"What? It is me that what?"
"Oh, hoist away!" she said. "Let's see how well she takes it, and work her in towards the shore. We cannot be so many miles from the Adur, I spoke a clump of fishers while you slept and they were out of Pevensey." She grinned. "I played the part of boy at tiller, my master sleeping, my accent West Sussex way. They maybe thought that we were of the trade, but being taken for a woman would have been much more unwise, I think!"
They got the close-reefed sail up and sheeted and the yawl lay to the seas much quieter, taking spray but no more solid water. She was tearing through the sea at a terrific rate, and would probably handle in a full gale if one came on. Will took the helm while Celine broke out more bacon and to his joy produced a water breaker she had found. It would have served several men a half a week had the yawl become a lifeboat, so they did not stint. In the fading light, and not far northwards, they could see the Sussex coast in its wreath of cloud. Whatever happened, shore and safety, of a sort, was achievable.
Will came back with his question after they had sailed another mile or more, and he had thought the implications through. He did not ask Celine what she had meant to say, because she had stopped herself from finishing. He harked instead to Richard Kaye, and something she had said earlier, before he'd slept.
"Mary Broad," he started. "She knows something about Slack Dickie Lieutenant Kaye that she would not tell for fear of hurting me. That was your implication, I believe? Some leagues ago?"
Celine's eyes were calm. She decided in a second, and she nodded.
"So Kaye, I take it, is some way involved with smuggling, and somehow involved with the men behind the Hampshire men, who would take over?" he continued. "The men who want to link up with the East Sussex men and Kent men, whom Mary and her fellows see as villainous? He agreed to help in mine and Sam Holt's venture, then attacked your lugger so our attack would fail without him being seen reneging? Have I got it right thus far?"
Celine nodded once more. She looked to weather, and eased her sheet a fraction.
"But Kaye's no friend of mine, but is to Daniel Swift, my uncle. And throughout my times with Mary Broad, and Hardman, and the Bartrams, they would never venture any names. It was "shadows" this, and "shadows" that, the men behind the bitter changes, the men behind those two most dreadful outrages, the men who murdered Charles Warren and Charles Yorke. Am I to believe they are both implicated, Kaye and Daniel Swift? That as well as being Navy officers they are traders with the enemy!"
A sudden heat had come on him, on the last words he had seemed to choke with it; but Celine stayed deadly calm.
"Not with the enemy," she said. "Kaye is an English patriot, full blood. He fell on Leopold's boat because of that, because we are French, we are the enemy. It was legitimate."
"And that is sophistry! If you are right he does business with the enemy, he is a backer of the trade! What is the difference?"
A creaming crest rose sharp beside their hull and Celine headed it, then delicately tweaked the stern to weather. It lifted her and the aft end both, then dropped them in a foaming gush as the wave roared under them.
"What is the enemy?" she replied, with the tiniest of smiles. "This year France, next year Spain or Holland. Perhaps the enemy is the government, in every land? Certainly the enemy is those venturers who take a different stance, or play by different rules, or fight for their own territory like our Hampshire friends. Of course Blaise Leopold was not the enemy in one sense of the word, he brought home English prisoners of war for you, but being French we could be named as such for Richard Kaye's convenience. Of course France is the enemy, but trade is trade and must be carried on despite the mad rules of our rulers, so we are not the enemy, likewise for Richard Kaye's convenience. Did not your "good King Charles" have a cousin who was King of France? Did he not borrow gold from him to use to fight a war against him with his certain knowledge? That's what our history says. Convenience, at bottom it is all convenience. Even killing, when necessary, is a convenience, is it not? As it is for governments, so it is for us."
"So Richard Kaye is one of the men behind the villainy that led to Yorke and Warren being killed? As a convenience ..."
More crests arose to windward, were handled, ridden, used. The boat and woman were in perfect tune. After each manoeuvre, sweet and delicate, she gave a little smile.
"I must be honest with you," she said at last. "The Hampshire people do not know. The names they were suspicious of, we were suspicious of, were kept from you, were not mooted to you, because Mary in particular feared your hurt. Remember, Jesse was her husband. You are held in very high .. . regard."
His voice betrayed his bitterness, his confusion. "Convenience, also or is that sophistry? Had I known, I maybe would not have joined the hunt, how could I have? We were looking for the murderers, Sam and I. We were not expecting to be used. Naive. Naive."
Cold spray hit his face but he held it there and did not look away. Celine eased her sheet. The yawl was staggering to a stronger gust.
"We did not know for certain, but we had to know. No one could come up with a better way. And there are other men you know of. A doctor of your area. The Petersfield Recorder, we think, but have no evidence direct. Men, even, of your family. Will, we do not know, we may be wrong. Sam Holt and you were setting on for it, but Kaye sank all our hopes. You may call this convenience if you so desire, you are cynicaclass="underline" if we can rescue Sam he may know more, he may have certainties to tell us."
"Men even of my family." Bentley's voice was bleak, he was clearly wrestling for understanding. "Daniel Swift is Kaye's protagonist, but you did not state his implication, you do not answer me. But Kershaw was Swift's man and he sank Kaye's hopes in a way, and told you it was because Sam Holt was abandoned and betrayed. If Kershaw was Swift's, how can you say that Swift is of the shadows? Oh Jesus Christ, there is that schooner building on the Thames!"
This to himself, as the memory hit him. Swift's own ship, on the stocks, his own fast private ship. And what was she for? Taking herring? No. Celine, hunched in her boat cloak, raised no question of his silent perplexity.
At last she said: "We all must rise, Will, that is the bottom of it. This war won't last for ever, maybe, and no man can finance a good run off his own back, can he? This landing on the beach tonight might involve four hundred men or more, and money to finance such ventures is not lightly raised. I don't know why Kershaw wrecked our boat, or even if he did, on purpose, but if he was Swift's man he knew you and Samuel as well, and maybe changed his loyalty, is that impossible? And maybe Swift is loyal to the King, and Navy, but knows he has to live, and thrive, and rise, whoever is the so-called enemy or even horrors if there is no one to fight at all, and he is on the beach! Men are ambitious, Will, although you do not seem to be. Maybe Kaye skewered your hopes to stop you learning things you would have found too indigestible. Back to convenience, although that's too warped to contemplate!" She laughed, briefly. "No, you've come against reality, brother. It is a bloody business, this life we're leading. All of us."
Did his father have a share in the building schooner? Had not Swift said that?
"But you do not know?" he asked forlornly. "You think there is involvement, but you do not know for sure?"
"We do not know," Celine agreed. "For certain."
Sam Holt had been betrayed, but the violence of the weather, his good hideout, and Bentley and Celine conspired to get him off the beach alive, if only just. Ten hours after that the question was an open one. When they sailed into calmer waters he was on the bottom boards face white and tinged with blue, hair caked in blood, unmoving. As they ran the forefoot on to mud, Celine gave way to tears.