Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
The sail appeared during Elizabeth's watch.
Darcy was properly asleep for the first time since the fever. It was a heavy, exhausted slumber that pinned him to his pallet. It did not release him for dawn, or light, or even the distant sound of Elizabeth shouting his name from the top of the tower.
He was awake by the second shout. By the third, he was on his feet.
By the fourth, he was climbing the stone steps to the upper platform with terrifying speed.
Elizabeth did not shout without cause, and the cause was immediately visible the moment he cleared the last step: a white rectangle on the eastern horizon, sharp against the morning blue.
A sail.
He had seen sails before. Over six weeks, six ships had appeared on the horizon and vanished again without stopping.
He had watched them come and go with Elizabeth standing tightly beside him.
He had felt her hand grip his when the ships passed, and slowly loosen when they disappeared. The loosening was an agony.
This sail was different. This sail was close.
Elizabeth was frantically feeding green juniper branches onto the banked coals of the fire pit. The smoke was already rising in a thick, white column against the sky. She was working fast, her face set in concentration.
“How close is it?” he demanded.
“Two miles. Perhaps less. It is moving northwest, but it altered course three minutes ago.”
“Toward us?”
“I cannot tell yet.” She fed another branch onto the fire, thickening the smoke. “But a ship does not change its heading without cause.”
He went to the edge of the platform. The ship was clearly a two-masted merchant vessel, riding low in the water under a heavy cargo. A trading captain with a strict schedule and a destination would have no interest in investigating an uncharted island unless the distress signal was massive.
They needed more smoke.
He fed every piece of green wood they had onto the fire. The white column doubled in size, climbing high into the air before the wind finally caught it and bent it eastward.
Elizabeth stood beside him. She had taken the largest piece of sailcloth from the tower's lower room, and was waving it over her head in a slow, deliberate arc.
The ship held its northwest course. He watched the angle of the hull and the set of the sails, trying to gauge the captain's intentions across the distance.
The ship turned.
It turned north. The bow swung directly towards the island, the adjustment small but definite. The captain had seen the smoke, and he was investigating.
“It is turning,” Elizabeth gasped, her hands white-knuckled on the sailcloth.
“Yes,” Darcy said. “They are coming towards us.”
She kept waving, and he kept feeding the fire. The ship grew steadily larger. He could make out the dark hull against the blue water, and the individual sails.
It was soon close enough that a man on the deck with a glass could clearly see the tower, the fire, and the two desperate figures waving from the platform.
The ship dropped anchor.
Darcy heard the sound echo across the water: the distant but unmistakable rattle and splash of an anchor chain.
Elizabeth finally stopped waving. She clutched the sailcloth against her chest and stared at the ship in silence.
The vessel had stopped, but neither of them dared to speak until they saw a boat.
A small boat lowered from the ship's side. It carried four oars and three men.
Elizabeth abruptly sat down on the stone ledge, her legs quite giving way beneath her. She watched the boat hit the water and begin rowing steadily towards the island.
Darcy remained standing, though it took every ounce of his discipline not to collapse beside her. She was shaking violently.
The sailors reached the cove twenty minutes later. A man stood in the bow of the small boat, calling out first in Italian, and then in accented French. Upon hearing Darcy's reply, he switched to English.
“You are English?”
“We are English. We have been stranded on this island for six weeks following a shipwreck. My name is Fitzwilliam Darcy. This is my betrothed, Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
The man in the bow stared at them. Darcy was acutely aware of what the sailor saw: a barefoot, bearded man in ruined trousers, standing beside a sunburnt woman in a torn dress. Elizabeth was gripping his hand with a force that would not release him.
“I am Matteo Ferrara, first mate of the Santa Chiara, out of Valletta. Captain Rossi sends his respects. He saw your smoke.”
“The smoke was intended for him. We are grateful.”
“You have injuries?”
“A wound that is healing. We require passage to the nearest port with British consul presence. I can pay.”
Ferrara nodded. He looked at Elizabeth, who was standing beside Darcy with her chin raised. Her fierce bearing communicated clearly that she required no pity.
“We can take you to Valletta,” Ferrara said. “Two days. Perhaps three, with the wind.”
“Valletta will do,” Elizabeth said. Her voice was steady. Her hand in Darcy's was not.
The transition from the island to the ship was a kind of violence.
It began with the boat ride. The sailors smelled strongly of tar, sweat, and cooked food. The scent of actual bread and garlic hit Darcy with a force he had not anticipated. After six weeks of fish and figs, the simple smell of baked flour was enough to make his eyes unexpectedly sting.
Elizabeth's grip on his hand tightened when they reached the ship's side.
The Santa Chiara was merely a trading brig, but from the waterline, it towered over them.
It was a wall of dark wood and rigging, alive with the sounds of a working vessel: men calling, ropes creaking, and a heavy brass bell.
It was the entire world, arriving all at once after six weeks of silence.
He helped Elizabeth up the ladder. She climbed without hesitation, and he followed close behind. When they reached the deck, there were nearly a dozen men staring at them. It was the first time in six weeks they had been observed by strangers, and the sudden scrutiny felt exposing.
Captain Rossi was a short, broad man with a grey beard and the unhurried manner of someone who had been at sea long enough to be surprised by very little.
He greeted them in English that was better than his first mate's, offered water and bread and olives, and led them to a small cabin near the stern that contained a table, two chairs, and a bunk.
“For the lady,” he said. “You, Mr Darcy, I can put in the crew's quarters, or—”
“Miss Bennet is my betrothed,” Darcy said. “We are to be married upon reaching British jurisdiction. I would be grateful for whatever arrangements you consider appropriate, Captain, and I defer to your judgement in the matter.”
Rossi looked at Darcy, and then at Elizabeth. He observed the deep sun on their skin, their ruined clothes, and the way they stood within arm's reach of each other. Their proximity was an ingrained condition of survival. Rossi drew his own silent conclusions.
“I have a second cabin,” Rossi said. “It is small. It has a door.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“The door has a lock.”
“I appreciate your thoroughness.”
Rossi almost smiled. He moved immediately to practical matters: food, water, the loan of clean clothing from the crew's stores, and their exact course to Valletta. Darcy answered his questions with automatic, grateful precision.
Darcy took charge of the arrangements. He had begun governing the situation the moment the boat reached the beach, falling back on his natural authority because the alternative was to collapse altogether. His staggering relief was too large for the deck of a trading brig.
They were rescued. Elizabeth was safe. The simple words felt wholly inadequate.
Six weeks of fear, labour, and love on an unnamed island had not been simple.
The rescue had finally lifted the crushing weight of uncertainty he had carried every day—a weight far heavier than the stones he had moved, or the fever that had nearly killed him.
They sat in the cabin Rossi had assigned to Elizabeth, eating bread and olives. They drank water from a tin cup rather than a coconut shell. The bread was terribly stale, the olives were far too salty, and the water tasted faintly of the barrel, but it was the best meal Darcy had ever eaten.
Elizabeth ate with a silent, focussed intensity. She finished her piece of bread, stared at the empty plate, and then looked up at him. She was attempting to smile, but her eyes were brimming with tears.
“Bread,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“It has flour in it. And yeast. And someone baked it in an actual oven.” A tear spilled over her cheek. “I do not think I shall ever recover.”
He reached across the small table and took her hand. Her fingers laced tightly through his. They sat together in the cabin, feeling the ship move steadily beneath them. Neither spoke.
Night fell. The Santa Chiara moved steadily westward under clear skies. Darcy stood on the deck and watched the island disappear.
It vanished slowly. He watched the hill and the tower's silhouette fade into the dark mass of rock.
The signal fire was still burning; he could see the faint glow of orange light on the horizon.
They had not thought to put it out before leaving.
It continued to burn as a beacon for no one, a stubborn habit of hope.
The light finally dimmed, and the horizon absorbed the island wholly. There was only the sea, the stars, and the sound of Elizabeth's step on the deck behind him.
He turned. She was wearing a borrowed sailor's shirt, the sleeves rolled to her elbows, the hem falling over her torn skirt. Her loose, salt-stiff hair was far lighter than it had been in England. She did not look like a gentlewoman, but she looked exactly like the woman he was going to marry.
“It is gone,” she said. She stood beside him at the railing, looking at the empty horizon where the island had been.
“Yes.”
“I expected to feel relieved. I feel something else. I have not determined what.”