My Sweet Folly (34 page)

He had struggled up, leaning over her, breathing dread deep into his lungs. She was dead; he had been certain. Her skin was chalk white, the blood like a black mat across her temple and cheeks, scattered over her gown. The blue kashmir shawl she had worn at Vauxhall was missing.

But bending over, he could feel her breath. He felt an irregular pulse. As he had tried to ease her into a less twisted position, the door had opened and a red-coated guard ducked into the cabin.

“Raikes?” he demanded, dropping the pail of water and the foul rags on the deck beside Robert.
 
“William Raikes? She dead yet?”

Robert looked up into his ugly face. “She’s not,” he said.

The guard squatted down beside her. “Pretty gal,” he said, not unkindly. “Tried to escape off the quay, I hear.”

He did not answer. When the guard moved to touch her, Robert put out his hand and blocked it fiercely.

“Well, it’s too bad. It’s too bad—but better for her if she passes on now,” the guard said.

Robert made a sound deep in his throat. The man glanced at him. He shook his grizzled head. “Nay, put your mind to it, man. Take my word. You don’t want her to suffer what’s coming.’’

“What’s coming?”

The guard shrugged and stood. “Fortnight, maybe, or a year down in the belly of this hulk picking oakum and gathering ballast, only God can say. Depends on the wind. Ten months under decks to Botany Bay, if you make it that far. I always reckoned transport better’ n hanging, until I sailed guard on board one of them convict ships. You think the stench bad here—open the hatch after six months out on one o’ them things. For a man, it may do, but a woman—aye, and one like your poor wife here, scent of quality on her—you let ‘er go now, or see her made a whore down there while you watch, and then die o’ putrid fever.”

Robert stared at him. “Who brought us here?’’
 

“Newgate warden, I reckon. I weren’t aboard when you come. There’s a chamberpot—you’ll have a biscuit later, visit with the prison master ‘fore you’re sent below. Do you want to request the surgeon, Raikes?’’

Robert could only look down at Folie’s limp hands, benumbed.

“Oh, a good man, our surgeon.” He chuckled. “He’ll kill her for certain.”

“Keep him out of here,” Robert said.

She dreamed of drowning and pyrotechnics. And Robert Cambourne’s voice. She could not be sure if it was the real Robert, her own Robert. She had no way to tell. She did not know his voice. Everything about him was fading, lost to her, lost forever, supplanted inexorably by this dark man who spoke to her in such a soft, bleak voice.

“Robert?’’ she whispered, attempting to touch the throbbing pain in her head.

“I’m here,” he said, but everything was black. She could hear water, smell sour river-smell and sewage, hear stranger’s voices with a bizarre hollow echo about them.

“Where?’’ Her voice squeaked. She reached toward the sound of his voice, but her wrists felt so heavy that she could not lift them.

There was a sound of metal. A firm hand gripped hers. “Here. Right here.’’

She felt him lean close, felt his breath on her face. She realized that she was lying on a hard floor. “I can’t see you,” she whimpered.

“You can’t?” His voice was very gentle. “Right here. It’s rather dark. You’ll see me in a moment.”

Folie waited, squinting hard. Her head hurt terribly. She tried to quell the panic rising in her. “I can’t see you. Can you see me?”

He did not answer. Folie dug her fingers into his hand.
 

“Can you see me?” she repeated. “Where are we?”

“Folly.” He spoke in a serious voice. “Don’t try to move. Just listen. We’re in one of the prison hulks.”

“What?” She started to sit up, but pain flashed in her head and he put his hand against her shoulder. The metallic sound came again, and something heavy slid across her breast.

“Don’t move. You’ve been badly hurt; hit in the head. Just listen.” He touched her face and gently turned her head to one side. “Do you see the porthole there?”

“No.”

He was silent.

“Should I see it?” she asked frantically. “Can you see it?”

“Be calm. My brave Folly. Yes, I can see it.”
 

Folie began to pant. “What’s happened? What’s happening?”

“Close your eyes.” She felt his fingers over her eyelids, a soft rhythmic stroke, first one side and then the other.

“What is it?” she whispered, holding tight to his hand in the blackness.

He said nothing in reply. Folie bit her lip and held his hand very tightly. She could hear men talking, but it was all muffled, as if they were isolated behind thick walls.

He touched her face. “We are a Mr. and Mrs. Raikes, it seems—convicts. We are sentenced to be held on this hulk ship until transported to Botany Bay.”

“Dear God.” She felt a strong wave of nausea rise in her throat. “Oh, I am going to be ill.”

“Turn over—” He supported her as she leaned on her elbow, dry heaves racking her body. Spikes of lightning went through her head with each spasm.

She moaned, opening her eyes. Briefly, she saw moldy straw under her hand, the floor tilting like a nightmare, and then everything went black again.

Robert sat silently, watching Sir Howard. Still the man had not spoken, and Robert said nothing to him. When a boy brought a biscuit and small ale, Sir Howard flicked the dry bread contemptuously onto the floor.

He looked up, meeting Robert’s eyes, and then away again.

“I don’t know how you and she were entangled in this,” Robert said.

Sir Howard did not appear inclined toward explanations. He merely stared straight ahead at the deck between his bare feet.

“I’m sorry for it,” Robert said.

Sir Howard closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wood. His face was set in an angry sneer. Robert sat still, trying to put together what had happened at Vauxhall. He did not think Folie had received that wound while sitting in her box in the middle of the brilliantly-lit colonnades. He could not fathom Dingley’s presence.

“Why was she not with Lander?” he asked Sir Howard. “I sent him to guard her.”

But the man just shot him a scathing glare. Another suspicion began to congeal in Robert’s mind: the gardens of Vauxhall were notorious for lovers’ assignations.

Folie stirred. He supported her head while she was racked with the dry retching again. She was trembling. Robert found a red-hot fury rising in him against Dingley, that somehow, some way, he had let this happen to her. She should have been with Lander.

A jailer came, different from the first guard, without a uniform. He shoved open the door, looked at Folie and Robert, and then bent over, unlocking Dingley’s shackles. “Up,” he said, though Sir Howard was already standing, brushing himself off. “Superintendent to interview ye.”

In spite of the low ceiling and his shirtsleeves and bare feet, Dingley held his shoulders very straight and proud. “I will take care of this,” he announced, speaking to the air, or perhaps the cabin in general. His cheeks were burning as the jailer snapped manacles on his wrists. “It is all a great mistake.”

The door shut behind them. “I’m glad to hear it,” Robert muttered. He could predict what was going to happen. Dingley thought this was some case of mistaken identity, that he could merely explain who he was and be released with profuse apologies. But if money, and plenty of it, had not changed hands to get them here under false names, stripped of any way to prove themselves, then Robert was the devil himself.

“Thirsty,” Folie whimpered.

Robert helped her to sit up and held the mug of watered ale to her lips. She groped for it, sipped and choked and shivered.

“I can’t see,” she said plaintively. “I can’t see.”

He held her hand hard for a moment. “Everything will be all right,” he said, having nothing else to say.

“I don’t understand how—” She paused, breathing hard and fast, as if to hold back a gag. “—how we came to be here.”

Robert gave a savage chuckle. “My suspicion that someone is determined to be rid of me appears to be something more than my disordered nerves.” He rested his head back. “Damn you, Folly. I meant you to stay under Lander’s protection. I told you to.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t believe you.”

“What did you mean by that note to meet you at Vauxhall?” he asked. “What did you want?”

“Note?” she said drowsily. Her head was slipping sideways. He jostled her, recalling that it was best to keep a person awake after a blow to the head.

“Yes, that note. Folly, don’t sleep. Answer me.”

“Do you mean—I wrote to Sir Howard—meet...me...there...”

“Dingley? But—”

She slid away into unconsciousness again, just as the heavy lock on the door clanked. The jailer had returned. “The two of ye now,” he said.

Robert looked up in amazement. “I’ll go. She is in no condition—”

“Both,” the man said. “Carry her.”

“Nay,” Robert said angrily, “there is no reason. She’s badly hurt; she shouldn’t be moved.”

The jailer kicked her. “Get up, ye lying bitch.”

Robert lunged at him, and got a boot in the jaw. It knocked him back, agony that crashed through his head and ears.

“Get up,” the jailer said calmly. “The lazy bitch, too.”

Robert took a deep breath, swallowing rage and pain. He stood up, waiting while the jailer unlocked him and replaced the wall shackles with hand manacles. In a black frenzy he thought of swinging the manacle chain and killing the man—thought beyond that: a guarded deck, the river, no hope of carrying Folie. Reason choked him.

He knelt down, sliding his arm around her shoulders. She woke a little as he lifted her to her feet. “Robert,” she mumbled.

The jailer chuckled. “Don’t even remember your bloody name, do she?”

Folie buried her face in his shoulder. Robert held her, allowing her to find her balance.

“Come on, come on,” the jailer said.

“The devil take you,” Robert muttered, thrusting off his hand. Folie wilted against him. With a rattle of chains, he lifted her in his arms and carried her.

In the main cabin, Dingley stood alone, locked to a steel bar that ran along the deck. The superintendent’s desk was stacked with account books and correspondence. Robert moved through the low door, carrying Folie, careful to avoid the hard frame.

“Can she sit?” he demanded of their warden.

Wordlessly, the man flipped down a seat that hung on leather straps from the bulkhead. Robert eased Folie into it. She clung to his arms, half-awake.

He stayed next to her, supporting her against him. The jailer stood beside the desk while they waited for the superintendent to appear. He made no pretense of hiding his interest in the open book that lay on the desk.

“Raikes, William and Fanny,” he said, casting Robert an evil look. “Forgery! Fourteen years transportation. Good riddance, eh?”

Robert watched the man’s face contort in vile mirth. Long ago, he had watched Srí Ramanu face a man like this, an Englishman determined on power and mischief.