Bedford Square - Anne Perry [12]
Cornwallis glanced at him. “Oh … three-masted ship.” He moved his arms to illustrate what he was saying. “Middle mast, middle sail … square-rigger, of course. Injured by a loose rope. His hand. Got it jammed somehow.” He frowned, turning towards the window again, away from Pitt. “I went up after him. Should have sent a seaman, of course, but the only man near me was Beckwith, and he froze. Happens sometimes.” He spoke jerkily. “No time to look for someone else. Weather was getting worse. Ship pitching around. Afraid the injured man up on the mast would lose his grasp, tear his arm out of its socket. Heights never bothered me in particular. Didn’t really think about it. Been up often enough as a midshipman.” His mouth tightened. “Got him free. Had to cut the line. He was almost dead weight. Managed to get him back along the yard as far as the mast, but he was damn heavy and the wind was rising all the time, ship pitching around like a mad thing.”
Pitt tried to imagine it, Cornwallis desperate, frozen, trying to hang on to a swaying mast forty or fifty feet over a wild sea, one minute above the heaving deck, the next, as the ship keeled, out over the water, and carrying another man’s helpless body. He found his own hands were knotted and he was holding his breath.
“I was trying to readjust his weight to start down the mast,” Cornwallis went on, “when Beckwith must have unfrozen and I found him just below me. He helped take the man’s weight, and we got down together.
“By that time there were half a dozen other men on deck, including the captain, and it must have looked to them as if Beckwith had rescued me. The captain said as much, but Beckwith was an honest man, and he told the truth.” He turned back to meet Pitt’s eyes, the light behind him now. “But I can’t prove it. Beckwith died a few years after that, and the man up the mast hadn’t the faintest idea who else was there, let alone what happened.”
“I see,” Pitt said quietly. Cornwallis was staring at him, and in the misery that was in his face Pitt glimpsed some perception of fear that he was trying to hold inside himself. He had lived a life of discipline against an element that gave no quarter, no mercy to man or ship. He had obeyed its rules and seen the deaths of those who had not, or whom misfortune had overtaken. He knew as few men can, who spend their lives in the safety of the land, the value of loyalty, honor and sheer, overwhelming physical courage, instant and absolute obedience, and total trust in those with whom you serve. The hierarchy within a ship was absolute. To have taken credit for another man’s act of courage was unforgivable.
In what Pitt knew of Cornwallis, it was also unthinkable. He smiled at him, meeting his gaze frankly. “I’ll look into it. We need to know who is doing this, and most of all what he wants. Once there is a specific demand, then there’s a crime.”
Cornwallis hesitated, still keeping his hand on the letter, as if already he feared the result of any action. Then suddenly he realized what he was doing. He thrust the paper at Pitt.
Pitt took it and put it in his pocket without looking at it again.
“I’ll be discreet,” he promised.
“Yes,” Cornwallis said with an effort. “Yes, of course.”
Pitt took his leave and went out of the room, along the corridor, downstairs and out onto the pavement. He had gone barely a dozen yards, his mind consumed with Cornwallis’s distress, when he was forcibly stopped by almost colliding with a man who moved across in front of him.
“Mr. Pitt, sir …?” he said, looking up at him, but although his words were framed as a question, there was a certainty in his face.
“Yes?” Pitt replied a trifle sharply. He did not like being accosted so physically, and he was too concerned about the ugliness of Cornwallis’s situation to wish interruption in his thought. He felt frustrated and helpless to protect a man he cared about from a danger he feared was very real.
“My name is Lyndon Remus, from the Times,” the man said quickly, still standing directly in front of Pitt. He produced a card out of