The Wherryman’s Daughter
Part One
Charity spied her father from where she knelt amongst the
reeds and rushes. Owen stood at the tiller of their wherry, the Marsh Lady.
The moon was a smooth pebble
throbbing with light but, like waves slowly dragging across, night mists
covered it. The painted white snout on the wherry, used to help other boats
spot her in the gloom, had been covered with ropes.
Wavering, Charity dug her feet
into the riverbank. Mud smeared over her skirt and legs, yet a bit of dirt was
better than tipping into that dark, grasping water.
Her father could not sail the
wherry alone. She should be there with him, helping guide the boat through the
river bends.
He had not dared to ask for her
help, though. Her father knew she would have disapproved of his reason, and
demanded he give the goods back to whomever had got him into this wicked
business.
At the stem of the wherry, there
was the hunched figure of another man. She could not tell who he was, as his
face was concealed by his downturned hat. He was too big and hulking to be her
cousin Alf. Could he be the smuggler or just another one of his lackeys?
Oh, Father, she thought, gritting her teeth, why do you do this? Couldn’t he see he was the one taking all the
risk, while some unknown person reaped the profits?
Charity was tempted to stand and
call for him to take the wherry home. However, she knew he was too stubborn. If
only her mother were still here, then she would have been able to get him to
listen.
She crept further along. Rain
still glistened on the grass. Damp reeds stuck to her cheek, tugging like a
child desperate for attention. Annoyed, she scraped them away, shivering as the
cold crept past her shawl.
A misstep, and the squelching
splash of mud seemed to echo. Her lips snapped together as she held her breath,
waiting for her father to cry her name.
The brim of the stranger’s hat
twisted in her direction. Her pale blue eyes seemed to stand out even more as
they widened. Breath spluttered out of her as her heart writhed, wanting her to
run.
Do not call out, Charity prayed desperately in her head. I am nothing but a shadow, a trick of the
mind.
Then a barley bird shot out from
a bush nearby. The stranger and her father chuckled, though it was empty of
humour.
Her father turned back to the
tiller. They were just as nervous. The sound of the boat cleaving through the
water and the groan of the oak body pierced the silence.
A bright leaf green flag at the
very top of the mast fluttered and danced at the slightest of breezes. It
curled around the little tin Marsh Lady
vane: a woman with a hat of feathers and a long river weed dress.
The wind blew Charity’s way and
her nose wrinkled. No matter how long she worked on the wherry, she would never
be fond of the whiff of tar and herring oil that the sail had been dipped in.
The Marsh Lady slowed. This was it. She had an idea of what her father
planned. Although they were far from the fields, there would be one man sowing
the crops, as men down the Copper Rose Inn said as they laughed into their
tankards.
Heaving and grunting, straining
his already weak back, Owen lifted up a cask of something. Brandy, most likely.
There was a rope attached and she knew a stone was tied at the end.
Last week, she had curiously
watched him pick stones from the path back home from church. He even had such
plans on a Sunday!
The cask was pushed overboard,
and it made a deafening splashing sound. He stiffened, anxiously turning his
head side to side. Was he checking that the customs and excise men weren’t
about to leap out of the water?
After a while, he started up
again. Charity quietly counted under her breath as each cask struck the water.
One, two . . . thirteen!
None rose. They were weighted
down and hidden until someone came to dredge up the booty and carry it down to
Norwich.
The Marsh Lady continued on. Charity hurried home, scowling.
She had seen all she needed to
prove her suspicions. Now, all she had to do was figure out how to get her
father safely away from the smugglers.
****
“Have you seen anything strange these past few nights,
Charity?” was the first thing she heard that morning, upon opening the front
door.
Her fingers tightly clenched the
door handle to try and contain the tremor in her hand.
Josiah Thiske, the local customs
man, stood there with his hat in his hand. He was only five years older than
her, twenty-nine, yet he had a sunken, craggy face. Sharp winds had whittled
his skin from when he had hunted for smugglers along the coast.
He was smiling at her, revealing
the crooked, chipped front tooth that looked like a fang. Apparently, it was
caused by a Dutch smuggler who had struck him with his cosh. It gave him a
hungry, wolfish look.
A shiver was scraping up Charity’s back. Was she the prey? Had she been watched and followed as well, as she had done to her father?
