“He asked me to destroy it and avail you of its contents.” Tom Holder is speaking quickly, as if he’s reciting a series of learned facts and worries he’ll forget one. “He’s being held on theHornet,where he’ll be tried for murder under the laws of the service.”
Black spots congregate before her eyes. “But he can’t be! He isn’t even in the navy!”
“Captain Hamer has impressed him just for the purpose of trying him. He doesn’t care that the crime was committed before. He has also told Jack he personally guarantees a guilty verdict and that Jack will be hanged from the mainmast yardarm this Friday at three o’clock in the afternoon.”
She turns away from the table just in time and spills her dinneracross the floor. Tom Holder offers her a cotton handkerchief. Her eyes sting with tears. “But that’s just three days from now,” she whispers.
“I’m afraid there’s more. In the note, Jack mentioned Captain Hamer intends to sail his ship into the river for the hanging, as far as he can go without running her aground. It won’t be far; it’s a big ship. Captain Hamer wants people from the villages along the river to come out and watch. He wishes to make an example of Jack. He told Jack all of this himself.” Tom Holder wipes the sweat from his brow. “Jack asks that you don’t come, Mrs. Henley. He asks you to promise you won’t go out and watch.”
She’s shaking her head. It can’t be true. “No.” Is that her voice? “No! No, no, no!” She clutches her head, stomach writhing.
She lost George much too soon. Must she now also lose Jack? What has she done that God has decided to punish her in this way? Was it the familiarity with James? Not loving George enough, perhaps? Was she cursed at birth or when someone—something—plucked her from the ocean and set her down, alone, afraid, on the road in Helford?
She remembers it suddenly. Not much—not her home or her parents or anything like that. But she remembers the fear. The loneliness. The way she stood there, not knowing where to go, whom to ask for help. Knowing she wouldn’t ever see those whom she loved most again. The memory is there—a memory made up of feelings.
There’s something else as well. A smell. Seaweed, salt, something sharp. Gull droppings, maybe. And apples. She went in through a wooden gate, didn’t she? She can see that gate now. Dark green and shiny as if the paint had not yet dried. She remembers her hands, which were tinged green also. The green of the sea. And her mother’s arms, the safety of them, and the voice she didn’t yet know, speaking words she couldn’t understand but that she now believes were,oh dear child…
But before that, before her mother’s arms, there was the fear. She’s feeling it again now at the thought of losing Jack. Her voice hasdropped to a whisper. It’s still going,no, no, no.Over it, a little loudly, Tom Holder says, “I’m terribly sorry. Will you promise?”
Promise? She has to think. What must she promise? To love Jack? To have and to hold from this day forward?
Tom Holder says gently, “Promise me you won’t go and watch, Mrs. Henley. It’s a dying man’s last wish.”
Black spots, all over the kitchen. They start in the corners of the room and move closer, crowding her vision. She grips the tabletop. “I promise,” she whispers. “Did he write anything else?”
“Only this: he asks that you think well of him and says to listen to the sea so you’ll never be truly alone. He’s something of a poet, isn’t he? What else…It was a long note, Mrs. Henley. Ah, I have it. Dick and Will Pengelly are with him. The press gang took them, but Captain Hamer is unaware of their free trade activities. Other than that there were some instructions on what to do with the contraband. You’re to have Jack’s share of the profits.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Mrs. Henley, I don’t know the whole of your situation, but I advise you to take it. Jack wants you to have it. It would allow you to live more as you are accustomed to.”
She’s still clutching the innkeeper’s handkerchief. The tip of the cloth sticks out from her fist like a white flag. “Are you able to send a note back?”
“No. I’m sorry, Mrs. Henley. I’m afraid I must go. There will be customers. I would’ve sent Richard, but I can’t trust that he won’t get picked up by the press gang. Besides, the message was too important—he may have gotten it wrong.”
Through the fog in her mind, she says, “Will you be all right, Mr. Holder?”
“They don’t want anyone my age.” He stops turning his hat and looks up at her. “Willyoube all right, Mrs. Henley?”
“Yes,” she says, feeling the fear bore inside her, making her arms and her legs hollow like the limbs of a bisque doll. The only thing nothollow is her head, which is pounding:Jack, Jack, Jack.She rises stiffly. At the door, she says, “Thank you, Mr. Holder.”
He puts on his hat and touches the brim saying, “That’s Tom for you, Mrs. Henley. I wish you courage these next three days. It will all be over soon.”
When the door shuts, she gets a bucket of water from the well flatly, and with hollow motions she cleans the floor. She washes her face and puts on a clean dress, and then she steps out the front door. The sun clings to the horizon and the air is scented with summer. Dried seaweed covers the banks of the river and the beaches of the coves she passes as she walks the coastal path.
Night folds over the headland. The open sea shimmers blackly beyond the shadowy bulk of the frigate. The ship moves lightly on the swell, masts poking holes in the sky. A lantern at the stern swings back and forth, casting a golden path on the water. Against the glow, silhouettes walk the quarterdeck—figures without faces. She can hear their voices like a distant murmur across the water. It’s a ghost ship, she thinks, fear clawing at the sight of the mainmast from which they will hang Jack.
The path moves gradually down to a shallow cove. She sits in the shadow of a large rock, arms around her legs, chin on her knees, eyes on the frigate. Jack is there. If she could only cross the dark water and haul herself up the side of the ship, right where those wooden steps are set in the hull, she could see him and talk to him; she could touch his hands through whatever bars they’re keeping him behind.
She could swim across. It’s not far. Even in her gown, she could do it. She could reach for the steps and try to climb up, but they would see her. They’d catch her and they would question her. She’d never see Jack. She might even make things more difficult for him. If only she could swim across and become invisible, making her way through the ship unseen. If only she could find him and tell him,I love you. I should have told you when I had the chance.
Until now she has felt too hollow to cry much, but as she watches the ship, the tears run free. Silently, she weeps—for Jack, for thethings that will now never be, for the blame that lies on her. If only she hadn’t gone to Roskorwell that day, when Lieutenant Sowerby called on her, the day they sailed to France. If only she could take back her demand that Jack take her with him on the voyage.
The guilt presses down on her, making it hard to breathe. A part of her wants to crawl into the water and make a bed under the sea, the surf her blanket, and go to sleep so she won’t have to live through the next three days and the rest of her life without him. Another part of her wants to fight. If she could point a sword at Captain Hamer’s chest, she wouldn’t hesitate to push the bladein.
Then she thinks,how has it come to this? How can a man like Captain Hamer, a Royal Navy captain like her father was before he gained his blue at the mizzen, like George wished to become—how can this man be her enemy? Her hand goes to her throat, feeling for the Trafalgar medal and for an awful second she believes it’s not there. It’s as if she has lost George all over again, even as she is losing Jack. But then she feels the ridged silver on the ribbon and her hand closes around the image of Nelson as she sobs without a sound.
The people on the ship continue to murmur. The sea murmurs, too, but it doesn’t comfort her. After what feels like hours she lies down on her side, her knees pulled up, arms around them, her cheek against the wet sand. Pebbles press into her shoulder and hip. She’s still weeping, but now it’s a dry sort of weeping; she has run out of tears.
