The Shifting Tide - Anne Perry [156]
“It’s a plague ship,” Durban replied. “We can’t let it put ashore, not here, not anywhere.”
Monk was reeling with fearful, inescapable thoughts. “You mean . . .”
“Can you think of anything else?” Durban said quickly. His face looked gray in the light from the hatch.
“Your men . . .” Monk began.
“Ashore. Help me get the sails up, then you can go, too. There’s the lifeboat—you can take it.”
Monk was balancing with difficulty. His trouble was not the faint rolling of the ship but the sick horror in his mind. “You can’t sail it alone! Where to? There’s nowhere you can take it!”
“Out beyond Gravesend, and open the seacocks,” Durban answered, his voice little above a whisper. “The sea’ll clean her. Way down at the bottom, it’ll be a good burial. Now let’s get out of here and up into the air. The smell is making me sick.” As he spoke he turned and started climbing again. Monk followed, hand after hand until he stood on the deck, gasping the ice-cold evening air, sweet as the light that poured across from the west, etching the waves with fire.
He could not remember much about raising a sail, but, as Durban told him what to do, some familiarity from childhood on the northeastern seaboard gave skill to his fingers. One great canvas slowly unfurled, and with their combined weight and strength began to crawl up the mainmast. They lashed it close, straight into the wind, then moved to the second.
Together they went to the winch and lifted the anchor. Monk completed the last few turns as Durban went back to the wheel and slowly turned her to catch the wind in one sail, then the next. It was hard work—and, with only two of them, dangerous. As the canvas billowed out and they picked up speed Monk turned to look at Durban. It was a kind of insane and terrible triumph. They were sailing a drowned ship on a sea of gold, heading towards the shadows of the east and the dying day.
“It’s time you went,” Durban said, raising his voice above the wind and the water. “Before we put on speed. I’ll help you launch the longboat.”
Monk was stunned. “What do you mean? If I take the longboat now, how will you get ashore?”
Durban’s face was quite calm, the wind burning his cheeks to scarlet. “I won’t. I’ll go down with her. It’s a better way than waiting for the other death.”
Monk was too shattered to speak. He opened his mouth to deny it, to refuse to grant the possibility, but it was foolish even as the thought entered his mind. He should have seen it before, and he had not: the sweating, the burning cheeks, the exhaustion, the carefully bitten-back pain, and above all the way Durban had kept a distance between himself and Monk, even his own men, recently.
“Go,” Durban said again.
“No! I can’t . . .” They were near the rail; the ship was gathering speed, the water churning alongside them. The words were the last Monk said before he felt a weight jolting hard against him; the rail had caught him in the back. Then the water closed over his head, cripplingly cold, smothering, drowning out everything else.
He fought to hold his breath, to beat his way up to the surface, for seconds the will to live driving out everything else. He broke into the air, gasping, and saw the huge bulk of the Maude Idris already fifty feet away and moving faster. He shouted after it, no idea what he was saying, just bellowing in fury and grief. For an instant he saw Durban’s figure in the stern, his arm lifted in salute, then he moved away and Monk was left to thrash around and think how he was going to make his way to shore without being drowned, run down by another ship, or simply frozen to death.
He had swum only a few strokes, hampered by his sodden clothes, and was already overwhelmed, when he heard a shout, and then another. With a mighty effort he twisted around in the water and saw a boat with at least four men at the oars bearing down on him rapidly. He recognized Orme leaning over the side of the bow, arms out.
The boat reached him, and even though they shipped the oars, the speed of it made it a desperate, arm-wrenching struggle to grasp Monk.