Hell and High Water

  “Look,” she said, “you might have known the ring. Doesn’t mean the man wearing it was your father. I hear men get hungry in gaol. He sold it, maybe. Traded it for bread.”

  “Impossible. The ring was part of him. It would not come off his finger.” Caleb recalled with a stab of grief how the ring had lodged tight beneath Pa’s knuckle. Over the years his skin had grown around it like the bark of a tree.

  “Fair enough.” She rubbed her face with the back of her hand then said, “He’d been in the water a while if you couldn’t recognize him. Days. Water’s cold this time of year. Might even have been weeks.”

  “Then he can’t have fallen in the night before he was found. It was Pa, I’m certain of it.”

  “I want to see the proof.”

  “The ring? But the man is buried.”

  “Well, then,” said Letty, as if nothing could be simpler or more straightforward. “We’ll just have to un-bury him, won’t we?”

  5.

  “Un-bury him?” Caleb echoed. Struggling to keep his voice low, he asked Letty two questions. “How? When?”

  Her answers came back neat as a pat of butter. “Tonight. The parson keeps the gravedigger’s shovel in his yard. Moon’s full, so we won’t be needing a lantern. We’ll wait until the village is asleep. Then we’ll go find out if the drowned man was wearing a ring or not.”

  “He will be.”

  “Perhaps. You’re not to speak a word to anyone, do you hear me? Not anyone.”

  “Who do you imagine I would share this secret with?” Caleb was exasperated. “Even if I were a blabbermouth… Letty, there is not a soul in this village I could talk to!”

  She looked at him. For a moment her expression softened. And then she was fierce again, stern and hard, but her words were at odds with her face. “Me. You’ve got me to talk to now.”

  * * *

  The rest of that Sunday passed slowly. They said nothing more to each other but Caleb was acutely aware of Letty’s every move. When night fell his aunt took Dorcas and climbed the ladder to bed as usual. Before Letty followed she gave him a look that told him her resolve had not wavered. Tonight they would be gravedigging.

  He didn’t think he liked her. He certainly didn’t understand her. But whatever her faults, Letty was in possession of a great deal of courage, and Caleb knew he had need of that just now.

  There was no watchman to call the hour. No church clock to chime. It was a matter of waiting for the night to pass. Praying for the village to sleep, and sleep soundly. Waiting and praying, praying and waiting, all over again.

  A full moon there may have been, but its light did not penetrate into the cottage. There was some small glow from the fire’s embers but that was all. Caleb lay in the dark and listened to the breathing of the family above becoming slower and deeper.

  When Letty moved, she moved quietly, but sound behaves differently in the dark. Each creak of floorboard, each rustle of cloth is magnified. A breath becomes a shout, a footfall akin to the blast of a cannon. Letty walked across the attic floor slowly. With every step she took he was in an agony of suspense, thinking his aunt would wake at any moment and ask what her stepdaughter was doing. As she descended the ladder each rung groaned in protest under her weight and yet neither Anne nor Dorcas woke. Together Caleb and Letty padded across the slate floor and slipped from the cottage into the street.

  He followed where she led, not up the road they usually walked to church, but along a path that skirted the marsh flats and then climbed through scrub up the hill to the parsonage. When they reached the house and she took the shovel from the yard the iron blade grated against cobbles, making a sound so harsh that Caleb expected the parson to peer from his window and demand to know their business.

  As they crept towards the churchyard their breath hung like smoke on the cold night air. Caleb was sure he could hear trees sighing, leaves dying, the whisper of bats’ wings, the slow slither of worms through soil. The village slept, but the world did not. Everything was alive. The very walls watched them.

  Their noses would have led them to the place even had there been no moon. The scent of wet earth, freshly turned, was strong.

  Caleb took the shovel from Letty. Was it not his father whose rest they disturbed?

  He began to dig, but he was as inept with a shovel as he was with a pair of oars. He dug deep, sinking the blade so hard into the heavy clay soil that he could not at once lift its load. His hands slipped on the shaft and the earth tipped back into the hole.

  Letty pushed him aside. She was deft and efficient, making light work of it. She dug swiftly, piling dirt onto the side of the hole. She was waist-deep when the shovel struck something other than earth. Cloth. Flesh.

  With the change in sound came a stench. Putrefaction. Decay. Caleb fought the urge to vomit but Letty, it seemed, had a stronger stomach than he did. She did not even wrinkle her nose.

  There was no coffin for this poor soul: there had been no one to pay for it. He was wrapped in a pauper’s winding sheet and Letty had come ready with a knife. She slit it open and reached inside for the corpse’s hands. Grasping his dead wrists, she held both up for Caleb’s inspection.

  The moon, however full, does not shine as bright as day, no matter what the song says. Yet, even in that cold, grey light he saw that the parson had not lied.

  On the third finger of the corpse’s right hand there was no ring.

  Indeed, there was no finger.

  The digit had been severed: hacked with a knife, the bone broken, the flesh ripped away.

  Such brutality spoke of urgency. Of desperation.

  It spoke of villainy.

  Letty wasted no more time. One glance at Caleb was all: a look of naked fear. Then she was herself again, brisk and business-like, filling in the grave while Caleb helped push earth back in with his bare hands, covering the corpse, treading down the soil so the disturbance would not be observed. He followed her every whispered instruction. The shovel must be wiped clean on the grass. Returned. Their hands must be washed in the river, every trace of churchyard dirt removed from their persons. And all this without making a sound. They must both slide unnoticed into their places, as if they had done nothing but sleep through the long night.

  The next day Caleb would have to go about his aunt’s business in his customary fashion as though he was not burdened with the knowledge that Pa, his Pa, his beloved father, truly was dead.

  And that someone was prepared to go to great lengths to conceal the fact.

  6.

  Knowing he was right and his wits were not addled was no comfort. What he and Letty had uncovered was deeper and darker and more dangerous than any sickness of the mind. Whoever had been so determined to hide Pa’s true identity that they had taken a knife to his dead hand would not hesitate to do the same to Caleb’s living flesh. There was a secret here that someone wished to protect and it would be wise to wipe the entire incident from his mind. For his own safety, for Letty’s, he should forget it.

  But that night as he lay by the fire’s glowing embers, clutching Pa’s puppets to his chest, Caleb could not rid himself of the sight of that corpse: bloated, stinking, and now mutilated. Wrapped in a pauper’s winding sheet, rotting in the cold dark earth, lying in an unmarked grave with nobody to weep at his funeral, nobody to mourn his passing or honour his memory. The parson had not commended the soul of Joseph Chappell into the keeping of the Lord but that of the mythical Thomas Smith. Would the gates of heaven be closed against Pa in consequence?

  There is power in a name. Through the years of his childhood Pa had always encouraged Caleb to find the right names for everything that he felt. Names could tame emotions, confine fears, govern passions. Language was what separated mankind from the brute beasts, Pa said. Words were what connected mankind to God.

  But now there were none. None at all. There was no word, no phrase, no sentence even that was big enough to describe the grief, the anger, the fury that tore at Caleb’s heart. Pa’s life
had been taken and that was hard enough to bear. But this? To steal away his name was beyond enduring! Pa was the best of men, the best of fathers: his name should be honoured. Men should speak of him with respect; they should know of his passing and mark it with tributes and words of praise. Not this. Never this. Joseph Chappell had been wiped out, annihilated. Nothing could be done for Pa. Nothing, nothing, nothing!

  Unless…

  Caleb sat up suddenly. The sack of puppets rolled across the floor.

  Suppose he found out how Pa had drowned? If he could uncover the truth… If he could see justice done… Why, then he could return to Pa his name. Did he not owe him that much?

  Pa had promised to return, come hell or high water. Well, Caleb would make a promise of his own: he’d discover by what strange, twisting path his father had been washed up on the very beach he walked upon. It would be done, whatever the risk, whatever the cost.

  But having made his solemn vow, he hadn’t the slightest idea how to proceed.

  7.

  At around noon the next day Caleb went out to gather driftwood but one glance over the marsh flats showed him that the sea had delivered much more than he alone could carry. He returned to the cottage, calling for Letty to come and help. Anne looked a little troubled, but they were desperately short of firewood. Necessity overcame any other concerns.

  A slow, steady drizzle soaked them while they worked but they had at least a chance of some conversation.

  “Who would have severed Pa’s finger?” he asked her. “The men who carried his body to the parsonage? Who were they?”

  Letty frowned, considering. “It was Stanley and George. They’d have done whatever they were told to, I reckon, but they’re not good at keeping their mouths shut. They’d have likely said something by now.”

  “But who else? The parson?”

  Letty was already shaking her head. She had evidently been giving the matter as much consideration as Caleb and she had the advantage of knowing the people concerned so much better than he did. “You’re taking it from the wrong end.”

  “How so?”

  “When you found him – your Pa – how long did it take you to fetch help?”

  “I ran. But I was distressed and the sand was so sodden – I didn’t move fast.”

  “And you left him lying there?”

  Caleb bridled. “What else could I do?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing. You did what you needed to. But anyone might have come by, see? Cut his finger off before they come and get him. Stanley and George – well, let’s just say they’re not the sharpest men in the village. Whether there was a ring or whether there was a missing finger, I don’t suppose neither of them would have noticed.”

  “But you said the parson was lying.”

  “And so he was. Lying about the tides, I meant. He doesn’t know anything about the river or the sea – he was talking off the top of his head.”

  “But why would he lie about a sailor going in the water at Tawpuddle?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe he never saw the ring. That finger could have been off before he came riding home – anyone could have stopped him along the way, told him you’d lost your mind. I don’t know that he even set foot in the outhouse, did he, to see for himself?”

  “He named the man as Thomas Smith.”

  “Did he though? He said he was going to make enquiries. Doesn’t mean he did it himself. He’d have sent a servant, I expect. I reckon someone’s feeding him stories, telling him there wasn’t a ring, saying it wasn’t your Pa and you’re soft in the head, that it was this Thomas Smith, and him all too willing to believe it.”

  “Who could be spreading such lies?”

  “Don’t know. Truth is, could be just about anybody.”

  A silence fell between them. Caleb, suddenly daunted by the scale of the task he had set himself, had nothing more to say. Letty had filled a basket with wood, yet she did not return to the cottage. Instead she stood, looking out to sea, her eyes seemingly fixed on the island in the bay. He noticed that her mouth twisted – as if she wanted to ask something more, but couldn’t quite bring herself to do so. He didn’t press her. He’d learned from Pa that silence can sometimes be used to great effect.

  Years ago he and Pa had eaten in an inn and when they rose to leave Caleb had discovered that the bottle – which had been brimful of coins – was missing. The innkeeper called all his people together and invited Pa to question them, but Pa merely stood and slowly, slowly, slowly looked from one to the other. At last the kitchen lad broke down in tears, and retrieved the bottle from where he had hidden it. Later, Pa said, “If you shout, if you accuse – why then, folk will defend themselves by instinct. They’ll bluster and lie and convince themselves they’re telling the truth. But if you say nothing people feel they need to fill the silence. It plays on their guilt, their fears. They credit you with all manner of thoughts whether you’re thinking them or not. And then they feel the need to explain themselves.”

  It was a powerful lesson that Caleb had taken to heart. So he stood on the marshy ground not taking his eyes from Letty’s face but uttering not a word until the quiet stretched out to breaking point and she felt compelled to ask, “When did he sail, your Pa?”

  Caleb was taken aback. “I don’t know. They told me nothing at the gaol.”

  “He was in Torcester, wasn’t he?” Letty persisted. “Convicted back in the summer, you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “I expect he left for the colonies not long after.”

  There was another long pause while Letty chewed her lip. Caleb had the impression that she knew something – that she was thinking, speculating, considering how much to reveal. Pa would have let her stew in her own juices so he did the same.

  At last she spoke again. “Where’d he sail from?”

  “I don’t know. I left and walked here like he told me to. I know nothing of what happened to him afterwards.”

  Yet another pause. Yet more lip chewing. And then Letty sighed. “I hadn’t ever seen it before. Can’t get it out of my head. I was down that way, see? Must have been a couple of weeks or so before you showed up. I watched a ship loaded. Cloth. Bales of wool. Nothing out the common line. But then there was this group of convicts, brought up from someplace.”

  Caleb was aghast. “And all these months you have said nothing of this? Did they come from Torcester?”

  “No… At least I don’t think so. Barnford, some folks said, though maybe that was wrong. You know what gossip’s like round here: empty as a barrel of air, most of it. There were others said they’d come from Tordown but probably no one knew for sure. It was just a group of felons, no one cared who they were or where they were from. They were cargo: same as salt cod or bales of wool. I don’t suppose even the crew knew their names. Didn’t seem to matter. There were twelve men. Might be your Pa was one of them.”

  Caleb struggled to understand. Could it be that while he’d been walking, following every twist and turn of the river, Pa had overtaken him on a journey to the county’s north coast?

  If Pa had come by road, if the convicts had been loaded onto a cart … why then, they could probably have made the journey much more quickly than Caleb had been able to. That his father should have sailed from the port so close to Anne’s home was a strange chance. But though Tawpuddle was not the nearest port to Torcester it was the largest, so perhaps it was no stranger than anything else that had happened since that market day.

  To think of Letty watching Pa loaded onto a ship, regarding him with the indifferent curiosity of a stranger, was terrible. “If you’d seen him, you wouldn’t have known him.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” When she looked at Caleb her eyes were full of misery. “Their own mothers wouldn’t have recognized them. They were covered in filth. I’ve never seen men in such a sorry state.”

  They were both quiet for a while, Letty haunted by the memory of what she had seen, Caleb trying to imagine it. At last Letty broke the silence. ??
?I’ll tell you something peculiar. They were in manacles, fetters, all those men, and none of them fitted properly. Those irons were dug right into their skin. Every man-jack of them was bleeding. They were put down in the hold. Chained up, like slaves.”

  The thought was unbearable. “Perhaps Pa found a way to escape. He could swim. Perhaps he thought he could make it back to land.”

  “Maybe. But last night … that body … his wrists weren’t marked. The skin must have healed. I’d say he’d been out of fetters a while before he went in the water.”

  “Pa was a skilled man. Good with his hands. Perhaps they found a use for him. Could they have unchained him? Made him work? Could he have taken a chance and jumped overboard?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “How else could he have got in the water?”

  Letty considered. “Died on board maybe,” she said thoughtfully, but then threw her hands up and blew out a mouthful of air in exasperation. “That doesn’t explain it either! When a man dies on board ship he gets sewn into a canvas shroud. They weigh it down with stones, so it’ll sink to the bottom.” She stared out to the horizon.

  For a moment Letty had a look of Pa: Pa concentrating, settling himself before starting one of his tales. Perhaps once again he was looking at this wrong. The finding of Pa’s body was the end of this story. In order to place events in their correct pattern, in order to make sense of the whole he should begin at the beginning.

  He had little hope that she would recall the name of the ship: dozens of vessels sailed in and out of Tawpuddle on a daily basis and the one she had seen had departed four months or so ago. But he would not know the answer unless he asked the question.

  “Do you recall the name of the ship the convicts were loaded on to?”