Chapter X
X
Luck was not on Bess’s side. Her husband returned for the Christmas holidays and came to her in the night, drunk and wanton. She lay beneath him, rigid, as his foul hands explored her body and stopped when they reached her swollen belly. In the light of the single candle, she saw his eyes darken.
‘You are with child?’
Bess’s jaw quavered as she tried to smile. ‘Yes, husband. Is it not good news?’
But from his face, she could see that it was not. Her husband was many things, but stupid was not one of them.
‘How long?’
‘Three months, of course.’ Bess had rehearsed the sums over in her head, but still the lie did not come easily. ‘It has been that long since our wedding night.’
He put his hand over her mouth and she thought she might suffocate while he finished his business and rolled off her.
‘I’ve heard rumours of your conduct aboard my ship,’ he said. ‘If you prove to be a liar and a slut, then mark my words, I’ll make you pay.’
With that, he went to the window and picked up the ship in a bottle. He took it to the fireplace and dashed it on the hearth. Bess screamed as the glass shattered and the little ship that she so treasured broke apart like a vessel battered against the rocks.
Her husband looked at her and laughed. Taking the candle, he left the room, leaving her trembling in the darkness.
* * *
He would make her pay. She didn’t doubt it for a moment.
But what could she do? It was a small mercy that her husband left again a few days later, but eventually, he would return.
Would he rip the baby from her arms and take it away?
Or lock her away in an institution? Or… she shivered…
would her actions cost her and her unborn child their lives?
‘James,’ she cried out, as she collected the pieces of the tiny ship. ‘You said you would sail through fire and storm, through death to the ends of the earth – why have you not come for me?’
She kept her eyes and ears open, hoping to glean even a scrap of hope from servants’ gossip.
Lily told her that a ship had been sighted off Falmouth.
It could be the Halcyon – but proved not to be.
A small ship called the Seagull was commandeered by pirates from the harbour at Fowey, and the owners suspected it was an inside job.
A merchant ship was wrecked off the coast of Britanny, all survivors lost.
None of what she heard gave Bess any comfort – and in fact, only served to increase her anxiety. The seas were dangerous and many vessels were lost to the vicissitudes of man or nature. Was the Halcyon amongst them?
And even if the ship was safe, would she survive its return?
For recently, she had felt unfriendly eyes upon her.
She’d put the pieces of the broken ship in her reticule and taken them out to the stables, hoping the groom could mend them.
But when she drew near, she had heard loud, gruff voices.
She’d discovered the groom drinking with Old John Dog.
His unwashed stench turned her stomach, and his grotesque dog growled at her.
Bess fled without accomplishing her errand.
Thereafter, she was aware of the old rogue frequently lurking about Polgothley and its surrounds.
Lily had told her that he’d been arrested for smuggling and had barely escaped the noose, but Bess’s husband had pardoned him and put the man to his own uses.
Bess had overheard servants’ talk that his tasks mostly involved harassing and intimidating her husband’s debtors, but when she did happen to meet Old John in the stables or on the cliff path, his sunken eyes bored into her and her heart lurched in panic.
Had her husband instructed the old man to arrange an accident to befall her?
She wouldn’t put it past either of them.
She was a slave to the dread that haunted her waking hours and dreams alike.
Only the love that still flickered in her heart and the movement of the babe in her belly kept her hope alive. James would come for her.
If only she could stay alive until he did.