At the moment, her eyes held nothing but agonising pain. It was obvious she had suffered unbearably, but Ralph did not ask her about the course her life had taken. He could not let her become his responsibility.

  ‘Three years ago you and I met in this bay, on this beach. We met under difficult circumstances. But that does not mean that we have anything in common. There is nothing between us now.’

  ‘There is your boy!’ Ann exclaimed.

  Harry had gone off again and was running in circles to make himself dizzy.

  ‘I told you before, he is not mine.’

  ‘You saved his life.’

  ‘We survived the same ordeal. That is a different thing. I gave him to you – he is yours now.’

  Ann took a step back. A light had kindled in her eyes, the fierce glow of anger. ‘How can you be so cruel?’ she said. ‘Have you never been desperate? Did you never find yourself with nothing – your home lost, your loved ones torn away?’

  ‘Desperate?’ Ralph echoed. ‘You do not know what I have suffered. But I have survived.’

  ‘Surely, not without the kindness of strangers,’ Ann snapped at him, her face burning with rage.

  ‘I have nothing to give you. The clothes on my back – that is all I own.’

  ‘I heard you speaking to that captain. You have enough to buy a passage away from here.’

  ‘I bought it on promises and hope.’

  ‘And hope is more than I have. Take me and Harry with you.’

  ‘You do not know where we are going.’

  ‘It must be better than this place,’ she said.

  ‘It is a wilderness. A wild land, inhabited by wilder animals. Every day will be life or death.’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘You think I do not know about fighting an untamable land? About hardship?’

  ‘It is no place for a woman.’

  ‘If it is no place for a woman then it is no place for a man,’ she retorted, with a steel that Ralph had not noticed before. ‘There is nothing you can do that I cannot.’

  Marius, who had been listening a little distance away, looked up the track, shifting impatiently.

  ‘Maybe we should bring her with us,’ he said. ‘A cook would be useful.’

  ‘And what about the child?’

  ‘He would come too,’ said Ann.

  ‘No.’ Ralph recoiled. He picked at the scars on his cheek. ‘I will not have him with us.’

  Ann stared at him. She could not fathom the hatred he seemed to have for the boy, but she could feel it blazing off him like the heat of a furnace. He would never yield to argument.

  At that moment, Ann understood that if she wanted to get what she needed from Ralph, a passage out of Port Elizabeth, she would have to find another way.

  ‘You have not heard the last of me,’ she declared. She turned and walked away, Harry trotting after her.

  Marius watched her go. ‘Are you sure that was right?’

  ‘I am not taking her and that child where we are going,’ said Ralph.

  ‘What if she goes to the governor? She knows your name, hey? What if she says she has seen Ralph Courtney and two of his friends here in Port Elizabeth? What if the governor sends some of his soldiers to investigate? I do not want to find myself breaking rocks on Robben Island again.’

  ‘It is only one more day. Tomorrow, we will be gone,’ said Ralph, but even he could hear the doubt behind his words.

  A gust of wind blew spray in Ralph’s face as he sat in the longboat and watched Port Elizabeth recede. ‘I told you we would get out in time,’ he said to Marius as he watched the settlement slumber in the mid-afternoon sun. ‘The woman did not raise the alarm.’

  The Dutchman was sitting on the bench beside him, looking unhappy. ‘Say that again when we are out of sight of the English.’ Marius had always hated being on the water, and his experience of escaping Robben Island had not altered his feelings towards it.

  They had spent the last twenty-four hours waiting for the roar of the cannons from the fort, for the sound of soldiers going door to door, hunting for the men who had escaped Robben Island and killed two of the governor’s men. The sale of the horses had been easily completed – Ralph had taken the first price he was offered, a paltry sum – but then, as he watched the young, blond farmer lead the nags away, grinning at his good fortune, Ralph’s heart had begun to pound in his chest. Surely, it was only a matter of time before word of his presence in Port Elizabeth reached the governor’s ear? Too many people had heard his name in the winkel. It was not possible that Ann Waite hadn’t given him away.

  Ralph shuddered, thinking of the last time he had been in a boat in this bay: close to death, with a dead woman and a dying child for company. That had been an ending, the conclusion of the first part of his life. Now, with the Farewell’s crew rowing him out to the ship, he felt a new beginning. He saw now that the events in between were merely an interlude, nothing of significance. They had simply served to bring him back here, to open the next chapter of his life.

  It would have been easier if he had not run into the woman, and the boy. Unease prickled his skin as he cursed the chance that had brought them together. Lady Fate, twisting her knife. They did not belong in this new life.

  The longboat bumped against the ship’s hull. The Farewell was a small vessel that sat low in the water even in ballast. With a full load, Ralph could almost see over her side when he stood. Two steps took him up the ladder and onto her deck.

  Captain Conway intended to wring every penny of profit from the voyage. The cargo had filled up the hold and spilled out on deck, which was piled with chests and sacks. A hen coop took up much of her fo’c’s’le, and a cow was tethered near her capstan. The crew would struggle to do their duties.

  ‘I heard men in the winkel offering three to one that she does not return,’ said Marius. ‘And they had no takers.’

  ‘Then let us hope we beat the odds.’ Ralph had sailed aboard East Indiamen, Chinese junks, Bengal smugglers, Baltimore schooners and every craft in between. He had seen worse ships – but not many.

  Conway approached, stepping around the cargo. He did not look happy to see his new passengers.

  ‘Do you have your fee?’

  Ralph handed him a small purse. Conway felt its weight and frowned. Ralph had sold the horses for a fraction of their value, but it was hard to find a buyer corrupt or simple enough to overlook questions about the animals’ provenance.

  ‘That is all I have. The rest will come when—’

  Ralph broke off. His face went pale. He stared over Conway’s shoulder as if he had seen a ghost.

  ‘What are they doing here?’

  Ann and Harry stood on the deck. A mound of cargo nearly obscured them – but the ship’s size meant there was nowhere to hide. Ann met Ralph’s gaze and returned it defiantly. Conway looked between them, puzzled.

  ‘She came aboard an hour ago. She said you had engaged her as your cook.’

  ‘You . . .’ Ralph clenched his fists, as if trying to hold back something that threatened to burst out of him. ‘You brought the child?’

  ‘Do you know where we are going?’ Jobe was more pragmatic. ‘It is no place for women and children.’

  ‘When the trekboere venture beyond the frontier, they take their families with them,’ Marius countered. ‘Some of our women are stronger than any man.’

  ‘No.’ Ralph was raging, almost out of control. ‘I will not take them.’ He stared at Harry, though if the boy felt the anger turned upon him it did not seem to trouble him. He tugged against his mother’s grip like a dog straining on the leash, gazing at the ship with a look of wide-eyed wonder.

  ‘It is not your decision to make,’ said Ann, who had remained calm as the men discussed her like a bill of goods. ‘Conway is the master, and he says who sails aboard his ship.’

  A part of her marvelled to hear her own confidence. In the past, she would not have dared defy a man like Ralph Courtney. She would have submitted meekly, and afterwards regretted her cowardice. But she had changed for good. Working the land in the boiling sun had forged new steel in her; loss and grief had quenched it to something hard and adamant. Ralph’s appearance in Port Elizabeth was a sign, she was sure of it, a lifeline out of her predicament. She would not let it go.

  ‘Boat approaching!’

  A sailor’s cry broke the silence on the main deck. Conway glanced where the lookout was pointing. A longboat was pulling across the bay, with half a dozen men standing in the bow. They wore red coats, with white crossbelts and brass buttons gleaming in the sun.

  ‘The garrison.’ Ralph swore.

  The news must have arrived from Cape Town that afternoon. In Port Elizabeth, it would not have been hard to pinpoint three strange men – two white, one black – who had arrived the previous day, even if no one remembered the name of Ralph Courtney from the winkel.

  A smaller man, neatly dressed in a blue coat, sat on the thwart beside the soldiers.

  ‘Who is that man?’ Marius asked.

  Conway took a spyglass from the rack and trained it on the boat. He swore.

  ‘That is Mr Francis, the customs officer.’

  ‘Do you know him?’ Jobe asked.

  ‘I have been doing everything I can to avoid him.’ Conway turned to the mate. ‘Put on all sail. We cannot let him get aboard.’

  ‘He will be here before we can get the anchor up,’ the mate protested.

  ‘Then cut the cable,’ said Ralph, realising the imminent danger.

  Conway did not take kindly to strangers giving orders on his ship, but he had no time to argue. If the customs officer got aboard, he would find the ship unregistered, the name of Farewell as thin as a coat of paint, and cargo in the hold for which he had no tax certificates. Also, there was the small matter of his passengers.

  Conway barked his orders. The crew raced aloft; sails dropped and snapped taut. The boatswain took a huge boarding axe and chopped the thick anchor cable like a tree trunk.

  Harry clutched Ann’s arm. His face was bright with excitement. ‘Are we going away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Once they were out to sea, Ralph would have no choice but to take them. Ralph Courtney was a brute, a ruffian – and now, it seemed, a criminal, too – but he was the best chance she had.

  But perhaps they would not even reach the open sea. The Farewell, so heavily loaded, was struggling to get under way; the men in the longboat were maybe half a cable length off. If they captured the Farewell, they might arrest Ann as Ralph’s accomplice. They would throw her in gaol – or worse, depending on the nature of his crimes.

  Panic seized her. To bring Harry aboard a ship, bound for an uncharted land, with a gang of dangerous men she did not know: how could she have done it? Desperation had driven her to madness.

  Ann ran to the side of the boat and looked down. All she saw was the churning sea. If she jumped with Harry now they would surely drown or, worse, be dragged under the ship first and then drowned. There was no way back.

  White veins of foam spread from the ship’s hull. The Farewell gathered headway. The chasing longboat slipped back. The men on the oars were strong, but they could not keep pace with a ship under full sail in a brisk breeze. They began to falter as they saw their effort was hopeless. In a moment, they would turn back.

  The man in the bow, with a lieutenant’s epaulette, snatched a rifle from one of his men and aimed it at the brig. A parting shot, no more; from a rocking boat, against a distant target, he could not hope to hit anything on deck.

  Fire spat from the barrel. With a mother’s instinct, even before the sound reached them, Ann threw herself over Harry and smothered him to the deck.

  Harry writhed under her, but she did not release him – she was expecting more shots from the longboat. She looked up, feeling a warmth and a wetness spreading across her back. One of the crew – a large, sandy-haired man with a mermaid tattoo – stood above her. He must have been watching the chasing boat from behind Ann. Now he looked down with a quizzical expression, staring in shock at the blood that was pumping out of the hole in his chest and showering over Ann.

  The shot had gone straight into his heart. He toppled over on top of her. Ann screamed, but the dead man’s body muffled the sound. Her dress grew hot and sticky against her skin as his blood spread through it; his weight crushing her against her child. Harry cried out beneath her, the weight of the two adults pinning him painfully to the deck. He would surely suffocate. How was this man so heavy? How was there so much blood in him? Ann felt her strength failing. She could not breathe; she felt the sailor’s death seeping into her.

  Suddenly, the weight was lifted from her chest. Ann gasped instinctively as she felt the sweet sea air fill her lungs. She opened her eyes and saw Ralph, who had pulled the corpse away. Harry got up, bawling. She wanted to hug her boy, but her skirts were soaked with blood.

  Climbing to her feet, Ann turned to Ralph. ‘You must take me back,’ she said.

  Ralph gave her a cool look. ‘Two minutes ago you insisted on coming with me.’

  She pointed to the dead man. ‘We must return to port so we can give him a Christian burial, and see justice done on his murderer.’

  ‘His murderer?’ Ralph said scornfully. ‘Did you not see who was in the boat? The customs officer will swear that he was trying to enforce the king’s laws, and all the other men will back him to the hilt. It is not so far from the truth, after all.’

  ‘Then what do you mean to do?’

  ‘I intend to follow my path. I will go to Nativity Bay and make my fortune.’ He cast his eyes over Ann and Harry. A tremor went through the scars on his face as he took in the sobbing boy. ‘It seems you are coming with us.’

  Behind him, the ship’s crew had swiftly bundled up the corpse in a hammock. The master said a few words, and then they hoisted it over the side. Ann watched it splash into the water, and wept at this reminder of the daughter she had buried on the voyage from England.

  Every journey ends in death, a voice whispered in her mind. She knew she should not think this way, but the more she tried to silence the voice, the more insistent it became. The baby, her kind, loving husband Frank, now this innocent sailor. Each time, others had died and she had lived. How many more would have to die before she found peace?

  INDIAN OCEAN

  T

  hey beat up the coast, day after day. For many hundreds of miles, they saw nothing but barren land broken by black rocks shelving up in inaccessible cliffs. Occasionally at night they saw fires breaking the darkness, and Ralph wondered at the unknown tribes who lived there; by day, they saw no other ships, for most vessels would keep further out to sea. Conway was always alert to the least change in the wind.

  ‘If we get caught in an easterly, we’ll be smashed to pieces before you can say “spit”.’

  But there were no gales or storms. Instead, they had to contend with light, baffling winds that had them sailing on all points of the compass to try and make headway. They spent days changing course, setting and furling sails, but when Ralph checked the sextant, he found that they had made little progress and were only just advanced of their last position.

  The Farewell was a small ship, and the space below decks was filled with cargo. The passengers had to find room on deck, cheek by jowl with the crew.

  The dead sailor was quickly forgotten. His possessions were auctioned off the same afternoon he died. No one spoke of him. Once, when Ann mentioned him, Ralph furrowed his brow as if struggling to remember.

  ‘Does a human life mean nothing to you?’ she asked him.

  ‘I have seen a lot of men die,’ he answered curtly. ‘Good men, some of them – and some not so good. You cannot mourn them all.’

  Ann could not forget the sailor so easily. She was beset by nightmares. Every night she dreamed that he crawled into the ship, with blue stones for eyes and seaweed hanging from him like rags. Then she would see that it was not the sailor but Frank, risen from the grave where she had buried him. He slithered on top of her where she lay on deck, soaking her with seawater, pressing his black mouth on hers so that she could not scream until she woke.

  In contrast to Ann, Harry was simply a happy, boisterous boy. By the end of the day he was too tired to be troubled by nightmares. He treated the ship as his own private playground. He darted down hatches and hid in the longboats; he turned newly coiled ropes into cat’s cradles and put tarry handprints over the freshly scrubbed planking. There was a time when Ann turned her back and he climbed halfway up the rigging before anyone noticed, and had to be hauled down by the boatswain. He was fearless, mischievious and made twice as much work for the crew as they would have had otherwise, but he always had a wide smile on his face and delight in his eyes; they could not begrudge him his antics.

  Ralph, meanwhile, seemed daily to grow more irritated by the boy. And somehow this made things worse. Harry seemed drawn to Ralph and the more Ralph tried to avoid him, the more Harry sought him out. He followed him like a shadow, fraying Ralph’s patience. Once, when Harry darted under Ralph’s legs while playing, Ann saw Ralph raise his hand to strike him – not a reproving cuff, but the sort of blow that would have laid a grown man out cold. Ann was too far away to intervene, and luckily Ralph mastered himself before he followed through, but Ann never forgot the raw hatred she saw on Ralph’s face in that moment. As if he wanted to murder Harry.

  She still could not fathom why the boy provoked such a reaction in Ralph. Was it a memory of their ordeal in the open boat? But Harry had been an infant – Ralph could not blame him for that. Had Ralph loved Harry’s mother? Ann doubted it. She remembered his response when she had asked if the dead woman was his wife.

  Ann could feel the rage emanating from Ralph. She had felt the same energy, the same anger when they had first met on the beach in Algoa Bay. She wanted to understand why Harry irked Ralph so, it was the only way that she could protect her son. But Ralph found ways to keep his distance, even on an overloaded tub like the Farewell. And in the evenings, when many of the men gathered around a guitar and a bottle of cheap brandy, he did not join in. Instead, he stayed aft by himself.