“Lord no, not particularly. It helps to have two older brothers there. Pen is a prefect you know, in his last year. Besides, he had told everyone I was called Pirate, and they thought that was funny. They teased, but they did not torment me.”
“Do they call you Pirate at school, too?”
“Oh yes,” he said with a fine assumption of carelessness. Then his face screwed up as if he was trying desperately not to cry. “Allie, I found out I cannot go to sea.”
Alicia’s heart leapt. Though she was very sorry for his disappointment, she could not help but be overjoyed that he was going to stay at home. Perhaps they would be married after all, though she was old enough now to suspect such things were not simple to arrange.
“Why not?” she asked, hoping he saw only her sympathy, not her relief.
“I’m too old. Boys who want to go into the Navy become midshipmen by the time they are twelve.”
“But you do not want to,” she said, astonished. “You are going to be a pirate.”
“Oh, that was just a childish game!” he said with a touch of impatience. “The Navy is the only way to go.”
“You are not much too old.”
“No, and I daresay Father could arrange it, but I wrote to him as soon as I found out, and he said the Navy is not a suitable profession for the son of an earl. When I am old enough he will naturally make me an allowance sufficient to lead a life of leisure, or if I insist, I may go into the Guards or the Church. The Church!”
“I cannot imagine you as a vicar,” Alicia agreed. “Only consider, a vicar called Pirate!”
Pirate managed a wobbly laugh. He patted her hand. “I shan’t do that, and I don’t like the Army much better. I suppose I shall just have to be a gentleman of leisure. But I will say this for Father, he says he will buy me a dinghy so that I can go sailing on the Fowey next summer. Do you want to come out with me?”
“Yes, please,” said Alicia.
Cornwall 1786
Pirate never again spoke to Alicia about his disappointment. She was sure he did not forget it, but he appeared resigned. The following summer his stoicism was rewarded: Lord Orford kept his promise and bought a sailing dinghy.
The estuary of the River Fowey was a long, broad inlet reaching several miles inland from the port of Fowey at its mouth. Sheltered by hills on both sides, it was a perfect place for learning to handle a boat. The shallow stream which had seen so many battles opened into a creek, flowing into the Fowey, where the dinghy could be moored.
The next three summers, Pirate spent more time on the water than off it. Alicia joined him when she could, but now she was older, it was more difficult to get away.
Nanny had retired at last. In the big, empty schoolroom, Miss Porringe held sway, and Miss Porringe was not the sort of governess to make friends with her pupil. Alicia was bitterly lonely. She lived for the school holidays, but her brothers and the Pendragon boys were older too, and less ready to make allowances for a girl tagging along behind.
Sometimes the Pendragon girls’ governess brought the three of them to pay a morning call on Miss Roscoe. Miss Porringe and Alicia always returned the civility, but Alicia had little in common with them. As Pirate had told her years ago, they were very proper young ladies.
One day, in a spirit of daring, Alicia proposed a game of cricket. How wide their eyes, how round their rosebud mouths, how they oohed and aahed! Cricket was for boys. As for fishing...
Lady Cynthia fanned herself languidly and observed, “Good gracious, what a tease Miss Roscoe is!”
So Alicia went fishing with Pirate, reckless of punishment. When bread and water for supper did not work, Miss Porringe made her stand in a corner with a book on her head, for hours, thus improving her posture as well--the governess hoped--as her behaviour. Alicia stood patiently. And galloped off again on her little mare, Comet, as soon as Miss Porringe’s surveillance wavered.
Fortunately, the governess’s authority did not extend to the stables, and all the grooms were on Miss Allie’s side.
More and more often, though, Alicia would arrive at the creek only to be told she could not go sailing today.
“I am sorry, Allie,” Pirate told her, “but I’m going out past Fowey and it would be the act of a dastard to take a female with me.”
“If it is so dangerous, you should not either.”
“It is different. I am a man.”
At fifteen, though he would have been at sea for three years now had he been allowed to become a midshipman, Pirate still appeared a boy. Small and slight, as yet hairless about the chin, he was just about Alicia’s height, since in the way of girls she had put on a spurt. He was every inch a daredevil, though.
Failing a direct prohibition, which his father had not thought to give, he often sailed the Jolly Roger singlehanded out of the mouth of the Fowey. From Gribbin Head to Pencarrow Head, he knew every cove and bay, rock and inlet. But three miles of coast did not long satisfy him.
* * * *
The summer after her thirteenth birthday, Alicia rode down to the creek early one sunny morning. She had little hope, for she knew the tide was on the turn, perfect for bearing the dinghy out to sea, and a steady breeze blew from the west.
“I’m going to tack around Gribbin Head today,” Pirate told her, “into St. Austell Bay.”
“Let me go with you, pray! I can help you row if you are becalmed.”
“Rowing at sea is not like on the river. You get wet. All those petticoats would get tangled around you, and anyway, you cannot pull hard enough with those silly sleeves. Tell you what, we shall sail up the river to Lostwithiel tomorrow, if you can get away. I have plenty of pocket money. I’ll treat you to a nuncheon at the inn.”
Alicia accepted gratefully, but she went straight home and tried to get into a pair of Edward’s breeches. Occasionally in the happy old days, she had dressed as a boy so as to ride astride.
Alas, her shape had changed, she realized sadly. Hips and breeches simply refused to cooperate. Whether she liked it or not--and she most emphatically did not--she was turning into a young lady.
That evening, after dinner, Alicia was allowed to join her brothers playing at battledore on the lawn in front of the house. As long as she did not run, Miss Porringe considered the game permissible for a young lady still in the schoolroom. Alicia had just made a flying leap and hit the shuttlecock a good whack, to cheers from her partner and rebukes from the governess, when one of Lord Orford’s grooms came trotting up the avenue.
Seeing them, he dismounted. They gathered round.
“Master Peter ‘a’n’t come home yet,” he told them. “Do anyone know where un went today?”
“He was going out in the Jolly Roger, I know,” said Edward. After being horridly seasick one breezy day on the Fowey, he had stopped accompanying his friend on the water. “I don’t know which direction.”
Alicia was torn. She knew Pirate’s voyages out to sea were surreptitious. If she told, he might be well and truly in the briars. On the other hand, suppose he had come to grief out there in the wind and waves, on the rocks and shoals that regularly claimed their victims.
Her nails bit into her palms at the thought. “He was heading down to the mouth of the Fowey,” she compromised.
“Thank’ee, miss.” The groom rode off, leaving Alicia to explain to her irate governess just how she knew of Pirate’s plans.
After a sleepless night, Alicia rose at dawn and rode down to the creek. No sign of the Jolly Roger. Her heart jumped into her throat and stuck there, choking her. What if he died, all because she had not told where he was going?
She turned Comet’s head towards Pendragon House.
The earl’s stablehands were already busy mucking out the stalls. They knew Alicia, and the head groom came to meet her as she rode into the yard. Even before he spoke, his grin reassured her.
“Master Peter come home around midnight, Miss Alicia. Stranded he were over t’other zide o’ the river, down Polkerris way.”
“Is he all right?”
“He weren’t hurt as I could zee, only plumb wore out and pretty mucky.”
“What happened? Where’s the dinghy?”
“I dunno, miss. Wi’ his lordship waiting, he didn’t stop to chat.”
Alicia thanked him and turned homeward. Her worst fears were allayed, but now she worried about Lord Orford’s reaction. If he banned sailing, Pirate’s heart would break.
She did not expect to see Pirate that day, but he turned up shortly before midday. Alicia’s brothers had all scattered to their various pastimes. She was walking in the garden with Miss Porringe, an incredibly boring occupation as she was not allowed to run, far less to climb trees, when she saw Pirate drive up in a whiskey gig.
Forbidden or not, she ran. Miss Porringe’s remonstrances pursued her, but soon faded behind since the governess followed her own dictum, that a lady never raises her voice.
“Quick, drive on!” Alicia cried, as she scrambled up beside Pirate.
Grinning, he whipped up the horse and they raced down the avenue.
“I promised you a nuncheon in Lostwithiel,” he said, “but we’ll have to drive, not sail.”
“What happened?”
He grimaced. “I misjudged the tide, like a regular lubber, and the currents and the wind, and the Jolly Roger got stuck on Par Sands. I had to wade to the shore, walk right across the peninsula to Fowey, persuade the ferryman to trust me for his fare, then walk all the way home.”
“That is miles and miles! But oh, Pirate, what about the Jolly Roger? And what did your papa say?”
“He was mad as fire at first, but he had to admit he had never told me not to leave the estuary.”
“I wager he has now. But you cannot, anyway, without the dinghy.”
“That is the best thing of all. Father is a regular Trojan. Just a minute while I turn into the lane.” Pirate slowed their mad career the merest trifle and swung around the gatepost. “There, driven to an inch!”
“Well, a foot, anyway,” said Alicia as they trotted up the narrow, twisting lane, overhung with briony and old man’s beard. “Is Lord Orford going to buy you another boat?”
“Not exactly. He is having the Jolly Roger towed off the sands for me, but best of all, he says he’s going to buy a yacht!”
“He’s giving you a yacht? Good gracious!”
“No, not giving,” Pirate elucidated regretfully. “It seems yachts are becoming all the go, and besides, our Cornish roads are so bad it is quicker to sail to London, or even to Plymouth and drive from there. But Allie, he says the son of an earl may be an amateur seaman, although not a professional. I may spend as much time as I wish aboard her, in the holidays of course, and he will have the captain teach me seamanship!”
For a moment, all Alicia could think of was that she would see less of him than ever. However, if nothing else, her life had taught her to swallow disappointments. Hiding her chagrin, she congratulated Pirate and resolved to enjoy today without thought for tomorrow.
It was a day worthy of lingering in her memory. The sun shone, the hedgebanks were bursting with foxgloves and campion, pheasants dashed across the lanes practically under the gig’s wheels, and gulls wheeled overhead. Pirate was more cheerful than he had been in an age. He made an exciting story of his grounding on Par Sands, and a funny one of the ferryman’s refusal to believe the salt-stained, brown-faced tatterdemalion was a lord’s son.
The inn in Lostwithiel provided a perfectly splendid nuncheon. Alicia almost ate herself sick with sweetmeats. Afterwards she and Pirate walked along the river, playing ducks and drakes with pebbles, watching ducks a-dabbling and swifts darting after flying insects. They even saw a kingfisher, a flash of blue that gleamed as bright as Lady Roscoe’s favourite sapphires.
“As blue as your eyes, Allie-oh,” Pirate commented carelessly.
Best of all, as the gig turned into the avenue, Pirate said, “Of course you will be invited to take a trip on the yacht. Father said we might go down to Falmouth, or around to Plymouth, and back. You and Ned, if he has the stomach for it, and James and Rupert if they like.”
With that to look forward to, Alicia did not mind in the least when Miss Porringe sent her straight to bed with no supper and nothing to read but a book of sermons.
* * * *
The summer was nearly over. Pirate took Alicia out twice more in the rescued dinghy before he went back to Eton. The yacht had not yet materialize when he left, but at Christmas he rode over with news that she was bought and being fitted out in Falmouth.
“I am going to ride over to see her,” he told Alicia and Edward, “whatever the weather.”
“I shall come with you,” said Edward, “as long as you don’t insist on my going aboard, even in harbour.”
“What is her name?” Alicia asked.
“She has been the Seagull, of all the dull names. Father says I may rechristen her, but I am not allowed to call her the Jolly Roger. Any suggestions?”
“The Buccaneer,” Alicia said at once.
Edward proposed several other names, but Pirate chose Alicia’s, to her delight. Perhaps at least he would think of her when he spoke of the yacht.
After Christmas, he and Edward rode off together. They were gone for several days. When they returned, Edward was quite unable to describe the Buccaneer, except that she was painted white with a red stripe and had three comfortable sleeping cabins as well as a day cabin.
Pirate made up for it with a wealth of minute detail. Alicia was ready to listen endlessly to his rhapsodies about her rigging and what sail she could carry, as well as her size and shape and living arrangements.
The Buccaneer was brought round to Fowey at Easter. As Alicia had feared, she saw little of Pirate during those holidays, just enough to know that he had suddenly grown four inches and started to shave. She consoled herself with the prospect of a cruise with him when summer came.
But long before that longed-for day, even before her fourteenth birthday in May, a great change came to Alicia’s life. The boys had scarcely returned to school when, right in the middle of the London Season, Lord and Lady Roscoe came home to stay.
Cornwall 1790
No one told Alicia why her parents had suddenly abandoned Society in favour of their isolated Cornish estate. However, she soon gathered through servants’ gossip that they had outrun the constable.