Wicked by Design Read online

  Even as Hughes spoke, Hester’s voice died in her throat as a vast grey wave reared up behind Carn Du, exploding against it in a burst of creamy white spray that soaked them all. With a cry, when the maelstrom of water had fallen away, she saw that there was no sign of Crow, or his hand, and Hester surged towards the cliff-edge, held back by her own servants. He was gone, simply gone.

  ‘John!’ she called. ‘John, John, John!’

  At the edge of her hearing, she was dimly aware of the rope-team heaving, calling out a rhythm, counting in Cornish, in the old language, as they hauled, just like fishermen pulling up the nets. Un, dew, trei, pajar; un, dew, trei, pajar— And then here Crow was, hauling himself over the wind-whipped cliff-edge, his black hair dripping water. Shaking off Mr Hughes and the other men, Hester ran to her husband, snatching handfuls of his sodden shirt as he slung one long leg over the edge, rolling on to the grass as she pulled, and after lying flat on his back for one moment he got to his feet, the shirt plastered to his chest, wet breeches clinging to the lean length of his thighs, and he looked at her with stark hopelessness.

  ‘Oh my God, come here!’ Hester said quietly, and she felt the crushing strength in Crow’s arms as he enveloped her in his embrace, his soaking wet hair sending runnels of water down the back of her neck.

  ‘Het, they are all gone.’ He spoke with his face buried in her hair. ‘Just one boy, that’s all. I went back. One other man I tried to reach, but he went under, and it was too late. That ship should never have left Newlyn. Boscobel should never have allowed her to be put out.’

  ‘You tried your best.’

  ‘What if it had been the boy?’ Crow said. ‘What if he’s down there at the bottom of the cove with the rest of them?’

  Hester pulled away, watching him with unease. ‘Crow, you saved the boy.’ Even as she spoke Hester knew he was not talking about that shivering creature now wrapped in Mr Hughes’s greatcoat, but about his own brother, who should have been home a month ago at least. She seized Crow’s shirt, twisting a handful of it, pulling him closer still. ‘No. Think properly. Think.’

  ‘You know as well as I do it’s the kind of thing he would do,’ Crow said, ‘idiotic young spendthrift that he is – with no money for a coach or doubtless even a horse, he’d soon enough sweet-talk his way into getting passage all the way down the coast. God damn his eyes, I’ll thrash him from here to Newlyn.’

  ‘No, think,’ Hester said again, ‘the Deliverance left Newlyn. It’s not as if she came down the coast from up-country. It doesn’t make sense. Kitto was never on that boat, Crow, he simply can’t have been.’

  He pulled away, raking back the hair from his eyes as he mastered himself. ‘God forgive me, Hester. I’m a fool, and I failed those men today.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ she said, holding him again. ‘It was not your fault that Hawkins Boscobel put out an unseaworthy vessel. You tried your best to save the crew.’ Hester knew even as she spoke that her words would not be enough to convince him that there was nothing he could have – should have – done. She shook him a little. ‘You’re still a fool, though.’

  He said nothing to that, but only held her close to his chest, and they clung to each other on the cliff-top even as the seawater soaked into her own clothes, unnoticed by them both.

  4

  One night after the Deliverance went down with seventy-two souls aboard, Captain the Honourable Christopher Helford stood up to his waist in the frigid black waters of Lamorna Cove, wondering if it were possible to be hanged by one’s own brother for stealing shipwrecked cargo on his land. Lamorna Bay spread out towards a sliver of moon; the sea was quiet now, all her temper spent when the wreck of the Deliverance had been smashed against Carn Du. Another dead man floated past, rolling over in the swell with the slow grace of a breaching whale, hair spreading like seaweed, mouth wide in his wax-white face. Twenty-four hours after the wreck, and the sea surrendered those it had been impossible to save. Captain Helford caught sight of another bobbing shape; it was too high in the water to be another victim. Wading, he grasped the hogshead with both hands, soaked wood slippery beneath his fingertips. The Deliverance’s crew might all be long past help, but there were those on land whose continued existence depended on how much coin the Cornish resistance could get for French brandy, whale oil and sodden bales of ruined muslin: the shadowy trade networks of An Gostel would make short work of this haul.

  ‘Take this!’ Captain Helford passed the hogshead to the girl beside him, wet, copper-red hair sticking wild across her cheeks. As he turned inland, he caught a faint glimmer of light on the headland by Carn Du, out towards Mousehole and Newlyn.

  ‘Is that Lord Lamorna or the English, sir?’ The girl was unnecessarily sarcastic, as if she’d always known this mission would end at Bodmin Assizes and the gallows, and Captain Helford wished to encounter Lord Lamorna here for the first time in almost two years as little as he hoped to meet a battalion of English troops. As if this had even been his damned notion, anyway.

  ‘Let’s not find out either way. Enough!’ Raising his voice, Captain Helford called a halt; the girl turned to look out to sea where the Deliverance had gone down. He didn’t know her: like the rest of the starved and ragged criminals herding bobbing flotsam shoreward, she wasn’t local. Likely she’d had father, brother or lover among the drowned crew. They’d all been from St Erth, so it was said. She’d have come across the moor in the hope of retrieving corpse and contraband alike. His hand closed over her narrow wrist. ‘Get up the beach unless you want to swing. Trust me, it’s not a pretty way to go.’ She turned her back on him, tails of sodden hair plastered to the back of her gown, shoulder-deep in the water, surging towards land.

  Captain Helford forced himself through the swell, cursing. He raised his voice above the crash of surf and moaning wind, shouting so that the rest could hear. ‘Go for the top of the valley! Now. I’ll show you where to make the drop.’ He’d been an idiot to involve himself in this, but what choice had there been, really?

  The lights on the headland shifted, shuddering: they’d been seen. Beached and heavily laden with barrels and bales of wet Rajasthani muslin, the women of St Erth ran and staggered up the cobbled slip, passing the quay where his brother’s caravels were so often moored, heading for a steep path that led away from the cove and through the fern-hung valley. A cry rose up, and the pinpricks of light on the headland began to shift again: whoever they were, they’d soon reach the tree-lined Mousehole lane slicing above the valley, putting an end to any chance of getting clean away from here. Turning to glance back at wet sand and lapping tide, Captain Helford saw figures still huddled around a dark shape on the rocks, a woman hunching at the side of a drowned man, her cloak trailing in a barnacle-studded pool. She made a low, inhuman noise akin to the cattle-lowing cry of childbirth.

  ‘Move,’ he shouted, ‘or we’ll none of us see the end of the week.’

  Her companion turned to him – the only other living man among them. ‘It’s her boy, your honour. Young Thomas.’ Middle-aged, sparsely bearded, those fingers nervously grasping the woman’s shoulder were ink-stained. Captain Helford recognised him with a jolt: Nathaniel Edwards, count-man at the Boscobel mine, and devout Methodist. So Edwards had come as escort to the women of St Erth, but he was stoop-shouldered and weak, a man of ledgers, ink and quill feathers, no more able to plan a raid on shipwrecked cargo than the bal-maids he was here to protect.

  Suppressing a flash of irritation, Captain Helford spoke with the measured fury he’d perfected in the sleet-filled trenches at Novgorod, a tone that made even the surliest private shift. ‘Edwards, help me get her up that damned fucking valley. Now.’

  They ran, hauling the prostrate woman between them, slipping on the rocks at the mouth of the steep path. Sweating through wet clothes at the weight of a sodden bale heaved on to his back, Captain Helford led his unlikely troop of smugglers past the scattered houses of Nantewas and the Wink, tavern windows shuttered against small-hour darkness.


  He really could hear horses now, hoofbeats pounding. One of the would-be smugglers stumbled, dropping her barrel, and he stopped it with his feet. He bent beneath the weight of the bale and took up the hogshead, too, forcing himself to run up the hill, sweat streaming beneath his shirt. It was at least a mile of hard and desperate sprinting past silent, scattered houses, snowdrops and wild garlic flowers pale in the moonlit dark, already flowering among moss-covered rocks hidden by the darkness. Sandy tinning-streams criss-crossed the gullies, and the sound of rushing water roared in his ears; galloping horses bore down from the Mousehole road, louder every moment.

  Crossing the mud-ridged lane and leaving it behind, Captain Helford splashed through standing water, dodging moss-covered stones and low branches, his chest tight with the exertion of running with such a burden, the muscles in his left arm and shoulders screaming. If he didn’t lead, no one would find the way to the fogou, and yet he had no way of knowing what was happening behind him. He reached the tunnel at last, sensing, as he always did, the sheer age of this place, a souterrain excavated and lined with great flagstones before men even knew God. Gasping with relief, he set down both bale and barrel, bundling and rolling them one after the other over dead leaves and stones into the dark, concealing mouth of the tunnel. The strongest and fastest of the women were the first to join him, bal-maids from the Boscobel pit and hard-faced fishermen’s wives, all weaving through moss-shrouded trees, laden with their stolen cargo.

  ‘Get in!’ Captain Helford waved them on into the fogou; wide-eyed, straggle-haired, the women crossed themselves as they ducked and went underground, bundling barrels and bales into the pitch-dark creep-tunnel that led away from the main chamber. Emerging into the night, he ran back down the valley to bring up the rear, jumping over streams and sidestepping trailing ivy. Passing the stragglers, he urged them on, and reaching the lane saw the girl with copper-bright curls supporting a limping Edwards, sparse hair in stringy disarray across his balding scalp.

  ‘He’s turned his ankle,’ she gasped, ‘he can’t run, let alone carry anything.’

  The hammering of hoofbeats now filled the air, and without discussion Captain Helford heaved the injured man over his shoulder. He snatched at the girl’s thin arm, tugging her along in his wake. They reached the shelter of the trees moments before the first of the horsemen passed on the lane – steaming horse-breath, red jackets, white breeches, shining black boots: English troops, men of the 11th Northumbrian, a crack cavalry regiment. Helford frowned, watching them pass. Why were the Northumbrians patrolling in Cornwall, instead of the 31st Cornish? His own regiment recruited in Cornwall but both Coldstream battalions had been abroad since the French were expelled from British soil in 1818. As far as he knew, the 31st Cornish still had men in Britain – but they weren’t here on Cornish land where one would expect to find them. None of this made sense.

  He signalled to the girl to wait and they crouched in silence, all Edwards’s weight still across his shoulder. His neck pulsed with agony. The girl shivered at his side, wet hair plastered across her forehead, and they watched through the trees as the soldiers rode by in a blast of iron-shod hooves and the sweat of horses and men and the bright glitter of a silver gorget hanging across an officer’s chest. At last, the Northumbrians bore off abruptly to the right, turning downhill towards the cove. When they had gone, Captain Helford signalled at the girl to get up and make for the tunnel, his shoulder muscles now screaming with the effort of bearing the injured man’s weight. The sour stink of Edwards’s breath turned his stomach. They picked through undergrowth, the girl’s breathing rapid and ragged with the effort of bearing the barrel she carried. They reached the tunnel in desperate, sweating silence, and Captain Helford gave up Edwards to the care of the women, shrugging off their clasping hands and their thanks. Edwards could stand now, gingerly testing his weight as he leaned against the moss-covered rock.

  ‘Where will you go?’ Captain Helford demanded of them all. ‘For God’s sake, do nothing so foolish again. If I’d not found you dithering on that beach, who’d be waiting for the gallows now? Next time you want to steal wrecked cargo, make a proper job of it.’

  The women stared back at him in obstinate silence, hard-faced, hard-eyed.

  It was the copper-haired girl who spoke. ‘Hawkins Boscobel is in the pocket of the English. He hiked the rents and laid men off at the mine, and put out the Deliverance knowing she was hardly seaworthy, so what choice did our men have except to sail in her and take his wages? Now we’ve nothing left at all, and our children are hungry already.’

  ‘Next time, apply to Lord Lamorna before you risk your own necks. Why on earth did you not?’

  ‘St Erth lies in duchy land, not the earldom, that’s why, Captain. And last we heard, the duchy’s English-controlled, for all we’re in Cornwall.’ The girl spoke with a marked lack of respect, her eyes sparkling, chin tilted. ‘So Lord Lamorna is entertaining the English at Nansmornow even as we speak, with Bloody Castlereagh himself as his guest. Some say my lord should be King of Cornwall; I say he’s after striking deals with England, not feeding his own starved countrymen.’

  ‘Oh, the devil take it!’ Captain Helford retorted. ‘You can’t get back to St Erth tonight. Where will you go?’

  ‘There’s a prayer meeting at Sancreed, sir,’ Edwards said, the whites of his eyes bright in the dark as he glanced out at the woodland. ‘We’ll be safe there. The patrols never ride inland when there’s so little moon – they don’t know where the old mineshafts are.’

  ‘Go then,’ Captain Helford said, forcing off a wave of exhaustion. Leaning against a tree, he watched them all flit away into the darkness, through the trees, Edwards limping and glancing back over one narrow, stooped shoulder.

  The copper-haired girl turned to face him, defiant. Still there. ‘I suppose you think we ought to be grateful.’ Somehow, she was only inches away.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ Captain Helford said truthfully, and when he kissed her, it was because he was glad to be alive out there in the night, and the warm curves of her body were proof of it, and together they lay down in the ferns and the dead leaves, cheating death in the darkness.

  By the time he heard footsteps, it was too late.

  5

  The girl screamed as she lay beneath him, strands of spittle between her wide-apart lips. With a leaping crouch, Captain Helford reached for the knife strapped to the inside of his boot, rearranging his clothes in panicked, battle-ready haste as he turned to face the night-roaming newcomer who stood watching him, two pistols at his belt. Crow was so devastatingly familiar a sight that the captain felt like a child again in his presence, as if all those months of snow, boredom, near-starvation and occasional bloody melee in Russia had melted quite away. With the detachment of a cat toying with prey, Crow watched the girl flee. She disappeared into the trees, still sobbing with fear, and only then did Captain Helford suffer his brother’s full attention. It was damnably odd how much smaller Crow seemed to have got since they had last met. He was barely an inch the taller now, with that scent of cigarillo smoke and rosemary laundry soap, and the attendant familiar hostility. The captain found it quite impossible to speak, an affliction that did not appear to affect his brother, who addressed him as if they’d recently encountered one another at a ball.

  ‘Bonsoir, Christophe,’ Crow said in idle, laconic French. ‘Do forgive the interruption. How extraordinary to encounter you here. We were expecting you for Christmas and it’s January: I must own I’d quite given you up.’

  ‘Oh, never mind that! Have you any idea what everyone’s saying about you in every tavern between here and Plymouth?’ Captain Helford demanded. ‘I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, Crow, but they’re calling you the King of Cornwall, when we still don’t even have a King of England. Everyone’s saying you’re as good as a traitor.’

  ‘Have you finished?’ Crow asked. ‘Because I take it the legal property of Hawkins Boscobel is now c
oncealed in the creep-tunnel and you’ve just aided and abetted the theft of a cargo from another man’s boat wrecked on my beach. Naturally you’ll explain the entire situation in your own good time.’

  Captain Helford mastered himself, wrestling with the particularly acute fury that only his brother could induce, with that high-handed way of talking as though one were a servant, or a child. ‘I landed at Plymouth a week ago,’ he said. ‘When I got to Fowey, one of your caravels was putting out – the Brieuze. Captain Douglas took me aboard. Everyone’s saying you’ve turned against England – that you’re leading Cornwall into allegiance with France, or the Russians—’

  Crow interrupted him with complete lack of ceremony. ‘A day after the Deliverance went down with over seventy men, all lost save a single boy, and you order the crew of one of my ships to make an unscheduled stop in an onshore wind? Jesus fucking Christ, have they been teaching you inexcusable stupidity in Russia as well as how to kill Frenchmen?’

  Captain Helford fought for words, and he wanted to sink through the ground. ‘I didn’t know about the Deliverance then,’ he said, ‘none of us did. Word hadn’t got that far north by the time we left Fowey. We didn’t go alongside the quay – I ordered Douglas to drop anchor well beyond Carn Du. We rowed in.’