Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [99]
She knelt down by the bed and offered up a last-minute prayer for their safety, but her attention wandered to all that this little hut had meant to her in the last three years.
It had been a haven, the one place where she felt an element of peace and safety. She had found joy in love-making with Will, there had been the happiness of Emmanuel’s birth, and so many different milestones in Charlotte’s development, from her first steps to her first words. Now they were leaving it for the unknown.
‘Mary!’
She jumped at the sound of Sam’s whisper, and turned to see him in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She realized he was embarrassed at interrupting her prayers.
‘It’s all right,’ she whispered as she got up from her knees. ‘Have you see Bennelong yet?’
Sam came right into the hut and looked down at the sleeping children. In the light from the flickering candle his lean face had an almost skeletal quality. He was not a handsome, confident man like Will, but the tender way he looked at the sleeping children touched Mary.
‘Will thought he saw him swimming out to the cutter,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t make out anything though, it’s too dark, but he said you were to come now.’
Mary lifted up Emmanuel, wrapped him more securely in his blanket, then passed him to Sam. Picking up a sling she’d made from some canvas, she tucked it round the sleeping baby. She tied one set of straps around Sam’s waist and the other two were put over his shoulders, crossed at his back and then secured in the front.
‘It will leave your hands free,’ she said by way of an explanation, afraid he might be irritated at her treating him like a nursemaid.
He gave her a faint grin. ‘I’m scared. Are you?’ he whispered.
Mary shook her head. Her stomach was churning, she was breaking out in a cold sweat, and the greater part of her wished she’d never dreamed up this plan. But she wasn’t going to admit to any of that.
‘We will do it, Sam,’ she said with more bravado than conviction, and turned back to the bed for Charlotte.
As she lifted the child up into her arms, Charlotte muttered in her sleep, but her head drooped down on her mother’s shoulder and she didn’t wake. Sam picked up the blanket and tucked it round the child, then smiled at Mary. ‘Ready?’
‘Almost,’ Mary said, and leaning down to the little table picked up a cloth bag.
‘What’s that?’ Sam whispered as the bag rustled.
‘Sweet tea leaves,’ Mary said, and smiled. ‘I have to take the one thing that we liked about this place, don’t I?’
They stole silently from the hut, pausing every now and then to check no one was about. Further back towards the town they could see the faint glow from dying fires, but the only sounds were the usual night ones of a sentry’s boots up on the quay, snoring from huts, the odd muted cough and the water lapping on the beach. Charlotte stirred in her mother’s arms, but Mary wrapped the blanket round her tighter to keep out the cool air, and walked faster to keep up with Sam.
Once Mary’s eyes had grown used to the dark, she could just make out the cutter coming towards the shore and Bennelong swimming before it, invisible except for a flash of white teeth every now and then.
She knew that if anyone had discovered their plan, it would be in the next few minutes that they would be stopped. Her ears ached with the strain of listening for running feet, every muscle was taut, and she expected to hear a musket fire with every step. When Will stepped out of the bushes in front of her she nearly jumped out of her skin. It was so eerie: the dark beach, the eight men all standing as still as statues, and the bundles lying like so many boulders. No one said a word, everyone watching as the cutter came closer and closer in.
Will waded out a little way, then swam almost as silently as Bennelong to help him bring the boat in closer.