Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

He had taken enough and scrambled desperately over the guardrails. He was too slow to escape my swing and the weighted boathook caught him on the back of his head as he jumped. Blood was bright in his black sleek hair. He fell against the big man who let go of Sunflower . The dory rocked alarmingly. I ran forward, raised the hook, and slammed it down, hoping to ram it clean through the aluminium hull. Instead I punctured a spare petrol can which began adding its fuel to the blood in the dory’s scuppers.

The thin man, whom I’d wounded, was much more alert than his big companion. He threw himself at the dory’s controls and rammed the throttle into reverse. The engine roared, the boat scuttled backwards like a frightened crab, and the big man nearly fell overboard.

“Bastards!” I shouted. The thin man just stared at me. Blood glistened on his waxed coat. I had hurt him, and his eyes told me that he was not a man to forget or forgive a defeat. But let him hate, I thought, because in a week’s time I’d be sailing south and he could whistle his enmity at the waning moon. I watched as he pushed the dory’s motor into forward gear. He was a better helmsman than his companion, and I suspected that the thin man was capable at most things he turned his hands to. He had that kind of confidence about him, but he had failed with me. I raised two fingers at him as the small boat accelerated away between the moored yachts, then the two men vanished among the moorings, leaving behind only a haze of blue exhaust smoke and a smear of bright blood on a boathook’s head.

And a woman. They had left the woman behind.

So now I went to find her.

“Bloody hell.” For a second I was too shocked to move, then I swung myself down the companionway.

The girl lay on my starboard bunk where the thin man had evidently gone to work on her. There was blood on her face, chest, and hands. She was wearing a woollen skirt, a blouse, and a sweater. The sweater was in remnants and the blouse bloodstained and torn. On the companionway were the tattered fragments of her raincoat which looked as if it had been torn apart by dogs. She stared at me with whimpering, scared eyes.

The bastard had also gone to work on Sunflower . He’d ripped her cabin to shreds, but that could wait.

“Who are you?” I was pumping water from the freshwater tank into an unbroken cup.

The girl did not answer. Her hands tried to pull the scraps of her torn sweater together.

I knelt beside her and she flinched away.

“For God’s sake,” I said, “I’m trying to help you. Now stay still.”

I don’t think I reassured her, instead I think the abruptness of my tone merely scared her into compliance. Whatever, she did not move as I used a cleanish scrap of rag to wipe the blood from her face. She shuddered when the rag first touched her skin, then seemed to accept that I was helping her.

“Nothing’s broken,” I said, which meant that her nose was still in one piece. The blood had come from a nosebleed, but that had stopped. One of her cheekbones was badly grazed, but the damage was really very slight, except to her nerves. I did not know about her ribs, nor was I about to investigate. The thin man had half stripped her to the waist, but I was not going to inflict a similar indignity on her. “What did he do to you?” I asked.

“He threatened me with a knife,” she managed to say, “then hit me.” Her voice was wavering and scared, and no wonder for she was still rigid with shock.

“Only hit you?” I asked. “Nothing else?”

She nodded firmly. “Nothing else.” Meaning she hadn’t been sexually assaulted. “He said I’d come to make an arrangement with you, and when I wouldn’t tell him more, he tore my clothes.” She had barely been able to articulate the last words, which came out as sobs. “There was nothing to tell!” she protested to me, to the whole boat, then began to shiver violently. I pulled a sleeping bag from the mess on the cabin floor and draped it round her shoulders. She shrank away from my touch. I was almost as shocked as the girl. The violence of the thin man was so gratuitous and unexpected, but any explanations would have to wait till the girl had recovered some of her composure.

“Go into the forward cabin,” I said firmly, “and clean yourself up. You’ll find some sweaters in the drawers. They’re not very clean, they’re a bit damp, but they’re better than nothing.”

She nodded again, but did not move. She was clutching the sleeping bag round her body with her bloodstained left hand. She was still sobbing, each exhalation a tiny whimper of pain.

“It’s all right,” I said, “I’m not going to hurt you.” I deliberately backed away and sat on what was left of my portside bunk.

Still she did not move. She was struggling to subdue the sobs which slowly died away. She took some deep breaths and finally, when she felt she was once again in control of her voice, she asked if I was the Earl of Stowey.

The question was so unexpected, and so out of place, that I just gaped at her. She frowned at me. “Are you the Earl?” she asked me again, but this time with a tone of desperation as if her recovery from the ordeal depended on my answer.

“Yes, I am.” Since my brother died I’ve been the twenty-eighth Earl of Stowey, but I prefer the anonymity of plain John Rossendale because a title isn’t any damn use at sea. “But I don’t use the title,” I explained to her, “so just call me John, OK?” I rummaged through the mess on the cabin sole and found a bottle of antiseptic and a half-clean towel which I held out to her. “Why don’t you go forward and clean yourself up? I’ll make some tea.” She went on staring at me. “Go on,” I encouraged her.

She took the bottle and towel, but still did not move, so I climbed up the companionway steps into the cockpit as though I was making sure that the two men had gone. Nothing stirred in the harbour except the rain slithering across the grey water. Smoke rose from chimneys in the town. I heard the girl moving in the cabin below, then the click as she locked herself into the forecabin. I took my binoculars from their clip in the cockpit cave-locker and stared towards the town, but I could see no sign of the small aluminium dory. My intruder had disappeared.

I went below again and swore under my breath. The thin man had turned Sunflower inside out. He had forced locked doors open, then spilt the locker contents on to the sole. He’d torn up the sole and rummaged through the bilges. He’d broken the VHF. The radio’s case looked as if it had been prised apart with a jemmy. I switched the set on, but nothing happened. The damage to the boat was not immense, but the cost of making the repairs would be painful. I cursed the bastard again; then, because I could not contemplate starting to clean up, I went topsides once more, turned on the gas at the aft locker, then went below and lit the gas hob. The small galley was about the only place on the boat which had escaped the thin man’s attention, presumably because I had disturbed him before he could start its destruction. The chart table had been wrenched off its piano hinge and all my precious, rare charts were torn and crumpled. The sextant was safe, which was a blessing. It didn’t seem as if anything had been stolen, but I could not be certain till I had searched the boat properly.

I made a strong pot of tea, mixed some powdered milk, and jammed up a leaf of the cabin table. I packed a pipe, lit it, then waited.

It was ten minutes before the girl came nervously out of the forecabin. She was wearing one of my Aran sweaters, which suited her. She had short black hair, dark eyes, and honey-brown skin. She had also, so far as I could tell, recovered her composure, though there was still a wariness in her expression.