Unclaimed Heart (8 page)

His silence told her everything she needed to know.

A week later, they caught their first glimpse of the Cape of Good Hope. It was midday, the sun hung vertical in the sky, and the clouds were nowhere in sight. Slowly, they made their way towards Table Bay. It was two in the morning when Constance woke to hear voices cheering; they had cast anchor. She kneeled up to her window and saw Table Mountain, its long flat peak ghostly in the clear moonlight.

“Africa,” she murmured. And the incredible thought that she would soon set her feet on that mysterious continent caused a thrill to her heart. She drifted in and out of sleep, restless, eager for morning to come.

She was dressed in her cabin, her letter to Daphne folded and sealed on the writing desk, when Father opened the door.

She tried not to flinch. He lowered dark eyebrows at her, his customary expression in the last few weeks as she had become more and more withdrawn from him.

“Constance,” he said, “we have arrived in Table Bay. The crew are going ashore for two days. Do you have anything for the post?”

She offered up her letter, her heart sinking. “Father?” she ventured. “Could I . . . would it be possible for me to accompany you ashore?”

“I'm not going ashore. You're staying here, and somebody will have to watch you.”

Ordinarily she might have protested how unfair this was, but she was utterly intimidated by him. “Very well,” she said, and returned to her bed to gaze out the window at the mountain and the bay. Trying not to think how much she felt like one of Old Harry's doomed chickens in its coop.

Good Bess
quit the Cape of Good Hope with a brisk gale after eight long days waiting for favorable winds. Henry was growing anxious, though he didn't know why. Sixteen years had passed since Faith's disappearance; the matter of a few days would hardly make a difference to the outcome of the journey. And yet anxious he was, keen to move, keen for the wind to blow.

Within a week, he was keen for it to stop blowing. North-westerly gales plagued them. One particularly violent storm plunged him deep into fear. The swell was high, but kept down by the violence of the wind itself, which ripped the white tops off the waves and sent them hailing across the decks. He couldn't stay upright without holding the rail, and his roared commands were carried away from the ears they were meant for. “Hand the mainsail!” he shouted, hoarse. “Take another reef in the mizzen topsail! For God's sake, keep
Bess
before the wind!”

He had been at sea nearly all his adult life, had steeled himself through storms twice the measure of this one. Why was he so fearful? Then it came to him: prior to this day, the only cargo he had carried was for trade. But today, Constance was aboard. His precious child. For all that she couldn't meet his eye, that she quavered when he approached as though he might eat her, he loved her and couldn't bear the thought of her coming to any harm.

They soon met with the south-east trade winds, blowing fresh and scented with the tropics.
Good Bess
was head-up for the Gulf of Mannar. Their journey was nearly complete.

“Captain?”

Henry turned from his navigation charts to see Maitland standing at the door to his cabin. He looked tense, and Henry felt himself tense up in sympathy. “Maitland?”

“We've seen a pearling schooner.”

“We're sailing between pearl banks. Of course you've seen a pearling vessel.”

Maitland cleared his throat. “We think it's de Locke's.”

Henry's blood began to warm up. “You mean, you think it's
mine
.”

Maitland nodded. Henry clasped his right fist in his left palm. “Prepare the men. We're going to take it. In one piece if we can. We'll fire three shots across her bow. If he still resists, we'll blow it to bits.”

Maitland hurried off, and Henry took a moment to gather his thoughts. De Locke, that scoundrel. Four years ago, Henry had bought pearls from de Locke for a trader back in England. It was only through fortunate coincidence that one of his paying guests on
Good Bess
was a jeweller, who had looked at them and declared six of them to be made of painted clay. Henry pursued de Locke through the pearl fishery superintendent. De Locke immediately and conveniently forgot every word of English he knew, so Henry's journey home was delayed while a translator was sought.

Then, late in the evening, de Locke had come to see Henry aboard
Good Bess
and, in halting but perfectly comprehensible English, challenged him to a match of écarté, staking the money he owed on the outcome of the card game.

By lamplight in the low-ceilinged cabin, with Maitland and Burchfield as witnesses, they had played. Henry wasn't ordinarily a gambler, so de Locke had to provide the cards and refresh his memory to the game's rules. In two
voles
, de Locke had increased his debt to Henry threefold. He drank fiercely, bet recklessly, continued to increase his debt. Then, finally, he had pulled out the title deed to his pearler,
La Reine des Perles
, and thrown it on the table.

“All against this,” he declared.

Henry agreed.

De Locke turned up three kings. Which was interesting since Henry also had two. Maitland searched de Locke's jacket and found high-scoring cards tucked into his sleeves. Under the threat of a pistol, de Locke was forced to count the cards, submit one correct deck, then roll his sleeves to his elbows for the final game. The one that everything was staked on.

De Locke was terrified now, perspiration beading above his gingery eyebrows. He turned over two tens, but Henry had two queens. And so he earned himself a third: the
Queen of Pearls
, as the pearler would be known in English.

Henry scooped up the title deed and crushed it in his fist. “A pleasure doing business with you, Gilbert,” he said.

De Locke looked as though he were fighting tears. “Will you give me until the morning to collect my things? Tell my crew?”

“Of course.”

In hindsight, that had been foolish. De Locke disappeared within an hour. A visit to his home the next morning had discovered only empty rooms. Henry sailed, still in possession of the pearler's title deed, and without being repaid the money he was owed. He had always intended, some day, to track de Locke down and make him repay his debt. To happen across him in the Gulf of Mannar was luck too good to be ignored.

He left his cabin, intending to go up on deck. Then he saw Constance's cabin door and remembered himself.

“Constance?” he said, knocking briskly, then opening the door.

She sat at her writing desk, auburn hair unbound.

“Father?”

“No matter what happens in the next hour, no matter what you hear, you are to stay here in the cabin. Do you understand?”

She nodded, her eyes round with surprise . . . or was that fear? He hadn't time to debate it.

“Don't lean out the window, either. And put your trunk in front of the door. Just in case.”

Who knew what de Locke was capable of?

Another nod. Why did she look so pale? What cause had he given her to be so afraid of him? “Don't worry, child,” he said, unable to keep the impatience out of his voice. “I know what I'm doing.”

He left, closing the door behind him. He could hear the sound of her shifting her trunk. Good, at least she'd listened to him. Heart thudding, he made his way up, hoping the gunners had the cannons ready.

“Tell them it's not good enough, Alexandre!” barked de Locke.

Alexandre turned to his diving companions, translated de Locke's words but softened them. “He wants to know if you can work faster. It's been a bad month.” The pearl tucked in his cheek seemed to burn a guilty hole. No pearls in four weeks—only the one that Alexandre had found—and de Locke was growing frantic.

“We are working as fast as we can for the money he is paying us,” one of the divers said in response.

Alexandre turned to de Locke, hedged, then said, “They say they will do their best.”

“Don't mumble so,” de Locke said, gruffly, turning away.

Alexandre adjusted the mainsail sheet, then glanced up. A ship had been growing closer all morning, but now she was clearly visible, the English merchant flag flying from her masthead. Alexandre watched a few moments. It seemed the ship was bearing straight for them, approaching fast.

“Gilbert?”

De Locke joined him, peering at the ship. “English pigs. What do they want?”

A sudden gust made the pearler heel over. Alexandre, perched on the cabin top watching the larger ship, lost his footing and crashed into the pin rail, cracking his jaw. He fell to the deck. The pain echoed through his skull. He shook his head hard, fighting unconsciousness.

De Locke was leaning over him, slapping his face. “Boy? Boy? Are you well?”