Devil's Rock (16 page)

How cruelly we were deceived! Too late we heard the roar of breakers on the rocks. Too late we saw the plumes of spray that burst against the cliffs and leapt a hundred feet into the air. Too late the master saw the trap that had been set. In a panic he ordered the ship about and four seamen threw themselves upon the wheel, but she would not come round. The seas drove us on; the wind drove us on; the sails were blown to rags and tatters but still we were driven on. Then a great black wave rolled out of the night, lifted the ship like it were a toy, rushed with it on its shoulders and flung it down on the waiting reef. The ship’s back was broken; the mainmast snapped and crashed with its yardarms and tangled rigging to the deck; many were flung into the sea.

Our family, clinging to each other and to the stern rail, managed to keep from sliding from the sloping deck. But each breaking wave pounded the shattered hull of the doomed ship, driving her ever further across the jagged reef, tearing fresh holes in her belly.

The ship lifted for the last time, struggled to right herself like a dying animal, then, with an awful groan, fell back upon the rocks. Our father ordered us to remain where we were and went to find the master, but our mother, seizing us by the arms, dragged us back down the companionway. Below deck it was so dark we could see almost nothing and everything was awash. Spouts of water exploded through splintered holes in the hull. Wading knee-deep in the icy water, we at last gained our cabin, where our frenzied mother searched frantically among the floating debris until she found her holdall. From it she took two bracelets, which she thrust on to our arms. Then she fell to her knees in the water and hugged us to her. ‘These will protect you. Whatever happens, my darlings, don’t take them off. Do you understand?’ We nodded. We were children. She was our mother. She must know best.

‘Father will be looking for us,’ she said. She took my hand and I took my sister’s and we plunged back through the flooded hull and out into the mayhem of the night.

As we reached the deck, we looked up to see a curving wall of water that seemed to hang above our heads, blotting out the sky. With a roar, the wave collapsed, engulfing us. Rolling and struggling, we were carried over the side of the ship and dragged down by the powerful current. I felt my mother’s grip on my arm and then it was slipping, slipping. Desperately, I tried to entwine my fingers in hers but the current prised us apart. I stretched out, reaching for her hand, but she was gone!

It was Una who managed to get her arm over a piece of floating wreckage and dragged us both on to it. All around us was the turmoil of broken water and the howling of the wind. We screamed and screamed for help and for our mother, but no answer came. At last, exhausted, we could only cling to each other and to the wreckage.

In this nightmare, I imagined, or thought I imagined, that we were suddenly propelled through the water. I thought there were creatures surrounding us, their dark, smooth backs visible when they broke the surface and blew spume into the air. Had I not been half drowned, I would have been afraid, but the creatures did not attack us and I found myself thinking that I must tell Mother about them when I woke up. But it was my sister who was shaking me and begging me to let go of the wreckage and drag myself up the beach that we had somehow reached. Bewildered, I did as I was told.

We lay in the wet sand, just beyond the reach of the waves. How long we lay there I do not know. It was the sound of voices that roused us, and when we sat up, we saw that there were lights coming along the beach. A rescue party! Our hearts lifted and as they drew nearer we were about to call out when a dreadful sight choked the cries in our throats. They paused by the water’s edge and, while some held up the lanterns, others dragged a poor seaman from the water. The sailor tried to raise himself from the sand but, as he did so, one of the party, a giant of a man whose face was disfigured by a great, white scar, drew a long knife and plunged it into the sailor’s body. What kind of people were these? Returning to our homeland, had we fallen among savages? Supporting each other, we stumbled across the beach and hid behind some boulders at the foot of a small cliff. From here we watched the awful proceedings on the beach. Following the advance party came horses drawing carts. On to one of these the bodies of the drowned were loaded. If any still showed signs of life, they were swiftly dispatched. A second cart was loaded with anything of value that washed ashore. A third cart carried a boat that was launched in the sheltered water, where the rocks of the reef provided protection from the breaking waves, and rowed out to the stricken ship. Clearly, the intention was to plunder the wreck before she broke up in the storm.

Sickened and terrified we huddled in our hiding place but it was clear that if we remained where we were we would eventually be discovered. Fear gave us new strength and when the wreckers moved further away we fled into the trees behind the beach. Finding a rough path that led up the steep hillside we decided to follow it, hoping that it might lead us to a place of safety. As we climbed the hill we saw the two beacons still burning that had lured our ship on to the rocks; the first on the pinnacle of a great, black rock, the second on the headland behind the rock, and so arranged to give the appearance of a harbour’s leading lights.

The sound of a horse’s hooves on the rocky path sent us darting into the gorse and bracken. As we lay peering through the undergrowth, we were surprised to see that the rider, judging by his manner of dress, was a gentleman. I was about to hail him when my sister pulled me firmly back down. ‘How do we know that he isn’t one of them?’ I heard her ask but her lips did not appear to move, and it occurred to me that neither of us had spoken since we had hidden on the beach but we had somehow managed to converse.

We lay still until the rider had passed.

Further on, we came to a settlement of roughly built hovels, some of undressed stone, the rest made from driftwood, broken spars, timbers and canvas scavenged from wrecks. Dogs barked as we approached. These were obviously the habitations of the wreckers, so we made a wide detour through the surrounding woodland and rejoined the track further on. The track now became no more than a footpath that wound its way out on to a headland. Should we continue? It led, no doubt, to a lookout at the cliff-edge.

Far out along the headland a lone cottage perched above the sea. A light in one of the windows drew us to it. At what point I fainted I can’t say. Did I reach the cottage, or was I carried? I awoke to find that we lay on a bed of straw in a simple room. An old woman dressed in black sat by the smouldering fire.

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And so began our life in the Orme Valley. Of the wreck of the
Persephone
we were the only survivors. Our poor parents and most of the ship’s company were drowned. Had old Mrs Ball not taken us in, we would certainly have met the same fate as the other unfortunates who reached the shore alive, only to die at the hands of that murderous gang. By hiding us at first and then declaring us to be the children of distant cousins, who had come to care for her in her old age, Mrs Ball ensured our survival. The old lady enjoyed a unique position in the local community, having been the childhood nurse of the landowner Robert Stapleton, the ‘gentleman’ whom we had seen riding down to the shore, no doubt to oversee the plundering of the
Persephone
. Moreover, she was the midwife and known to be skilled in the use of medicinal herbs.

With the help of these herbs, our physical injuries healed soon enough. But what could heal our hearts? Our parents had been taken from us and we now must live among those who lured them to their deaths. Una, who had shown such strength on the night of the storm, lapsed into a state of melancholy from which nothing but the sight of dolphins would rouse her. She spent every day on the rocks below the cliffs watching for them, learning to call for them so that they would come to her.

I knew what she was doing and I knew I was losing her. Una and I had been together from the moment we were conceived. We were born within minutes of each other, spent every day of our lives together, learnt to walk together and run together. Our very first words had been to each other, and now I was losing her, losing her to the sea and to the dolphins. For we had learnt now the power of the bracelets and Una was using these powers to become one with the creatures of the sea.

I do not know what ancient sorcery the Edura employed when he cast those bracelets, what demonic powers he called up and trapped within their sacred alloy. It seemed to us that he had breathed life itself into those metal bands. They often felt as though they pulsed upon our wrists and became inflamed like living things. When Una and I wore the bracelets we could hear every thought in the other’s head, and we could slide from our own bodies into each other’s and into the bodies of birds and animals. Even when we removed the bracelets, some of their powers remained with us, as though we had absorbed a little of the potency instilled in them. At first, we had little control over those powers and our waking lives became like dreams, but gradually we became adept at manipulating them so that we could inhabit our own bodies when we wished to and move into others whenever we chose. Then we discovered we could create phantasms, creatures that seemed completely real but owed their existence to our imaginations. These phantasms would only exist for as long as we held their images in our minds; as soon as we ceased thinking about them they vanished. We could see through their eyes, hear with their ears, feel what they touched. Una had little interest in creating them, preferring instead to flee her own body as often as she could to share the bodies of dolphins, but I spent many hours perfecting a phantom grey cat that I could send wherever I wished in order that I could spy on our murderous neighbours.

Dear stranger, you may be wondering why did we not use the powers of the bracelets to leave the Orme immediately and find our way back to Wales. Una had lost all interest in human society. From the night our parents died, she turned her back on the land and looked only to the sea. Even I, her twin sister, received little more than the odd word, and I now had to invade her mind to discover what she was thinking. More and more often when I attempted to contact her I would find that she had left her body to be with the dolphins. I began to fear that one day she would not return or that her body, left so long without her spirit, would die.

And what of me? Of course, I would never leave without my sister, but I had my own reason for staying – I wanted revenge.

I took to helping Mrs Ball on her missions of mercy. She was often called on to treat illnesses with her herbal remedies, to set broken bones, to stitch up wounds and, occasionally, to deliver babies. The old woman’s sight was failing, so she welcomed my assistance, as did her patients. Soon I, and my grey cat, were as accepted as the old woman herself. She taught me how to prepare potions and salves, which plants healed and which were poisonous. I helped tend her herb garden and she sent me along the cliff paths and into the woods to gather berries, leaves, roots and the bark of certain trees. I was biding my time, waiting for my opportunity and getting to know my enemies, chief among whom were Mr Maunder and the Honourable Robert Stapleton.

Maunder was that scar-faced brute we had seen going about his murderous work on the night of our shipwreck. He was six foot three in his sea boots, with a chest like a barrel of herrings, his thick grey beard streaked with yellow stains from the tobacco he constantly chewed. Maunder was a smuggler and wrecker who could take another’s life as easily as snuff out a candle. All were afraid of him, even Stapleton.

The Honourable Robert Stapleton was as thin as Maunder was broad and as subtle as Maunder was brutal. His soft, fleshy mouth seemed too big and loose for his sharp, bony face. His skin had the grey pallor of an invalid, for he was a creature of the night, addicted to drink and gambling.

Stapleton, no longer able to support his evil habits on the income from his estate, lived like a leech on Maunder’s smuggling and wrecking, allowing Maunder and his gang to remain on his land and pass themselves off as his estate workers to avoid the attentions of the excise men. Maunder, for his part, cheated Stapleton whenever he could by hiding the most valuable items of plunder.

Which was the parasite and which the host? It was hard to tell. Each needed, hated and distrusted the other.

These men had robbed me of all I loved. They had murdered my parents and driven my sister’s spirit to hide among the creatures of the sea. To wreak my revenge I had to discover their weaknesses, find some way of gaining a hold over one or other of them. Maunder, I surmised, might survive without Stapleton, but Stapleton would not survive long without Maunder. Maunder, then, would be my target. Bring him down and I could destroy both of them. Easily said but, despite the extraordinary powers given me by the bracelet, I was still a child, and these were vicious, powerful men with a gang of cut-throats that would do whatever their leaders bid them. I had seen them at work on the night of our shipwreck and I knew the bodies of their victims fed the crops in Stapleton’s fields.

It was over a year before my chance came. Fights were common in that place. Petty jealousies and rivalries fuelled by the strong liquor their smuggling brought in would erupt into violent clashes and we were often called upon to treat the wounded. This particular night I was helping Mrs Ball to her bed when there came a thunderous hammering on the door. When I opened it I found the one they called Crab standing outside, a pinch-faced ruffian with a twisted hip that made him walk in an odd sideways fashion.

‘Come quick as you can. It’s the Captain,’ he shouted as soon as the door was open, then turned and hurried off into the night with his strange shuffle and skip. The Captain was their name for Maunder.