She Rises by Kate Worsley

Author:Kate Worsley
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2013-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Luke goes right down to the orlop deck, a place he usually avoids, before he finds Charlie. He stands in a knot of men by the empty purser’s office. The tight-furled points of his yellow kerchief wag in the light from the lantern at their feet. Luke sees him squat forward on his haunches and hiss curses into the snarling jaws of a solid white dog. Its owner has it tight about the collar but still it twists and thrusts to get at its tormentor’s face, only inches away. Charlie purses up his lips and blows a kiss at the dog, all the while glaring bleakly into its eyes. At Luke’s approach he smiles broadly.

‘Little Luke. What can I do for you, my unlucky lad?’ The dog’s owner tugs on its collar as it rushes forward, barking furiously.

‘You must come.’

‘Must I now?’

Luke is well used to Charlie’s arch ways. He sets his shoulders. ‘Nick fell, he is hurt bad.’

The men about take their hands from their pockets. Charlie just shrugs. ‘Indeed,’ he says evenly.

Luke stares. He has not expected this. Charlie is Nick’s best mate, the man to rouse up some rum and a wad of his best baccy and be down there in a trice, with perhaps a blanket to wedge behind his mate’s back. And Hogmarsh and the rest of the mess, rallying round. Where are they all? The dog snarls and twists at his feet. He can feel his anger rising.

‘Nick’s in sick bay.’

Charlie smiles on, inscrutable as ever.

‘Charlie, why don’t you –’

Charlie takes his arm, and steps into a dark corner.

‘Listen, Luke. You know our boy Nick. Good lad and all that. But he’s not the steadiest hand on the tiller, now, is he? You know what I mean. Bit of an unpredictable bastard.’

What of it? Luke wants to ask. He’s your mate, Charlie. You look after him when he’s in trouble. But he knows as well as anyone what Nick can be like. He remembers the boy Nick beat up on the tender. The lad didn’t last long after that. He thinks of all the times then and since that Nick has pulled rank, got thundering drunk, picked a fight out of nothing. Only last Saturday he cracked a lad’s head against a post, he ended in sick bay. The whole mess laughed then. Not now. No, Luke has been safe, at the eye of the storm, but Nick has ruffled a lot of tempers.

‘So?’ he says. But he can feel Charlie tense, and lose patience.

‘You’re not stupid, Luke.’ Charlie fingers Luke’s kerchief, gives it a little tug. ‘He’s on his own now. Leave it, all right?’ He walks away, back to the men and the whimpering white dog.

Luke watches him go. That was Charlie trying to help him, he realises. Charlie knows how it goes. And so he’s dropped Nick like a hot coal. The thought makes him sick. That damned Nick’s all I’ve got in the world, he realises. That drunken, vicious collier bastard.

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