His Spoilt Lady (18 page)

“Surely Lord,”
Linnett asked aloud, “you can’t have saved us just to go and drown
us a few days later? No!” She rebelled against the thought,
determining, “If I have my way,
we will
survive this!”

Gently but
awkwardly, she extracted the oars from under John’s prone body.
First, she used an oar to push the boat farther away from the
ship’s side, and then she placed each oar either side of the boat
into the rowlocks. Clutching an oar in each hand, she dipped the
paddle ends into the sea and pulled back with all her might. One
oar slipped from her grip; hastily, she grabbed it, only just
saving it from disappearing into the ocean depths. Linnett took a
deep breath, started again and eventually got a rhythm going, pull
back and stroke, pull back and stroke. Sweat dripped down her face
and between her breasts, but she struggled on.

When finally
Linnett broke for a rest, wiping her hot face with the back of her
forearm, she looked back at the ship and was surprised by how far
she had managed to row. “I am only just realising what an amazing
woman you are, Mrs. Foster.” Linnett started in surprise and
squealed with joy, her arms reaching out for John, helping him to
sit upright; Linnett covered his face in kisses. “Steady now!” John
swayed and held his head with both hands. He felt and looked
dreadful.

“John, thank
goodness you are alright!” Linnett gasped with relief.

“Well, I
wouldn’t say alright, exactly,” John quipped and gave her a weak
grin. He looked around him and frowned. “So, here we are then. I
take it we are the only ones blessed with this particular fate?” He
raised a questioning brow. Linnett hung her head; her hair tumbled
forward in a curtain of honey, which screened her face from his
gaze.

“Linnett?” John
reached out a hand and gently raised her head. Her face was awash
with tears and she was unable to speak.

John’s face
hardened, “All dead?” he asked, hazarding a guess. “Captain
Pettigrew? Ahhhh, not Duncan, too?”

Linnett nodded
her head and suddenly she spluttered into gut-wrenching sobs, her
body folded forward, and her head dropped onto John’s lap. He
gently laid his hand on her head and stroked her soft hair.
Sorrowfully, he sat thinking of the good men he had come to like
and respect, so needlessly slaughtered. He wondered how this
disaster had come about and thought he may have some knowledge of
that. John remembered the darting light from the ship the other
night and the French song being sung by someone hidden from view up
on deck.

He looked up at
the sky and saw it was still blue and the sun shone quite warm. The
sea looked a pleasant green, and although there was quite a swell,
it was reasonably calm. They must make use of this fine weather and
row as much and as far as they could. It was their only chance of
surviving.

When Linnett
had subsided into hiccups, John mopped her face with his
handkerchief, holding her face between his hands he spoke to her
tenderly. “We will talk of what has happened later. Now we must row
to survive, or rather you must row for now at any rate. I will
rest, and hopefully soon, I can help you with the rowing.”

John pressed
his lips against her forehead gently. Linnett nodded grimly and
settled herself back on the boat seat to row once again. She found
it a relief to do something physical and put all her strength into
the rowing. After an hour, she stopped, absolutely exhausted, and
sitting where she was, Linnett bowed her head, her chest heaving
from her exertions. She was disappointed to see the ship still in
view even though they were some way from it.

John watched
her sadly. What terrible dangers he had exposed her to, a young
gentle-born girl of only nineteen years. She should not have seen
such terrible atrocities. John knew that he would never forgive
himself for dragging her into this nightmare. If only he had heeded
her wishes, she would still be safe at her home in England.

Gingerly, John
felt his injured head and then stretched, reaching out to touch
Linnett’s arm. “I will row now, sweetheart. Can you move over to
here so that we can switch places?”

Awkwardly, they
shuffled around one another so that John was able to row. The first
five minutes were hell for him. His poor head pounded and his arms
throbbed with the effort of rowing, but then he managed a good
rhythm.

Linnett settled
into the bottom of the boat and rested her head on her arms while
leaning against the seat. She fell into a doze, and when she awoke
The Tempest was no longer in sight and the sun was low in the sky.
John was rowing still.

“Have you been
rowing all this time?” she asked him with concern.

“No,” he
replied, shaking his head, “I stop every hundred strokes for a
rest. Is there any water? I’m parched.”

Linnett turned
from side to side looking for the flagon of water that the pirates
had given them. She finally found it under the seat and passed it
to John. He drank deeply and wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand.

“I had hoped we
were near enough to shore so that we could land before night came
but we are farther out than I had estimated,” John said.

Linnett reached
out to take the water from him. “How do we know if we are even
rowing in the right direction” she asked dejectedly.

John pointed
beyond her. “Turn your head and look,” he said, and when Linnett
turned, what she saw made her eyes liquid with relief. For there in
the distance lay mountains, and wheeling up in the sky from that
same direction were birds. “Land, oh John! How long will it take us
to get there?”

“It’s much
farther away than it looks. I can’t say how long it will take us,
but we will get there, my sweet, I promise you that!” John grimly
rowed on, determined to land the small boat before night fall if he
could.

It was dark
now. Still they had not reached the shore, the sea was starting to
rise, and the waves tossed their small craft from side to side. It
was almost, Linnett thought, as though the sea were playing
catch-a-ball with them, only in this case it was catch-a-boat.
Linnett was terrified, her teeth chattering and her lungs jarring
with ragged breath. John had abandoned rowing as soon as darkness
had fallen. He had tried to use one of the ores as a rudder to keep
their course true, but as the sea swelled, it had become an
impossible task and he had given up. He stowed the oar in the boat
alongside its partner. A small sail was folded under the boat seat,
John wrapped it around the two of them so they could snuggle
together in the bottom of the boat. They were at the sea’s mercy,
and all they could do was pray, which they both did silently, each
imploring God for the other’s survival.

After a while,
it may have been minutes or hours, they had no way of knowing, it
rained. As it rained the wind got up, and the little boat was
thrown about like a bobbing cork. Linnett clung to John in terror.
John held her tightly and cursed himself for ever bringing her on
this wretched voyage. He now believed they were doomed and expected
the boat to turn over as each new wave hit them. How long the storm
lasted, neither knew.

The long night
finally passed, and they had survived, but morning bought no joy.
Thick fog had fallen, and they had no way of telling in which
direction land lay. John dared not row, lest he take them far out
to sea by mistake, so they lay in the boat dozing, becoming
listless with fatigue. As the day passed, Linnett began to shiver.
Soaked to the skin, cold and hungry, she had given up all hope of
them ever reaching safety. Finally she fell into a deep and
unhealthy sleep. John roused himself enough to give her the last of
their water dribbling it between her salty lips and then he too was
overcome with the wet and the cold and fell into an exhausted
slumber.

The first John
knew of the following day was a rough shaking of his shoulder and a
deep male voice shouting in his ear, “Mister! Mister! Wake up
Mister!”

John groaned
and tried to push the man away. He just wanted to be left alone to
sleep. He felt himself lifted upright to a sitting position. John
opened his eyes and quickly shut them against the brightness and
the salt that stung them. He rubbed them with the back of his hand,
and as he did so, a wet rag was placed in his palm and a deep calm
voice spoke, “Use this. It is fresh water.”

Gratefully,
John wiped his eyes and face. At last able to open his eyes, John
saw a sturdy arm covered with curled, white-blonde hairs, holding
out a drinking canteen. John drank deeply, and never had water
tasted so sweet.

“Thank you,” he
said, his voice hoarse, and he passed the canteen back.

John looked
around him. He was sitting on the sandy beach of a cove; his
rescuer was a huge blonde giant of a man dressed in warm outdoor
clothes. At his side was a small blonde boy so like him that John
guessed correctly that it must be his son. John smiled at them, but
then suddenly he remembered Linnett. “My wife!” He tried to stand
too quickly and fainted away. The blond giant sighed heavily. He
turned to his son and said, “Peter, go to the cart and untether old
Bess and bring her here to me.”

“Yes, Pa!”

The boy ran as
fast as his thin legs would carry him up the beach to the track
where they had left the horse and cart tethered. In the cart,
covered in a warm home-knitted blanket, lay a feverish Linnett.
Together, the man and his son managed to get John slung over the
horse’s back and up to the cart, where they placed him next to
Linnett. Slowly, they set off up the earth track towards the man’s
home. He wondered what his wife was going to say when he returned
with two more mouths to feed; worried, he frowned and shook his
large shaggy head and sighed. On the beach, the sea birds flew
back, landing on the now deserted sandy shore to scavenge in the
surf once again. Undisturbed by man, a few gulls sat on the
wreckage of the small rowing boat, which lay just beyond the tide’s
reach.

They had by now
been staying with the family Lammers at their farmstead near
Ogunquit, which Hans told them meant ‘Beautiful place by the sea’-
named by the Abenaki, a local native Indian tribe for about a
month. By this time, John was more than seriously concerned about
Linnett. After their ordeal, John had spent a couple of days in bed
suffering from mild chills and exhaustion, but with Sarah Lammers’
excellent cooking and care, he was up and around in no time.
Linnett, however, was suffering from fevers and chills and had been
extremely ill indeed. Even now, she protested that she was too weak
to leave her bed. Sarah Lammers, a shrewd woman, suspected Linnett
was stronger than she let on, but after what that lass had been
through she wasn’t about to comment, so she kept the knowledge to
herself.

The Lammers
were a kindly, down-to-earth farming people, who had settled on
their land ten years ago, only months after Hans had married Sarah.
Hans Lammers was Dutch; he was brought to America by his father
after his mother had died in childbirth in their native
Netherlands. This was to be a new start for the family, and
although it had been a hard struggle, the tough, honest man had
made a good life for himself and his small son. He ran a supply
store in Boston and that was where Hans had grown into a fine,
strong young man.

Sarah had
caught his eye when she had visited the store with her mother, the
local school teacher. Both her mother and her father were teachers
and ran the local school in a kindly but firm manner. Sarah’s quiet
character, her brown eyes and prettiness attracted the big man, and
he had courted her with gentle determination, his polite, calm
manner finding approval in the eyes of Sarah’s parents. They were
wed, and with the monies given them by both families for their
wedding present, they had bought a plot of 180 acres of fertile
land and woodland situated near the coast, almost a hundred miles
north from family and Boston.

At first,
Sarah’s parents were appalled. They had envisaged a life with Sarah
and Hans running and perhaps extending the Lammers’ store, their
grandchildren visiting daily and the family all safely nearby.
Peter Lammers was startled but then pleased by his son’s decision
to move on and to farm. He did his best to smooth his wife’s
ruffled feathers. In fact, it was only after the birth of Hans’ and
Sarah’s son Peter that they both had finally reconciled themselves
to their daughter’s move.

Hans and Sarah
had travelled down with a wagon train of people wishing to build a
new life and community near the land Hans had bought, and now a
small township was settled some five miles away from the farm’s
boundary. The farm was hard work, but both Hans and Sarah loved it.
The house was made from the trees cut from their own land and was a
spacious, if not large, comfortable log house.

Downstairs was
simply one large open room, with the cooking and eating area to the
back of the house. A large black cooking range stood against one
wall, and a big, well-scrubbed pine table stood in front of that
with six beautifully carved chairs around it, Hans had made them
the first winter they had moved into the house. He loved to carve,
something his grandfather had taught him as a small boy in the
Netherlands. Hans had made the farm house unusual and beautiful
with his carvings. All the shutters at the windows were carved with
leaves and flower designs. The stairway that ran up the left-hand
side of the large downstairs room displayed carved animals from the
local area, including squirrels, deer, racoons and even snakes,
from one end to the other.

There was a
large stone fireplace on the right hand wall and, on the floor in
front of it, a bright circular wool rug, which Sarah had lovingly
made. Four carved rocking chairs were placed around the rug,
enticing a person to sit and enjoy the roaring log fire that the
Lammers generally kept ablaze in all but the hottest of summers.
Upstairs were four rooms; Hans had planned for a large family, and
neither he nor Sarah ever mentioned the fact that, so far, only
Peter had come along. Sarah used the spare rooms for when their
respective parents came to visit.