The Lady's Slipper (38 page)

‘Help me,’ she shouted, but her voice faded weakly into the mist.

‘Quiet!’ Geoffrey pushed her up the stairs to the upper deck, his hand tight over her mouth.

Stay calm, she told herself, and look for someone who can help you. Through the fog, the upper deck looked to be deserted. She could hear the voices of sailors below on the quarter deck, see vague silhouettes of figures moving against the white sail aloft as the ship heeled in the mist. There was a slight breeze now and they were letting out sail.

But she was too exhausted to struggle so she let herself be carried towards the stern lantern, a blur of yellow light against the mist, tilting sideways with each heave of the sea. His hand was still over her mouth and was damp with her own blood. A swinging spar glanced Geoffrey a blow to the head. He staggered, and cursed it, but it seemed to cause him no pain, only made him seize her more tightly.

The rigging groaned under the sudden fill of wind. The mist came and went in shreds of white. She was failing, the wound had sapped her strength. The stern dropped away and she saw the void loom fleetingly beneath. The wind blew in her nostrils, suffocating her. Geoffrey spun her round and pushed her harder. Her boots could get no grip and scraped as she slid against the boards, skidding backwards until she was wedged up against the rail, the brass housings digging into her waist.

‘Help me!’ she cried again, but her voice was faint as a seagull’s cry.

She reached for the rail and caught hold, but it was grainy with salt water and her hand was too small to cling on. She felt it slide slowly out of her fingers. With sickening clarity she understood what he was trying to do.

‘Please, Geoffrey, no.’

She dug in her nails but he was leaning on her harder now, trying to topple her over the edge. Below the wash rushed by in ragged stripes of white foam. Her back arched over empty air, both hands clutched at the neck of Geoffrey’s shirt. She felt the fabric bunch in her hands and her own nails bite into her palms. Geoffrey groaned as he struggled to free himself of her, pushing down on her shoulders.

Suddenly he released his grip, feeling inside his pocket. She fought to regain her balance, clenching her fists round his shirt. Next moment, the quill knife was at her throat.

‘Let go,’ he said.

The ship was moving faster now and the wind whistled at the back of her neck. With wide eyes she saw Geoffrey raise the knife above her throat. His other hand reached back and closed around one of her wrists. The ship rose up under them.

‘Stop!’

Geoffrey turned, distracted.

Behind him Richard held a rapier at arm’s length, the tip level with Geoffrey’s neck. His teeth were clenched, his expression stony.

‘Leave her be.’

Geoffrey flailed his arm wildly, swiping the knife across Richard’s face. Alice lunged for freedom, but Geoffrey gripped her by the wrist.

Richard dodged and parried the attack. The rapier slipped and sliced into Geoffrey’s forearm, but Geoffrey paid no heed to the gashes in his sleeve. He turned back to Alice, who had sunk to her knees and was twisting, trying to loosen his grasp on her wrist. He looked down on her. He had the eyes of a hound coming in for the kill. He raised the knife above her chest. She heard his rasping inhalation as his arm went up.

Then he stood still, mouth hanging open, as if listening. The knife faltered in his hand. Alice saw a spot of crimson appear on his belly and slowly spread out like the red contours of a map.

The knife dropped to the floor with a rattle, before the ship heeled once more and his falling weight nailed her to the deck.

Over his shoulder she caught sight of Richard, swaying in the pale light. His face was flushed, his eyes blazing. In his hand he held the rapier; it hung loosely from his grasp, and from its tip droplets of blood dribbled onto his boot like ink. He looked down at it and then threw it away from him as if it were red-hot.

Alice felt Geoffrey move on top of her, heard him groan, felt the sticky warmth of his blood seeping through her clothes.

‘Oh God help me. He’s alive,’ she said.

Richard dragged Geoffrey roughly to one side and lifted Alice to her feet, holding her so tightly she could feel his heart thud against her ribs.

‘What the devil’s going on?’ One of the midshipmen appeared from below. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Richard Wheeler.’ He pointed at the figure on the ground with a trembling hand. ‘Help us. It’s Sir Geoffrey Fisk, he’s wounded. Get him to his cabin.’

The man summoned two deckhands who carried Geoffrey, still groaning, to his chamber. Word soon spread and more curious crew came to his quarters to find out what was afoot. They stood there gawping, taking in Richard’s cut and bruised face, and Geoffrey who was breathing heavily, lying on his back on his bunk, the front of his shirt and his fine coat soaked with blood. The men hastened away.

‘Help me, Alice,’ Richard said, pressing his cuff onto Geoffrey’s chest. ‘Don’t just stand there. We must do something.’

‘I won’t go near him,’ Alice said. ‘Don’t ask me.’

Geoffrey had ceased to thrash and now moaned and lay twitching like a beached fish. Richard pressed his shirt harder into Geoffrey’s stomach to stem the flow of blood. Geoffrey screamed and became distraught, heaving and lashing out until Richard was forced to move away.

Before long the Master arrived to ascertain what had happened.

‘What the hell is all this? My men tell me there are shot holes in the tween-deck corridor.’

Richard told him plainly they had duelled over the lady, and that Geoffrey had come off the worst in the fight.

‘Are you mad? We could not tell whence the shots came. For God’s sake, we thought the other vessel was firing at us. Thank God it was one of our own.’ He shook his head with an expression of blank disbelief. ‘Damned fool. You put their lives at risk as well as our own with your brawling. What were you thinking of?’

He shouted over to the boy, who stood in the corner, white-faced, transfixed by the sight of Geoffrey’s sopping shirt. ‘Fetch the surgeon. Quick, now.’ The boy ran off.

‘Don’t say I did not warn you,’ the Master said. ‘Women and the sea are like Cain and Abel, they never meet without that some calamity occurs.’

Richard had unaccountably turned his back to them all. The Master narrowed his eyes, tapped his fingers against his breeches, as if weighing Richard in the balance. Richard ignored him, opening all Geoffrey’s shutters to let in the light, and now his attention was seemingly focused on the view out of the window. Alice saw the back of his hair was matted with blood.

The Master looked exasperated. ‘Our livelihoods depend on him,’ he said to Alice, indicating Geoffrey with a tilt of his head. He stepped towards Richard. ‘If he does not live, sir, then understand you will be responsible for the men’s wages, will you not?’

Richard looked round, and nodded. His face was haggard, the face of a man grown old.

‘Then I will leave you to sort out this unholy mess. The surgeon will tell me his chances, and I hope they are better than they look.’

Alice watched this conversation unfold before her as if it were a long way away. Her teeth were chattering as the cold air sluiced over her. She supposed she must be in shock. Her hands were blue, the heat had shrivelled inwards to her centre. On the wall of Geoffrey’s cabin the sunburst display was missing a sword. She knew now where it lay–on the deck, cast aside, the tip dark with blood.

She wanted to go to Richard, but she must pass by Geoffrey, and she dare not. She hated to see Geoffrey writhing on his bed like that, in his own blood, like an animal on a slaughterhouse floor. But what if he should find new strength, attack her again, reach out and grab for her throat? So she stayed shaking in the corner, not daring to pass him, one hand clutching her shoulder where the flesh-wound was throbbing its own aching rhythm. When the Master and his officers had left, Richard turned to her, in turmoil, his sleeve sodden with a mess of blood.

Richard knelt and peeled Geoffrey’s wet coat open and then pressed the fabric of his shirt to staunch the wound again. He spoke into his ear.

‘Geoffrey. Geoffrey, can you hear me? The surgeon is coming. Hold on there.’

The vessel hit a wave, and Geoffrey moaned and half opened his eyes. When he saw Richard, his eyes closed again to shut him out. Richard turned to Alice.

‘Have mercy. I will not let him die, Alice. We were friends once.’

She nodded, but could not erase the image of Geoffrey’s face as he lunged towards her with the knife. She still felt the empty air behind her and the suck of the sea. Her legs trembled beneath her skirts. If she were to open her mouth she did not know if words would come.

Richard saw her hesitation and stood up and made to hold her, his brown eyes desperate. His fingers dug into the back of her neck. ‘Oh God, Alice. He’s going to die.’ Then suddenly he pushed her away. ‘Don’t come near me. I am cursed with his family’s blood.’

‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was thin and small.

He whispered, ‘My men–they killed his mother, in the days of shaking. They tortured her. Raped her. Oh God, Alice, they made sport with her corpse…they had lost their senses somehow, God alone knows. But they cut off her fingers, wore her white hair in their helmets–as trophies…’

She looked at him in disbelief. He could not mean it.

‘I did not know. It was not on my orders, I mean. I saw her afterwards–it was a charnel house. That same woman who had given me sweetmeats and apples as a boy and welcomed me into her drawing room.’ He could barely get out the words, they seemed to choke him. He shook his head. ‘I swore then I was done with bloodshed, would fight for peace instead, with the Quakers.’ He took hold of her again in an iron grip, forcing her to look into his eyes. ‘But look at me,’ he said bitterly. ‘I see now, there will never be any peace in my breast.’

His eyes were streaming–a salt river running down his face. She had never seen a man cry before. It wracked her to see him like this. She hushed him and wiped his face with her fingers.

‘Tell me, is one life worth more than another?’ he asked. The bones of his face were stark under his skin, his voice held an appeal, as if he wanted her to somehow absolve him. She knew she could not help him. It was a question she, of all people, could not answer.

‘Thou art a Quaker. Look to thy faith. Pray, Richard,’ she said. ‘Pray for us all.’

Richard sank to his knees on the damp floor of Geoffrey’s cabin but did not utter a word. He stayed with his head bowed, his shoulders hunched, like a man awaiting an execution. The neck of his shirt was damp with blood and stuck to his back. She had the absurd notion of wanting to fetch him a dry shirt. Exhausted, she sagged onto the side bench. Her right hand twisted her wedding band round and round on her finger.

The surgeon appeared at the door. Richard helped him heave Geoffrey over and undress him. The surgeon used a scalpel to cut away Geoffrey’s coat and shirt, cursing as the constant motion of the ship made steady hands impossible, and Geoffrey himself was moaning–tossing and turning now in a kind of delirium. The lacklustre light seeped in through the windows. When they turned him back, Geoffrey’s sodden shirt was slit open to reveal skin that was red and inflamed, a patchwork crusted with scars and lesions, scaly like a reptile. In the centre a deep hole oozed blood. The surgeon looked at Geoffrey’s scarred chest with astonishment. Nauseated, Alice put her hand to her mouth.

‘I have never seen the like,’ said the surgeon, fascinated. ‘But the blade has come from behind. I thought you said it was a duel?’ He looked at Richard accusingly.

Richard could not meet his eye.

‘He meant to kill me,’ Alice said, ‘he had lost his reason.’

The surgeon sniffed and turned his attention back to Geoffrey. ‘No wonder he carried himself so stiff.’

‘What is it? Is it a disease?’ Richard asked.

‘No. He must have had this all his life. I have seen it before, but not so severe.’

‘I knew him as a boy,’ Richard said. ‘He never said anything about it, but we used to make jest of his scratching, the way boys will. He never swam in the river with the rest of us, though, and I always wondered why,’ said Richard. ‘We thought he was putting himself above us.’

‘By the look of it, it caused him much pain. But maybe not as much as this wound.’ He fetched out needle and thread and carefully turned Geoffrey over to examine his scarred and crazed back, but then stood away, unsure what to do.

‘Will he live?’ Richard asked. His eyes were desperate.

‘It is too deep and narrow for me to sew,’ the surgeon said, at length, ‘but we can wash it with brandy, and plug it with cotton and woundwort to stop the bleeding–guard it from festering. But no, not a cat’s chance.’

Later Alice would remember this scene as if it were a nightmare–the ship shifting one way and the other on the swell of the sea, the light alternating between pallid grey and greenish gloom, the red of Geoffrey’s blood and his screams of pain as the wound was plugged.

Richard was wretched. It was evident in his lined face, the way he winced as the alcohol was poured into Geoffrey’s wound, his inability to meet her gaze. The next time she turned to look for him, he had silently left the cabin, but she felt his absence as a relief–his anguish had been an almost physical presence in the room.

When the surgeon left, Geoffrey lay listless on the cot, his scabrous chest bound tightly with a muslin bandage, through which Alice saw a spot of blood was already emerging. She stayed well away from him near the doorway. His chest rose and fell erratically with his breath. Alice had not mentioned her shoulder to the surgeon, but he saw she was in pain and he had helped her clean and dress it with a wad made from a neckerchief. Now it felt as if she had been kicked by a horse. But in truth she barely noticed it, her thoughts were dazed.

Behind her the cabin door banged. ‘Why?’ said Richard, evidently trying to make sense of it all. ‘Why would Geoffrey want to harm thee?’

‘Some sort of madness. He was not himself. He kept talking to Margaret.’

‘Margaret who?’

‘Margaret Poulter, the woman they accused me of killing. We had become friends. Geoffrey must have been involved in her death somehow. And maybe Ella Appleby, my housemaid. But it is all so confusing. I can’t make sense of it.’ She glanced towards the bed, where Geoffrey lay on his back, his face waxy. ‘Don’t leave me alone with him though, Richard. I’m afraid of him.’

‘I have murdered him,’ said Richard, ‘even after all my vows, my pledge for peace.’

Alice reached out for his hand. ‘In heaven’s name, Richard. He would have killed me–’ she tugged at his arm–‘and thee. Now let me look at the back of thy head,’ she said. But he twisted away from her.

‘What am I, Alice?’

She shook her head, unable to fathom the question.

‘All my fine Quaker principles, all my talk of God. That’s easy enough in times of peace, easy enough when the wolf is not at my own door. But am I different when the time comes? Should I have turned the other cheek rather than raise a hand against another?’

Alice’s heart flooded out towards him and her mouth opened to comfort him, but his face stayed her from speaking.

‘Tell me–’ he came towards her and loomed over her, filled with a sudden rage–‘if I had not acted, would I have been more human? Or less?’

She could not answer.

‘I thought I had found God. But look at me.’ She bowed her head, embarrassed. He pulled at his bloodstained shirt and thrust it close to her face so that the stench of it filled her nostrils. ‘
This
is the kind of man I am.’

Alice began to weep. He snatched the shirt away and turned, presenting her with his back, rigid, like a wall.

‘Richard…’

‘Keep away from me.’ She stopped in her tracks, his words were harsh and brittle. ‘I should have reasoned with him. I cannot be trusted. I cannot trust myself. I make bold promises but cannot trust myself to keep them.’

‘No…’

After a few moments he strode out of the cabin without looking back.

Alice looked over to where Geoffrey lay on the wooden cot. She walked purposefully over to him.

‘Is it not enough that you should try to kill me?’ she said. ‘I wish you would die. You have destroyed us. Richard will never forgive himself.’