Chapter II
II
It was even worse than she’d thought. The boat lurched like an unruly pony, and the smell of tar and salt and sweat made Bess’s stomach roil.
The captain had not been present to greet her as she boarded, though she’d been told he was the cousin of the man she was to marry and that she would be safe in his care.
Instead, the first mate had shown her and Lily to a cabin below deck.
He and the other sailors had leered at her with ill-disguised lust. This was not a luxurious ship designed for passenger comfort.
It was a working vessel with a hold full of casks, barrels, and crates carrying unknown goods.
Other than two elderly gentlewomen, the Misses Applebaum, who were headed to visit a cousin in Penzance, there was no one aboard of her class, no one worth speaking to. It boded poorly; the voyage already felt ill-fated.
As Lily unpacked her things in the tiny cabin, Bess watched through the porthole as the ship left behind the ramshackle docks and featureless landscape.
The brown waters of the Thames stretched listlessly all around.
Bess wondered if she’d be better off throwing herself overboard to end the fear and misery of an unknown future.
Her feelings may be wrong, but they were all she had left of her old life.
When she next reached landfall, it would be on strange soil.
Cornwall. She’d read an account of the place in a book she found in her father’s library.
A strange, misty land populated by mischievous sprites known as piskies and the spirits of King Arthur and his knights.
The lost island of Avalon. The text had intrigued her, her imagination conjuring up a place of magic and possibility—
She was startled from her reverie by the boatswain knocking on the door. The ship had cleared the estuary, and if she liked, she would be allowed on deck for some fresh air.
‘Yes,’ Bess said. ‘I would like that.’
But as she followed the man up the steep steps to the deck, her stomach thought the better of it. She rushed to the side of the boat and retched over the side.
Cornwall…
Whatever romance the place might once have evoked was eclipsed by cruel, hard reality.