At Limehouse, Elsie rested, Federico stalked seagulls and Frank went to discuss the weather forecast with the harbourmaster. Lotti and Ben bought pies from a shack on the waterfront, and filled flasks with strong sweet tea for the next leg of the journey, out through the Thames Estuary and round the Kent coast.
‘What’ll we do if the forecast is bad?’ asked Ben.
‘Run away,’ said Lotti, licking gravy off her fingers. ‘Go by train.’
‘What about Elsie?’
‘Leave her with Frank,’ grinned Lotti.
‘Seriously, Lotti.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘Look at the sky! It’s a perfect day for travelling. And here comes Frank looking really, really grumpy. That probably means he’s had good news.’
Lotti was right. Not only had the harbourmaster confirmed an exceptionally calm forecast, he had also introduced Frank to the skipper of a Dutch barge, the Wilhelmina, which they could follow as far as Ramsgate.
‘So everything is perfect,’ said Lotti cheerfully.
‘Blinking marvellous,’ snarled Frank.
But even Frank’s mood lifted as they rejoined the Thames. It was late morning, the tide was still with them, sunlight was bouncing off silver wavelets. Round the Isle of Dogs they went, past the Royal Docks and out towards Tilbury. The dogs stayed below, but Lotti and Ben and Frank all remained on deck, each taking turns at the tiller while the others drank in the surroundings. The river grew wider, its banks flatter and further away, the sky ever vaster, until it was almost possible to imagine what it might be like at sea.
‘It reminds me of home,’ said Lotti when the city was quite gone and they were surrounded by marshes.
‘Barton?’ asked Ben, surprised.
‘Not that home,’ said Lotti, and under her breath she began to sing, the song about the nightingale that Moune had taught her in her garden when she was little, which she had remembered on the night she rescued Federico from being shot.
‘Pretty,’ said Frank. ‘What does it mean?’
‘Oh, it’s a very old song, and quite sad, but beautiful too. It’s about a man who walks past a spring, and the water’s so lovely that he swims in it, and then a nightingale sings and he says, sing, nightingale, sing, since your heart is light. But the man’s heart isn’t light, because his lover turned him away after he refused to give her a rose.’
‘Silly,’ said Ben.
But Frank, remembering a girl long ago whose heart he had lost for just such a foolish reason, said, ‘Teach it to us.’
‘What, in French?’
‘Long journey ahead, Charlie. And French’ll be useful where we’re going.’
And so Lotti taught them the song. And Frank and Ben struggled over the French, and they all laughed, but when she taught them the chorus, they all grew thoughtful, because the chorus went ‘Il y a longtemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai’, which means ‘I have loved you a long time and I will never forget you’, and as they sang Ben thought of Nathan and Sam, and Lotti thought of Isobel and Théophile and Moune, and Frank thought of the girl he had lost all those years ago but mainly of his brother Jack, and the tide turned and the little Sparrowhawk battled on and her shadow on the water grew longer.
In the cabin, the dogs slept.
They turned eastwards and the air grew claggy with salt. Ahead of them now there was only blue.
‘Is this the sea?’ asked Ben.
‘Not yet,’ said Frank. ‘Still the Thames.’
On they went, under that infinite sky until, six hours after leaving Limehouse, they reached the mouth of the estuary.
*
The first wave caught Ben by surprise, yanking the tiller away from him. The Sparrowhawk lurched. Lotti, who was making sandwiches in the galley, felt her stomach heave. Ben’s blood flooded with panic. The dogs, jolted out of sleep, howled.
‘Easy, lad.’ Frank’s hand was over Ben’s on the tiller. ‘Them waves aren’t as big as they look, and the boat’s stronger than you think. Hold steady. It’ll grow calmer when we reach the open sea.’
Steady, steady. The Sparrowhawk climbed up and slid down the swells but Ben, with Frank guiding him, felt the strength of the hull beneath his feet, the power of the engine driving them on.
‘You said she’d sink at the first wave,’ Ben reminded him.
Frank said, ‘They’re not real waves.’
They reached the open sea and Frank was right, the waves did calm. On and on they went still hugging the coast, following the Wilhelmina, until all the tea was drunk and all the sandwiches eaten and all the light was gone. Lotti yawned, and Frank sent her below to sleep. The dogs were shivering on Ben’s bunk. Lotti climbed in beside them and cuddled them. The Sparrowhawk rocked her like a cradle.
‘Jamais je ne t’oublierai …’ she sang to the dogs in a whisper.
I will never forget you …
Never
Ever
Ever.
Lotti slept.
A little later, Frank went below to use the privy, and for a few moments Ben was left alone at the tiller out on the darkening water, beneath a sky full of stars, and now something new was happening, something marvellous … The wake of the Wilhelmina and the wash of the Sparrowhawk swirled green with phosphorescence, and the two boats stood like jewels on luminous clouds in the oil-black sea.
‘Magic,’ breathed Ben.
Out at sea, weather fronts were gathering, and far away inland, the train bearing Hubert and Vera Netherbury back towards Barton trundled through the night. But in that magical moment alone on deck, with nothing in the world but him and the boats and the sky and the waves and the strange otherworldly light, Ben knew that Lotti was right, and that he could do anything.