Mermaid of Penperro Read online

  The five women to whom Konstanze was shackled looked no better than she herself felt, their clothes so filthy and worn that the original colors were indistinguishable, their hair lank with grease, their faces gaunt and pale and sheened with the sweat of fever. They were all six sitting in the bow of a small boat, being rowed out to the prison hulk Dunkirk, where they were to remain until the next ship scheduled to carry women set sail for Australia. She was to be transported.

  A week after Tom’s visit to Launceston the assizes had begun, and her trial. She hadn’t been able to speak privately again with Tom, but had seen him white-faced in the courtroom gallery, having just arrived back from London. Through her barrister she learned what Tom had discovered in London: her husband was dead. He had suffered a series of heart attacks, the first of which had come soon after she left him. All this time she had feared him, and he had been lying helpless in his bed.

  She supposed she should feel some bit of sorrow or pity for the man, but it was relief she had felt more than anything else, even though his death meant that he was unable to withdraw the charges against her.

  The relief had lasted three quarters of an hour, which was how long her trial had lasted, Bugg II taking up more than his fair share of the time testifying against her. Despite Tom’s petitions on her behalf, despite the evident loathing with which the judges and jury regarded Bugg II, the verdict had come down against her. The judge had placed the black cap upon his wig and solemnly intoned that she was to be “hanged by the neck until you are dead.”

  The meaning of that sentence had not come home to her until she was back in the noxious jail, back in the dark and the filthy straw, with a rat nibbling on her shoe until she kicked it away. The truth did not affect her as she had expected it would. She had thought she would weep, or shriek, or lose her senses completely. Instead, a weird calm had descended upon her. She would die, or some miracle would save her. She had no control over which would be her fate. There was nothing to do but wait. Either way, it would all be over in the space of a few days.

  She had been wrong about that. At the end of the assizes the judges had gone over their lists of the convicted and had chosen her as one of the “lucky” ones who would have her sentence commuted from hanging to transportation. She was convinced it was because of Tom’s efforts that they had done so, and hope had taken new life within her. The next day she and the women to whom she was chained were put in a cart and hauled down to the coast, to the hulk Dunkirk.

  The hulk drifted almost imperceptibly on its anchor chains, the gray early morning light doing nothing to illuminate its black sides. Ramshackle huts had been built on deck, and between the stumps of the former masts stretched a line of laundry, hanging damp and lifeless. The hatches facing shore had been boarded shut—she’d heard because local residents had complained of the stench that blew to them on the wind. She could believe it. Even from fifty yards away the hulk smelled like an open sewer at the height of summer. She’d thought that nothing could be as bad as Launceston Jail, but perhaps she had thought too soon. The Dunkirk had been serving as a floating prison for seven years, and would likely remain here, polluting the waters of the Hamoaze Waterway, until its timbers rotted and it sank to the muddy bottom with its chained occupants gasping for their last desperate breaths of air.

  The boat at last reached the hulk, and Konstanze heard the hideous sounds coming from within the floating prison. Even through the shut hatches and gunports the groans and cries of the suffering prisoners could be heard, their misery infecting the air as surely as did the stench of their bodies and waste.

  A pair of marines waited for them at the foot of a stairway built onto the side of the hulk, and after the boat had been tied off they helped the prisoners disembark. None of the women tried to make a dive for the water. Not only were they chained together, but they were too weak to do more than try to stand. Looking up at the creaking mass of timber and rot, Konstanze almost thought a watery death would be preferable to spending the next one, two, maybe even three months on board.

  The marines directed the chained prisoners up the steep gangway and onto the deck, their hungry eyes inspecting faces and bodies for reasons Konstanze could too easily guess. The deck of the hulk was even more forbidding up close than it had been from a distance, looking like nothing so much as the back alley of a Paris slum, and smelling three times as bad. The force of the stench up close had the women gagging, the air thick as porridge as it filled nose and throat.

  The chains joining them together were removed, although the irons on ankles and waist remained. Only half the hulk was for women, and as they were herded in the direction of that hatch the clouds above thinned, and an illumination of pale sunlight painted the prisoners. Konstanze squinted up at the clouds, then across the water to the green slopes of Cornwall.

  Tom would come for her. Somehow he would save her. She didn’t know how he would manage it, but she had to believe that it was so.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Penperro

  He didn’t know how to save her.

  He had tried everything he could think of, and had called in every favor, had pulled every string. Even the commutation of her sentence had been due to factors other than his own influence: it was understood that female prisoners were needed in Botany Bay to relieve the “needs” of the many men.

  He kicked his desk, then again and again, putting dents in the rich polished wood of its front. The pain in his foot was nothing to the pain tearing him apart inside.

  “Tom!”

  Hands pulled him away, and he turned to see Matt, who had come into the house without his even noticing. “You won’t help her by breaking your foot.”

  “I can’t help her at all!”

  “She won’t go to Botany Bay. You’ll think of something. You’ve been going at it too hard, is all. You haven’t rested, you haven’t eaten—it’s a wonder you have a single lucid thought in your head.”

  “I don’t know where to go from here,” Tom said, the words a plea.

  “Eat first. Then we’ll talk. She won’t like getting free only to find you’ve turned into a raving lunatic. She’ll pitch you over for someone else. And look at yourself—you’re not a sight for anyone’s sore eyes. You’re too thin, and have a ghastly color. It’s a miracle you’ve healed as well as you have—you look ready for the grave. I wouldn’t want to take you to my bed if I were her, that’s for sure,” Matt said, leading him to the dining room. Mrs. Toley had already set out the china and silver, and dashed out of the room as they appeared, presumably in a hurry to bring the food before her master could change his mind.

  “Is this how you minister to the suffering?” Tom asked.

  “Only to asses like you.”

  Strangely, that made him feel better. Only a friend would call him an ass in that tone, and it finally occurred to him that he was not alone in this: Matt would help, however he could. “Thank you.”

  “Shut up and eat.”

  As usual, Mrs. Toley had prepared far too much. He was too sick with worry to have an appetite, but Matt was right. He would be no use to anyone if he didn’t take care of himself, and he had yet to regain his strength after being shot. The food made him feel queasy, especially when he thought of how little Konstanze had had to eat, and how frail she had felt in his arms at Launceston, frail and hot and speckled with the rash that told him that if the hangman didn’t kill her, typhus might. He forced himself to swallow, a bite at a time.

  “Hilde is in as bad a shape as you,” Matt eventually said, his own plate of food already half consumed. Hilde had returned with Tom to Penperro after Konstanze was removed to the prison hulk, as if she did not know where else to go. After a day in the empty Penrose cottage she had shown up on Matt’s doorstep, and had been staying with him for the three nights since.

  “I’m not surprised. She watched over Konstanze like a mother bear,” Tom said.

  “I think she’d like to actually be a bear, if only to have the chance
to rip the bellies out of everyone responsible for taking away her cub.”

  Tom knew the long list of people to whom Matt referred, starting with the mayor of Penperro, who had acted as magistrate. Although he had been told by several concerned townsfolk that Konstanze had been of help to them—he himself profited now and then from smuggling—he had been more concerned about his own neck than hers. He didn’t want to draw suspicion on himself by displaying leniency for Konstanze when there was such clear evidence of a crime as the tickets from the pawnshop. He’d agreed that Konstanze’s fate should be decided at the Launceston summer assizes, and had chalked Tom’s wound up to an accident incurred during a struggle.

  Tom would dearly love to leave the man alone in a room with Hilde and see what was left of him when an hour was up. Himself, he would like to throw the man facedown in the harbor mud and stand on his head until the tide came in. Bugg II he would bury in a pile of rotten, oily fish heads—his face bore some resemblance to a bass, seen from the front—and then he’d set the mound alight.

  He couldn’t hold anything against Foweather, though, for all that without him Konstanze would still be free. The Preventive man had been subdued ever since that night, hardly speaking to anyone. Tom had heard rumors that he often went to the rocks and gazed out at the sea, as if not quite believing his mermaid had not been real.

  As far as anyone knew, Foweather had no idea that the mermaid and the smuggling were connected, and instead thought only that an elaborate prank had been played upon him by the man he had thought his friend, and by the “woman” to whom he had lost his heart. He was perhaps too simple a man to ponder why they would do so, feeling only the hurt of being the butt of their supposed joke.

  Even Bugg II hadn’t bothered to delve into the question of why Konstanze had been pretending to be a mermaid, so happy had he been to see her arrested.

  Dinner was cleared away, and Mrs. Toley served them dishes of spotted dick with hot custard. Tom poked at the spongy cake with his spoon, digging out the raisins, then gave up. He’d forced himself to eat as much as he could. Matt raised an eyebrow at him, and he pushed his dessert dish over to his friend.

  “I’ve eaten, but I don’t feel any great solutions coming over me,” Tom said. “I still don’t know what to do. All legal routes have led nowhere, and all I’m left with is contemplation of somehow breaking her free.”

  Matt spooned up a bite soaked in liquid custard sauce. “So break her free.”

  “From a prison hulk guarded by marines?”

  Matt shrugged, finishing his dessert and starting on Tom’s. “Or you could have one of your privateer acquaintances attack the ship that takes her to Botany Bay.”

  Tom frowned, thinking of the painting above his desk with cannons blasting and splintered wood flying. “There’s got to be a better way. How many guards do you suppose are actually aboard the ship at any one time?”

  “I have no idea. Not more than six or eight, I would think, and I imagine they give more attention to the half of the hulk that holds the male inmates. No one expects trouble from women, even when they’re convicted felons. I’ve heard that the marines even sleep with the women, in exchange for wash water or food. Not that Konstanze would do that,” he added quickly.

  Tom had heard the same thing. It was no surprise that women in terrible circumstances would do what they must to better their situation. He could not believe that Konstanze would be one of them, and hated to think that she might almost be desperate enough to do it. If she did, he had no one but himself to blame for not freeing her sooner.

  “You don’t suppose they sleep with them amidst all the others, do you?” Tom wondered aloud. “They’d bring them up on deck, wouldn’t they, or to their own quarters on board? They’d take their irons off, as well.”

  “And let them bathe, I warrant. What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not certain. But if there was some way to get Konstanze above decks… It occurs to me that the hulk is surrounded by water, and, mermaid or no, that is very much her element.”

  “It’s the element of the marines, as well. You don’t think they’ll have a boat right there waiting for such an attempt? And I doubt Konstanze will have the strength to swim either far or fast. And if she does manage to escape, where will she go? She’ll be a hunted woman. She won’t be able to sleep easy anywhere in England.”

  Tom nibbled a hangnail, slouching down with one foot up on the edge of the table in his favorite thinking position, his mind beginning to tick. He had the pieces of a plan before him, but did not yet know how to thread them together into a workable plot to free Konstanze.

  Konstanze. He remembered her telling him the origin of her name and the ridiculous plot of The Abduction from the Seraglio. In the final, improbable scene the pasha reversed himself, and released Konstanze and her lover to go live happily ever after.

  The connecting thread began to appear.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Kent

  Bugg II was whistling a bawdy tune as he got out of the cab in front of his father’s home. The driver unloaded his box of things while Bugg II stretched and held his arms out wide, surveying the large brick house with an eye toward improvements. It was as good as his now, as soon as the old man gave up the ghost.

  He paid the driver and swung open the front gate, the cab’s rattling sounds of horse and carriage fading as he came up the short walk. The garden looked a trifle weedy, he noted. He’d have to flay someone’s hide for that.

  A cheerful explanation for the unkemptness hit him. Perhaps dear Father was dead already, and the staff were loafing in absence of a master’s presence.

  If he wasn’t dead, then hearing that his beloved wife had been hanged as a thief would surely kill him off.

  Father, I did all I could to save her, Bugg II would say, weeping. It was terrible, terrible! Her eyes bulged, her tongue stuck out, getting more purple by the second. She thrashed and thrashed, but her arms were tied behind her and there was nothing to be done.

  It would be one of his greatest regrets that he had not stayed in Launceston for Konstanze’s execution. The moment her sentence was read, he had lit out of town. The fury on the face of Tom Trewella had warned him that his life was in jeopardy if he stayed. He contented himself with the knowledge that he had finally won, and seeing Konstanze in such sorry shape had been balm to his soul. She had looked as if she’d been dragged through the back streets of London, then dunked in the Thames for good measure. He’d hardly even recognized her in court.

  He put his hand on the front doorknob and tried to turn it, but it would not budge. He gave the wood a few sharp raps.

  Throughout his long search for Konstanze he had sent periodic mocking letters to Quarles, letting him know of his progress, but as he had never been certain in which direction he was headed it had been impossible to give an address for a reply. His blood fairly bubbled with excitement, waiting for Deekes to appear at the door and tell him if his father still lived.

  A minute passed, and no Deekes.

  He rapped again, harder this time, and longer. He stepped into the flower beds and pressed his face to the nearest window, cupping his hands around his eyes. It was a sitting room into which he looked, and it appeared even bleaker and more bare than he remembered. That seemed a good sign.

  The door opened.

  “Deekes! It’s bloody well—” he started, then stopped in surprise. It was Quarles standing there. “Mr. Quarles! Where’s Deekes?”

  “Mr. Bugg. What a pleasure to see you at long last.”

  Bugg II stepped out of the flowers and back up onto the porch, then shoved his way past Quarles into the house. “Why didn’t Deekes answer the door?”

  “Mr. Deekes is no longer employed here.”

  Bugg II looked at him in some surprise. “No Deekes? I thought he’d never leave. Father must have booted him out for letting Konstanze leave, eh?”

  “I’m afraid your father didn’t get the chance.”

  “
Eh?” Bugg II asked, feeling a grin pull at the edges of his mouth. “Didn’t get the chance?”

  “Your father passed away shortly after you left for Exeter.”

  “Damn me!” Bugg II exclaimed. “Did he? Bloody hell. What a damned shame.”

  “Mmm. Yes, it is, really. I expect you shall be in mourning for quite some time.”

  “He was a good man. Best father a boy could hope for,” Bugg II said, enjoying himself. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been here, but I was only doing as he begged me.”

  “Oh, yes, you were quite the dutiful son,” Quarles said, sounding a bit as if he found the entire situation amusing.

  Bugg II didn’t quite like the sound of that. The solicitor tended to be amused only when someone else was about to get a nasty surprise.

  “I found Konstanze,” Bugg II said. “She—”

  “Was arrested as a thief.”

  Bugg II gaped at the man. “How did you know that?”

  “Her, er… friend, Mr. Trewella, contacted me, in a bid to have the charges dropped. Of course, there was nothing I could do to help, as your father was already dead.”

  “Quite right. A shame for Konstanze, wasn’t it?”

  “Indeed. And I received word a few days ago that she was convicted of her crime.”

  “And hanged for it!” Bugg II said happily.

  “Not precisely.”

  “Eh?”

  “Shall we go into the office? I have a fire going in there. It’s a much more comfortable place to talk.”

  Bugg II obediently followed the lawyer. “Why hasn’t anyone come to take my things inside?” he asked.

  “The staff… is no longer present,” Quarles said. “But about your stepmother, Konstanze—”

  “What did you mean by saying she was not hanged?” Bugg II asked, taking a seat. He liked to think he was in a far stronger position now than when he had left on his quest, but Quarles’s little smirk was bringing to life a worm of anxiety in his chest.