If this is death, was Caleb’s first conscious thought, it is sadly disappointing.
He was curled up, folded in on himself like a newborn baby. There was blackness – not the cool, clear blackness of night, but a muffled, smothering dark. And there was pain. So much of it! Pain everywhere, in every part of him. He had died, but this was not heaven: that could not hurt so savagely. He was damned to hell. Yet there was no flaming pit, no smell of sulphur, no horde of demons. Nothing, but the enveloping dark and the pain.
And then movement. A violent jolt that made his head explode with agony. He screamed, or tried to. His mouth was stoppered with a cloth, balled and pushed so hard between his teeth that it was close to choking him. He longed to tear it out, but could not move, so tightly was he confined on all sides.
Panic – that most futile of emotions! – overwhelmed him. If he’d been free to run it might have lent an extra spur to his flight. Trapped, it did nothing but reduce him to a helpless terrified wreckage. Tears streamed down his face, his nose ran: he was going to suffocate. He had to get out! He struggled. Wrestled. Strained. But he couldn’t move even a fraction of an inch.
Pa’s voice in his head: Be calm. Slow down. Take a breath.
But his arms were tight across his chest. He couldn’t fill his lungs.
Shallow breaths then. But slow. Count. In. Hold. One, two, three. Out. Release it slowly. Now the next.
Do as Pa would do.
Come on, Caleb! God gave you a mind; he meant you to use it. So think. Use your reason!
Caleb forced himself into a state of relative calm. Where was he? Captive. In something small. A trunk perhaps. Or a chest. No. The sides were not flat. They curved against his back. Damnation, his back! The skin must have been scraped off as he’d been forced inside this thing. It smarted, sticky with sweat and blood. Rough, heavy timber against his raw, screaming flesh. Take a breath. Stinks like a tavern. But not ale. Something stronger. Whisky? Rum, maybe? Was he confined in a barrel?
Sound was muffled, but that regular, steady beat… It was the plod of horse’s hooves on the earth road. The creak of a harness, the turning of wheels. He was on a cart then, being carried along. By whom? To where? What did his captor intend to do with him?
He could see nothing. Smell nothing but rum and sweat and fear. His ears strained for clues.
The thud of hooves changed. They were no longer on a dirt road: cobbles now. There were people in the streets – snatches of conversation, shouts of greeting. And water? Was that the sound of water?
The cart stopped. Cries of seabirds. Men calling. Yelling orders. The chatter of women. Children. Crowds of people. The creak of rigging. The flap of canvas in the wind.
Another sudden jolt as the barrel was lifted, thumped to the ground, then pushed onto its side. Rolled over cobbles. Pain and dizziness rendered him almost unconscious. The barrel was righted, but this time it was upside down. Now his feet were uppermost. Caleb was on his head, neck nearly breaking under his own weight. Blood pounded in his skull, and poured from the wound made where he had been struck.
He had known many things in the past few months: hunger, fear, loneliness, grief. But he had never experienced such intense physical anguish as he did then.
And yet through that screaming haze of pain came a sliver of hope. As the barrel had rolled across the quayside a cork stopper had become slightly dislodged and a tiny crescent of light cut through the blackness inside. He struggled, each move a blinding, piercing new agony – and managed to get a single finger to it. Pushing the cork out, the crescent turned into a perfect circle of daylight.
He could see nothing through it, but could hear a little more clearly the sounds of a ship being made ready to sail. And then he caught Letty’s voice. Fretful. Anxious. “But where is he? He said he’d come.”
Hearing her, Caleb redoubled his efforts to escape. But the barrel was suddenly hefted high and he no longer knew which way was up, which was down. With the last of his strength he pushed his finger through the hole, hoping that Letty or someone, anyone – customs officer, sailor, child – would see it, would demand to know why a barrel containing a man was being carried on board.
But there were no shouts. No questions. No cries of surprise or alarm. Simply another crushing thud as barrel hit deck. The slither of ropes lashing it down. For a moment everything was still. And then the slap of waves on the hull, orders yelled, feet running to and fro, the crack of canvas as sails were hoisted. The shouts of mariners as the ship cast off and got underway, shrill cries of “Farewell” from the women and children on the quay.
One of the voices deeper than the others. So achingly familiar, it jerked his heart from his chest.
Letty!
Bidding goodbye to her father.
And then nothing but the creaking of the ship’s timbers as the Lady Jane carried Caleb from the land.