The Stonecutter's Daughter

1

Darkness was settling in early on the isle of Portland. Joseph Rushmore rose from his chair near the fire to tap the dottle from his pipe against the smoke-stained stone of the chimney-piece. ‘I’m off out for a bit, Anna.’

‘It’s a good dark night for it.’

‘Aye. As well as the French Brig a packet went down today, lost with all souls, I should imagine. The bay is full of wreckage and bodies.’

‘Poor beggars, but I daresay there’ll be pickings to be had.’

‘Aye, she would have broken up about now. The seas have been treacherous. November of 1838 will go down in the record books as being a bad year for storms and wrecks alike.’

‘The seas are always treacherous hereabouts. Portland soil is full of the drowned. ’Tis not long since the Caroline went down and we buried the Wesley missionary and his wife in Brackenbury churchyard. Sometimes I feel guilty robbin’ the dead.’

‘Don’t be so daft, woman. If we don’t, somebody else soon will.’

‘Aye, I know.’ Fashioning a pair of socks from wool teased and spun from her pair of domestic sheep, Anna gave a sigh as she laid her knitting aside. ‘Most of us profit from the disasters one way or another, we always have. Doesn’t make it right in the eyes of the Lord, though.’

Joseph grinned at that. ‘You silly old puddin’. Indeed, ’tis a shame to let anything go to waste when the Lord rewards us for risking our own lives to save the lives of others. The beach is fairly littered with wrecks and cargo this month. Would you let it all be washed away and sink to the bottom, especially since the roof over your own head is supported from good oak taken from the wrecks. And a damned snug roof it makes, too.’

Indeed, the whole house was snug, for Joseph was a stonecutter and mason and had built the place with his own hands on the field Anna had inherited from her father. It stood in Fortuneswell, overlooking the bay and the expanse of pebble beach to the left. To the right was the towering Verne hill, over which the mist poured like a cataract of milk towards evening.

Like most homes on Portland, theirs was built to withstand the winter storms and the salt-laden spindrift carried from the sea in the wind. Joseph had fitted one block of the local freestone precisely into the next, edge-bedding the cornices and window sills. There was a porch with an arched door and he’d roofed it with slat limestone from Tout quarry. The house had been built with room enough to accommodate the family they’d never had.

Anna couldn’t argue with Joseph’s logic, so she changed tack. ‘What happened to those two young boys they pulled from the water today?’

‘They have relatives,’ Joseph said gently, for the disappointment in her face at their own inability to bear a living child was hard to take. Anna was past forty now and had slipped the last one just two days previously. This time the infant had survived to eight months inside her. A boy it had been, perfect in every way, except he hadn’t drawn breath and his face had had the look of a moon-face about it. Not that Joseph had told Anna that. He’d sewn the boy in a linen shroud so Anna couldn’t look on him and grieve. His body lay in the outhouse waiting for the storm to abate, so Joseph could arrange his burial. ‘George Gray has given those youngsters to the rector’s wife to care for until he can contact their kinfolk.’

Anna, tall, plump and round of face, her greying brown hair tied in an untidy bun at the nape of her neck, pulled a scarf from the hook as he donned his oilskins. ‘Wear this under your collar, Joseph, it will stop your neck chaffing.’

Despite grumbling, Joseph did what he was told, for it was a howler of an evening and the wind was riding around the house, driving the rain this way and that. The storm couldn’t last for ever though. ‘It’ll blow itself out in a day or so, be devilled if it doesn’t.’ He caressed Anna then, his callused fingers stroking gently against her cheek so she turned her lips into his palm to kiss him. ‘You rest whilst I’m gone, my Anna. You should still be abed.’

‘Keeping busy takes my mind off things.’ She made an annoyed noise in the back of her throat. ‘And we’ve got enough troubles without your calling up the devil, Joseph Rushmore. Now, away with you, and don’t you go dealing up the Lugger Inn tonight. You know what a pack of thieves those Barnes brothers are. They buys things cheap, but it costs people dear to buy those same things in the Weymouth marketplace. I might as well have a stall myself. And take that dog with you, the lazy lump is hogging so much of the fire I can smell his fleas roasting.’

Joseph grinned as he whistled to his dog. Rufus immediately leapt to his feet and stretched. Strong-shouldered and sturdy, he was a Portland Sea Dog, bred specially to bring ship’s plunder or contraband ashore. Like most of the islanders, Joseph regarded smuggling as an industry rather than a crime. The cargo of goods washed ashore from wrecks was fair plunder. It was not as if the ships were deliberately lured on to the shoals or rocks. The waters around Portland were treacherous at the best of times, so even the most experienced of skippers could come to grief.

‘And don’t you come home drunk, else I’ll fit the skillet around your backside,’ she called out as the door closed behind him.

In the outhouse, Joseph took a long coiled rope from a hook, setting it around his shoulder and across his chest. For a moment, he gazed with a mixture of anger and regret at the still, shrouded form laid on the bench. Ten cheils, his woman had lost. What had they done to deserve this when his brother had three strong sons to help him in his fishing boats, and a bonny daughter or two to help his wife around the house? He and Anna had loved each other as a man and wife should. They lived as good a life as most around these parts – better than some. They worked hard and always attended church on Sunday.

It was obvious the Lord didn’t intend them to have infants of their own. ‘’Tis a cruel thing for a man and his wife to go through time after time, having their hopes built up then having them dashed down again,’ he said directly to God. ‘Anna has suffered over the years. If you intend to give us an infant to love, let it be soon before we grow too old. If you can’t find it in your heart to do so, then allow Anna to remain barren from now on.’

He fondled the dog’s ear. ‘I’ll be needed back home soon, Rufus, so don’t you lead your master into drinking trouble.’ Dog at his side, Joseph set off downhill – had Anna but known it, with the Barnes brothers and the climb up to the Lugger Inn at Weston the last thing on his mind.

The sou’westerly would be depositing its final bounty on shore before the gale blew itself out. The tide would be at full flow soon and most of the preventative men would be home having their dinners. But, anyway, more often than not they turned a blind eye, for too many were in on the game themselves.

It was the revenue men you had to look out for, for they were armed to the teeth with guns they didn’t hesitate to use, and their cutters were fast. Not that they bothered him, for Joseph had been apprenticed to a quarrymaster, not become a fisherman like his father. Though he had seamanship and muscle enough to oar his elder brother’s sturdy lerret on occasion.

During the day, from the clifftop at Fortuneswell there was a fine view of the shingle beach. Now, the length of it was dotted with flares, and fires were lit to guide survivors ashore and warm their rescuers. The scene was alive with scurrying figures. The sea roared in fury to the shore, to suck noisily at the shingle before spitting it back. The water boiled and foamed, crashing against the rocks behind him and throwing spray high into the air as he walked along its length.

It was too rough for the fishing lerrets to put to sea, even though they were regarded as being unsinkable. As Joseph approached the shore he turned his eyes away from several drowned corpses pulled above the high-tide mark and laid in a row. But one of them drew his glance back. It was a young woman, her clothes torn and sodden, her lips blue tinged and her hair spread like dark strands of seaweed. She looked vulnerable, with one of her breasts uncovered, pale, but swollen and blue veined, as if she’d been suckling a child. She wore no jewellery, but whoever had pulled her from the water would have taken it. He stooped to pull her cloak around her to give her some dignity.

Carts came and went, piled up with wooden planks, canvas, kegs of brandy, anything the scavengers could lay their hands on. The beach would be picked clean within a few days, as if ants had dismembered the corpse of a cockroach.

Joseph’s brother, George, was with his boat, passing kegs of brandy along a line of men, to be deposited on a cart. He nodded. ‘Brother Joseph.’

‘Brother George.’

George stopped to gaze through dark eyes at the water after the last keg was handed over. Glumly he said, ’She be having a fine old tantrum now, but she’ll blow herself out before too long. I’m not risking the boat tonight. ’Sides, I’ve got to get this lot hidden away from the revenue men. I’ll be down here at first light, though.’ He passed over a bottle of French brandy, wiping the neck on his palm. ‘Here, warm your cockles on this, Joseph. It’d be a shame to waste it, though there be plenty more littering the beach.’

‘Anna will shrivel my ears if I get myself too spirited up. Last time I forgot to shut the front door and the wind blew the furniture straight out through the back door. It took me a week to find it and I had to swim all the way to the Channel Islands.’

George grinned at him and spat into the pebbles at his feet, his phlegm stained brown from the tobacco he chewed. ‘You tell a bleddy good tale, our Joseph. The last one you told my youngsters kept them shivering in their beds every night for a month.’

Tipping up the bottle, Joseph took a swig and sighed as he felt the liquor gently warm him. ‘It’s a rare drop.’

‘That it is.’ George waved a hand at him when he tried to hand it back. ‘There be plenty more where that came from. You keep it.’

As Joseph walked along the shingle, sipping at the brandy, he recovered several more bottles. He slid one into his trouser pocket before burying the rest in a hole above the high-tide mark. He also recovered a couple more bodies, dragging them up the beach to where they could be found, stripping them of their valuables, but leaving their identification intact.

It was a sad business to end up in the hands of strangers, who neither knowed nor cared. He thought of the young woman, who would be buried in the Kimberlin cemetery above Chiswell, along with the bottom folk and other strangers. ‘Time to go home and get the cart before the ebb,’ he said to Rufus. ‘I wished I’d thought to bring it with me.’

The dog whined and pressed against him, his body quivering and his eyes and nose intent on the sea.

‘What is it, boy, what do you see?’ Joseph saw it himself then, a white bird floating on the water. ‘’Tis only a seagull.’

Rufus gave a sharp bark and Joseph looked again. Odd, the bird was, looking as if it was standing on something as it spun this way and that. It resembled a gleaming white figurehead on a small boat beneath it – and that boat was heading straight for the rocks beneath the cliff.

As a long wailing cry came to him on the wind, goosebumps trickled coldly down his spine. Joseph had never heard a gull cry like that before, as if a spirit had risen from the deep. And he remembered his father telling him a tale of a white gull that carried the souls of drowned seamen, but only if they’d lived good lives.

As the object rose to the crest of the next wave, the ragged clouds above him parted and the moon appeared. But only for a moment, long enough to give him a clearer glimpse of the boat, which was lashed between two wooden kegs tied together. ‘It can’t be a boat because it’s too small, and it has a hood,’ he whispered, denying his first impression. ‘It must be a chest of some sort with the lid open.’

And a chest often contained valuables! Taking the rope from his shoulders Joseph tied it around the dog. ‘Fetch it back to me, boy.’

Without hesitation, Rufus plunged into the maelstrom of water. Joseph could feel the undertow dragging against the rope, but Rufus was strong and was bred for such conditions. He dived through the waves rather than pit himself against them and, soon, his strong jaws took a firm grip on the rope lashing on the side of one of the kegs. With a raucous squawk, the seagull soared skywards, circling and sailing on the wind above them as Joseph hauled the dog and his plunder ashore.

God had answered his prayer, Joseph realized as he whispered, ‘Be damned if it’s not a cradle.’ And what he’d thought was a lid was an oilskin buttoned and tied over what was left of some fancy frilled curtains – a hastily rigged sail.

The infant inside was saturated with water, which lapped over its stomach. Face red and screwed up from crying, its body was bound tightly to the cradle by a length of rope wound several times around its middle, and propped against a pillow so its head couldn’t be immersed unless the sea broached the craft. Arms and legs punched at the storm.

Someone had done this out of desperation, knowing they were not going to survive but trying to give their infant a chance at life. It was only by good luck that the little craft hadn’t overturned or completely filled with water.

Joseph stared down at the distressed baby for a second, then freed the infant from its restraints. ‘By God, you’re a skinny un,’ he told it, ‘and loud with it, too, though I daresay the paddy you’re in has kept you from freezing. Best we get you back to my Anna as soon as we can.’ Dipping his finger in brandy he placed it in the baby’s mouth for a few moments, allowing it to suck at the warming liquid. Then, without bothering to undress it, he wrapped the child firmly in his scarf and placed the bundle in his sou’wester. ‘Here,’ he said, giving it to Rufus to carry. ‘’Tis precious, mind, so don’t you go dropping it.’ The kegs were half full, he realized as he cut them free. He’d pick them up later.

Grunting, he hefted the cradle in his arms. It was heavier than he’d thought it would be, fashioned as it was from solid wood, and a good deal more fancy than the cane basket prepared for his own infant, he thought, as he saw the carvings.

‘It’s heavy at the bottom,’ Joseph muttered, his hands finding purchase under the rockers. ‘The reason for the half empty kegs became clear then. The weight of the liquid would have remained in the bottom, acting as extra ballast and keeping the little craft stable.

Joseph set off back up the hill with long strides, all the time thinking that the Lord had answered his prayer, though his conscience would keep denying it. The infant protested all the way, the sound almost swallowed by the howling wind.

By the time he reached his house, the Lord had won the battle, as Joseph had counted on him doing. He couldn’t stop grinning as he wondered what his Anna would say.

‘Keep the girl as our own! Have you gone daft in the head, Joseph Rushmore?’

‘Who’s to know she ain’t ours, since I told nobody about the one in the outhouse, and as far as folks know you still be waitin’ to birth ours? He tenderly touched a roughened finger against a dark curl. ‘Look how bonny she is. And she has the same coloured eyes as you.’

‘Mine are a lighter blue,’ Anna pointed out, her voice softening as she gazed at the child. ‘What if her mother comes lookin’ for her?’

‘Her mother is lying on the beach, as cold as marble. I covered her up, for her breasts were all swollen with milk and it didn’t seem decent to leave her exposed to the stares of men. Young, she was, and a beauty. I reckon it was her husband who tied the babe to the cradle, for it was seaman’s knots he tied her with.’ His voice dropped. ‘Anna, God meant this child for us, but you’d have had to have been there to have knowed it for sure. He sent a seagull to guide her cradle ashore, and I believe that seagull was the soul of her father.’

They both shivered as they gazed at each other, their eyes conveying the same message of conspiracy. Sometimes, it was easier on the conscience to heed signs and instinct than use common sense and logic. Even the church believed in signs and matters of the spirit.

Almost convinced, Anna muttered, ‘Poor lamb. Aye, could be you’re right, Joseph. Perhaps she was meant for us. We can certainly provide her with a good home.’

Anna had dried the infant, and had dressed her in the clothes she’d prepared for their own. Amongst the wet clothes she had found a brooch pinned to the infant’s wrap, fashioned in the shape of a rose, picked out in sparkling red stones. She had hidden it safely away. Not because she wanted to deceive Joseph, but because he would sell it. It was a pretty piece for the girl to have when she was grown, and Anna wasn’t about to deprive her new daughter of it.

With a child warm and snug in her arms, Anna felt the call of nature as the tiny mouth nudged against her bodice for sustenance. Her breasts throbbed with the need to satisfy the child, who made frustrated cries as her head turned blindly this way and that.

Could she feed the infant? Her teats were seeping milk after the stillbirth and were hard and sore. If she could feed the girl she would know for sure the Lord had meant it to be, she thought. Bringing the infant under her shawl she opened her bodice and placed the girl against her breast. Immediately, its mouth closed on to her and it began to suckle. Anna felt the pull of it reach to the very pit of her stomach.

Tears trickled down her face as she felt the fulfilment of being a mother after all this time of hope and disappointment. After a few moments, her other nipple began to secrete milk against her bodice. She closed her eyes and basked in the contentment this simple act of nature brought her. Any lingering doubts she’d harboured fell away from her. Joseph was right. It was meant to be. God had sent her this infant to care for. Oblivious to her husband’s presence she began to rock back and forth in her chair, humming a lullaby.

In the chair opposite, Joseph smiled to himself as he rose to his feet. He had another task to perform. ‘I’m taking the dog cart down to the beach. There’s some fine liquor to be had and the ebb tide will leave behind what it doesn’t want. And I’ll make sure the woman doesn’t go to her grave with her arms empty. I’ll give her our son to hold.’

‘Aye, it’ll be nice for them to have each other. If you see George again, let it out that the babe has been safely born, like. I’m of a mind to call her Joanna after us. And I like the name Rose because it’s pretty, like her.’

‘Joanna Rose Rushmore,’ Joseph said, tasting it on his tongue. ‘’Tis a name fit for fine folk, and here was me thinkin’ that if I ever had a daughter I’d call her Hannah, after my late mother.’

‘As if I’d call her after that bad-tempered besom. She’ll have her own name. It will be Joanna Rose and no arguing,’ Anna said firmly.

Joseph chuckled. ‘No arguing? Can’t say I ever met anybody called that before.’

‘Oh, get away with you. Sometimes you’re as daft as a trapped snalter. Though, come to think of it, those sweet little birds ain’t fool enough to go running around in this weather, let alone get caught in the traps, for I hear tell they go to somewhere called Africa in the winter, where it’s warm.’

Joseph’s eyes twinkled with amusement now he’d got a rise out of her. ‘Have it your own way, woman. You always do.’

Dear Joseph, Anna thought as her husband left the room. But she had caught a glimpse of their son’s face before Joseph had taken him away, and she was glad he’d not lived to face the sly taunts of the islanders.

Twisting a dark, wispy curl about her finger, she whispered to the infant. ‘I’ve got it into my head that you should be called Rose. Perhaps that was your mother’s name, for ’tis young you are to have a brooch of your own, and such a pretty and precious one it is. From now on you are to be called after Joseph and myself, because we’ve made you ours. ’Tis right and proper that you should have your dead mother’s name, too, so her spirit can find you and guide you through life. So, should anyone ask you, Joanna Rose Rushmore is your name.’

Joanna Rose stopped suckling. She gazed towards the strange voice, her recent ordeal already forgotten now she was comfortable again. Her eyes were dark blue and remained fixed on the woman holding her, for she was able to focus for small amounts of time. Her mouth pulled down at the corners and she gave a soft cry of alarm. But instinctively she knew the smiling mouth and kind blue eyes didn’t threaten, and the arms supporting her were soft and comfortable. She was tired, too, for the hunger had returned and she’d been forced to suckle harder at the alien teat to produce her supper.

The infant was smaller than the son she had recently given birth to, Anna thought, for his head had been large. Joanna couldn’t be more than a month old. Holding her baby protectively against her heart she began to sing her a lullaby.

After a moment, the child offered her a tremulous smile, then she turned her face to the lure of the teat and began to suckle again.

Tears filled Anna’s eyes, for that moment of acceptance had been sweet. ‘You’re a survivor, Joanna Rose, and don’t you forget it,’ Anna whispered softly against the girl’s ear.

2

Alexander Morcant smiled as he gazed out of the window of the London office of the Darsham and Morcant Shipping Company.

Even though he had only just turned ten, he appreciated the richly glowing wood-panelled walls, the buttoned leather chairs, the heavy brass-based lamps with their glass chimneys, and the lingering aroma of tobacco smoke.

The company was run by the capable twenty-two-year-old Tobias Darsham, who had reluctantly relinquished the more exciting life the sea had to offer to help run the London office after Alexander’s grandfather, a man of fierce gaze, bristling eyebrows and boundless energy, had suffered a sudden and debilitating paralysis.

The company founder, John Darsham, whose portrait hung on the wall behind Tobias’s desk, had been dead a year since. Tobias looked remarkably like his father, with his astute grey eyes. Of medium height, slim and wiry, he possessed a smile of great charm, which he used sparingly. Tobias Darsham had an air that commanded respect, and he dealt honestly with himself and others.

The flames leaping up the chimney from the open fireplace crackled and danced, sending light and shadows leaping about the walls, making it cosy despite the dreary weather outside the window.

‘You did well in your exams, lad.’

Alexander turned to smile at Tobias. ‘I’m lucky, scholarship comes easily to me. I’m not so good on the practical side, though.’

‘Have you stood on the button yet?’

His uncle was referring to the terrifying punishment of making a cadet stand on the topmost point of the yardarm. At the thought of the ordeal, for the button wasn’t much bigger than a dinner plate and hardly had room for the feet as it swayed in the wind. Alex’s smile fled. ‘I have.’

‘And?’

‘As you can see, I survived it. I was sick afterwards, though.’

‘So was I when I was put through it. It’s a test of a man’s courage as well as a punishment, and you passed that with flying colours. A seaman who lacks the stomach to climb the rigging is a danger to himself and to the rest of the crew.

‘I have no intention of following my father into the profession. I suffer too readily from seasickness.’

‘Aye, I know. I’ve never thought a life at sea would suit you, young Alex. Neither did my father. Before he died he told your grandfather and father so in no uncertain terms, when you were first enrolled at the marine school.’ Tobias grinned. ‘ Alexander goes green around the gills every time he looks at the ocean, he yelled at them. He should be trained to manage the affairs of the company. Someone might take advantage of the fact that there isn’t a Morcant sailing a desk to rob us blind, and it might be my son, Tobias Darsham, here. ’

‘What did my father say to that, sir?’

‘Lucian just laughed and told him the training would not go amiss and you could make up your own mind when you were older. It seems as if you have.’

‘Aye, I have. And yours was made up for you.’

‘It was, but although I still get a hankering to go to sea, it’s not part of my blood. A voyage round the coast now and again will replenish the salt in me, but your father and brother need to breathe it in constantly.’ Tobias’s eyes probed the depths of his. ‘Something is bothering you, lad. D’you want to talk about it?’

Alexander hesitated, then told Tobias what troubled him. ‘One of the cadets slipped and fell to his death from the button.’

‘It happens.’

Turning to gaze out of the window again, Alexander muttered, ‘How can you be so calm about it? It didn’t have to happen. They knew he was terrified and didn’t want to go up on the yardarm, but they made him. It was one of the boys from the workhouse. Nobody seemed to care that he died.’

‘Aye, well. Life at sea is a dangerous profession. People die and you have to train yourself not to mourn.’

Alexander caught a reflection of Tobias in the window. He liked him a lot. Tobias was always there for him when he had a problem, unlike his father or brother, who were almost strangers to him, for he only saw them on occasion.

‘What if it had been me who died?’

‘It wasn’t you, Alex, and thank God for it. If it had been we would have had to accept that someone we love had left us and wouldn’t be coming back. That wouldn’t mean we didn’t care. Would you like me to talk to your father about a change of school? Since you have no intention of going to sea, Rugby might suit you much better, hmm? The headmaster is Leonard Arnold, who insists his pupils receive a well-rounded education to develop intellectual ability, moral principle and gentlemanly conduct. The school has a good reputation.’

‘Described like that it sounds just the place a boy wouldn’t want to be.’ Alexander’s eyes began to shine. ‘However, my friend and neighbour, Anthony Grantham, is being educated at Rugby School and he likes it fine. So I expect I would like it there, too. Thank you, Tobias. I’m sure my father will listen to you.’

Tobias didn’t think he’d have any trouble persuading Lucian.

‘Any sign of the Cormorant yet?’ he asked the boy.

‘No, sir, but I’m looking forward to meeting your wife and daughter.’

A wide smile spread across Tobias’s face. So was he. It had been three months since he’d last set eyes on Honor. Over the past few months he’d moved into the house his father had left him, furnished it and had it decorated from top to bottom. Honor’s portrait smiled down at him from the drawing-room wall. Her eyes reflected the vivid blue of cornflowers, her hair was a tumbling torrent of darkness. As for his daughter, he had not set eyes on her at all.

Tobias had met Honor Palmer in New York and she had swiftly become the love of his life. Barely eighteen, his bride had quickly