frigates, both holed below the water-line, the screaming wounded . . . nearly a third of his own crew and more than half the Frenchman's dead and injured . . . and the dismounted cannon rolling around the decks as the gale rose, and with night falling. "All he had time to do was to get the prize-crew across, Paul. It was the only thing he could do."
"It was still the wrong decision. He should have concentrated on saving one of them—instead of which he lost both." He stared at her for a moment, and then through her as his own imagination began to work. "But maybe you're right... It's all too bloody easy to sit here in quiet and comfort, sipping our sherry, and making all the right decisions—same with my war, the '14-'18 . . . all too bloody easy . . ."
It was very quiet on the terrace. Elizabeth felt the tranquillity of the evening all around her, not only in the silence itself but also in the peaceful protcctiveness of the old stone house and the great comforting curve of the downland ridge above them, in which the house nestled; and she could smell the evening smells, of honeysuckle and thyme and lavender.
But it was a false tranquillity—false both because their thoughts were concentrated on battle and sudden death, and pain and fear long ago . . . and because there were men on that hill, the child had said, and they recalled her mind to sudden death and fear and pain in the present.
She shivered, and found that he was looking at her again.
"Sorry—I was . . . thinking." He straightened up. "And for dummy3
thoughts there is drink! I'll have another—and will you change your mind?"
"I'll have a small sherry, Paul."
"Good! So ... next morning the Vengeful had disappeared, and the prize-crew reckoned she'd gone down in the night, and it was all they could do to stay afloat anyway . . . there—
one small sherry! So they beat it as best they could for Portsmouth, only to come to grief themselves on the Horse Sands, which would have been in sight of home if it hadn't been midnight in another howling gale, poor devils . . . poor brave devils! Hence . . . one carpenter's mate and three seamen left to tell the tale." He raised his glass in a silent toast. "But the Vengeful didn't go down that night, did she!
She lasted three whole days, before she piled up on—where was it?"
"Somewhere among the rocks of Les Echoux, Father thought.
From where the survivors finally came ashore on the coast near Coutances, he thought they might have been making for one of the Channel Islands."
"They had the damnedest luck too. If it hadn't been for the weather they might have made it. Instead of which . . . just another couple of forgotten epics. And two more for your statistics, Elizabeth—one French battle casualty and one English shipwreck. But two epics, nevertheless."
She was glad that he'd got the point, which Father himself had been at pains to make, that the saga of the Vengeful and the Fortuné deserved to be told for its own sake and not just dummy3
as the sad history of Number Seven.
"So that leaves us with another thirteen survivors to account for—the very last of the Vengefuls—right?"
"Yes. The crew of the jolly-boat," Elizabeth nodded.
"The jolly-boat—'a hack-boat for small work', the OED
says . . . which was presumably the only undamaged boat to get away from the wreck . . . and not a very jolly voyage, because two of them died soon after they came ashore, from injuries or exposure, or both. . . and they were all in a bad way, more or less." He nodded back, and then his eyes shifted to the Vengeful box. "And that came ashore off the Fortuné—the ship's doctor's box of tricks . . . presumably?"
She noticed that he was watching her intently. "Father thought so. It was rather surprising that Dr Pike left the Vengeful, but maybe the French ship didn't have a surgeon.
But that's the only way it could have been washed up on the English coast. And the carpenter's mate remembers him being on board the Fortuné."
"But he wasn't one of the survivors."
"I'm sorry?" Elizabeth's attention had strayed back to the box, with its inscription plates which it had been her duty to keep brightly polished, but which were sadly tarnished now.
"I said, he wasn't one of the survivors from the Fortuné. . .
And from the Vengeful there was the third lieutenant, Chipperfield, and the little midshipman, Paget . . . and the Gunner's Mate, Chard, and the Quartermaster's Mate, Timms dummy3
—"
" What?" exclaimed Elizabeth in astonishment.
"Timms. And the six seamen—eight originally—"
" But . . . but, Paul—" She was forced to curb her astonishment by the appearance of her hostess on the terrace.
Paul stood up, clasping the chapter to his chest. "Mrs Audley
—are you going to join us?"
"Of course not—not when you're talking business—and do make it 'Faith', Paul, please . . . Elizabeth, are you all right?
Are you absolutely famished?"
Faith Audley at the best of times, on neutral ground, would have demoralised Elizabeth. Maybe she was all Paul Mitchell had said— and, to be hatefully fair, from the gentle and sympathetic putting-at-ease with which she'd greeted her dishevelled guest, she probably was a nice woman. But that slender, elegant blondeness, and the equally stylish cut of the working-clothes, jeans-and-shirt, not to mention the expert make-up and hint of very expensive scent, was positively debilitating.
"No, I'm fine, Faith." She was, to be accurate, absolutely famished. But there was also another hunger inside her now, which required more urgent satisfaction. "Really I am."
"I'm sure you're not . . . I've had to feed Cathy to stop her falling apart . . . But it won't be long—" she switched her attention back to Paul "—the office phoned again, Paul, to say dummy3
they're en route . . . But meanwhile you are instructed to spill the beans to Elizabeth, David says—whatever the beans are . . . But I'm sure that means more to you than me—
entendu?"
" Entendu, madame—Faith," Paul Mitchell bowed. " Bien entendu."
"Ye-ess." She gave him a slightly jaundiced look. "You and my David are two of a kind, I've always suspected. Which means . . . for Miss Loftus—for you, Elizabeth, beanz meanz troublez."
"Not at all!" Paul protested. "It means that your David reposes confidence in Elizabeth's superlative loyalty and common sense— beanz meanz secretz."
"Hmmm ..." Faith had the height to look down her nose at the world, and the right shape of nose for looking down. "It sounds very much like the same thing to me. As long as you don't repose the same confidence in them, Elizabeth, that's all."
Paul watched her depart, frowning slightly at that final, left-handed, half-affectionate insult.
None of that mattered, though—it was those names which mattered.
"One of them lived to tell the tale, Paul—you said that just as we arrived." And a very curious tale, too; and it was irritating also—it was more than that, it was infuriating—how the effect of arriving at the manor house, and being met by dummy3
Faith Audley immediately, had abated her curiosity until now.
"The tale?" His mind seemed to be elsewhere.
She pointed at the type-script. "In Father's chapter—except for Lieutenant Chipperfield he never had the names of any of the survivors. He only had what that one sailor who reached Verdun told the senior naval officer there—that Chipperfield's party had escaped the fortress at Lautenbourg, in Alsace—and the conflicting stories the French put out . . .