Ripples in the Sand (The Sea Witch Voyages)

To My Readers

A personal message from Helen Hollick

The journey through 2011–2012 has been somewhat of a roller-coaster ride for me, personally and career-wise.

The year 2011 started out bordering on a nightmare when my previous indie-based publisher went bankrupt. Helen Hart and her excellent team at SilverWood Books came to the rescue, and republished my novels efficiently, professionally, and beautifully.

When my previous publishing house collapsed I had just started writing the fourth in my
Sea Witch
Voyages –
Ripples in the Sand
, but the text files to my previous books were not returned to me; I only possessed old, unedited files. This meant I had a mammoth re-editing task to undertake – seven books in about four months. I found it difficult to write and re-edit both at the same time, so there was no alternative but to set
Ripples
aside.

The editing and republishing completed, I then concentrated on rebuilding my career. Promoting your own books is an area where it is often difficult for the self-published/independent author. There is no Big Publishing House Marketing Machine to fall back on; no agent to help tootle the trumpet. We are on our own. Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads – all are social outlets ideal for ‘spreading the word’, but as authors we need to work hard at promoting ourselves in a tasteful and interesting way. No one wants to be pestered by repeated “buy my book” campaigns. No matter how good the book is.

Social networking and marketing myself has taken effort and time. Most of the early part of 2012 in fact, and when I was finally ready to return to writing
Ripples in the Sand
, I had lost the plot. Literally. My ideas for another adventure with Jesamiah Acorne had ambled off to find somewhere more exciting to lurk. Indeed, Jesamiah himself had wandered away (probably with a bottle of rum in hand) to seek excitement of his own, rather than wait around for me to take notice of him again. I did not have writer’s block – I had writer’s memory-wipe.

I finally managed to get re-started, but it was hard work to pick up the threads again.

Several re-written drafts, in-depth edits and a few sleepless nights later, I finished writing. Only a last polishing edit to do.

And then, within the space of a heart-pounding with excitement half-hour, my life turned upside-down one Saturday morning. In a good way. My husband had a modest lottery win on the opening night of the Olympic Games. An unexpected windfall which meant we would be able to pursue our family dream of buying our own house and land in the English countryside.

We decided to move from London to Devon, but house hunting and preparing to move is not easy is it? Especially when you are also trying to complete writing a novel! So here I am wanting to see
Ripples in the Sand
leave harbour, and I am in the middle of house buying and preparing to move.

I apologise profusely to my many Jesamiah fans who have been so very patiently awaiting his next escapade – here it is at last.

Thank you to everyone who has supported, encouraged, and assisted me through these sometimes difficult, sometimes overwhelmingly exciting, months. Your eager enthusiasm is, believe me, very much appreciated and I sincerely thank you for being wonderful readers, fans, and more important, friends.

Website:
www.helenhollick.net

Main blog:
www.ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/helen.hollick

Twitter:
www.twitter.com/HelenHollick

Title Page

Dedication

For Cathy Harmon Helms

a gold-filled treasure chest of a graphic designer and a best friend,

and Ray, her husband: two of the nicest people I know

Map

Ship Plans

The Wising Woman

The Wising Woman, Tiola Oldstagh, stood quite alone, the sea tugging like a persistent child at the sodden hem of her gown, a slight breeze toying with the loose strands of her midnight-black hair. Her face was tipped to the full moon; no smile, no light of pleasure or joy in her eyes, only unshed tears of sadness.

“Time runs too fast or creeps too slow,” she said, the despair catching in her throat. “Time is an illusion, it does not exist, yet it is eternal. It had a beginning and it will have an end. Time is the future, the present and the past.”

The ebbing tide lapped at the land and swirled around Tiola’s bare feet, washing away the cold, hard sand that clung between her toes.

I do not understand you, Witch Woman. This thing you call Time means nothing to me.
Tethys, the soul, the elemental spirit of the sea, sneered her contempt. Her voice, the hush of the ocean, sounding in Tiola’s mind as the white foam surging upon the rocks.
I am the waves, the surf, the shallows and the deep. Nothing governs me.

“The passage of time governs us all,” Tiola answered, adding with a wry smile, “even you, Tethys.”

For a while and a while, Tiola gazed at the moon hanging high and bright in the tar-black, star-pocked sky. “What of the tides?” she murmured quietly. “Even you, the Goddess of the Depths, cannot control the law of the tide.”

Can I not?
Tethys hissed, her spiteful scorn grating over the shingle in a long, sww…issh of sound.
We sshall see Tiola Oldstagh. We sshall see. You cannot defy me. I will take what I want, when I want him. He is mine, not yours.

Another wave rolled in with a ssh…sshush of immense power towards the shore, high crested and angry. It hurled upon the sand in a roar of defiance, but could only run so far. It broke and shattered into nothing more harmless than a swirl of delicate, lace-like, patterned foam.

Spent, impotent, the sea returned from whence it came, leaving behind a curve of wet sand, silver-glistening in the moonlight.

Tiola squatted on her heels and stared, fascinated, at the swathe of dark-shadowed, undulating ridges and hollows left behind by the receding tide.

The ripples in the sand.

One

Devon, England

February 1719

Trying not to show his anxiety, Jesamiah Acorne stood beside the lee quarterdeck rail staring out at the dark, distant horizon. His hands were thrust deep into his longcoat pockets, left leg slightly behind the right to maintain balance as his ship ploughed through the heavy Atlantic swell meeting it head on.

Sea Witch
shrugged the rough waves aside as if they were of no consequence, the spread of her canvas grumbling and cracking in the strong wind and the rigging thrumming like the string section of an untuned and unrehearsed orchestra. Her timbers were creaking with every lift and dip of her bow, the sea foaming over her fo’c’sle in a toss of white spray. They would have to tack soon; as soon as it was light Jesamiah would give orders to hoist the t’gallants. But not yet.

Just in case.

The wind had a cold, spiteful nip to its jaws. Ice was puddled on the deck and the great, taut stays that secured the towering poles of the three masts were rimed with hoar frost. Tiola, Jesamiah’s wife, curled in their bed down in the great cabin, had said there would probably be snow mantling the hills and moors of Cornwall and Devon. Jesamiah shivered, his breath streaming like a cloud from between his lips. Snow. The snow in Virginia where he had grown up had often lain in deep drifts for weeks and the mile of the Rappahannock River bordering his father’s tobacco plantation had frozen hard most years. His father’s plantation? His now. Not that he wanted an inch of it, there were too many bad memories associated with the place. And with snow.

His father had been like a bear with a sore head during those long winter days when there was nothing to do and nowhere to go, and Jesamiah’s brother who, it had turned out, was not a brother after all, had taken the misery of the atmosphere out on Jesamiah. Hardly surprising, now he was a man grown, that Jesamiah despised snow, Virginia, the plantation, and tobacco all in equal measure.

The last time he had encountered snow he had been a pirate aboard the
Mermaid
. They had come to England to offload a cargo of ill-gotten plunder. Had not stayed long. Too cold and too many Excise men sniffing around for contraband. Captain Taylor had found a buyer who didn’t ask questions, weighed anchor and headed for the coast of Africa instead. That had been a while ago, several years back; things had changed since then.
Mermaid
was gone and Jesamiah was captain of his own ship; add to that, he had a wife and was no longer, technically, a pirate. He had signed his name in a book of amnesty and had more than proven his worth and usefulness to Governors Rogers of Nassau and Spotswood of Virginia since doing the deed. He was still carrying illicit cargo though. The tobacco in his hold was a legitimate crop grown on his own land; those hogsheads he intended to take ashore legally, despite the import tax and tedious form filling. It was moderate quality stuff and would not make much of a profit – certainly not worth risking a noose for. The two hundred and seventy kegs of brandy and the dozen barrels of precious indigo were a different matter.

God’s breath, but it was cold!

There was a pale line in the east making a thin slit between the pitch blackness of the sea and the silver of the star-studded, frosty sky. A new dawn, another day. As Jesamiah squinted towards it the narrow streak perceptibly widened, turning from dark blue to purple, then salmon pink. Resolutely, he stared at the changing colours. No use looking over his shoulder to scan the open Atlantic spread behind his ship, he would not see a thing from down here on the quarterdeck. He waited, his fingers fiddling with the new gold acorn earring dangling from his right earlobe. A replacement for the one he had tossed overboard into North Carolina’s Pamlico River a few months ago.

He frowned, unconsciously touched his barely healed collarbone. October and November were two months he would rather forget – except for the night he had taken his Tiola as wife – although even that had been marred and his rights as a husband somewhat postponed by various, unpleasant events. He rubbed at the rough beard along his chin and jaw line, the skin of his cheeks cold against his sailor’s callused fingers. He had made love to Tiola only the once since that All Hallows Eve when she had bound their union with the special bond of her White Craft. Only once in three months.

“Dawn’s liftin’ ‘er skirts,
Capitaine
.”

Jesamiah glanced at his second in command, his quartermaster Claud de la Rue who had his woollen-gloved hands clasped around the spokes of the helm and a red wool cap pulled down over his ears. On a Royal Navy ship the steering would be a seaman’s job, but most of the crew were more comfortable with the familiar ways of piracy, where rules and hierarchies did not apply. Jesamiah was the captain and his word was law because
Sea Witch
was his ship, but beyond that, equality and fairness were respected.

Rue indicated the skylight above the great cabin. A faint glimmer of a lantern’s glow trickled through a chink in the shutters covering the glazing. “Miss Tiola will per’aps be well again once we drop anchor?” he said, the concern evident in his voice. “It is
la mal de mer
that makes ‘er so ill,
n’est-ce pas
?”

Jesamiah nodded. Aye, that was the lie he had told the crew. His wife was suffering badly from acute seasickness, he’d said. How could he broadcast the truth? That she was a white witch and witches, it seemed, could not cross the sea without being seriously incapacitated. He glanced up at the indistinct top of the mainmast silhouetted against the fading stars and the tendrils of light spreading across the cloudless dark blue. Joe Meadows – Skylark – was perched at the masthead, peering into the distance. Stoically, Jesamiah resisted the urge to grasp hold of the shrouds and climb up to join him. He must appear calm, in control, at ease. All the same, he jumped nervously when Joe suddenly called down.

“On deck!”

Mocking his own wariness Jesamiah sniffed disdainfully and, tilting his head, peered upwards. “Well?”

“She’s still there, Cap’n. The dawn’s catching ‘er t’gallants, makin’ ‘er fair sparkle. Don’t think she’s seen us yet.”

Damn. Damn. Fokken, bloody, sodding damn!

That Navy frigate had been steadfastly trailing their wake since yesterday afternoon.

“How the bugger has she stayed with us?” Jesamiah muttered, annoyed. They had made several manoeuvres during the night in an effort to lose her. How was she still there, clinging like a barnacle? Bugger her!

“’Er
capitaine
must know ‘is business,” Rue observed wryly. “Unless ‘e is ‘eadin’ for the same ‘arbour?”

Jesamiah shook his head. “He’d ‘ave altered course by now if he wanted Falmouth or the Channel. An’ if going for Bideford, like us, or Bristol, why ain’t he overhauled, instead o’ tailin’ us like a dog after a bitch on heat? If they ain’t interested in us they wouldn’t still be there would they?” Jesamiah fingered his acorn earring again then touched the lengths of blue ribbon braided into his black, shoulder-length hair. “We can let them catch up and heave-to, invite ‘em aboard. Or fight – or run. I can’t risk being boarded, so that’s the first one out. If they find what we’ve got in the hold they’ll ‘ang us all as smugglers without botherin’ to ask questions.”

“We fight, then? With Miss Tiola aboard?”

Jesamiah considered the possibility. Could they fight? Against the Navy? Who was he kidding to even think of it!
Sea Witch
would be kindling with a single broadside. These heavily armed frigates patrolling the coast of England, France and Spain were not the incompetent, untried sea captains sent out to the Colonies to gain experience. These were crewed by tried and tested seamen who had fought in battles, gained victories and added a string of prizes to their credentials. The fact that this ship had doggedly followed during the hours of darkness probably meant her captain was curious, and a capable commander. And a curious, capable commander was not a welcome companion to an ex-pirate who had an excessive amount of contraband stashed aboard.

“We could toss what we ‘ave over the side.” Rue suggested when he received no answer.

Jesamiah glowered at him. “That is not going to happen either.”

Rue shrugged, slightly amused. “
Non
,
but I thought I ‘ad better mention it.”

The sky was brightening rapidly. That ship could be seen from the masthead because she was bigger and had her topgallants set. Only those who had nerve, or nothing to hide, risked the highest mast and sails being skylined by a rising dawn. Jesamiah peered at the broadening smear of daylight. There was a possibility that
Sea Witch
could still be invisible, the darker western horizon was behind her and they were sailing on main and foretopsails only. Maybe those bastards were clutching at straws and were merely lucky to be in the right – wrong – place? Maybe they were heading in the same direction, or hoping for their chase to be captained by an idiot? If so, they were going to be disappointed. Northern Cornwall, the Bristol Channel and the Devon coast were not far ahead. Two hours sailing? Three, to the shelter of Appledore harbour? Was there hope of getting in past the Bar and easing upriver to Bideford all in the one tide? Probably not. If they made all sail and ran they could be drawing attention to the fact they had something to hide. Unless… unless they had a reason to run.

Shafts of pale blue were splitting the sky like torn rents in a bolt of cloth, golden rays of sun spearing upward with pink-tinged clouds spreading out like drifting islands.

“On deck, Cap’n!” Skylark’s voice floated down. “They’ve seen us; altering course and settin’ stn’s’ls.”

Bugger.

Jesamiah waited another five minutes. It was wasted time, for nothing changed except the daylight strengthened. He cupped his cold hands round his mouth and bellowed his first orders of the day.

“Loose t’gallants and courses! An’ shift your arses!”

If he was forced to heave-to and was questioned he had his reason to be running under full sail – a very good reason.

A seriously ill, possibly dying, wife.