Squatting, Hawkwood turned the body over. It wasn’t easy. The dead were never cooperative and his fingers were cold and when he saw the state of the face he wished he hadn’t bothered. The waves and the rocks had inflicted a lot of damage and sea creatures had already taken full advantage of a free meal. Hawkwood doubted the man’s own mother would have known him. Though she might have recognized the tattoos on the left forearm; a Union Jack and an anchor, under which was inscribed the word: Dido. The name of a ship, Hawkwood presumed, rather than a wife or sweetheart.
Despite the discrepancy, it was safe to assume this had to have been one of Griffin’s crew. He thought about the forty or so men that had made up the ship’s complement and looked to where the sea was pounding relentlessly against the edge of the rocks. Rising to his feet, still shivering, he scanned the broken shoreline.
The second body lay about fifty paces from the first, though he nearly missed seeing it. The black tarpaulin coat merged closely with the surroundings and, even as he drew near, Hawkwood thought it looked more like a dead seal than a man. It, too, rested face down. He hesitated before raising the head and was relieved to see that this one hadn’t taken as much of a battering as the first, though the lips and eyes showed clear evidence of nibbling from teeth and claw. There were enough of the features left to aid recognition but as Hawkwood hadn’t been introduced to the cutter’s entire crew, despite there being something vaguely familiar about the face, he wasn’t able to put a name to it.
With some difficulty he removed the coat. He felt no guilt at doing so. The dead man had no use for it and, though it had received a soaking it would help provide extra insulation on top of his shirt and waistcoat.
He was about to get up when he saw the remains of the boat. A stempost and four feet of splintered bow lay several feet away, wedged among the seaweed-encrusted rocks like shattered pieces of discarded bone. There were no markings to suggest what ship they might have come from. He looked around for more wreckage but couldn’t see anything and he knew it was probably pointless to continue the search. In any case, it was time to move on. Still finding his feet, he made his way back to the beach.
He looked up at the cliff face. The worn parts of it looked soft and crumbly. There had been recent slippage, he saw, which suggested that a good many of the boulders he was skirting were the results of landslides. Emerging from the debris, he placed that thought firmly at the back of his mind and headed for the dunes.
A distant, low-hanging smudge drew his gaze. Drifting wood smoke; which meant a dwelling of some sort, but the contours obscured his view so whether it was evidence of a village or town or a single isolated abode, it was too far away to tell. By-passing the place and proceeding on his way was one of the options open to him, but when he thought about it, that idea didn’t make much sense. Where was he proceeding to? Far better to find out where he was and then determine his next move. And the only way to accomplish that was either look for a convenient signpost, or ask somebody.
That was when he heard the groan.
He stopped dead and listened, his skin prickling. The noise came again, from close by; a low exhalation, as if someone was in pain. He turned towards the source and saw movement; a dark shape slinking behind a bank of grass close to the entrance of what looked to be a narrow gulley running between two dunes. There was something else, too, leading away from the gulley back towards the sea; shallow and uneven depressions in the sand; scuff marks, as if an animal had dragged its way ashore.
God’s blood! Hawkwood thought.
He moved swiftly and silently, keeping low, knowing it was still a risk, but driven by a feeling of expectation that was impossible to ignore. The hairs rose along the back of his neck when he saw the black jacket and the hunched shoulders of the figure that was trying desperately to burrow itself into concealment.
Sensing imminent discovery the figure stopped moving, but only for a second and not before Hawkwood had seen that it was favouring its left arm. As fear overcame caution, the prone man suddenly tried to rise and run, but the effort proved too much and he stumbled and fell to his knees, chest heaving. Hawkwood stepped forward. The man turned and looked up over his shoulder, resignation on his pale, pain-streaked face, which expanded into shock when Hawkwood said evenly, “Going somewhere, Lieutenant?”
He knelt quickly, just in time to allow Griffin’s commander to collapse into his arms.
There were livid bruises and abrasions on Stuart’s cheeks and forehead. His clothes were damp and encrusted with sand. He stared up at Hawkwood as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Good God, you’re alive!” he breathed hoarsely.
“I could say the same to you,” Hawkwood said, cradling the lieutenant’s shoulders. “Can you sit up?”
Stuart nodded. With his back propped against a stout tuft of grass, he swallowed and coughed. When he’d recovered, he stared at Hawkwood. “I still don’t believe it! We launched the boat but when we couldn’t find you, we thought you’d perished.” He cleared his throat again and with an expression of distaste wiped a loop of spittle from his chin.
Hawkwood looked at the lieutenant in amazement. “The bloody ship was turning turtle! How in God’s name were you able to launch the boat?”
To Hawkwood’s further astonishment, Stuart shook his head, wincing as he did so. “She didn’t sink.” And from somewhere, a wry smile appeared. “I told you she was a sound ship. It’d take more than last night’s blow to break her. Griffin lives to fight again.” Suddenly, the smile fell away, replaced by an expression of acute sorrow. “Though the cost was far greater than I would have imagined.”
“How many did you lose?” Hawkwood asked, thinking about the difficulties the crew must have endured just trying to get the boat into the water, let alone conducting a search in waves as high as a three-storeyed house.
The lieutenant hesitated and then said with despair in his voice, “Fifteen, including Marlow and Sheldrake.”
“The men in the jolly boat?”
Stuart looked at him, his brow furrowing. “How . . .?”
“I found their bodies,” Hawkwood explained.
The sadness remained etched on Stuart’s bruised face. His jaw tightened. “They were good men. When I asked for volunteers they were the first to step forward. But the waves proved too much for us. They carried us ashore but the boat foundered on the rocks. We were cast into the water and separated.”
Another of the Almighty’s cruel japes, Hawkwood thought bitterly. It had been the jolly boat, built for purpose, that had fallen victim to the fierce and unforgiving sea while he’d been transported to safety on what had amounted to little more than a piece of driftwood. He recalled Fitch and the wrath in the helmsman’s face when he’d voided his anger in the midst of the storm. Hawkwood hadn’t even reached his destination and already the mission had cost the lives of fifteen men.
Stuart emitted a grunt of discomfort as he shifted position. He continued holding his left arm close to his chest.
“Let me take a look at that,” Hawkwood offered.
It didn’t take a moment to confirm the arm wasn’t broken but the lieutenant’s wrist was badly sprained.
“We should get off the beach and find shelter,” Hawkwood said.
Stuart nodded and Hawkwood helped him to his feet. When they were both standing, he found that Stuart was gazing at him. Sorrow had been replaced by a kind of weary amusement.
“What is it?”
“I was thinking it’s true: the Lord does work in mysterious ways.”
“How so?”
“We’re alive when we’ve no right to be.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“On the contrary, I’m exceedingly grateful. I’ll make a point of telling Him so