Imogen Robertson - Instruments of Darkness

Daniel did not take his eyes from the patch of street in front of him but shook his head.

“No. You know these roads best and besides, we should not split the guard. If we are being followed and he slips past you, I do not like the odds of Miss Chase and I against this man and his friend.”

Graves hesitated. Miss Chase stepped up to them, put her free hand lightly on his arm.

“He is right, Graves. And let us go by the busier routes. This is too isolated a place.”

Her touch acted on Graves like a charm. He nodded. Clode lifted Jonathan into his arms again, and smiled at him.

“You are our lookout, my boy. Keep your eyes open and sing out if you see anything more.”

The boy looked a little white, and tightened his grip, but nodded.

In the distance they heard one of the great bells beginning to peal the hour. Graves put his knife back into his waistcoat and turned toward Knight’s Bridge.

“One o’clock. Come then, and let us hurry.”

Harriet heard the clock in the hall mark out one with a brassy chime. It had been foolish to try and sleep; her mind had just chased itself in circles for an hour. She swung her legs to the floor and picked up her dressing gown with a sigh. Harriet had never known sleeplessness at sea. Whatever her worries or griefs, the motion of the ship had always let her rest. She would still wake now expecting to hear the speaking strain of the timbers around her, the movement of the air.

Crossing the room, she lit the candle on her dressing table and sat in front of the mirror as the wick caught and the flame steadied, and stared at herself a moment. She looked well in the candlelight. Her friends had told her that a life on the sea would age and blemish her skin, but she had, as yet, hardly any suggestion of lines about the eyes and mouth; she only began to look old when her sister sat by her. Rachel looked almost dewy with youth, as if she were still forming, budding.

Harriet turned the little key in the drawer below the mirror and pulled out the last of her husband’s letters. It had arrived almost two months ago, and she could not yet begin to expect another. She smoothed down the pages and smiled at his familiar writing. She let her fingertips rest on the paper, and it seemed to her it was almost like touching his hand. The letter began with frustrations and bargaining to reequip in Gibraltar, the problems that inevitably followed the victories there. He had found a man on his crew who, although a drinker and inclined to be a fighter too when drunk, had formed an alliance with the daughter of the quartermaster and proved a hard bargainer for the ship. Of the ship herself, the turn of speed the new copper sheathing gave her, he could not say enough. The last lines were a swift farewell. Some of his friends were heading back to the Channel Fleet while he left for the Leeward Isles, and the opportunity to send back mail was not to be missed.

Her husband had ended with words meant only for her, a simple enough declaration of his love, his trust and commands to kiss the children for him. He always lifted those last lines to his lips, he told her, when the ink was dry, and now she did the same; she could swear the paper smelled of salt and cold winds.

She set it down again with a smile, and looked past her reflection into the black countryside around her. Strange. He loved the sea like a mistress, but she knew his heart was here; that though he had spent only months here since Caveley was his, the place was his home, the core of him. It called to him across oceans. Of course, she was here, and his children, but it was more than that. The stones and soil had sung to him, for him, when they had driven up the carriageway in a borrowed chaise. She had not seen such joy in his face since the day she had agreed to become his wife. She loved her home too, of course, but the affection she felt for the place was only a weak reflection of the fierce love he held for it. He would be able to walk around the house and grounds in his mind with a more exact eye than she; when he slept his mind always took him here.

Her own heart was on the sea still, and she hungered for it. The horrors she had seen there could wake her in the night, but they only bound her more tightly to the ship and the crew. She knew she was still their figure-head, their presiding angel, however many years she was pulled away from them, but she longed to feel those smooth timbers under her hand, hear the whistles and shouts, see the dizzying openness of the water. She remembered the surge in her blood at battle, the politics of harbor and stores, the thick black coffee their steward served them when the bells called out for the day to begin.

An owl called out over the forest, and pictures in her mind of wind and water were swept away by the image of Brook as she had first seen him, the look of faint surprise and disapproval on his face, the obscenity of the wound in his neck. She imagined him alive, standing in the dark, the figure emerging behind him with Hugh’s knife in his hand. She played the scene through behind her eyes as she watched the darkness. Thought of Hugh’s scarred face emerging from the gloom, then Wicksteed’s. Did Wicksteed have the courage to kill a man? What could make him a murderer?

Huddled against the children in the darkness, Verity Chase heard the sound of a sob suppressed and looked down. Susan was crying. She knew the girl did not want it known; she was being as brave as she could for her guardians, for her little brother. Verity pulled her more tightly to her side, letting her fingers press into the girl’s shoulder. She hoped to give courage, resolve, but she was not sure she had any left herself to give. Her eyes stung with sleeplessness and fear in the gloom. Ashes from various fires had found their way past her hood to her pale skin and caught on her eyelashes. Her face seemed to have been crying gray, sooty tears. She looked up to where Clode was propped against the side wall of a shuttered coaching inn next to her. Jonathan lay curled on his cloak at the man’s feet. Daniel smiled at her-sad, serious. She found herself thinking that, shaved and cleaned, he probably still looked little more than a boy himself. At the moment he looked more like a woodcut of a highwayman. So much the better. There was a footstep and Graves approached.

“We are very close to Hunter’s now. It’s not ideal. I can see where the house is from the end of the road here-there are lights burning, it’s perhaps half a mile. But it’s open ground. If Jonathan is right and that man is still following, it is the perfect time for him to make his attack.”

Susan whimpered, and as quickly bit her lip. Graves dropped to his heels beside her.

“My love, I’m sorry to scare you. I’m an idiot.”

Susan shook her head quickly. “No. I’m sorry. I do not mean to be frightened.”

Miss Chase squeezed her shoulder again. “We are all frightened, Susan. That’s just good sense.” She looked between the two men. “What shall we do?”

Graves stood again. “We’ll have to make a run for it. Miss Chase, could you carry Jonathan that far?”

She nodded.

“Very well. As soon as we come into the open, head right. And run. If the gates are locked you will have to climb them. Whatever happens, do not wait in the road.”

“Of course.”

It was hard for Graves, searching out the edges of her face in the darkness, not to declare his love then and there. He swallowed. “Clode and I will follow and stop anyone passing us. Are we ready?”

Clode was placing Jonathan in Miss Chase’s arms. Susan had taken her bundle from her, and tied it around her waist. They nodded.

“Very well then. Let’s go.”

They reached the corner and without a word Miss Chase turned and plunged off into the darkness, one arm supporting Jonathan, her free hand in Susan’s. Clode and Graves began walking backward behind them. The little light of the new moon caught on the tips of the blades they carried. The footsteps began to fade behind them, for one joyful moment the night was suddenly still, and Daniel thought they might have been wrong-that the paranoia conjured by the riots and their own fear might have deluded them, and the boy-that all was well … then there was a shout and two dark shapes reared up along the track.