took a running jump into the sea. The waves enveloped him, pulling him down into the black, crushing coldness that left him gasping for breath. He surfaced, his lungs begging for air. As he broke through the water he discovered that, contrary to what he had thought, he cared very much about living.
He had no time to rejoice in this newfound appetite for survival or recover his breath because a large piece of wood struck his shoulder from behind. His arm went numb. He kicked his legs, propelling him towards the small boat. Something tore at his leg and he realised he was closer to the rocks than he realised. The rowing boat would risk being smashed if it came close. If he was near to the rocks, he could not be too far from the shore.
‘Go without me,’ he bellowed.
He could scramble over them towards safety. He aimed for the rocks when something hit him from behind, forcing him head first on to an outcrop. The impact left him reeling. He flailed and was slammed once more on to the rocks. Something warm trickled down his face, but he had no time to examine the wound.
John clambered up the rocks and crawled on his belly in the direction of the light that was burning on shore. Facing brutal wreckers would be safer than a certain death by drowning. After much slipping and sliding that left him grazed and bruised, he staggered on to a beach. He tripped over a body of one of the crewmen who had not survived the waters and gave a sob.
His head was spinning. There seemed to be two moons shining down, but even so he was finding it hard to make out anything in the moonlight. He felt his head and his fingers came away wet and sticky with blood. The sensation made him nauseous.
John staggered further up the beach, but when the hard sand changed, he slipped and lay on the damp shingle. He rolled on to his back, tangled in his cloak, and lay there. Time lost meaning and it could have been a day or a minute before he first heard the voices that called to each other across the shore. The wreckers had come.
Among the coarse sounds, John was convinced he heard soft female tones that did not belong in a place of such devastation and death. He caught a scent of something floral that was at odds with the odours of sea and blood. He decided he must be dreaming, or was at last to be reunited with his wife and a feeling of peace descended on him.
‘Margaret?’ he mumbled. ‘I am ready for you.’
He could not keep his eyes open and had no strength left to do anything but surrender to whatever fate held in store for him.
The fires had been lit in the church windows again.
Blanche Tanet slammed down her comb as soon as the faint scent of smoke reached her. Her bedchamber on the top floor of the tower room had windows at each side and she could see both shores that the castle overlooked. She leaned out, looking towards the village of Plomarc’h and, sure enough, in the window of St Petroc’s Church, a light shone out to sea. The church was on the clifftop set a short distance from the village. It was visible from the sea, so sailors and fishermen would know they were being watched over, but the purpose of the beacon was far from holy.
Blanche had been preparing for bed, but could not ignore this. She muttered an oath under her breath. She tore off her chemise and began to dress in breeches and a shirt. Over the top of her padded, sleeveless gambeson she threw a heavy cloak, then tugged on her knee-length leather boots. She did not have time to braid her hair, but simply gathered it, twisting and piling it under a wide-brimmed sailor’s hat, and strode down the stairs, gathering a flaming brand from the iron ring in the wall. When she reached the path that led to the beach she broke into a run, arriving on the beach slightly out of breath.
The bodies of drowned men littered the shore. When the moon slid from behind heavy, black clouds, the rocky shore looked like a battlefield. Blanche felt her stomach heave. She swallowed down the bile that rose to her throat and tightened her grip on the torch. She strode to the shore and peered out across the black rocks that glistened wet and sharp, only slightly visible above the surface. The rocks stretched out well into the sea and had been guilty of causing more deaths than Blanche could imagine over the centuries.
Barrels bobbed, surging in and out as the tide dragged at them. Wine. This had most likely been a merchant ship. All around her, the villagers hauled the debris from the sea to carry it away or load it on to the wheeled carts they had brought in preparation for such finds.
Was she the only one who felt a twinge of guilt at the way they treated the dead? A little way along the shore, a short, wide man was standing up to his knees in the water, heaving a cask back to shore. Blanche recognised him. Andrey was her cousin by her second marriage and the Captain of Blanche’s ship White Wolf.
Blanche intercepted him as he dropped his salvage on the shingle and stood upright, stretching his arms to relieve the cricks in his neck.
‘Who ordered the fires to be lit?’ she demanded.
Andrey scowled and spat into the sea. ‘Who do you think? Ronec did.’
Blanche’s fist tightened around the flaming brand she held. Jagu Ronec was the landowner whose property neighboured Blanche’s. He was also the Captain and part-financier of Blanche’s second ship, White Hawk. He was wealthy, powerful and—as Blanche had found out only after she had allied herself with him—cruel and unprincipled. She counted to ten in her head, breathing deeply before she answered, wishing she had never thought to involve him in her crusade against the French forces. Even with this attempt at controlling the repellent emotions Ronec’s name conjured, her voice was tight and full of fury.
‘And you obeyed him?’
‘Not I,’ Andrey said. ‘But the crews are growing tired of waiting for your command to sail and your insistence on only taking French ships. They look to Ronec, anticipating an alliance between you.’
Blanche flushed. There was an implicit criticism in Andrey’s words and it was not without reason. Ronec had already had more of Blanche than she had wanted to give and marriage was an alliance she was determined to resist to the last. The villagers’ discontent was something she would have to address soon. Ronec was not present, of course. He would not venture out to wallow in salt water in the dark when others could do it on his behalf.
‘Take the bodies to the castle,’ she commanded Andrey. ‘They deserve a proper burial.’
Andrey nodded and began relaying the order to the men who had gathered round to watch them speaking. Andrey’s loyalty to Blanche was unquestionable and she knew that the dead would be laid to rest with respect.
Blanche began to roll the barrel up the sloping beach to add it to the pile of salvage. The methods were dishonourable, but she would not let the salvage be wasted when it could be used to improve the lives of the tenants on her land.
The barrel was heavy. Blanche paused for breath beside a corpse that had been washed further up the beach than most. The man was lying on his back, one arm tangled inside a heavy cloak that must have hampered his efforts to swim and should by rights have dragged him to the bottom of the sea. Yet here he was, lying on the beach, his long limbs sprawled out carelessly. He could have been napping on a riverbank on a warm summer afternoon.
He was not a youth, nor as old as Andrey. Blanche guessed he was somewhere around his thirtieth year, only a handful of years younger than she was. Unbidden, her mind went back to her first husband who had died before his time. This man looked nothing like
