Love Under Fire Read online

  “You are – hurt!” she exclaimed.

  He put his fingers up to his face and then regarded them ruefully.

  “A splinter from the mast caught me,” he said. “It is nothing.”

  “I will bandage it for you.”

  “It does not matter,” he answered. “There are three of my men with broken arms and one with a broken leg. We have also lost a man overboard.”

  There was no elation in his voice now and Elvina said gently,

  “I heard – the mast go.”

  “Yes, it has gone and we are drifting helplessly. It is too rough to get the oars out. In fact there is nothing we can do until the rain clears.”

  “Are we well away from the coast?” Elvina enquired.

  “God knows! The maps and papers went overboard and we have little left but our bump of location.”

  Elvina put up her hand and touched his knee.

  “These storms do not last long.”

  “What do you call long?” Lord Wye asked sharply.

  “Five or six hours is about the usual length. There were some last summer that raged longer, but they were exceptional.”

  “This one is quite exceptional enough for me,” Lord Wye said grimly.

  “Perhaps we could put in at Corunna,” Elvina suggested.

  “According to the Captain’s calculations we should be past Corunna by now. With this wind behind us God knows how many knots we have been making since we left Lisbon.”

  Elvina said nothing more. She had no further suggestions to make.

  Then a little timidly she asked,

  “May I bandage your head – for you?”

  Lord Wye put his head back against his chair and closed his eyes.

  “If you wish.”

  She realised that he was utterly and completely exhausted. She had seen men like this once before when they had been battling with a storm at sea.

  She had been down at the Harbour when a fishing boat was brought in almost broken into pieces and yet still afloat and the men had dragged it up the shingle to safety and then had flung themselves down on the stones and fallen asleep.

  She could remember her surprise and then her understanding of the ordeal that they had been through and what it must have taken out of them.

  Those had been rough strong men used to battling with the sea day after day and year after year.

  If they had succumbed to fatigue, how much more so would it affect Lord Wye, who was not used to such exertions?

  With difficulty she managed to cross the cabin and look amongst the mêlée of stuff spilled from the drawers for a bandage of some sort.

  Finally she found her way through another door to a cabin, which she guessed was Lord Wye’s. It was in a fantastic state of disarray. Everything was on the floor.

  A mirror that had hung on the wall was smashed and a chair was overturned. Even the bedding had fallen from the bed.

  By groping on her hands and knees Elvina managed to find some soft muslin cravats. There were also some fine linen handkerchiefs and soaking one in water, she crawled back to Lord Wye’s side.

  Holding onto his chair to steady herself, she swabbed the blood from his forehead and his face.

  It was a bad gash, she perceived, with jagged edges and the flesh already looked purple and inflamed.

  She remembered that her mother had always said that water, unless it had been boiled, might be dangerous to wounds and so bravely she started across the room again to a cupboard where she had seen the Steward place the bottle of wine after their meal was finished.

  There was little of it left. It too was broken and, when she opened the cupboard door the wine poured out like a flow of blood.

  She dipped the handkerchief in it and carrying it back to her patient dabbed it against the wound.

  He stirred a little as if it stung him, but he did not wake.

  Now with great difficulty Elvina managed to put a pad of clean linen against the wound and bind it with the muslin cravat.

  It was not a job that she was particularly proud of, but at least it stopped the blood from flowing and it would keep the wound clean.

  Then she went back to her place at the table leg, only glancing up above her every now and then to see that Lord Wye was comfortable and not in danger of being thrown from the chair.

  With his legs stretched out in front of him, his wet clothes dripping until there was a pool of water around the chair, he looked the very picture of exhaustion.

  He must have been working as one of the seamen himself, Elvina thought, because she could see that his fingernails were broken and his hands black with tar as if he had been pulling at a rope.

  She wished that she could force him to change his clothes into something dry, but she knew it was almost impossible to waken him now.

  He was deeply asleep, snoring a little as a man will who sleeps in an uncomfortable position.

  He looked younger in repose, she thought, and far less awe-inspiring than he had done when she had first faced him across the table and answered his questions.

  She realised now that she had been afraid, not only of him but most of all of being sent back.

  She had escaped and she thought now that, if Lord Wye had insisted on taking her home, she might, in desperation, have jumped overboard.

  But he had not refused her sanctuary.

  She felt her heart soften and warm at the thought of his kindness.

  Other men might have behaved quite differently.

  Elvina had been brought up in a town continually full of soldiers and she was well aware of what might have happened to her had Lord Wye sent her forward with the seamen. That must indeed have seemed to him her rightful place.

  A peasant child from Portugal, a shabby little stowaway, parentless and without a name!

  Why should he have troubled himself, as he had done, to give her a cabin that was kept for his own guests, to let her eat with him and to treat her as if she was his equal?

  Elvina gave a little sigh.

  “Thank you!” she whispered aloud to the sleeping man. “Thank you for being – a great gentleman.”

  She remembered last night how his voice had softened when he had spoken of the children on the quay looking like skeletons.

  It was those few words and the kindness she had sensed in him which had given her the idea of stowing away on his yacht, of throwing herself on his mercy and of travelling with him to England.

  It had been a desperate and mad thing to do and yet her instinct had not been at fault. She had trusted a man and he had not been found wanting.

  “Thank you,” she said again and, putting out her hand, very gently touched his.

  He was cold. Crawling across the cabin once more, she brought back a blanket from his bunk.

  And yet, what use was a blanket when he was so wet? Elvina wondered if she could possibly try to undress him, as she had often tried to undress her father when he was too drunk to do it himself.

  But she knew that such action would be impossible as far as Lord Wye was concerned.

  It was not only because he was such a large man, six feet at least in height, it was because with the yacht still rolling it was impossible to keep one’s balance even for a moment.

  There was nothing she could do but put the blanket over him. She covered him up to his chin and tucked it round him in the chair.

  He looked strange with his bandaged head emerging from a cocoon of soft white wool. But still he slept.

  Elvina fetched another blanket for herself, draped it over her shoulders and cuddled down into the warmth of it. She had not realised until she thought of Lord Wye just how cold she was.

  Her thin shawl was no protection against the wind that seemed to creep in even though the doors and portholes were barred against it.

  Now it was growing dark outside and as the ship rose on the waves she could see a little glimpse of the sky.

  It had been grey with the lashing rain, but now it was darkening into sable and
Elvina was sure that it was not as rough as it had been.

  The thunder, which had growled and grumbled overhead all the afternoon, was going farther away and although the rain still fell, even that was not so violent as it had been.

  It was quieter too outside the cabin. But that meant nothing for without a sail they were helpless.

  As Lord Wye had said, there was nothing they could do except to drift until the sea went down.

  Now that the blanket was around her, Elvina felt a sense of comfort. She was sure that Lord Wye was more comfortable as well.

  Wet though he might be, the blanket was engendering some heat and his expression was certainly that of a man at peace.

  Elvina felt her eyelids dropping and the cabin was darkening. She slipped a little lower down onto the floor and she slept.

  *

  She awoke with a sudden start, wondering for a moment where she was and filled with a fear that she would feel Juanita’s whip across her shoulders. And then she remembered that she had escaped.

  She knew in an instant what had awakened her. Someone had come into the cabin and from her position beneath the table she could see his boots, high fisherman’s boots, and she realised that why she could see them was because he held a lantern in his hand.

  She moved as the light fell on her face and she looked up to see Mister Sanders standing there, his face very white in the candlelight with great dark lines of sleeplessness and exhaustion under his eyes.

  Suddenly Elvina was aware that the yacht was no longer moving. There was the slap of the waves against the sides and there was the sound of the wind, a very much lower and gentler wind.

  But they were not moving.

  That was why Mister Sander’s legs had seemed strange. That was why the lantern in its steadiness had seemed so surprising.

  “What it? Where are we?” Elvina asked.

  In answer Mister Sanders raised the lantern so that he could look at Lord Wye, still asleep beneath the confining warmth of the blanket.

  “Don’t waken him,” Elvina cried. “He is tired, dead tired, leave him alone.”

  The young Officer looked down in surprise at the fierceness of her tone.

  “He worked as hard as anyone,” he said with a note of admiration in his voice. “If it had not been for him, the mast would have gone hours earlier than it did. He helped us lash it with ropes, but it was no use. It broke in the end.”

  “I heard it,” Elvina said.

  “It knocked a man overboard,” Mister Sanders told her. “He had no hope in a sea like this.”

  “What is happening – now?”

  “We are aground. That is what I have come to tell his Lordship.”

  “Where?”

  Mister Sanders shrugged his shoulders.

  “I have no idea. A sandbank of some sort. We shall know in an hour when it is light. The Captain thought he ought to know.”

  He nodded towards Lord Wye.

  “Tell the Captain that his Lordship is asleep,” Elvina said. “There is nothing he can do about it, is there?”

  “There is nothing any of us can do,” Mister Sanders answered. “Except pray that there is a British ship within hail. We have been trying to signal as it is.”

  “What about the enemy?” Elvina asked.

  “You need not be afraid of them,” Mister Sanders said scornfully. “Britain has command of the sea. Why, coming out here the place was like a regatta, British ships wherever you looked. Boney may have an Army, but he has no Navy. Nelson saw to that.”

  “But if we are stuck on a sandbank, we must be near the shore,” Elvina commented.

  “The Captain thinks we must have rounded Cape Finisterre by now,” Mister Sanders said. “But personally I have my doubts. We might have been going North, East or West in that storm. Much more likely to land up in Oporto than anywhere else.”

  “No, no! We must be farther than that.”

  If they had only reached Oporto, Elvina knew only too well what would happen. Lord Wye would have second thoughts.

  He would send her back to Lisbon. There would be a fishing boat or a transport of some sort. He might even try to send her overland. It would only be a question of paying to get someone to take her home by mule cart.

  “I’ll tell the Captain his Lordship is asleep,” Mister Sanders said.

  When he had gone from the cabin, Elvina got onto her knees and prayed,

  ‘Please, God, don’t let it be Oporto. Please, God, let it be further up the coast than that.’

  She scrambled to her feet and went to the porthole, but nothing could be seen.

  It was still dark and still raining, but now it was gentle ordinary rain and not the lashing, blinding sort that had battered against the porthole during the violent storm.

  Elvina went to her own cabin, washed her face in cold water and, feeling in the confusion and mess on the floor, tried to find a comb for her hair.

  She was unsuccessful and, thinking that she might find someone to light a lantern, she opened the door onto the deck.

  Outside two or three lanterns had already been lit. One was placed over the entrance to the cabins and two others were suspended from what remained of the main mast.

  Never had she seen such a scene of confusion. Everything was broken, battered and stained with seawater.

  Two seamen were vainly trying to tidy things up, moving pieces of barrels that had smashed into a hundred pieces, coiling a tangle of ropes and pulling out the splinters of wood that had embedded themselves deeply in the deck.

  On the bridge she could see the Captain talking to Mister Sanders and another Officer.

  “’Tis no use guessing, Sanders,” she heard the Captain say sharply. “I’ll be honest and say I have not the slightest idea where we are.”

  “We shall know soon, sir.”

  The Captain looked up at the sky, the rain falling on his tired face.

  “I suppose so. Let’s hope it’s a pleasant surprise.”

  “Shall I send out more signals, sir?” Mister Sanders asked.

  The Captain debated for a moment.

  “I suppose so. But keep them out to sea. God knows what we shall find on the land, if there is land to starboard.”

  Someone on the deck caught sight of Elvina standing at the cabin door.

  “Is there anything you want, miss?” a seaman asked.

  “I should like a lantern, if you please,” Elvina answered.

  “Good Lord! I had forgotten our stowaway,” she heard the Captain say. “Is she all right?”

  “Quite all right, sir,” Mister Sanders answered. “Give the child some food, she must be famished. And I daresay his Lordship will want something to eat when he wakes.”

  “I think we could all do with a meal,” Mister Sanders said. “I know I feel as if I could eat a whole roasted ox.”

  “Go and see to it then,” the Captain remarked wearily.

  A seaman carried one of the lanterns into Elvina’s cabin and kindled a light in the one that hung there. He also went into the main cabin and lit the lanterns above the table while Lord Wye still slept

  Elvina tidied herself as best she could and, covering her shoulders with her shawl for the dawn wind was chilly, she went back into the main cabin.

  It was not until the Steward brought slices of ham and cold chicken on a broken plate that Lord Wye opened his eyes.

  For a moment he struggled against the confining blanket and then sat up.

  “What the devil – ?” he began.

  Then he saw Elvina.

  “So, we are alive!” he exclaimed. “Have I been asleep for long?”

  “Not very long, my Lord,” she answered.

  “What is happening? Why have we stopped?”

  “The ship is aground,” she told him.

  “The devil it is!”

  He sprang to his feet, crossed the cabin and disappeared. She gave a little sigh and with difficulty restrained herself from taking one of the pieces of ham and eating it in
her fingers.

  The Steward came back with bread baked the day before in Lisbon, butter and some pewter mugs.

  “All the china is broken,” he said with a smile. “But there are some bottles of ale intact, unless his Lordship would rather have something stronger for breakfast.”

  “I should think his Lordship will be grateful for anything,” Elvina answered.

  “That goes for all of us,” the Steward added. “The sea has got into the meat and most of the water barrels are damaged. But we’ll be able to get some more now that we’ll have to put into Port.”

  “Where are we likely – to do that?” Elvina asked.

  The Steward shrugged his shoulders.

  “The Captain was talking of Corunna or we might have to go back to Oporto. There’s a better Harbour there.”

  Elvina drew a deep breath.

  Lord Wye came stumping back into the cabin.

  “Heaven knows where we are. I will have something to eat, change my clothes and by that time it should be dawn.”

  “There is only ale to drink, unless you would like – something stronger,” Elvina said.

  “Ale will do me,” Lord Wye replied. “But what about you?”

  “I will have a little ale too,” Elvina said with a smile.

  “Are you hungry?” Lord Wye asked.

  “Very,” she replied.

  “You are a funny little thing,” he said, settling himself at the table. “Most children of your age would have been screaming themselves silly at a storm like that. You were as good as gold and, what is more, I find that you have bandaged my head. I told you not to worry.”

  “You have a nasty gash there,” Elvina said. “It will take some time before it knits. Does it hurt?”

  “It throbs a bit, but I am more concerned about the men below decks. We do not carry a doctor in a ship of this size, but the Captain has some knowledge of setting bones. He is going to see what he can do when he has time.”

  “I wish I could help,” Elvina declared.

  Lord Wye stared at her.

  “You?” he asked. “Goodness, that is not woman’s work.”

  “In the hospitals the orderlies were usually drunk,” Elvina said. “That was why the nuns used to go and nurse the soldiers. They were really wonderful.”

  “I have heard that. I only hope, if I am ever wounded, that I shall have a nun to look after me. Or you. You are nearly as good as one, aren’t you?”