‘I am curious about those torches you saw at the bottom of the steps, there in our secret inlet.’
‘I could check easier in daylight,’ Pru suggested. ‘And safer.’
You could, Anna thought, aware what John needed to know to confirm his suspicions.
‘I must know if both those torches are lit,’ John told Pru. ‘And a child playing will be overlooked. If you would rather not go, tell me. I will not love you any less.’
Anna watched Pru’s face as the child considered the request. She saw no fear, only a stalwart girl measuring out the task.
‘If I move carefully, I can do it.’
‘You only need to go down far enough to see the torches.’
‘I will come, too,’ Allan said.
Anna held her breath as Pru leaned towards the boy. ‘I have a better idea. Let us take a rope between us. You go part way down. When I go the rest of the way, I will tug twice on the rope for two torches lit. You can run back here and tell your father. He’ll know sooner that way.’
Allan didn’t like the idea and told her, but Pru was masterful. Anna realised she was watching the two children they’d been last November and December, trying to stay alive in an empty house, with Pru in charge, so young herself.
‘You did what I asked when it was just the two of us,’ Pru said quietly. ‘Allan, do that again for me.’
Silence, then, ‘I will do it for you,’ Allan told her. He looked at his father. ‘We will be ever so quiet and careful, Papa.’
‘That’s all I ask,’ the Captain said, after a visible struggle that tore at Anna’s heart. ‘Pru, if I am asking too much…’
‘You’re not, sir,’ she said, and shyly touched his shoulder. ‘I am having the best time of my life. We’ll take care. There’s rope by the shed.’
Hand in hand, without a backward glance, they walked across the lawn, stopping at the gardener’s shed for rope.
Anna and her Captain stood on the veranda, watching in the growing darkness as the children approached the steps, then disappeared. John tightened his grip until she wanted to cry out, but didn’t.
‘They’re taking forever,’ he said after mere minutes.
She could not have agreed more.
The sky turned from grey to ink. When it felt like midnight in the next century, she heard scrabbling on stone. They hurried to the edge to see Allan waving the rope like a talisman. ‘Two burning torches, Papa!’ he declared. ‘Pru tugged.’
Pru followed soon after. Anna grabbed her and held on tight, while Allan started to protest at his father’s own strong grip.
‘I saw two torches brightly lit,’ Pru told him. ‘What does it mean?’
Anna glanced at John. She knew what he would say, and she dreaded it.
‘It means that someone in Port Mahon wants to know whenSwallowis docked at the wharf. Two torches must mean we are here. When it is one torch,Swallowis heading back to sea.’
‘I don’t understand, Papa,’ Allan said. ‘Couldn’t they just ask you?’
Thank you, Allan, she thought as the captain started to laugh, a genuine belly-laugh with no panic in it.
‘Allan, that makes perfect sense,’ he said when he could speak. ‘When I find out who it is, I’ll ask them.’
Allan nodded. ‘I would, Papa. Wouldn’t you, Pru?’
Pru looked down at her lap and smiled. ‘I might.’
John gave the children what Anna knew was a captain’s look. He put his finger to his lips. ‘Consider yourselves my crew. I order you to tell no one. Promise me.’
They understood. He kissed them.
