap had been the sound of her corset breaking, and several buttons of her coat flying off. She looked down, but in the dim light, couldn’t see if the corset was completely broken or not. If it was, the glamour alone might not be enough to maintain her disguise. “My coat has torn.”

A little more cautiously, she continued to struggle, till her body was partially turned and her left hand fell on Harnett’s calf. Instantly, she snatched it back, a blush rising in her cheeks. What was she doing?

“Good!” said Harnett. “Now work you way down to the boot-top. The knife should come out easily enough.”

“I . . . I . . .” faltered Truthful.

Before she could say anything more, the ship plunged more dramatically than it had been, and she heard the crash of a wave breaking against the bow. A second later, spray fell against the barrel, a fine mist coming through the cracks between the staves.

This reminder of their impending drowning overcame the deeply ingrained lessons of modest behaviour. Taking a deep breath, Truthful squirmed around, her hands sliding down Harnett’s thigh, past his knee to the cool leather of his boot-top and then to the hilt of the knife. There was a brief struggle, straining every muscle in Truthful’s fingers, then it was free and in her lap. But at a cost. The remaining stays on her corset had burst, her shirt was torn across the front and under the arms and her ensorcelled moustache felt very insecure upon her upper lip.

“Well done, lad,” whispered Harnett, as Truthful gripped the knife between her knees and started sawing at the rope between her wrists. “There’s few Englishmen who can handle themselves as well, my religious friend.”

Truthful bit her lip and tried to quell the rather pleasant feeling she got from his praise by imagining what he would say when she revealed her deception. Or when it became obvious …

With her thoughts otherwise occupied, Truthful was rather surprised when her hands suddenly came free. She started cutting the rope around their respective waists, but as each strand parted, she couldn’t help thinking that as they got closer to freedom they also got closer to what would be an unpleasant revelation. What could she possibly tell Harnett?

At last, the rope parted. Truthful hastily re-wrapped her coat around herself, and keeping her knees well up she slid around and cut the ropes from Harnett’s hands, then started on her ankles. It was tricky work now, for the ship was cutting diagonally across a heavier swell, and the breeze had increased to an extent that the ship was now running fast with the wind on her quarter. More water was being shipped across the deck and the barrel was soaked with spray every few minutes.

Concentrating on her cutting, Truthful heard nothing above the wind and crash of waves, but Harnett suddenly craned back and joined his hands to hers to force the knife through the last strand of rope that bound his ankles.

“Quick,” he cried, his large, muscular hands pressing down on her slim fingers. “Someone is opening—”

His words were lost in the crash of another wave. Light suddenly flooded the barrel as the lid was flung open, revealing a stormy sky, a towering mast and sails — and a ring of armed men, the closest of them holding a cutlass, its blade resting on the edge of the barrel.

“Stand up,” he said. Truthful recognised his voice as that of the Frenchman she had overheard when they were being loaded aboard the Undine. “I see that you have managed to free yourselves.”

Blinking, even against the weak light that filtered through the storm-clouds, Truthful and Harnett stood gingerly, clutching at the sides of the barrel for support. The Frenchman and his men watched them carefully, their weapons ready. Now that Truthful was on deck, she saw that the sea was not as rough as she had supposed. The breeze was fair for France, and the ship had a good amount of canvas up.

“I am Captain Fontaine,” said the man, inclining his head a fraction, so that his dark forelock slipped slightly across his brow. But his eyes didn’t leave them, and the cutlass only wavered as he changed his footing to allow for the roll and pitch of the ship. There was cruelty in his eyes, Truthful thought, and his voice was harsh.

“Who are you, my barrel-friends?”

“I am Major Harnett of His Britannic Majesty’s 95th Regiment of Rifles,” replied Harnett slowly, his eyes flickering over the rest of the ship and the men around them. He didn’t look at Truthful, who leant against him as if she wished she could disappear into his shadow.

“And I am the Chevalier de Vienne,” said Truthful wretchedly, clutching her coat around herself with one hand, the other white-knuckled on the iron-rim of the barrel.

“Really?” asked Fontaine, lazily running his eyes up and down her. He reached forward with his left hand, and with one swift motion, neatly ripped off her moustache. It came away so easily that Truthful realised that it must have come unstuck with all the water, and had already been sliding down her upper lip.

As it parted from her skin, the glamour left her.

She saw the men start, and Fontaine begin to smile. But it was Harnett’s reaction she cared about. Truthful turned to him and felt him flinch as if he had been struck by a bullet. He stared at her, not speaking. She saw disbelief in his eyes, then a growing spark of anger. But he didn’t say a word, he just kept staring till she turned away.

“Take the woman to my cabin,” snapped Fontaine. “Lash the man to the bowsprit. Let’s send him to Neptune slowly, eh?”

The men surged forward. Harnett brandished his little sghian dbhu and leapt at Fontaine but his legs, cramped and weakened from their imprisonment, failed him and he fell over the side of the barrel. Fontaine laughed and brought the hilt of his cutlass down upon his head, knocking him senseless.

Truthful shouted and swung a fist wildly at Fontaine, but one of the sailors grabbed her from behind, wrapping his beefy arms around her while his sardine-laden breath blew across the back of her neck, at least until she jerked her head back and smashed him in the nose, a trick she had seen watching a mill when disguised as a boy with the Newington-Lacys. He let go, gasping, but two more sailors pinned her arms and another gripped her around the knees. She struggled violently, but they pushed her against the mast and held her there.

“Take her to my cabin,” ordered Fontaine. “I will attend to her later. But she is not to be harmed! Tie her up, but take care not to hurt her, you understand!”

Fontaine’s cabin was the main saloon at the stern of the vessel, under the quarter-deck. It was surprisingly clean and neat, not at all like Truthful’s expectations of a festering pirate ship. There were several low wooden lockers against the walls, a polished table bolted to the deck in the centre of the cabin and a red plush lounge under the stern windows, which were currently closed against the elements.

The three sailors rapidly tied Truthful’s wrists, then the other end of the rope to the table leg, carefully checking that there was enough rope to allow Truthful to reach the lounge. They tested this by dragging her there and throwing her on it, ignoring her kicks and attempts to bite.

But after doing so, the three merely grinned, and left. Truthful heard the last locking the cabin door behind him, and then their footsteps clattering up the short ladder to the main deck. She lay still for a moment, her head still dizzy from the brandy-fumes. Even though the motion of the ship had quietened, the slight roll and pitch did not help her head or her stomach.

“I refuse to . . . be . . . sick,” muttered the Admiral’s daughter, who’d been raised from an early age to sail a dinghy and had often been at sea on her father’s yacht, though never in bad weather or with the additional scourge of brandy.

Seasickness pushed aside, she staggered to her feet and lurched across to the table, to see how the sailor had tied the rope to the table-leg. A quick examination of the knot brought a smile to her face. He had used a trickster’s knot, counting on a landlubber (and a woman) being unable to fathom its tortured windings and loops within loops. Truthful undid it in several seconds, humming a sea-shanty to herself, a song that Hetherington had used to whistle when he went over the ropes of the Admiral’s yacht with a younger Truthful, or when they tied knot after knot for the Admiral to inspect.

Both ends of the rope undone, she coiled it on the table, and inspected the lockers, searching for a weapon. But the lockers lived up to their name, being firmly shut by keyed bronze locks and were made of solid teak, so Truthful found no way to get them open. In any case, she thought, they were probably only full of the Captain’s private supply of food and drink. She turned to the plush couch, and stripping it of cushions, found a storage-space below. But it held only clean sheets and blankets.

The last resort was a drawer in the table. It held a sewing kit, with all the usual paraphernalia of buttons, thread and small needles. But at some time, someone had thrust something more useful through the cloth cover of the kit. Truthful drew it out and held it tightly in her hand. A three-inch, curved sailmaker’s needle was not much of a weapon but it was better than nothing.

The shutters on the stern windows were closed, but Truthful unfastened one and eased it open. She looked out at the sea below and the white wake of the ship, and for a moment considered climbing out. She was a good swimmer, but there was no knowing how long she had been unconscious or how far they were from land. Besides, there was Harnett. She couldn’t escape without him, and he would be drowned if he was left tied to the bowsprit for any length of time.

But she couldn’t defeat Fontaine and all his crew, armed only with a sailmaker’s needle. Which meant her only real hope was a rescue, from Harnett’s friends with or without the assistance of the Navy. However, they would need time to catch up, time that they might not have. The ship was heeled over and sailing fast, confirming from the little she had seen above decks that it was indeed a fast-sailing brig with a good crew, and as Harnett had noted, the wind was fair for the Continent . . .

Truthful thought for a moment, weighing up the situation. She had the rope she’d been tied up with, a sailmaker’s needle, any amount of thread, a number of sheets and blankets . . .

An idea formed in her head, a sailor’s idea. She acted on it quickly, opening the drawer and taking out the heaviest thread. She bit off a good section and used it to lash the door shut. It wouldn’t hold for long, but every minute would count. Then she took out the sheets and blankets, quickly laid them out on the floor and began to sew them together. She used long, loose stitches using doubled thread for strength, sewing as she had never sewed before, constantly jabbing herself but ignoring both the pain and the splotches of blood that fell upon the cloth.

Shouts above and an even greater inclination of the deck told her that the crew were trimming the sails, perhaps even spreading more, to wring out extra speed. That suggested a chase had begun. If only Fontaine stayed on deck for a little longer. Truthful was finished with the sewing. Now she tied the rope that had been used to secure her firmly around the neck of the makeshift sea anchor she had made, and paid it slowly out the stern window before making the rope fast as unobtrusively as possible around the frame.

Bending over to look down, she saw the anchor billow out and fill, larger than she had hoped. But her stitches needed to hold, and the rope must not be cut.

The clatter of footsteps on the ladder made her whip around. The door rattled as someone tried to open it, but for the moment the thread securing it held. Truthful picked up the big needle again, ran to the door and stood next to it, her hand raised.