The Monsoon (16 page)

Beside him Guy sat up.

“Where are you going?” he whispered.

Tom’s heart sank.

“To the head,” he whispered back.

“Go to sleep.” In future he must make some changes to their sleeping arrangements. Guy sank back on his straw pallet, and Tom slipped away in the direction of the bows, but as soon as he was out of Guy’s sight he turned back quickly and slipped down the companionway to the lower deck.

In this wind and on this point of sailing the ship was never silent. Her timbers creaked and groaned, one of the seams popped regularly, loud as a pistol shot, and the waters rushed and whispered, thumped against the hull.

There was no light in the lower deck, but Tom moved with confidence, only once running into one of the bulkheads. Any noise he made was covered by the other shipboard sounds.

A single lantern was hanging from the deck at the bottom of the stern companionway. It cast a glimmering of light down the central passage. There was a sliver of light under the door to his father’s cabin. He slipped past it and paused briefly outside the tiny cabin in which the three girls slept. He heard nothing, and went on.

The powder magazine was on the next deck down, right beside where the heel of the mainmast was stepped on the keelson. Tom crept down the last set of wooden stairs into the utter darkness of the lowest deck, and carefully to the door of the magazine. He knelt beside it and, by touch alone, fitted his key into the lock. The mechanism was stiff, he had to exert considerable effort before it yielded, and the door opened to his nudge. He stood in the dark opening and inhaled the sharp odour of black powder. Although he felt a sense of accomplishment, he knew there were still many obstacles before him.

Quietly he pulled the door closed and locked it. He groped for and found the crack above the lintel, where he hid the key and the tinderbox he had brought with him. Then he retraced his steps through the vessel until he reached his pallet on the gundeck and crawled onto it. Beside him Guy moved restlessly. He was still awake, but neither spoke again, and soon they both drifted back to sleep.

So far all had worked in Tom’s favour. So much so that the next day he had a queasy feeling that his luck must change. There had been little indication from Caroline that his plans might go any further than the point they had now reached. His courage was evaporating. He brooded on the risks he had taken, and those he must still take. More than once he determined to return the magazine key to his father’s desk drawer, and abandon the whole desperate idea, but then he would sneak a glance at Caroline when she was absorbed in her lessons. The curve of her cheek, the pink lips pouting in concentration, a soft forearm below the puffed sleeves of her dress now lightly gilded by the tropical sun, and sparsely decorated with fine, peach-fluff hairs.

I have to be alone with her, even for a minute. It’s worth any risk, he decided, but still he hesitated, unable to screw his courage to the act. He teetered on the brink, until she gave him the push that sent him over the edge.

At the end of the day’s lessons, Caroline flounced out of the cabin ahead of Tom. But as she stepped onto the companionway, Master Walsh called out to her, “Ah, Mistress Caroline, will you be able to attend the music practice this evening?” Caroline turned back to answer him. Her movement was so unexpected that Tom could not avoid bumping into her. At the collision she almost lost her balance, but caught hold of his arm to steady herself, and he put the other round her waist. At that moment they were out of sight of Walsh and the two boys in the cabin behind them.

Caroline made no effort to pull away from him.

Instead, she swayed towards him and pressed her lower body against his, a deliberate gyrating movement, looking up into his face with a sly, knowing expression as she did SO. In that instant, the world changed for Tom. The contact was fleeting. Then she stepped round him and spoke to Master Walsh through the cabin door.

“Yes, of course.

The weather is so fair we could meet on deck, don’t you think?

That’s a splendid idea,” Walsh agreed, with alacrity.

“Shall we say at six o’clock, then?” Walsh still used the landlubber’s calculation of time.

Ned Tyler stood beside Tom at the ship’s wheel.

Tom was trying to hold the Seraph’s heading at south-west by south, on her unswerving run across the ocean.

“Meet herP Ned grunted, as Tom let her pay off a point. With every sail set to the royals and filled with twenty-five knots of wind, it was like trying to hold a runaway stallion.

“Look at your wake. Ned told him sternly. Obediently Tom glanced back over the stern.

“Like a pair of snakes on honeymoon,” Ned said, which they both knew was unfair: a cable’s length behind there was a barely discernible kink in the creaming wake, but Tom was allowed no leeway by his tutors. For the next ten minutes the Seraph cut a rapier-straight furrow through the blue waves.

“Very well, Master Thomas.” Ned nodded.

“Now, from the top of the main mast, if you please.”

“Royals, topgallants…” Tom called the names of the sails, without hesitation or mistake, and without allowing the ship’s head to wander.

Then the trio of musicians came up from the stern quarters. Guy was carrying Caroline’s songbook and his cittern. Walsh, with his flute sticking out of his back pocket, was carrying her stool in one hand and holding his wig on with the other. The group took up their usual place at the lee rail, protected from the main force of the wind.

Tom tried to keep his attention on the con of the ship’s respond toNed inquisition and watch for the moment that Caroline opened her songbook and found the note he had placed between the pages.

“Mizen mast sails, if you please, from the top,” said Ned.

“Mizen topsail,” Tom replied, then hesitated. Caroline was ready to sing, and Walsh passed her the songbook.

“Go on,” Ned encouraged him.

“Mizen staysail,” said Tom, and paused again. Caroline opened the book, and frowned.

She was reading something between the pages. He thought he saw her pale, but then she glanced up involuntarily and looked straight at him across the full length of the open deck.

“Mizen course,” said Tom, and looked back at her.

Again she gave him that sly, enigmatic look, and tossed her head so that her curls danced in the wind. From between the pages of her songbook she picked up the scrap of rice-paper, on which he had so laboriously penned his message, crumpled it into a ball between her fingers and tossed it disdainfully over the side. The wind caught it and carried it far out before dropping it into the water, where it disappeared among the pear ling white caps. It was so clearly another rejection that Tom felt his world totter.

“Hold your luff!” said Ned sharply, and Tom started guiltily as he saw that he had let the Seraph sag down to leeward.

yet though he knew now that it was fruitless, Tom lay on his pallet through all the long first watch, awaiting the hour of midnight, and debating with himself as to whether there was any reason to take the risk and keep true to the assignation he had proposed. Her rejection had seemed categoric, and yet he knew with certainty that she had enjoyed that disturbing moment of intimacy in his father’s cabin as much as he had. And that fleeting contact outside Walsh’s quarters had confirmed beyond doubt that she was not averse to another adventure.

“She ain’t the high and mighty lady she pretends,” Tom told himself angrily.

“Under all those fancy petticoats she loves it just like Mary or any of the other village girls.

I bet a gold guinea to a pinch of dried horse droppings, she knows how to play Bury the Mannikin with the best of them.” He had removed his pallet to a niche behind one of the cannon, so that neither Guy nor Dorian could lie beside him and keep watch on his comings and goings during the night. The hours of the watch seemed interminable. Once or twice he dozed, but then he would jerk awake, trembling with anticipation or consumed with doubts.

When seven bells in the first watch was struck on the deck above where he lay, he could contain himself no longer and crept out from under his blanket to make his way stealthily to the head of the companionway, holding his breath in case one of his younger brothers accosted him.

Once again he paused outside the tiny cabin in which the three girls slept, and placed his ear to the door. He heard nothing, and felt the temptation to tap on the panel to find out if Caroline was lying awake as he had been.

Good sense prevailed, however, and he left the door to creep down onto the lower deck.

To his relief the key to the magazine was where he had left it along with the tinderbox. He unlocked the door, slipped through it, climbed onto the ready rack to reach the lantern in its gimbals then took it out into the passage and closed the door carefully so that a spark from the tinderbox would not touch off any loose grains of powder on the magazine floor.

He brought the tinderbox down from its hiding-place, and, squatting on the deck, considered the risk he was taking in striking a flint in the darkness of the ship. It was not so much the danger of explosion that worried him, but that any light might attract attention.

His father’s cabin was at the top of the companionway, and beside it was that of Mr. Beatty and his wife. They might be sleepless, or one of them might leave the cabin to answer nature’s call. The officer of the watch might move through the depths of the hull on his rounds and come to investigate any unusual illumination.

Yet Tom knew with absolute certainty that Caroline would have neither the courage nor the knowledge of the layout of the hull to find her way down to the magazine in complete darkness. At least he must give her that much encouragement.

He crouched over the tinderbox, shielding it with his body, and struck the steel to the flint. There was a blinding eruption of blue sparks and the under caught. His heart was beating fast as he lifted the mesh screen of the lantern, lit the wick and cupped it with his hands until it caught fairly. Then he lowered the screen, which dimmed the flame but protected it from setting off any loose grains of powder.

He tucked away both key and tinderbox in their hiding-place, then carried the lantern back into the magazine and replaced it in its gimbals.

He retreated from the magazine and drew the door to behind him, adjusting the gap so that only the merest glimmer of light showed through, not enough to attract undue attention but sufficient to tempt a timid girl to try the ladder of the companionway.

Then he crouched beside the door, ready to close it at the first indication of any trouble and blot out the light.

He could not hear the ship’s bell down here so close to the bilges, so he lost count of time.

“She’s not coming,” he told himself, after what seemed to him the passage of several hours. He half rose, but still he could not bring himself to leave.

“Just a little longer,” he decided, and settled back against the timber bulkhead. He Must have dozed, for the first warning he had of her arrival was the perfume of her body, that kitten smell of a young girl, and then he heard the slither of her bare feet on the deck, very close at hand.

He sprang up, and she screamed in terror as he rose out of the darkness at her feet. He seized her desperately.

“It’s me! It’s me!” he whispered.

“Don’t be afraid.” She clung to him with surprising strength.

“You frightened me.” She was shaking wildly, so he held her to his chest and stroked her hair. She had let it down. It was thick and springing under his hands, reaching halfway down her back.

“It’s all right. You’re safe. I’m here to look after you.” in the dim light he saw that she wore a nightdress of pale cotton. It was fastened at her throat with a ribbon, and reached down to her ankles.

“I should never have come,” she whispered, her face pressed to his chest.

“Yes. Oh, Yes!” he told her.

“I’ve waited so long. I wanted you to come so so much.” He was amazed at how small she was, and how warm her body was against his. He hugged her tighter.

“It’s all right, Caroline. We’re safe here.” He ran his hands down her back.

The cotton was sheer and flimsy and she wore no other garment under it.

He could feel every swell and hollow of her body.

“What if my father-” Her voice was breathless and broken with fear.

“No, no.” He stopped her.

“Come with me.” He drew her swiftly into the magazine and pushed the door shut behind them.

“No one can ever find us here.” . He hugged her close and kissed the top of her head.

Her hair smelt faintly aromatic. Her shaking eased, and she lifted her face and looked up at him. Her eyes were huge and luminous in the dim light of the screened lantern.

“Don’t be rough with me,” she begged.

“Don’t hurt me.” The very idea appalled him.

“Oh, my darling. I could never do that.” He found that the words of reassurance came naturally and convincingly to his lips.

“I love you, I have loved you since the first moment I laid eyes on your beautiful face.” He did not yet realize that he had the gift of eloquence that sets great lovers apart, nor did he know how well it would serve him over the years ahead.

“I loved you even when you treated me so coldly.” Her waist was so slim that he could almost encircle it with his hands. He pulled her harder against himself and her belly felt hot against his.

“I never wanted to be unkind to you, , she told him piteously, “I wanted to be with you, but I couldn’t help myself.”

“You don’t have to explain,” he said, “I know,” and he kissed her face, rained kisses on her forehead and her eyes, until at last he found her mouth. At first her lips were firmly closed to him, then slowly they opened like the fleshy petals of some exotic flower, all hot and moist and filled with a nectar that made his senses swim. He wanted to have all of it, to suck out her essence through her mouth.

“We are safe here,” he reassured her.

“No one ever comes down here.” He kept whispering reassurances, to distract her as he moved her towards the racks of silk powder bags.