Ripples in the Sand (The Sea Witch Voyages) (37 page)

Thirty One

Tiola could see, from the shore below Crow Point, the ghost-like figures of the future superimposed over the events of the past. Time rippling and flowing, unbound. March 1719, blended with December 1693, and she was adrift from Time itself, her spiritual presence held temporarily in the past at the moment of Jesamiah’s birth.

Kneeling in the white surf of a sun-emblazoned winter’s evening, her green cloak swirled behind her like voluminous angel’s wings, she watched, unable to do anything as
Sea Witch
, twenty-six years in the future, ran aground. She could see every detail, even through the dusk of that future time, for the setting sun of this, the past, provided light enough. She could see King George’s militiamen waiting in hiding, waiting to kill and capture as the
Sea Witch
crew struggled ashore. Waiting to hang men for the felony of smuggling and treason. Betrayed by those they had trusted.

She saw Hartley and Doone. Saw Jesamiah use the death-bringer of his blue ribbon. Saw the blow that sent him reeling into unconsciousness, and saw the redcoats bind his hands. She saw, and could do nothing to stop any of it, for the past, present and future were overlapping, infused, one entwined within the other. Separate but combined, as a shadow and a reflection is transposed to appear as one entity upon the shimmer of wet sand. She had saved Jesamiah’s soul through the years of the past – the essence of his being, the boys who had become men, who had become fathers begetting sons – only to lose him in 1719 to the injustice of a Whig government and a German king’s law?

The woman beside her, face creased against the pain of a broken ankle and the consuming tide of labour, was struggling to push her breach-born son into the world. If Tiola did not help then Jesamiah, in this life, would never come to be; the vision of the future would be naught but a mirage. Should she let that happen? For a single moment she hesitated then she grasped the baby’s ankles and with the next contraction eased the little body through the birth canal. She waited, letting gravity do the rest, taking a risk because he could so easily drown in the amniotic fluid, suffocate or be strangled by the birth cord.

On hands and knees, Dona ignored the swirl of the rising tide that was sucking and clawing at her sweating body, and panted, short, quick breaths, obeying the instructions of this blessed woman who had come from nowhere. She looked up once, a silent oath against all men escaping her lips, closely followed by a prayer to the Mother of all Mothers. She thought she saw men fighting on the headland, thought she saw a ship, but the setting winter sun dazzled her eyes, and the next birth contraction swamped her senses, tormenting her like a hag riding a stolen mare.

Tiola was acutely aware of the other, future, time and of that other red-haired woman in the throes of premature labour. Had heard Jesamiah calling for help, but this baby, here in 1693, was the one she had to give assistance to; the other one would have to take its own slender chance between life and death.

The
Sea Witch
crew, militia, and the men of Devon had all ignored the woman, had possibly not even seen her, for she was waist deep in the water and it was now, in that future time, quite dark. She was weeping, making no attempt to struggle from the pummelling remains of the bore tide, her tiny, too early-born child slowly emerging from between her legs, her own strength failing her. What could Tiola do except be aware of what was happening in the periphery of her vision? There was nothing she could do, and that was wrong! So wrong! A little soul not yet ready to breathe the air of life deserved the gentleness of love and kind words, no matter for how brief a moment. No child early to birth, no woman going through the danger of labour deserved the terror of being alone, but there was nothing Tiola could do, nothing… Except…?

With sudden clarity, Tiola understood.

The Spanish woman, Dona, gave one more push and tugging gently on the babe’s legs Tiola caught him in her hands as he eased into the world. A boy, as she knew he would be. The sea swirled, gentle in this sunset evening, and Tethys crooned her triumph.

He is mine.

No, Tethys, he is not; you can never have this child, he is protected from you.

Tiola held the newborn in the sea, the salt water washing away the muck of birth, and a single wave of frustrated annoyance slapped ashore with sudden force, sending spray hurtling into the air.

Sadness ripped through Tiola as she next said what she knew she must.

The other child is yours. His mother gives him to you. He is the gift you have been waiting for these many long years. Take his soul and be gone, let this end and leave us in peace.

Thirty Two

Tiola knelt in the rippled sand that was filled with the water of the tide, shimmering in the light of the setting sun. She held close in her arms the baby who would grow to become the man who was Jesamiah. She could see people coming from Tawford Barton to take Dona home; to set her broken ankle and to fuss and pet her. Charles, Jesamiah’s father, riddled with remorse was running; his stepmother, Jennet, close behind carrying blankets and urging the servants to hurry.

With her gift of clear sight, no matter the distance, Tiola could see also an elderly man standing on the jetty below Tawford Barton. Jesamiah’s grandsire, a frail old man, who had known much of the world, its battles and its lovemaking, its horrors and its dreams. The enmity between him and his son was not healed, but he had a grandson now. Perhaps because of Jesamiah the feuding could be forgotten. He need only speak the right words, tell Charles of the legitimacy that, so stupidly out of conceit and arrogance he had misguidedly concealed. Tiola sighed. In this existence of the past the frailty of the future was held in quivering balance. From knowing the future, the enmity between Jesamiah’s father and grandfather would not be mended. It would knot the tighter, the anger not put out until Jesamiah returned as a man grown to learn of the intricate tangles.

“The intricacies of life,” she mused, “can only be understood when they are looked at backwards.”

Tiola dried and warmed the child within the folds of her cloak. Jesamiah had been in the seawater some while, but aside from the cold, the sea could be of no harm to him. She knew that now, and understood it all. He was protected from Tethys by the veil of the Caul that had been draped around his head at birth. Crooning to him, Tiola cleared the last of the covering membrane from his face. “All my fears for you, little man, all my tears, all were unnecessary. Tethys could never have you, for you are a Caulbearer, Jesamiah, as were all those other boys born before you.” She rocked him gently, her soft and gentle voice soothing and loving. “Had I known of it I need not have worried. It is the Law of Life and Death that the Caulbearers cannot drown.”

She smoothed the baby’s cheek with her finger and he grasped it in his own tiny hand, his dark eyes staring into hers, two souls with the immensity of the Universe gathered within them meeting and joining. “And yet,” she said, “there has to be a reason to ensure that a babe, a boy, a man, does not drown. Something, someone, must interfere at the right time and the right place to ensure the prophecies are fulfilled.”

As the others approached, Tiola rose from where she knelt, placed the child in his mother’s arms and withdrew. They might have noticed her spirit transcending from the past into her present, but if they did they saw it only as a brief shimmer of reflected shadow on the sea-wet sand, nothing more.

Thirty Three

Crawford lay prone beside a heaped pile of rocks. There was a rotting fish beneath his nose stinking into his senses and making him want to vomit. He held his breath as best he could, played dead, not daring to move lest the militia see he was alive.

What should he do? What could he do! He closed his eyes, desperately wishing that when he opened them again he would see a different scene, would not witness
Sea Witch
broken and battered, would not see men dead on the sand or being marched away shackled and bound by those damned men of sodding King George of Hanover. They had even shackled the boy – in God’s good name; Thomas Benson was a child, a young child! What sort of people were these Protestant Whig bastards?

Christ Jesus! King James was dead! He suppressed a groan. All their efforts, all the months – years – of careful planning, all that Jennings and Doone and the others had hoped and prayed for was finished. It had all been for nothing.

Reluctant, Crawford opened his eyes. The militia were carrying off their dead, leaving the others where they lay for the villagers to collect, if the tide did not claim them first. He bunched his fists, bit his lip, unsure what to do. They had Captain Acorne. Crawford could see him in the smoky flickering light of the torches the soldiers had lit. He was bound, ropes tethering his wrists and ankles, making him stumble unsteadily as they pushed and prodded him along the foot-stamped path through the wind-whispering grass of the headland.

Crawford covered his head with his hands; what was he to do? He looked towards the shore, his stomach knotting as, with a sudden parting of the clouds and a burst of silver moonlight, he saw the bodies of the drowned floating, grotesque, in the shallows. He saw the two women as well – the red-haired English woman who had been married to an important Spaniard, and Mistress Acorne, the Captain’s lady wife. The redhead was in labour, a bugger of a thing to be happening at this time, this place, but in his opinion women should keep their legs closed if they didn’t want the trouble of childbirth. Mistress Acorne, they said, was a healer. Let her see to the sordid mess of dropping a brat then. He did not hold with having women aboard a ship, did not hold with a lot of things that Captain Acorne did, but it was not for him to say so aloud.

He looked the other way, towards Instow, where a few lights glimmered faintly from the shorefront tavern’s windows.

“If things do not go to plan and you get into trouble,”
Henry Jennings had said on that chance meeting in Bideford,
“come and find me. I’ll be at The Fleece in Exeter.”
Well, he had worked for Jennings for long enough, since those days, many miles, many months away in Nassau, before he had wormed his way aboard the
Sea Witch
. Maybe it was time to collect that handful of gold Jennings had promised him for keeping watch over Acorne’s back – and to do what he could to ensure King James came safely ashore.

Crawford sighed. Acorne had no idea that he was Jennings’ man – and Sir Ailie Doone’s. A good thing perhaps, for he had failed at both tasks, but maybe if he were to take word quickly to Jennings, tell him what had happened. Maybe he would at least be rewarded with a few pieces of silver.

He waited until he was sure the militia had gone. As the moon sailed behind a covering of cloud, he got slowly to his feet and sprinted along the beach, taking care to bend low and keep within the cover of the dunes. He would get to Exeter, find Captain Jennings.

Thirty Four

Time had warped again, and righted itself. Francesca’s son slipped from his birth-bed into the sea and Tiola was there, where she should be, holding his terrified mother and murmuring a midwife’s words of calm. Tears stinging her eyes, she cut the cord, and carefully removed the inherited legacy of the membrane caul that was around the boy’s crumpled face, knowing that he would not be able to take breath into his ill-formed lungs; knowing that his life would exist for but moments.

She held the fragile little body in her arms offering him all the comforting love that she could give, and then set his soul free within the sea. With sadness for a life that had ended before it had begun, she gave the boy, in those few frail seconds of his brief existence, to Tethys.

You have what you wanted.
Tiola said.
~ Father to son, father to son; the seed of life has passed down through the generations, and not one of them was yours, Tethys. Each one was born protected against you. Not one of them could drown in the sea, not until this child, a son of Jesamiah’s, who died because he could not breathe the air of the land. ~

Sad and afraid, Tiola looked towards the headland, to where they had led Jesamiah away. She had saved him from the sea, and now she had to save him from the noose.

I will come for you, Jesamiah, as soon as I have tended Francesca. I will come after you.

~ You’d better, ~
he said, gruff, into her mind.
~ I’m getting’ bloody tired of being locked up for doin’ things I ain’t done. ~

Calm, serene waves lapped at the land smoothing the ridges of the rippled sand flat. Benign, Tethys caressed the night-embalmed shore, crooning her murmured contentment:

~ Jesshh…amiah… Jesshh…amiah… Jesshh…amiah… ~

Author’s Note

I decided to bring Jesamiah to England for a change of scene – and because he had a cargo of tobacco to sell.

Before I started any research I was intending him to make a brief stop in Devon and then go on to London. I chose Appledore because my editor, Jo, lives nearby, and her English Civil War novel
Rogues & Rebels
is set there (and between us we thought it would be fun for Jo’s protagonist to be my Jesamiah’s grandfather). I knew that Bideford and Barnstaple were important trade harbours during the eighteenth century, but to my astonishment, I discovered that Bideford was, in fact, one of the main centres for the Virginia Tobacco Trade – until the River Torridge silted up (as Jesamiah predicts). I also knew nothing about the ruins of St Anne’s Chapel on the headland of Crow Point, nor that a traditional colour for her predecessor, Anu (also sometimes called Danu) was green and red. Anne, who kindly models as Tiola for my covers, quite by coincidence wore a green cloak and red skirt for the photo shoot.
And
there is the coincidence of the same name Anne! Or maybe these things are not coincidence. Who knows?

Readers familiar with the classic novel
Lorna Doone
, will be aware that her story was set by R.D. Blackmore on Exmoor, in the period of civil unrest after the Monmouth Rebellion. I couldn’t resist introducing a further generation of the Doones into my adventure story.

As in the previous
Sea Witch
Voyages
I feel obliged to point out that this is not an ‘historically accurate’ novel. More readers are expecting historical fiction to reflect accuracy now, and I agree that an author has a duty of integrity to his or her subject. Detail is important, but I wanted to write the
Sea Witch
Voyages
for fun and pleasure, so while I have made every effort to be correct with many details – nautical accuracy for instance (with grateful thanks to James L. Nelson for checking the detail) – these books are historical adventure fantasy: a good bit of the narrative is made up. I make no apology for the few incorrect adjustments to ‘fact’. For instance, copper was not used until a little later in the eighteenth century on ship’s keels, nor was the style of rigging quite right for the early 1700s.
Sea Witch
is based on the replica ship
HMS Rose
, now renamed and better known as HMS
Surprise
, the star of the movie
Master and Commander
. As I adore that vessel I decided to use her as my ‘template’ for Jesamiah’s beloved ship.

As always, however, the underlying plot is based on fact. The Stuart attempt to regain the throne of the British Isles had always been something of a forlorn hope. England, and in particular the powerful Whig government, did not want a Catholic King, and by the time Bonnie Prince Charlie, James III’s son, fought and lost at Culloden in April 1746 it was a lost cause. The attempted rebellion of 1719 is fact – the Spanish and French allies of James Francis Edward Stuart (not learning from the errors of their forebears) launched an armada of ships from Cádiz in March. The fleet met heavy storms off Finistère where most of the ships were wrecked. James himself had been delayed and didn’t, for some reason, reach Cádiz until two months later. A second army in Scotland attempted an uprising but was soon crushed. The earlier 1715 Uprising saw a lot of activity in the West Country, as there had been for the Duke of Monmouth’s earlier attempt at gaining the throne. Monmouth was the illegitimate son of Charles II, and for some reason the King would not, or could not legitimise him, trusting, instead, his Catholic brother, James to take up the Crown after his death. A decision that almost plunged England and Scotland back into another bloody civil war.

After the Battle of Sedgemoor and Monmouth’s defeat Judge Jeffries, known as the Hanging Judge, was particularly severe in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, and when the 1719 Rebellion was feared, several government spies were sent to this part of England to rout out any suspected traitors. It is interesting that none were recorded! Also as an aside note, Daniel Defoe of
Robinson Crusoe
fame was a known government spy.

James II, however made a bad job of being King and was deposed by the government and replaced by his Protestant sister, Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange.

James’ son, James III, was notorious for being ill. He suffered almost every malady from piles to smallpox, did very little to inspire those who wanted to be loyal, and fled back into exile abroad when campaigns started going wrong – as they always did.

My idea of the passenger Jesamiah brings to England being King James III is pure invention on my part, although who knows the real truth of any event of the past? Perhaps there was indeed a subterfuge attempt to bring the Stuart King ashore ahead of the Armada. That would explain why he was delayed before entering Cádiz. Perhaps, just perhaps, after March 1719 the man who said he was James Francis Edward Stuart, King James III of England, wasn’t who he claimed to be.

John and his son Thomas Benson are real characters – Tom became a notorious Devon smuggler in manhood, stowing his contraband on Lundy Island. I like to think he might have learnt his trade from Jesamiah. There will be more of him in future
Sea Witch
Voyages
. I am very fond of his father John. I explored some research about him via the Akashic Records (psychic research – details at www.
journeystothepast.blogspot.co.uk
. This link is to general Akashic information only, readers who are genuinely interested in the subject can follow the directions to reach my personal articles.) A few of the incidents observed during the sessions I had form part of his story in
Ripples In The Sand.

There are a couple of characters mentioned in this adventure who have very minor roles – Mahadun, for instance. He is to play a major part in the next voyage in the series –
On The Account
. For readers that are worrying,
Sea Witch
will sail again, and I have not killed off all Jesamiah’s crew: Jansy, Jasper, Isiah, Rue and Finch will all survive to vex Jesamiah another day.

There will be more high sea adventure, smuggling, fights, misunderstandings and derring-do (and a return of the lovely Alicia) for Jesamiah to contend with very soon!