Silent Time (5 page)

That night, when the boys were fast asleep, she and Paddy walked in silence across their meadow and through the droke to the cove. She brought the rodney in off its moorings, hopped aboard and lifted the sea chest over the side to him.

“So, that's it?” he said.

“That's enough, isn't it?” she replied. “I risked my neck for that.”

“I hope it was worth it,” he said, a bit glumly. It was obvious to Leona he was still troubled by their underhandedness. Never mind, she thought. He would appreciate her cleverness soon enough.

Leona knew something Paddy didn't. She had already taken a look inside the cardboard case she'd taken from the wreck, and it did indeed contain something of value – not money, but something people paid good money for, which amounted to the same thing. But the proper handling of it would require some thinking. She needed time to figure out what to do. Paddy was worried enough; it was best to keep it a secret from him, too, for the time being.

The cardboard case lay hidden under some hastily gathered branches and leaves only a few feet from where Paddy stood holding the trunk in his arms as the small waves washed around his rubber boots. Tomorrow she planned to sneak down here with a piece of sail cloth and a spade, wrap the case securely and bury it properly in a good, deep hole. It might have to remain hidden for some time; there might even be those who would come looking for it. Let them come, she thought, for it was salvage and rightly hers. She had risked life and limb for it and would never give it up until she was satisfied with the reward.

But, for the moment, there was the matter of the trunk.

“Grab the end of it, Paddy, and say nothing as we cross the meadow, just in case. An' stop fretting. We'll be back home in a minute and no one need ever know the difference of it.”

Paddy complied, wordless, until they were in the kitchen with the trunk sitting in the middle of the floor. He took out his pocket knife and cut through the tightly knotted rope that had been run through the staple several times in order to secure the hasp.

“Here, you open it,” he said, when he was done. She knelt and threw back the lid.

Leona's face broke into a broad smile at the sight of carefully folded, brightly coloured woollen caps, mittens, and sweaters. What was more, she discovered as she began removing the items one at a time, that most of them were for children.

“Now here's something that's gonna do us for years,” she said, proudly.

Knitting was not among the domestic skills she'd acquired in Three Brooks. She had made some progress since coming to Knock Harbour, however, and her efforts could explain where these things came from when it was the proper time to put them on the boys. She laid out the small sweaters, deciding which of the boys would get this one or that one first, and how long they might have to wait before something fit.

Paddy picked up one of the hats and rubbed it in his fingers. “Don't even feel like sheep's wool to me,” he said.

“It's probably not,” Leona said. “It was probably made in Portugal or bought dirt cheap somewhere on the voyage. Maybe one of the sailors was planning to sell it to shops in St. John's. He must have heaved it over the side, but left it in the end. You can get a pretty penny for this kind of stuff.”

“People here are going to wonder where it all come from,” Paddy said.

“Who's to say I didn't knit it myself?” she said, annoyed that he wasn't figuring things out her way. “We won't let the boys wear them for a long time yet, though,” she quickly added.

“Very good, girl,” he replied, with a backward toss of his head that meant he'd said all he was going to say on the subject. Leona couldn't resist pushing things just a little further.

“Look at these drawers, Paddy,” she said, holding up different pairs of one-piece woollen underwear. “One for Nick, one for Toby, and even one for the baby. It's all right to put the boys in these now, isn't it? Who's gonna know what Jas is wearing in the crib or what Toby and Nick got on under their clothes?”

She accepted his silence as a go-ahead.

“It's a bit damp,” she said. “I'll stoke up the fire before we goes to bed and lay it all out to dry. The boys can wear the drawers tomorrow.” She took his hand as he rose from his seat. “Paddy, my dear, you may not know it yet, but this is our lucky day.”

They went to bed then, with the mittens, hats, and sweaters scattered on the kitchen table, the oven door, and parts of the floor. Three pale wrinkled suits of underwear hung like fragile bodies on a line above the stove.

The next day Arthur Duke sat in his squeaky new leather office chair in the British Hall Building in St. John's and stared at the pair of cardboard cases lying on his gleaming oak desk. He massaged his temples and tried to grasp the painful and overwhelming fact that there were only two instead of three. Captain Miguel de Silva stood across from him. Arthur had taken the measure of the man as best he could and determined that it was unlikely he was doing something underhanded in failing to deliver the third box. However, since it was essential that he know the fate of the missing box, Arthur had been questioning him for over two hours, pressing for details just in case the captain was either deliberately omitting or inadvertently holding something back.

“Tell me again what you did with the third box,” he said.

“I carry it on deck but, accidentally, I leave it. We were getting into life boats.”

“Yes, but where, exactly, did you leave it?”

“Beside ladder we use to abandon ship. We almost ashore before I notice. Too late to go back.”

“You're absolutely sure it wasn't taken by a crew member?”

“Mr. Duke, I am captain. The last to abandon ship. I am very sorry for this, but my ship and my men were in danger.”

The note of impatience in this apology annoyed rather than appeased Arthur.

“I do understand, Captain. Unfortunately, I find myself missing one third of a very valuable and important shipment that I entrusted to your care. I also understand that, since you have clearly forfeited your fee for this service you may have little remaining interest in the matter, but you surely don't mind if I ask you a few more questions before you wash your hands of it entirely?”

Arthur could see by the way the captain's eyes narrowed that he wasn't impressed by the display of pique. He didn't want to appear puerile, so
he made an effort to get control of himself. At twenty, he was already judged by many to be too young to handle the responsibilities of his new office. His patrician mentor, Sir Robert Bond, the Prime Minister of Newfoundland, had recently passed over a host of seasoned civil servants to choose Arthur as his new Deputy Colonial Secretary. The rejects would be delighted to learn that he'd bungled an important assignment so early on.

“Forgive me, Captain, I'm obviously upset by these developments.”

“I understand, Mr. Duke,” the captain replied.

“The Prime Minister returns from London in two days and, as you know, I asked you to deliver this shipment from Boston so that I might have it ready for him upon his arrival. This turn of events is very unfortunate. If there is any chance, any chance in the world of retrieving that missing box, then it must be done.”

He despised the edge of desperation creeping into his voice.

“Please, Mr. Duke,” the captain said, with a toss of his hand and a smile that Arthur judged too cavalier by half, “ask questions, as you like.”

Arthur pressed on. “Well, you're absolutely certain that the third box went down with the ship? No one could have gotten on board?”

“I told the people it was very dangerous.”

“But you also say that you left your men and went to Placentia. How can you be sure no one went to the vessel in your absence?”

“The man at the church, he warn everyone not to go. I hear later that the ship go down before anyone go out there.”

“And this man, Merrigan, he's the sort to be trusted?”

“I believe, yes.”

“How did you meet him?”

“It was to his yard we went first, when we find the shore in the lifeboat.”

“I see. He was the first person you spoke to there.”

The captain hesitated. “It was to the girl we spoke first.”

“The girl? There was a girl?”

“It was his wife,” the captain said, “but she very young. Like a girl.”

“I see, Captain. So, it was the girl who took you and your men to the church, not the Merrigan fellow, after all.”

“No, the girl, she go to the cove.”

“What cove?”

“The cove with the lifeboats.”

“Really? Why did she do that?”

“She had something there to do, she said. Wood, I think.”

“At the spot where you'd landed?”

“Yes, it was … how would you say it, back of their place.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“You did not ask the question.”

Arthur glared, but kept his composure. At last, the interrogation had uncovered something.

“I see nothing for it but to go down there myself and investigate. I'll arrange a carriage for tomorrow. I'll be hard-pressed to make it back before Sir Robert returns, but, when he does, at least he'll know I've done everything in my power to remedy the situation.”

Haste makes waste
was one of Sir Robert's favourite maxims, and Arthur was very close to having created a very wasteful situation indeed. He hoped he still had time to correct it.

Leona had heard the old story of the devil turning up one day in some out-of-the-way place as a well-pressed, well-dressed gentlemen. That might have explained her instant dislike for Arthur Duke when she opened the door two days later and found him on her front step. Or maybe it was the narrow set of his eyes, the way they stared at you down the smooth gun barrel of his nose. It might have been his neatly trimmed moustache with its air of vanity and false maturity. It might have been his fancy dress, the charcoal overcoat against the seagull whiteness of his collar and the little gold pin that fastened his paisley tie. It might have been the way he pulled his shiny leather gloves off one finger at a time. It might even have been the insincere little smile that flitted onto his lips once he'd introduced himself and looked at her as if she should keel over and thank the Lord for sending such a grand visitor as himself. But, most likely, it was simply the fact she knew what he was after that made him seem diabolical.

Strangely, his youth was the most unsettling thing about him. She'd grown used to dealing with older people, exploiting the unnecessary allowances they made for her, but that wouldn't be the case with this whipper-snapper from St. John's. He was barely more than a boy, but she sensed something cold and deliberate about him that gave her the shivers and immediately put her on guard.

“What can I do for you today?” she said, quickly deciding not to waste a smile on him.

“I'd like to ask you some questions, if I may, about a shipwreck that took place on those rocks out there. The Virgin Rocks, you call them, isn't that right?”

“Well, sir, I notice you're stayin' over at Maisie's Tobin's. She can tell you everything you need to know about the wreck, and anything else in
Knock Harbour you might be curious about, too, so I don't know why you'd want to talk to me.”

She saw his dark piercing eyes take her measure with focussed determination. “The captain of the vessel told me that you were the first person he spoke to.”

“They come into our yard, so me and Paddy was the first to talk to ‘em, yes.”

“He said you went to the cove down there when everybody else was heading to the church.”

“So I did.”

“Why was that?”

“Well, if ya wants to know, I went to get the bundle of driftwood I left down there the evening before. I wanted to get it home in case it rained.”

“I see.”

“Then, I had to get the fire lit and the youngsters dressed an' fed. That's why I was late getting' to the church that morning, in case Maisie said anything to you about that. She don't have a chick nor a child to tend to, but I got three boys, Mr. Duke, and, as a matter of fact, they're in there now. My youngest is feelin' poorly, too, so I got to go.”

“Mrs. Merrigan, I'm actually here on a delicate bit of government business.”

She turned back and offered him a slight smile. “What business is that of mine.”

“It might concern you, Mrs. Merrigan, if you happened to take any salvage from that vessel four days ago.”

“Didn't Maisie tell you? Nobody got a scrap of salvage off that boat. She went straight to the bottom before anyone got a chance.”

“Mrs. Tobin seemed to think that if anyone did happen to get something off the vessel it would have been you.”

“Maisie Tobin is the biggest backbiter on this shore, and you'd do well to ignore half of what she says and take the other half for lies.”

Arthur reached beneath his coat to an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet. “Let's just say you did, though. I'd be glad to offer you a generous reward for the return of any materials that looked like they might be of interest to the government.” He pulled a fresh new twenty dollar bill from the wallet.

“Mr. Duke, if I had anything belonged to you or the government, I'd give it back an' that would be the end of it. But now you're after insultin' me, so I got to ask you to get off my property.”

They stared at each other. She put her arms akimbo and dared him to deny her request. She watched him still desperately trying to gauge her honesty and she knew she'd won the little cat and mouse game for now. He hadn't said what was inside the box and she hadn't let slip any clue that she might know. Finally, appearing to realize that he had indeed gone too far, Arthur Duke turned on his heels and headed toward the road.