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 calm after a terrible storm.
She thought of Malta, her brief visit in an Indiaman, which had been on government business and bound for Naples. Sillitoe had arranged for her to be landed at Malta, even though she knew he would once have done anything to keep her from Richard, and he had made no attempt to gain any advantage either on the passage out or on the journey back to England. If anything, he had been withdrawn, perhaps at last understanding what it had cost her to leave the man she loved behind in Malta.
Forever.
She had seen him only twice since Richard’s death. He had offered his condolences, and assured her of his readiness to help in any way he could. As with the lawyer, Lafargue, he had understood immediately her concern for Adam. He had been correct in every way, and had made it his business to begin enquiries of his own.
Catherine thought she understood men, had learned much out of necessity. But after Richard, how could she survive? Where would be the point?
She recalled the exact moment when they had been reunited, at English Harbour over ten years ago. She had been married to Somervell, the King’s Inspector-General.
Dazed and yet on guard because of the unexpectedness of the meeting, and the danger she had known it would offer. Telling him he needed love, as the desert craves for rain.
Or was I speaking of myself? My own desires?
And now he is dead.
And tomorrow, another challenge. All those staring eyes. Not those of the men who had stood with him and had faced death a hundred times, or the women who had loved and welcomed them when they had returned home. Without limbs. Without sight. Without hope.
No. They would be the faces and the eyes she had seen that evening at the celebration of Wellington ’s victory. Rhodes, who had been championed as the new First Lord of the Admiralty. Richard’s wife, bowing to applause she would never earn or deserve. And the unsmiling wife of Graham Bethune. Unsmiling until the moment of insult, as if she had been a part of it. All enemies.
She had turned her back on them. Had come here, half blind with anger and humiliation. She stood up quickly and stared at the bed. And he was waiting for me.
Tomorrow, then. The bells would toll, the drums echo through the empty streets. They would be remembering her Richard, her dearest of men, but they would be looking at her. At me.
And what would they see? The woman who had inspired a hero? The woman who had endured a shipwreck, and fought the danger and misery so that they might all hope to live, when most of them had already accepted a lingering death. The woman who had loved him. Loved him.
Or would they see only a whore?
She faced the mirror again and unfastened her gown, so that it fell and was held until she released it and stood naked, the hair warm against her spine.
As the desert craves for rain.
She sat again and recovered the brush. She heard a step on the stairs, quick and light. It would be Melwyn, her maid and companion. Cornish, from St Austell, a fair girl with an elusive, elfin prettiness. She was fifteen.
She stared unwaveringly at the mirror. Fifteen. As I was when I was with child. When my world began to change. Richard had known of that; Sillitoe also knew.
She heard a tap at the door and pulled the gown up to her shoulders. Melwyn entered the room and closed the door.
“You’ve not eaten, m’ lady.” She stood her ground, quietly determined. “Tesn’t right. Cook thought…”
She stood quite still as Catherine twisted round to look at her. Then she said simply, “You’m so beautiful, m’ lady. You must take more care. Tomorrow d’ be so important, and I can’t be with you. No room for servants…”