Storm Tide Page 3

  He rubbed his face and felt the bruise his father had left. Did he want to stay here all his life and end up like his father: bitter and shrunken? He climbed off the bed. He had packed his clothes, his knife, the necklace he had made out of the shark’s tooth and a few other belongings in a canvas bag. He dropped it out of the window and clambered after it. The night air was cool, the moon so bright it dimmed the stars. It refreshed him. He was doing the right thing.

  He crept away from the house, through the stockade fence and down the path to the beach. His head was brim-full of thoughts of the adventure ahead; he didn’t think to take a last look back until the house had disappeared behind him.

  Down in the bay, the Dunstanburgh Castle sat at anchor, ready to sail on the morning tide. The calm water around her gleamed like a mirror. There was a small dugout canoe drawn up above the tidemark. Rob dragged it to the water’s edge and stowed his bag. He was about to get in, when suddenly a voice behind him said:

  ‘Where do you think you are going, Robert Courtney?’

  Rob spun around, to see his grandmother emerging from the shadows of a kapok tree. Her silver hair was luminous, her white dress like a shaft of moonlight.

  ‘I thought the fish might be rising in the bay,’ Rob lied.

  ‘And what do you expect to catch without a rod or a spear?’

  Rob was glad she could not see him blush in the dark.

  ‘I was running away,’ he mumbled. Then, finding his courage. ‘I am running away. To join Captain Cornish’s ship.’

  To his surprise, she didn’t argue. ‘Of course you are.’

  He stared at her. ‘You will not try to stop me?’

  ‘Would you listen?’

  She moved towards him. He noticed she was carrying two bundles: a small round bag tied at the neck, and a long, thin parcel wrapped in a sheet.

  ‘I know you cannot stay here. I have seen the way you look at the sea, and the ships that call. You gaze at that blue horizon and long to discover what is beyond it.’

  Rob had never heard her talk like this before. For the first time in what seemed like his whole life, he felt that he was speaking to someone who truly understood him.

  ‘But be careful,’ Louisa warned him. ‘Before Tom came to Nativity Bay, not one of the Courtney men lived out their full years. Tom’s father, his grandfather, his three brothers . . . they all met violent, untimely ends. Fort Auspice has been a paradise for us, a place where the family can live in peace. I fear what will happen to you if you leave it.’

  Rob saw the concern in her face. He heard the anguish in her voice. But he was seventeen, and immortal as all young men think they are, and he did not believe her.

  ‘I must do this,’ he told her.

  She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘I knew you would say that. Jim would have said the same.’

  She handed the bag she carried to Rob. It was only small, but her thin arms struggled with the weight. When he took it, he heard the clink of coins.

  ‘Consider it your inheritance from Jim,’ she said. ‘Wherever you go, it will ease your path. And if you are a true Courtney, you will make it grow tenfold before you come home.’

  Rob took the bag with amazement. He had never held so much money before, had never even thought of it.

  ‘Also, I want you to have this.’

  Louisa took the second bundle and unwrapped it. Rob gasped. He had seen it before, many times.

  ‘Uncle Jim’s Neptune sword.’

  ‘It was presented to our family by Sir Francis Drake himself,’ said Louisa, though Rob knew all the stories by heart. ‘Every man in the Courtney line has carried it into battle.’

  Moonlight gleamed on the blue Toledo steel. Rob thumbed the blade. Jim had not used it in anger for years, yet the blade was as sharp as the day it was forged. He turned it in his hands, thrilling to feel the perfect balance of the weapon.

  He craved it with all his soul. But–

  ‘I cannot take this.’ He pushed it back into Louisa’s hands. ‘It should go to my father.’

  ‘Your father is a good man. He is my son, and I love him, but he is forged from a different metal than the other Courtneys. He will never use this sword again. It was not meant to be kept sheathed, gathering dust in a forgotten corner of an unknown continent. Jim wanted you to have it – and so do I.’

  She put it in his hand and closed his fingers around it. Rob’s arm trembled as he took it. For the first time, he felt the heavy finality of his decision.

  ‘Will I see you again?’ For a moment his voice sounded like a child’s again.

  ‘Of course you will,’ said Louisa briskly. ‘I am not so terribly old, and the tides will always bring you home. Come back wealthy and strong, and with a beautiful young bride on your arm and a brood of great-grandchildren for me to spoil.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Rob.

  ‘Now go. Cornish needs a full tide to get his ship over the bar, and he will not delay.’

  They embraced. Rob’s strong arms almost crushed Louisa’s thin body with the strength of his emotion. For a moment she feared he might never let her go.

  But the lure of the sea was irresistible. He released her, kissed her on the cheek, and loaded the sword and the money into the waiting canoe. Louisa pushed him off, wading into the water in her nightdress until he was clear. He paddled out to the ship with strong, confident strokes.

  ‘Farewell!’ he called back.

  The moonlight made a silver path on the bay, straight towards the anchored ship and out into the open ocean. Soon Rob was nothing more than a shadow against the bright water. Louisa touched the cross she wore around her neck.

  ‘God speed,’ she whispered, though not without a tremor in her heart. She put her hand on her breast. There was a lump there, invisible beneath the skin. She had told no one, not even Jim, but she had felt it, growing inside her with malignant power.

  There was no point trying to fight it. Her life had had its share of sorrows, but it had also given her many joys. She was content.

  But she knew she would never see Rob again.

  R

  ob hid himself in the hold, which was thick with the aromatic spices of Cornish’s Indian cargo. He meant to wait two days, so there could be no chance of Cornish sending him back. In the end, he needed to relieve himself so badly he emerged, blinking and shamefaced, just as the ship’s bell struck noon. The great whale-backed summit of the cape was still clearly visible behind them.

  Tawny Cornish surveyed him sternly. ‘A stowaway, eh?’

  ‘Please,’ Rob begged. ‘Do not take me back.’

  ‘I cannot take the responsibility. If any harm came to you . . .’

  Cornish was torn. It was late in the season to catch the trade winds, and he would count the cost in lost profits of every day’s delay reaching London. But he could not in good conscience take the boy from his family.

  ‘What would I tell Louisa?’

  ‘It was Grandmother who helped me stow away. She gave me this.’

  The Neptune sword sang in the morning sunlight as he pulled it out.

  ‘Put that away,’ said Cornish hurriedly. ‘That is a weapon that should not be drawn lightly.’

  Rob obeyed. ‘You said yourself I should make my own way in the world.’

  The breeze snapped the masthead pennant. Cornish made his decision.

  ‘I will sign you on as a fo’c’s’le hand. But you will have to earn your keep,’ he warned Rob. ‘No loitering or shirking.’

  Rob’s grin was so wide his jaw ached. ‘Thank you, sir. I promise you will not regret it.’

  Cornish assigned Rob a mess and a watch, and ordered one of the mates to show him the ropes. Rob was a quick learner, and an eager student. His mind and body moulded naturally to his tasks. Soon, he could run aloft as fast as any of the topmen, balancing on the yards like a cat as the ship rolled beneath. He could splice a line, reef a sail and tie a knot all while a hundred feet in the air. His young body, already strong, grew harder. Cornish was a firm taskmaster, but he could hardly hide his pride. Even when Rob returned from shore leave in Cape Town sporting a hangover and a livid tattoo on his arm, the captain barely raised an eyebrow.

  He had caroused hard in Cape Town, determined to prove himself a rough, tough, but loyal mate. His gang of sailors drank and sang, Rob’s voice growing hoarse as he poured his heart and soul into the melodies. As one of the youngest he could reach the top notes, which he would sustain until his breath ran out, and everyone in the room clapped and yelled encouragement, standing him drink after drink. He was free, this was a new life, and he felt a surge of pent-up life force urging him on to ever more devilish pranks and laughter. He wanted to mark himself as one of the crew, so he bit his lip and looked away as the tattooist carved intricately into the skin of his upper arm, the pain as nothing compared to the joy of camaraderie. Imprinted for a lifetime was a bold anchor entwined in muscular rope. Arms around shoulders, bonded by blood and unshakeable brotherly love, the gang stumbled from tavern to tavern and into the night.

  The boy was growing up.

  ‘You are like a wild colt that has jumped the paddock fence,’ Cornish told Rob. ‘Just like your grandfather, Jim.’

  Rob glowed with pride. He knew there was no higher compliment Cornish could give, nor one that Rob would cherish more.

  The Dunstanburgh Castle rounded the Cape of Good Hope and ploughed into the great rollers of the Atlantic Ocean. Soon afterwards, the coast of Africa slipped below the horizon. Rob, working at the masthead, was the last man on the ship to see the continent before it vanished. The only home he had ever known.

  But that was the past. He turned his back on it, and set his face towards the north-west, to the new horizons and new continents that
awaited him.

  O

  n the far side of the ocean, nearly eight thousand miles away in the colony of Massachusetts, Theo Courtney was in a towering fury.

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded, waving two scraps of paper. They had been a single sheet, until he had torn it apart in his anger. ‘I found it in your bedroom.’

  Caleb Courtney stood in the farmhouse kitchen and stared his father down. There was no doubting their relationship: both had the same strong frame, thick red hair and piercing green eyes. Theo’s face was tanned from long hours overseeing his farms, while Caleb’s was still speckled with youthful freckles. Otherwise, there was little difference between them.

  ‘It is a pamphlet,’ said Cal coolly. ‘And you should not have been spying in my bedroom.’

  ‘It is treason,’ Theo spluttered. ‘It says that our colony should break with Britain and declare for independence.’

  ‘You call it treason. I call it common sense.’ And then, because Cal was of an age when he could not resist provocation: ‘King George is a tyrant who means to make slaves of us all.’

  ‘I risked my life in the King’s armies!’ Theo shouted. ‘While you and your hothead friends were sucking your mothers’ teats, I was fighting to keep the colonies safe from the French. And now that menace has gone, and the King of England has the temerity to ask the colonies to pay for their own deliverance, you call it slavery?’

  ‘We do not vote for the Parliament in London. Why then should we submit to their demands? Only the legislatures of the colonies have the right to levy taxes.’

  Theo’s face flushed so red he looked as if he might explode.

  ‘We are Englishmen. If Parliament cannot make our laws, it is anarchy.’

  ‘He doesn’t mean it, Pa,’ said a voice from the doorway. It was Theo’s second son Aidan, smaller and darker than his older brother. He had listened to the argument unnoticed. ‘Just ’cause he read it doesn’t mean he thinks it.’

  ‘Keep out, Aidan,’ said Cal. ‘This is not your business.’

  ‘I live here, too. If there’s to be a war—’

  ‘There will be no war,’ said Theo, in a voice that brooked no argument. He crumpled the two scraps of paper into a ball and threw it into the fire. He glared at Cal, defying him to protest. ‘And if I hear any more of this treason, you will find you are not yet old enough that I cannot give you a thrashing.’

  ‘Nothing compared to the thrashing we will give King George,’ muttered Cal. He skipped out of the kitchen, avoiding the pewter mug Theo had thrown at his ear.

  He went to the stables and saddled up his horse, Maverick. He needed to ride.

  The horse’s presence soothed him. Maverick had been a birthday present from his father, a fearsome stallion with a coat as glossy and black as wet tar. He was named after Samuel Maverick, the apprentice who had been shot dead by the British in the Boston Massacre a few years earlier and had become a martyr to the cause of liberty. Maverick had been part of a crowd confronting British soldiers. When the soldiers raised their muskets to scare off the mob, Maverick called out, ‘Fire away, you damned lobsterbacks!’ – which they did, killing Maverick and four others.

  Theo thought Cal had named the horse for his fearsome temper, and Cal had not told him the truth. He did not want his father to think he was ungrateful.

  He stroked Maverick’s nose and combed a knot from his mane. He buckled the girth, and was about to step up into the stirrups when a shadow fell across the stable doorway.

  ‘You’re not running away, are you?’ said Aidan, in a fearful voice.

  ‘I’ll be back for supper,’ said Cal curtly.

  Ever since Aidan could walk, he had followed his big brother like a shadow, desperate not to be left behind. When Cal learned to ride, Aidan had dislocated his collarbone trying to clamber onto the horse. When Cal started boxing with his friends, Aidan had come home with a broken arm. Sometimes, Cal appreciated the adoration. For most of the past fourteen years, he had found it intensely annoying.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Aidan.

  ‘Over to the Hartwell farm.’

  ‘Why?’

  Cal didn’t answer.

  ‘You’ve been there five times in the last week. Are you sweet on Liza Hartwell?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Cal.

  ‘Then why?’

  Cal hesitated. Seeing he had an opening, Aidan played his trump card.

  ‘If you don’t say, I’ll tell Pa you’ve been spooning Liza Hartwell in her barn. He’ll forbid you to ever go again.’

  ‘I’d punch the daylights out of you if you did that.’

  ‘I’d still tell.’

  Cal glared at his younger brother. He did not trust Aidan to keep a secret, but he did not want his father asking questions about his visits to the Hartwell farm. And he badly wanted to tell someone his news.

  ‘Promise you won’t tell a soul.’

  ‘I swear,’ said Aidan solemnly.

  ‘Blood brothers?’

  Aidan put up his hand. A thin scar showed on the palm where he had cut it open six years earlier. A childish oath, but they both took it as solemnly as if they’d sworn on the Bible. Cal raised his own hand and pressed it against his brother’s.

  He lowered his voice. ‘We’ve formed a group. It’s called the Army of the Blood of Liberty.’

  Aidan squinted. ‘The what?’

  ‘The Army of the Blood of Liberty.’ Cal tried to invest the name with gravitas and majesty, though he knew it was a mouthful. The name was a compromise. Half the boys had insisted they should be the Army of Liberty, the others were adamant they should be the Blood of Liberty. After hours of heated debate, they had settled on both.

  ‘Who’s in it?’ asked Aidan.

  ‘Boys from the farms. Sam Hartwell went up to Boston a month ago and spoke with some patriots. We’ve had enough of politicians talking and writing pamphlets. We need to organise for war.’

  Aidan felt a stab of jealousy. It hurt to think that Cal had joined a secret society without telling him.

  ‘Can I join?’

  ‘You’re too young.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No.’ Cal’s voice was as stern as their father’s. ‘This is not like when we played at soldiers in the hayfield.’ He tousled his brother’s hair. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt.’

  ‘I won’t get hurt,’ said Aidan. ‘I can ride as well as you, and shoot even better.’

  Cal resisted the automatic impulse to contradict him. ‘And when you are sixteen, there will be fighting enough for all of us. Until then, this is man’s work.’

  Before Aidan could argue, Cal swung himself into the saddle and galloped out of the stable yard.

  In the farmhouse parlour, Theo heard the drum of hooves. By the time he looked out of the window, Maverick and his rider were a cloud of dust on the farm track.

  Theo’s wife Abigail came in carrying a tray with a pot of tea. She set it on the table and poured two cups.

  ‘I heard your argument from my bedroom,’ she said. ‘Did you have to be so hard on the boy?’

  ‘What he is saying is treason.’

  ‘If sons grew up believing everything their fathers told them, the world would never change. He must become his own man – as you did at his age.’

  ‘That was different,’ frowned Theo. ‘I had no choice in the matter.’

  ‘Neither did I, after I met you,’ said Abigail archly.

  Theo had arrived in America as an orphan. In a short time, he had become a hero in the frontier war against the French and their Indian allies. Against the odds he and his ragtag army had inflicted major damage on the French forces, winning the battle at Fort Royal, which turned the course of the war. He had fallen in love with Abigail and she became pregnant with Cal, to her family’s fury. Fame and victory had provided him with a certain amount of money, which he had invested in a merchant business from the port of Boston. The business had thrived, for Theo had learned his trade in the bazaars of Calcutta and could out-haggle even the meanest Yankee. Later, he had bought this farm in a township some twenty miles from Boston.

  Theo slumped in his favourite chair and sipped his tea. Even the drink was tainted with the sour taste of politics. Cal had refused to drink tea, ever since the British government put a tax on it.

  ‘I fear for what will happen to him, if he does not stop this madness,’ said Theo. ‘It’s more than politics. The government will hang traitors.’