In the Blood (54 page)

Katherine could not move.
 
Her eyes followed another man as he stepped out from the gathering, another goliath though no match for the latter.
 
His hands punched the air above him, demanding attention.

“Remember!” the man cried.
 
“Only by drowning or beating.
 
No blades.
 
It must appear as if the sea took them.”

A cheer went up from the gathering, displaying in their raised hands an assortment of bludgeons.
 
Then the gang broke, spreading light along the shore again and into the sea as each man searched for the next victim.

Katherine at last fell back into the cabin.
 
Her hands were shaking as she found the table and laid her writing box down.
 
She fumbled around the edges in darkness, feeling for the drawer where she knew the tinder box and spare candles were kept.
 
She had to record what she had witnessed and it occurred to her now that the light the crew had been so exultant to see as they came through the Channel was no ship at all but the light of the wreckers who had succeeded in bringing them onto the rocks.

Her hand caught against the drawer handle.
 
She opened it and removed a brass tinder box and a single candle.
 
On the fourth strike the dry shreds of hemp caught and when the candle was fixed and glowing, Katherine opened her writing box and took up her quill.
 
Before dipping into the ink she went back to the opening to gauge how long she might have.
 
She knew the light would draw attention.
 
She would have to be quick.

Quicker than she hoped.

A small boat was in the water now.
 
Several lamps were lit aboard it.
 
They were coming to the rocks - to the
Betsy Ross.
 
Ahead of it she noticed that others from the gang had already made their way around the rocks at the base of the shore-line cliffs.
 
Lanterns danced and bludgeons fell and she knew that all hope was surely lost for herself and for her family.
 
She thought of her mother, kind as a saint.
 
Then of Laura and whether she had been a good sister to her.
 
She had to fight to hold back her tears.
 
Then unsolicited images of little George forced themselves into her head and sent those tears flowing unrestricted until she could do no more that bury her head in the ruffles of her gown.

When she looked up again the small boat was closer, but its advance had stopped.
 
It pitched and rolled on confused waves that seemed to have no respect for nature, flowing into the shore and out from the rocks in all directions.

It was then that Katherine saw why the boat had stopped.
 
A man was being pulled from the sea; a man she knew and loved so well.
 
It was her father, James Fairborne.
 
She looked away as the first rock struck him.
 
Then every arm on that boat rose and fell like hammers striking a blacksmith’s anvil.

“Father!” she called, ready to jump to his aid and to her certain death.
 
But she knew she could not.
 
She knew only that she had to record what she had witnessed.
 
She ran back to the table and hurriedly began to write, smudging the words with her tears.

Chapter Sixty-Six

T
ayte stopped reading.
 
He looked up through troubled eyes, first to Amy, and then to Tom.
 
“My father is dead!” he repeated.
 

Amy got up and read it for herself.
 
“That can’t be right.”
   

Tayte could scarcely believe it either.
 
“You don’t make up stuff like this,” he said.
 
It wasn’t the answer he expected to find, but he could not refute it.
 
He expected to learn that James Fairborne had set up the whole thing, only to spend the rest of his days living in fear of someone finding out; finding Katherine’s writing box and the iniquitous secret it harboured.

“So they were
all
murdered that night,” Amy said.

“Wreckers!” Laity added, flashing his eyes.

“More than that,” Tayte said.
 
“They took everything James Fairborne had: his life, his family and his identity.”

The mystery surrounding the sole benefactor named in James Fairborne’s last will and testament was suddenly obvious.
 
Tayte understood now that they were both impostors.
 
They had stolen their fortune through their own murderous machinations and taken all necessary precaution via the will to ensure that their lie perpetuated beyond their own lives.

Tayte turned back to the letters and read on.
 
“My father is dead!
 
Now the candle has drawn them, but they are no weak moths come to perish by its flame...
 
I hear their boots on the boards above me now...
 
They are here for me...”
 
He stopped reading.
 
“That's all there is,” he said, wondering as he supposed everyone else was at the circumstances of their deaths.

In 1783, Katherine’s words were written with no time to spare.
 
She tore the pages from her journal and sealed them tight into the box’s lid.
 
She had barely finished putting the box back together when a bearded face that was wild and hateful as the night, appeared inverted at the hatch.

“What’s this?” the man said.

He forced a menacing grin, obviously pleased with his find.
 
Katherine saw his boots dangle in, quickly followed by the rest of him as he dropped heavily through the hatch and sprang to his feet.
 
His grin remained, though changed now to a leer as he eyed her up and down like she was some prize he’d just won.

“And you dressed up for us,” he said, circling the table as Katherine edged back towards the opening.
 
“Very pretty you look too,” he added.
 
He lunged for her and laughed as she flinched away.
 
Then as she made towards the opening, he blocked her, pinning her to one of the bunks.
 
“This is a little extra the boss didn’t say about.”

Katherine could find no words, useless as she knew they would be.
 
She kicked and lashed out, but she was no match for him.
 
She felt him pull her closer, pressing himself against her.
 
She heard her dress rip; felt the tug at her chest.
 
Then the man was drooling, so close to her that she could taste his stale tobacco.
 
She was barely aware of the second man who dropped in through the hatch.

Her attacker reeled and bellowed, “Get in line!
 
I go first!”

“This says otherwise!”

A wooden beam connected with his head and he fell aside like a discarded tissue.

Katherine found herself staring into Jack’s eyes.
 
Her helmsman
had
come for her.
 
He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her from the bunk - pulled her into his arms and held her there for as long as he dared.
 
A moment later he pushed her towards the opening.

“Go!” he said, and his eyes begged her to obey.
 
Above them, the sound of heavy footfalls rattled the planks as the wreckers scurried over the ship like the rats they were.

Katherine was shaking her head as she retreated, still clutching the box, unable to bear the idea of parting with Jack again so soon, unable to suffer the thought of what might happen to him if he stayed.
 
She reached the opening and he turned away from her at last, distracted.
 
“Please!” he said.

And Katherine was falling.

She had no idea how she came to the shore, or even why she was still breathing.
 
Katherine felt she had no right to either, but the sensation of wet sand tickling through her fingers was as welcome as any pillow after a long and arduous day.

Jack...

Her delusion of being somewhere else was over.
 
Katherine rolled weakly in the sand and looked back to the
Betsy Ross,
knowing in her heart that her helmsman could not have made it.
 
The brig was awash with lamp-light, as were the exposed rocks.
 
The wreckers had all but finished their night’s devilry.

Are they all out there?
she wondered.

The lanterns were as many as she’d seen all night.
 
She considered her chances, remembering the house she’d seen earlier: the light blazing in the window.
 
Was there any hope that she could raise the alarm?
 
She turned away from the wreck to look for that light again and knew at once that all hope was lost.

A lantern approached along the shore, another was close behind.
 
Between her and the first lantern a body drifted face down, not six feet from her; floating lifeless with the surging tide, catching in the sand as the waves receded, then washing further in as they returned.
 
Another poor soul from the crew,
Katherine thought from the attire, knowing her own end was close.
 
But the body was too small, the hair too long and too familiar.
 
It was Laura.

Katherine made no effort to rise from the sand as the first figure approached.
 
She was too weak to struggle, physically and emotionally.
 
What hope did she have against the brute of a man who came out from behind his lantern and dragged her from the edge of the sea by her hair?
 
She made no sound, despite the pain.
 
Her writing box tumbled at last from the folds of her soaked gown and spilled its contents onto the shore, washing ink into the sand, black as his blood.

The brute stooped to retrieve it, admiring it.

“Let me go,” Katherine pleaded at last.
 
“Take the box.
 
I give it to you.”

The brute smiled.
 
He snapped the lid shut then took her supple young neck in one calloused hand and wrenched her closer.
 
“It is already mine!” he seethed.

The other lantern arrived in time to stay his brutality.
 
“Do not tarry here,” the second man ordered.
 
He stepped into the light and the hand around Katherine’s neck dropped her, as a hunting dog drops game at its master’s feet.

“Bring me James Fairborne’s body,” the man ordered.
 
“It must never be found.”

The brute turned away and his master caught his arm.
 
“What’s this?”
 
His eyes were on the box.
 
“Nothing leaves the beach!
 
I made that very clear.”
 
He snatched the box away, admiring it as he turned it in his hand.

The brute’s back was to him now.
 
His shoulders slumped as he made off.

“No witnesses!” his master called after him.
 
“Not a soul,” he added, as though affirming some previous assignation.
 
He admired the box again and without taking his eyes from it, he said, “And when I am found in your father’s place, battered and close to death myself.
 
This will make a fitting trinket to be clutching.
 
Something precious to me, James Fairborne, after the sea has claimed all else.”

Chapter Sixty-Seven

J
efferson Tayte shook his head, thinking about the ill-fated Fairborne family, wondering how anyone could conceive such a murderous plan, let alone carry it through.
 

“Who did this?”

He placed Katherine’s journal extracts onto the bed and saw that Amy shared his anger and that Laity’s smile had succumbed to glistening eyes.
 
Tayte held up the remaining pages.
 
The writing was clear, the paper otherwise unmarked.

“Maybe the answer’s in here,” he said.

The letter, signed by Lowenna, was dated Monday, May 16th, 1803.
 
The day before Mawgan Hendry was murdered.
 
Tayte cleared his throat and continued.

“That my father is not the man he claims to be, I am certain.
 
That James Fairborne was murdered even before he reached Cornwall’s shores in 1783, I have no doubt.
 
These past few days have left me guessing as to who I really am, though I surely have no right to call myself Fairborne.
 
Today, just one day after discovering that Katherine’s journal bore a startling truth, I have learnt enough of my father’s past to give us both our rightful name.