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  ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘You’re sure of it?’

  She nodded, and with that my last hope sunk, for none would believe my word against hers, not when Aunt Madgie had come forward as a witness against me. ‘God damn you, Martha Tregaskis!’ I cried.

  Precious minutes had been lost. I reached the quay and rushed down the steps onto the beach where the dying embers of the bonfire glowed through fine spray. There was light enough to show Gideon Stone standing by a mooring post, the very same he’d leant on when we’d first talked all those months ago. Flakes of ash fell like snow all around him. The feeling of that time came back to me with great force, and rage mingled with longing in my heart.

  ‘This is the last I’ll see of you,’ he said.

  ‘You have the whole world to save. I wish you luck with it.’

  ‘My only wish is to save your soul for all eternity.’

  ‘I can’t wait that long. I’m not giving up all for Perfect Love in the hereafter. I’m a feeling woman and I want love in this life, perfect or otherwise. And if not love, then at least life.’

  ‘I wish you knew how hard this is for me.’

  ‘When you sober up, you’ll see it all in a new light.’

  ‘I’m sober now, believe me, and miserable as any man that ever lived.’

  From out in the darkness, Nathaniel called, ‘We must make haste, Mary.’

  As I walked towards the water’s edge, Gideon called out to me once more. ‘I will find you. I’ll come to Looe.’

  I turned to face him, one last time. ‘No, Gideon. When the moment is passed, you’ll think better of it. I shan’t wait for you another time, only for you not to show.’

  ‘I’d get on that boat with you if I could, Mary. God knows I would! But my every limb shakes with terror at the prospect of being in a boat again.’

  Without looking back, I waded out towards Nathaniel. He leant over the gunwales and lifted me into the boat. I’d never put to sea before, and was perhaps the first woman from the village ever to do so. The sea wasn’t firm and steady underfoot like the land, but shifting and slippery. I sat on the bench to the fore, and heard Nathaniel in the stern grappling with the oars, before turning the boat about with short strokes.

  There was a loud sploshing out in the water. A figure was wading towards us. Nathaniel stepped forward, his bulk dark against the night sky. He had an oar in his hands, ready to bring it down on the head of a Preventive Man, if need be. The wading man reached the boat and gripped the sides, hauling himself up until his head and shoulders leant into the boat. Then he swung his legs over the side and landed with a great thud on his back, setting the boat swaying wildly from side to side.

  It was Gideon. He crawled on hands and knees in the bottom of the boat and raised himself with a great to-do onto the bench alongside me.

  ‘Shall I throw the fool overboard?’ shouted Nathaniel.

  ‘Not just yet, Nat!’ I cried. I turned to Gideon. ‘What do you think you’re about?’ I said. ‘Get out of this boat, now.’

  ‘You heard her. Jump out, preacher,’ shouted Nathaniel. ‘We’ve no time to waste.’

  ‘I’m coming with you, Mary,’ said Gideon.

  ‘Are you mazed?’ I said.

  ‘I shall hold fast to you, even if it kills me,’ he stammered. He was shaking so hard the bench wobbled beneath us.

  ‘He’ll get us all killed!’ shouted Nathaniel. ‘Listen to him, the fellow’s scared out of his wits. I hadn’t reckoned on a chicken-hearted land lubber aboard.’ But despite what he said, I heard the scrape of the oars in the rowlocks and the splash of the paddles and I knew he was rowing us out of the harbour. Queer thumps sounded under the hull and I could only wonder what lurked in those unseen depths. ‘The sand bar be off to the west, so it’s only they rocks yonder we need worry about,’ Nathaniel shouted.

  ‘God help us!’ groaned Gideon.

  Soon after, the wind began buffeting my ears and cold spray stung my face. We had cleared the harbour. The boat pitched and rolled harder than before, creaking and straining as if it might split in two at any moment. My stomach lurched at every rise and fall of the swell.

  Nathaniel moved over to the boat’s mast. ‘We’re gathering steerageway, I durst break out the sail,’ he said.

  By the time he’d gone back to the tiller, the sea was slapping against the sides of the boat as it heeled to the wind. Then I thought I heard gunshot, and for a fleeting moment feared the King’s men were on our tail, but it was only the canvas flapping and cracking in the wind. Gideon and I were thrown from side to side and my knuckles ached from clutching the bench beneath me. Every time the boat leant over, the pair of us slid together, and gallons more freezing water slopped inside. Gideon’s head was bowed, and under the roar of the wind I heard him pray for deliverance.

  Perhaps Nathaniel heard his prayers, for he called out, ‘We’ll have rounded the Lizard before it gets light. I know these waters better than any Preventive Man.’

  Soon we got onto a more even keel, and I was able to collect my thoughts. I remembered the day I first saw Gideon lashed to a barrel in the harbour, and I saw what it must have cost him to get on board a boat again. And now he’d set himself on a course with no way back.

  I put my mouth to his ear. ‘It looks like we shall have to do for each other after all,’ I said. I put my hand on his, and felt how firmly he was gripping the bench.

  Not daring to move his hands, Gideon leant towards me and perhaps meant to kiss me, but at that very moment the boat pitched and threw us apart.

  ‘How confoundedly strange that it should turn out this way,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps it was meant,’ I said. ‘God works in a mysterious way.’

  We sat on our bench to the fore of the boat as the ropes strained and the sail swelled, pulling us towards the new day on choppy waters. To the east a thin grey line showed on the horizon, the coming dawn. From where I sat with my back to the future, I could see the village where I’d spent my whole life. It was a dimly lit island afloat in the night, while the rest of the world was no more than a dream.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the writers and tutors at New Writing South, in particular Susannah Waters for her help with an early draft, to my agent David Headley, and to everyone at HarperCollins HQ, in particular Kate Mills for safely steering Wrecker out of the harbour and into open water.

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