‘Sorry,’ said Davit.
‘What use is sorry? Stop doing it.’
‘I can’t help it,’ shrugged the big man. ‘Not if you want us to make any decent progress.’
Boris glared at him; but Davit refused to back down. It was having the girl dozing in the crook of his arm, no doubt; wanting to impress her. Boris’s irritation with her was increasing all the time; but, unfortunately, so was his desire. She was wearing a knee-length white dress with nothing but knickers underneath, and every time water splashed over her, the fabric would go a little translucent. He remembered the way she’d spurned his offer, generous though it had been, and his irritation increased another notch. She needed taking in hand, that was the truth of it. She needed to be taught who was boss.
He flapped out his map, checked their position against the low islets that lay like upturned oyster-shells upon the water. Their progress was hopelessly slow. At this rate, they’d never get to Eden by nightfall, or anywhere close. And if they weren’t going to make it there tonight, then they’d have to stop even earlier so that they could make camp before it got too dark. He put away his map again, let his eyes drift back to Claudia. The hemline of her dress had ridden up a little, showing off her thighs. He licked his lower lip.
Their bow plunged into another wave, splashing more water into his lap. He glared furiously at Davit. The big man was looking innocent as an angel, holding up a hand in apology, but Boris knew better.
He was going to enjoy taking Claudia from him. By Christ, he was.
II
Knox sailed out to a cluster of symbols marked at between thirty and forty metres on Adam’s chart, then dropped anchor, checked his equipment and suited up. Diving solo on a re-breather was a bad habit to get into, but he’d be fine as long as he stuck to his disciplines, kept checking his equipment and took breaks. He tipped himself backward over the edge, exploded into the sea. The water was cold but visibility was excellent, though it grew darker as he descended. The sea-floor here was rich with brain and stag-horn corals, but there was no way to tell which in particular Adam had been interested in, or why he’d marked his map as he had. He swam in a widening spiral around the Yvette before deciding he’d seen enough and beginning his ascent.
The sun was high and warm. He unzipped his wetsuit, the better to enjoy it, opened a bottle of drinking water and sat on deck watching the waves breaking gently yet relentlessly upon the reefs, just as they’d done day after day for centuries now; for millennia.
The Winterton had spent three days upon these reefs before it had broken up. Three days. What a bizarre time that must have been for crew and passengers alike, praying for a berth on one of the few lifeboats that had plied back and forth to the shore, or with the native fishermen who’d come out to help, as their ship slowly fell apart beneath them. They’d tried to save it, of course; their immediate response to collision, indeed, had been to throw everything overboard to lighten it and so float it off the reef.
He sat forward a little. It was a sailor’s first instinct, when they’d run their ship aground, to try to refloat it. Was that what had happened to the Chinese? He closed his eyes, the better to picture that leviathan on a shortcut from the Cape crunching its keel upon this reef. He could only imagine the chaos and terror. Giving orders on a ship that big was hard at the best of times, but infinitely harder in the aftermath of a reef-strike, particularly if it had happened-as they mostly had-at night or during a storm. But deckhands knew the drill even in the absence of command: toss overboard anything and everything you can to lighten the ship and make it easier to refloat. The most obvious things to jettison would have been its anchors and cannons, the very things they’d found at Cheung’s site. And if a cargo hold had been torn open, it would explain the pottery and other artefacts too.
Chinese ships had been fitted with watertight bulkheads to survive moderate hull damage. But even once they’d refloated themselves, they’d still have been stuck outside the reef, badly damaged and shipping water fast, shrouded in darkness or buffeted by a storm, facing a desperate race to find a pass before they sank.
A pass just like the one right here.
III
Rebecca went across to greet Therese. Michel smiled up at her as she took him in her arms, and his smile did strange things to her heart. They walked together through to the clinic, laid the infants down in matching wooden cots. ‘I don’t suppose you have medical records for Adam and Emilia?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ said Therese. ‘What for?’
‘The police found some blood on the boat. They want to see if it belongs to Adam or Emilia.’
Therese gave her a dismayed look, but she flipped through a drawer of handwritten cards without a word, jotted down the information for Rebecca. ‘Okay,’ she said, gesturing at the examination table. ‘Now show me what your boyfriend do.’
Rebecca entrusted herself to Therese’s care without a qualm. Many Malagasy struggled with Western medicine, for it was widely believed that much sickness was caused by gris-gris; malevolent, voodoo-like spells and curses that could only be cured by countervailing magic. But Therese had grasped the principles from the first, and had only grown more knowledgeable, intuitive and energetic with the years. ‘You do this on coral?’ she murmured, as she saw the extent of Rebecca’s injuries. ‘You away too long if you forget coral is dangerous.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why you away so long? Why you cruel to your papa and sister like this? You like to hurt your fambly and frens maybe?’
‘I never had time to come back.’
Therese snorted. ‘You hab time now, all right. Too late now. You break your papa’s heart, you know. First Mama, then you. Eb’ryone he lub go away.’ She removed the dressings on Rebecca’s palms, examined the multicoloured mess beneath. But she nodded in approval. ‘Your boyfriend’s a good nurse,’ she said. ‘Where he learn to nurse like this?’
‘He has some quite bad burns,’ replied Rebecca. ‘Maybe he learned from doing his own dressings.’
‘Burns?’ frowned Therese, taken aback. ‘Where?’
‘On his shoulders and back. Why?’
‘No reason. No reason.’
Rebecca wasn’t convinced, but she let it go, watched Therese clean her wounds, apply more antiseptic cream and iodine, dress her with fresh bandages. ‘I come back tomorrow, yes?’ she said, when she was done.
‘Not tomorrow,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’ll be away. The day after.’
Therese pulled a scolding face, but evidently knew Rebecca too well to argue. They picked up the infants again, and Rebecca walked her out, entrusting Michel once more to her care before returning to her father’s desk and his letter to Yvette. Enough melancholy. Time for my round-up of gossip. Pierre is our most regular guest, of course, still as bemused by life and by his own nature as ever. He sits there with one eyebrow cocked as things happen around him. He ordered colour leaflets from a print shop in Tulear and now refuses to pay, if you please, because two of the pictures are slightly fuzzy! I know I should disapprove of him more, but he’s a child and entertaining company and it’s difficult to hold him responsible for the messes he creates. Therese asks me to remember her to you. She has had her child now, too, of course, christened Xandra Yvette after you. I pray every night that this one lives. She is wonderful, Therese, completely selfless. She looks after Michel whenever Emilia and I take out the boat. And she still won’t take payment for it, or her work at the clinic, though Pierre comes around afterwards and asks for it on her behalf. I head into Tulear more than pleases me. I would stay at Eden always if I could. I am like that tree-frog who cannot stand the croaking of its own species. Our friend Mustafa Habib inevitably finds me within minutes. His intelligence system is second to none. He even dragged me and Emilia to lunch at his wretched palazzo, then spent all day pestering me to let him invest in Eden, so that Ahdaf might work for such a worthy venture! I keep telling him that he is talking to the wrong person, but I don’t think he believes me.