A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4)(94)

Tiberius swore and began to pull harder at his oar. “She means to drown us.”

“No, she means us to comply,” I corrected. “If she meant us to drown, she would have made a bigger hole.” I inspected the series of small punctures drilled into the hull. Sawdust was floating on the top of the water, and I realized she must have damaged the boat just before coming to find us. A few other granules floated on the surface and I rubbed them between my fingers, dissolving them.

“Sugar,” I pronounced. “She must have packed the holes with plugs of sugar to keep the boat afloat long enough to get us away from the beach.”

Stoker and Tiberius pulled hard for the little isle, and we reached it just as my skirts were beginning to float. We were wet through to the waist. Tiberius vaulted over the side and onto the slippery rock, putting out his arms to me. I jumped, rocking the boat dangerously as Stoker steadied himself. The water was nearly to the gunwale in the boat, and with a single nimble rush, Stoker leapt to the rock, the quick motion thrusting the boat under the water.

“Well, that lets out any idea of rowing back,” Tiberius mused.

I looked around the island. It was a single large rock, mostly flat, rising a little way out of the water. It was covered in seaweed and dreadfully exposed to the rising wind. I shivered in my wet clothes and without a word the three of us huddled together in the center of the rock. We were silent awhile, watching the last of the grey light fade and the stars begin winking to life. Across the narrow channel, the warm golden light of Mrs. Trengrouse’s lantern hovered like a firefly in the gathering darkness for a long time before at last it bobbed away.

Stoker turned towards the horizon, where the sea stretched away as to the end of the world. “‘The vast, salt, dread, eternal deep,’” he pronounced.

“Keats?” I asked.

“Byron, actually.”

“While the two of you natter on about poetry, I should like to point out that Mrs. Trengrouse is well and truly gone,” Tiberius said. “And we are castaways.”

“And me without a flask,” Stoker said lightly.

I reached beneath my skirt. “Have mine,” I told him, passing over the small flat bottle of aguardiente I always carried upon my person.

“Thank Christ,” Stoker said, taking a long pull. He offered it to Tiberius, who refused with a shudder.

“It is not a very good plan, this scheme of Mrs. Trengrouse’s,” Tiberius said. “She has got us out here, now what? We pass an uncomfortable night and then hail a passing boat. She might have purchased a few hours’ peace for herself to finish whatever diabolical machinations she intends, but she cannot hope to escape us.”

Stoker gave me a long look in the starlight before looking to the horizon, where the moon, enormous and glimmering white as an agate, was rising, casting its light across the shimmering sea.

“’Tis the full moon,” he said slowly. He picked up a piece of seaweed in his hand and held it. “And the kelp is damp.”

“What does that signify?” Tiberius demanded. “I vow, when I get my hands on that witch, I will make bloody well certain she goes to Newgate for this. Who does she think she is, forcibly detaining a peer of the realm?”

He went on in that vein for a few minutes, but I picked up a piece of seaweed for myself and looked at Stoker. “Oh,” I said quietly. He nodded.

Tiberius paused in the middle of his diatribe. “What?” he said irritably. “It is bad enough that I am marooned out here like bloody Robinson Crusoe without the pair of you doing that enraging thing where you seem to read one another’s minds.”

“The tide is rising,” I said calmly, marking where the waters had climbed since our arrival.

“So? They do that,” Tiberius returned. “Every twelve hours, I am told.”

Stoker kept his face towards the horizon, the moonlight illuminating his profile like an emperor incised upon the face of a coin. “It is the full moon,” he repeated. “And the kelp is wet.”

Tiberius rolled his eyes heavenwards. “Why does he keep bloody saying that? I can see the damned moon and I do not give a queen’s quim for wet kelp.”

Stoker turned at last, his expression fathomless. “Today is the first full moon after the autumn equinox. The sea will rise, higher than at any other time during the year. And at the last high tide, it rose enough to cover the island completely.”

It took a moment for Tiberius to grasp the full implication of what he was saying. Even in the fitful light I could see him pale, his eyes suddenly bleak. “You mean we shall drown here?”

Stoker shrugged. “I see no boats, brother. It is only a matter of time before the sea closes over us.”

“But the other Sisters,” Tiberius began.

I shook my head. “Too far to swim and pointless. There is no shelter and they are even further out to sea. No trees to provide fuel for a fire and even if there were, I suspect Stoker’s matches are worse than useless.”

He reached into his pocket for his matchcase and opened it. The handful of lucifers inside floated on a little puddle of seawater. “Pulp,” he said succinctly.

“What if we made a great noise and shouted for rescue?” Tiberius asked, somewhat desperately, I thought.

“The wind is blowing the other direction,” Stoker told him with greater kindness than I would have expected. “It will carry the sound away from the island.”