Well, I’ve published two novels and I’m now writing my third. it should really be a sequel to my last novel, Darkness Falling, but I’ve got sidetracked and started another psychological thriller instead. I’ve also just published the Prologue and the first seven chapters of this on my blog if you want to have a look at it.
So where are we on a sequel to Darkness Falling? I definitely want to do a sequel but it looks as though I’ll have to get the new thriller out of my system first. In the meantime and for those of you who can’t wait, published below is an initial chapter and the start of the second. All of this comes with a health warning because it may well be that these chapters don’t appear at all in what is finally published or if they do appear, then they might turn up elsewhere. So you’ll have to treat this as a very rough first draft. All feedback welcome!
Break of Dawn
Chapter One
Sorcha stood at the bow of the ship peering into the darkness. She often came up on deck at night. At first it had been to get away from the suffocating stink in the hold, to breath in fresh air, and feel the spray from the waves stinging her cheeks. Now though, there was another reason. She had noticed that the ship’s captain was often on deck at this time of night as well, pacing quietly around, occasionally leaning up to check the tension in the sails’ ropes or kneeling down to more closely inspect some of the decking. Sometimes though there was no sign of him or indeed of anyone else and it felt as though she had the ship to herself. On those nights the ship itself felt alive, an unseen presence which spoke to her in its own language, the sails cracking in the wind and the soft moan of the ship’s timbers undercut by the wash of the sea against its bows.
This was not one of those nights. She could sense his presence on deck even before she saw him. It was a full moon with an almost clear sky, the glimmering light of the stars mirrored by the pearl iridescence of the waves.
“Beautiful isn’t it?” murmured the Captain, who had come up behind her.
She had heard his footsteps as he approached and turned to face him.
“Yes, it is,” she said and turned back towards the sea. “Why does the sea gleam white like that?”
“Phosphorescence – the glow is caused by algae. The ship disturbs them, so they knock against each other, hence the light.”
“Phosphorescence” whispered Sorcha, feeling the soft sibilance of the word on her tongue and lips. It’s magical”
“Difficult to spell though.”
She turned to stare at him again, a look of amusement playing across her features.
“I meant the glow was magical, not the word,” she said. “How do you spell it anyway?”
He shook his head and laughed.
“I can’t – I can say it, but I can’t spell it. Do you want to try?”
“No, I’m sure I’d get it wrong as well – why don’t we call it sea glow?”
“Well I can definitely spell that. How many words though, one or two.?
I don’t know – you choose.”
“Two it is then. Sea glow.”
“I always thought the sea would be dull but it’s not – there’s so many wonderful things, the creatures that live in it, its moods and changes, the different lights in the sky.”
“No, the sea is never boring, particularly when there’s a storm.”
“And will we have storms?”
“Much more than you might wish for I’m afraid and one is too many.”
She could see the sudden anxiety in his face.
“But we’ll be alright, won’t we?”
“Well I’ve done this voyage many times and I’m still here aren’t I?”
She smiled. He was a very attractive man she thought, although careless with both his clothes and looks, his blonde hair swept loosely back from his brow, thick stubble on his cheeks. The first mate had told her he was widowed, his wife having succumbed to typhus, some years past. Now she was studying him more closely she could see he was holding some kind of brass instrument cupped in his hands.
“What’s that?” she said pointing.
“This?” he said, glancing down as though it was the first time he had himself seen it and was astonished to find it there. “It’s a sextant – we use it for navigation,”
“How does it work?”
“That’s a long answer I’m afraid. Are you sure you want to find out?”
Sorcha smiled. “Well it’s a long voyage, so any diversion is welcome.”
The Captain smiled back. “Well I’ve never heard it described as a diversion before.”
“Show me”, said Sorcha, and moved closer. The Captain held it up so she could see it more clearly.
“It’s used to fix the positions of the stars above. See, the stars and the sun and moon tend to have fixed positions so if we can calculate the angle of the ship below them relative to their positions then we’ll know where the ship is.”
“How do you know what their positions are?’
“You use an almanac – a book showing the positions of the stars and the moon and sun, across the months and seasons. So that tells you where they should appear in the sky on any given date. If you then calculate the angle of the ship relative to the stars and what have you, you can work out where the ship is.”
“Why has it got two mirrors?” said Sorcha peering more closely.
“Look I’ll show you. He handed her the sextant and moved around behind her, cradling his arms around hers, so he was also now holding it.
“Hold it vertically, yes straight up like that. Now turn it towards the moon so you’re pointing at it with the sextant. Look at the horizon.”
Sorcha peered around the sextant.
“No, not like that – look at the horizon through that little mirror there. Now, can you see – the image in that mirror is a reflection of the moon in the other mirror above it. Now, move this arm of the sextant until the moon appears to rest on the horizon.”
“What like this?”
“Let me see”, said the Captain, leaning in so closely to Sorcha now, she could feel his breath on the nape of her neck. She gave a tiny shiver of pleasure.
“Yes, yes, that’s it – exactly right. We’ll make a mariner of you yet.”
Sorcha flushed.
“Now look at the measurement scale in the arc of the sextant – that shows the angle between the boat and the moon. From that you can calculate the boat’s position and map it on a chart. That fixes the latitude but to really find out where the boat is on the map, you also need longitude – one is horizontal, you see, that’s the latitude, and the other line is vertical. If you can identify both then the point at which they cross is the boat’s position.”
She laughed.
“Stop, stop – it’s too much. I can’t keep up with you.”
“Well, it does take a bit of learning.”
He hesitated.
“I could explain the rest tomorrow night if you’d like?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’d very much like that. When though?
“If you come up on deck at the same time as tonight that should work. I’m always knocking about here at night anyway.”
“Tomorrow then.”
“Tomorrow.”
He smiled and strode away. Sorcha gazed after him. She knew she felt a powerful attraction to him but felt guilty too. Her poor husband was imprisoned in some festering hulk of ship, having been unjustly convicted of sedition and attempted murder. He had been sentenced to hang but the sentence had been mercifully commuted to transportation to the colonies. He would be imprisoned though for seven years, seven long years before they would be together again. She loved her husband with a passion; how was she to endure it?
She felt ashamed too, that she was now drawn to this new man. What an awful betrayal this was, she thought. And worse she had lain in her cramped bunk at night, dreaming not of Michael, her husband, but of the Captain. She had heard the coupling of young couples close to her; their whispered endearments, their barely suppressed laughter and moans. One night, aroused despite herself, she had reached down between her thighs with probing fingers and brought herself to climax. But it was the Captain’s face she had imagined, not Michael’s, and afterwards she was filled with self-disgust. Even worse, she had pleasured herself with her young son, Rian, sleeping softly beside her. She had moved as little as possible to avoid waking him but when she came, it had been almost impossible to suppress a soft moan and she had glanced anxiously across to make sure he was still asleep. She had then turned to her side to sleep and suddenly become aware of someone looking at her. It was Mary, her sister-in-law, who slept across the aisle; she was lying on her side too, awake and staring across. Nothing was said and after a few moments, Sorcha had turned away and fallen quickly asleep.
Johnson, the lawyer who had defended Michael, had told her that not only had Michael been fortunate to have had his sentence commuted in this way, but given the charges, he would not have been surprised if the sentence had been transportation for life. It seemed she had a stranger, Trevelyan, to thank for the lenience of the sentence. He had learned that Michael’s son, Declan, had been killed during the clearance of their village and this had moved him to plead for clemency with the Prime Minister, Russell. Johnson had been sufficiently intrigued by this to investigate Trevelyan’s role more closely; it seemed the man had himself lost a daughter whilst serving in India. Acting as the principal agent in Ireland in overseeing the British Government’s famine relief measures, Trevelyan was viewed by many as an inhuman monster and yet here he was showing a rare glimpse of humanity.
Trevelyan’s daughter had been three months old when she
died. Declan had been ten. Every morning, Sorcha’s first waking thought was the
renewed anguish of his death, and his presence hovered at the edges of her
consciousness until she again succumbed to sleep at night. In the last few
weeks though, and especially since they had boarded the ship, she had found herself
struggling to remember his face. She could still hear the sound of his voice,
his laugh, the way he had sighed when dismayed or annoyed, but she could no
longer picture his face. She had felt both upset and ashamed at this; it was
almost as though he were dying a second time. If she, as his mother, couldn’t
preserve him whole in her mind’s eye, then who would remember him? This was the
very least she could do for him and yet she was failing. And worst still, as
much as she struggled with the burden of remembrance, she feared even more, that
one day, she would wake up and her first thought would not be of Declan, that it
might be minutes or even hours before she again remembered him. That to her
would be an even worse betrayal. So, her suffering was both a torment and a
comfort, something she hugged to herself even as she tried to push it away. And
she did not want it to go away.
Chapter Two
They had been at sea a bare fortnight and already there had been two murders. The first had been a convict, a young man, not yet twenty, who had been found with his throat cut, lying in his bunk. The second though, had been a crew member; his throat too, had been slashed open. The murder had taken place at night, another crew member stumbling over the body when they came up on watch. The crew had been unsettled by the first murder, but it was the second which really unnerved them. If convicts fell to killing each other then that was to be expected, an administrative inconvenience but no more than that. A report would need to be filed; a cursory investigation carried out. Many were expected to die on the voyage anyway, either from typhus or dysentery. The killing of a crew member was another matter altogether. The victim had been just fourteen years old and had been well liked by everyone; it had been his first voyage, but he had displayed a courage and willingness to work which had impressed them all. Now he was dead, and no-one felt safe.
Michael lay awake on his back in the dark. The convicts were stacked like bundles of firewood, sleeping four abreast on a wooden shelf with afforded each no more than eighteen inches of space. For the first few days at sea they had been made to wear leg irons and each convict had been bound to the next by chains fastened to these, the chains themselves secured to the floor of the bunks by iron rings. Once the ship was in the North Atlantic though, the surgeon and captain decided, in consultation with the office of the guard, that the prisoners were sufficiently docile to allow their leg irons to be struck off. Michael’s ankles had been badly cut by his own irons and he was relieved when they were finally removed; it also meant that it was easier to sleep. Whilst the irons were on, the slightest movement or stirring of his sleeping companions had often succeeded in waking them all up.
The hatches were battened down each night to imprison them in the belly of the ship. Above them on the deck, the prisoners could hear the thump of feet and military boots continuing long into the night. They could also hear the roar of the sea and the shrieking of the ship’s timbers as it pitched and yawed. Many of those around him had been seasick during the first few days. At first, they had attempted to use the buckets provided for piss and shit, but as they became weaker, they simply vomited where they lay. Each day when the hatches were unsealed the convicts first task was to carry the buckets up on to the deck and empty them over the side of the ship. Their second was to swab and clean the decks beneath and around the bunks.
The last time Michael had been allowed to see his wife and sister had been in prison in Sligo. From there he had been transported with a small group of eight other convicts in two carts to another prison on Spike Island, a low fortified rock which sat within Cobh harbour.
There the convicts were made to change into prison clothes of drab, brown canvas. They transferred to their ship, the barque, Parmelia, the following day. Michael first caught sight of his wife and sister as he ascended the gang plank. Sorcha had screamed his name and he had glanced round, immediately spotting both her and Mary in the crowd. He called back to her and for a moment stood still, half turned around. Then he was pushed roughly in the back by one of the soldiers.
“Keep moving scum.”
Michael glared at him. He gave one last despairing glance back, and then resumed his reluctant progress upwards. Once on deck, and despite their heavy chains, the prisoners rushed to the rails to try and get one final glimpse of their loved ones but were soon beaten back with blows and shouts from the soldiers. They were forced down below deck and the ship made ready to depart. From below they could hear the heavy rasp of canvas as the sails were lifted into position and the grinding roar of the anchor chain. When they were finally allowed back on deck the ship was already some distance from the shore. It was a dank November day, the grey sky almost indistinguishable from the roiling sea beneath it but it was just possible for the convicts to make out the shapes of their grieving families and friends still standing on the dock. Their faint moans carried across the waves, a low bass line against the shrieking treble of the seagulls. Some of the men stood with tears in their eyes, others swore quietly to themselves, whilst others affected not to care, laughing loudly with their companions. Michael stood watching for a long time, even after many of the others had turned away. There were tears in his eyes; he knew he would never see them again.