The Beckoning Dream

“But Geordie—” and Catherine’s voice rose dangerously “—is to be relied on?”

“Very much so. We have been to the wars together, and he has twice saved my life.”

To her look of disbelief at the mere idea of such a scarecrow saving anything, Geordie offered a brief nod. “True enough, mistress. Only fair to say that he saved mine more times than that.”

“I trust him,” said Tom belligerently, “and so must you. Your life may depend on it.”

“Oh, in this ridiculous brouhaha everyone’s life depends on someone else,” declaimed Catherine bitterly. “Mine on you, yours on me, and both of us on Geordie, and poor Rob’s life depends on all three of us. It’s better than a play. No, worse than a play, for no play would be so improbable.”

“You’re the actress, so you should know,” was Tom’s response to that. “In real life, my dear, everyone does depend on everyone else. ’Tis but the condition of fallen man.”

Fear, impotence and anger, all finely mixed together, drove Catherine on. Her tongue turned nasty.

“Oh, we have turned preacher now, have we? Not surprising since we are to pass as canting Republicans. Canst thou whine a psalm through thy nose, preacher Tom? Or is that a trick to learn on the way to Antwerp? Pray learn it quickly so that you may leave a poor girl’s virtue untouched as a good preacher should.”

To her own surprise Catherine found herself half-laughing as she finished, and Tom’s powerful face was also glowing with mirth. Geordie was watching them both with his rat-trap mouth turned down.

“Loose tongue,” he muttered, “may loosen heads on shoulders, master. Because you have allowed your tongue to wag in the past and paid no forfeit for it, doth not mean that you may escape punishment for ever.”

“There,” exclaimed Catherine triumphantly, “even your servant can teach you common sense.”

“Oh, is that what he is muttering at us? Come, mistress, we must have a council of war, but only when you have sent your serving maid to market to buy our supper for us.”

This shocked Catherine a little. “You intend to stay here tonight?”

“Aye, mistress. The packet doth not sail until early tomorrow. We must be up at dawn and away.”

What can’t be cured, must be endured, would obviously have to be her motto, was Catherine’s last despairing thought as she turned away from him. But he had not finished with her yet.

“Your baggage is packed, mistress?” he asked her commandingly. “You have an assortment of clothing both plain and fancy and are ready to leave?”

She had the satisfaction of assuring him that she was more than ready—at least so far as her luggage was concerned.

“And there is yet another thing, mistress. No good follower of the late Lord Protector would be saddled with a wife called Cleone—a heathen name, indeed. Your true name is Catherine, and so you shall be known. Or would you prefer Kate?”

More to annoy him for the orders he was throwing at her than for any other reason, Cleone replied tartly, “Catherine will do. As old Will Shakespeare said, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ so what shall it profit that I am called Cleone or Catherine: they both begin with a C.”

Tom bowed as gracefully as any court cavalier. “Catherine it shall be. And I am Tom, always uttered with due humility as befits a good wife.”

He gave her his white smile again and, for the first time, Catherine saw that it quite transformed his face. Not only were his teeth good, but the relaxing of his harsh features showed her the boy he must once have been.

Nay, Catherine, she told herself sternly, you are not to soften towards a hired bully who plainly sees you as his prey. To do so is to deliver yourself into his hands.

Surprisingly he made no demur when, later, after they had supped, she showed him into Rob’s bedroom. She had thought that he might take advantage of her, try to pretend that she was his wife and must do a wife’s duty. Instead, he had flung down the small pack he had carried upstairs, given her another of his slightly mocking bows and told her to try to get a good night’s sleep.

“For, madam wife, we have several hard days ahead of us, and I would wish that you arrive before Grahame as fresh as a daisy in spring—or the violets that your eyes resemble.”

“Fair words butter no parsnips with me, Master Trenchard,” Catherine told him tartly.

Only for him to say, blue eyes mirthful, “Tom, dear wife, always Tom. Most wives would be happy to receive such a compliment from a husband to whom they have been married for the last five years.”

“Ah, but as a Puritan and a preacher such fair words would lie ill upon thy tongue.”

“Oh, a man may be a Puritan and a preacher, but he is still allowed to love his wife, lest the world end. Go forth and multiply, the Lord hath said, and how shall we do that if there be not love?”

“And the Devil can quote Scripture to achieve his own ends,” Catherine replied smartly. “Goodnight, dear husband, and sleep well.”

“I would sleep better if I did not sleep alone,” Tom informed the door soulfully as it closed behind her—and chuckled as she banged it.

And now, after boarding the packet without further incident, or much talk, and enduring a morning that began fair, but ended in storm and a high wind, Catherine found herself in the throes of seasickness. More than ever she wished that Rob had had the wisdom not to put his treasonous thoughts on paper.

A hand on her shoulder as she straightened up had her whirling around. It was Tom’s. He was not being seasick, no, indeed, not he. Far from it—he looked disgustingly healthy, rosy even. Behind him lurked Geordie, looking green; a violent lurch of the ship brought him to the rail to join her in her offerings to the sea.

“Below with the pair of you,” ordered Tom, laughter in his voice. “You will be better below decks.”

“Not I, master,” and, “Not I,” echoed Catherine, but Tom was having none of it.

“Do as I bid you,” he ordered Geordie, and as Catherine reached a temporary halt in her heavings he swept her up, to set her down only when they reached the companionway into the hold.

Below decks was truly nasty, as Catherine had expected, smelling of tar and worse things, but the boat’s heavings did seem less distressing. Tom, having laid her down on what he called a bunk, brought over to her a large tin basin. Sitting beside her, he said, still vilely cheerful, “Use that if you feel sick again.”

“I am over the worst, I think,” Catherine told him, hoping that she was, but a moment later a huge wave sent the boat sliding sideways, which had her stomach heaving again. With a tenderness that surprised her, Tom held her head steady in order to help her, and when her paroxysms at last ended, he laid her gently down and pulled a dirty sheet over her.

How shaming to behave in such an abandoned manner before him! Not that he seemed to mind. On the contrary, having removed the basin, he came back again with it empty, carrying a damp cloth with which he gently wiped her sweating face.

This seemed to help, and he must have thought so, too, for he said in a kinder voice than he had ever used to her before, “This time, I think, the worst is over. Do you feel able to sit up yet?”

Speech seemed beyond Catherine, so she nodded, and struggled into a sitting position. From nowhere Tom produced a pillow with which he propped up her aching head.

“Geordie!” he bellowed at that gentlemen, who had been engaged in heaving his heart up into a bucket, but now seemed a little recovered. “Bring me my pack, if you can walk, that is.”

Geordie appeared to take the “if’ as an insult. “Course I can walk. I ain’t been ill.”

This patent lie amused Catherine, and she gave a weak laugh. Tom looked at her with approval as the staggering Geordie handed him his pack. He opened it, and produced a small pewter plate, two limes and a knife.

Catherine watched him, fascinated, as he cut the first lime in half, handing one half to her, and the other to Geordie.

Geordie began to suck his, and Catherine, after a nod from Tom, followed suit, her mouth puckering as the acid liquid reached her tongue.

“Good,” Tom told them both, “that should make you feel better!” He cut the second lime in half, and began to suck it vigorously also. “And now, some schnapps.” His useful pack gave up a small tin cup, and first Catherine, then Geordie and finally himself, offered what he called, “a libation to the Gods of the sea, only down our throats and not over the side!”

Like the lime, the strong liquor seemed to settle, rather than distress, Catherine’s stomach. She began to feel, as she told Tom, the drink talking a little, “more like herself”.

He put a friendly arm around her which she felt too weak to reject—and then he gave her his final present, a disgusting object which he called a ship’s biscuit.

“Eat that, and you will be quite recovered.”

Her head spinning from the combined causes of an empty stomach brought about by seasickness, followed by a large draught of the strongest liquor she had ever drunk, Catherine managed to force it down. Her poor white face bore testimony to her revulsion as she did so.