An amateur sailor? Why was that not comforting? If she was risking her life, she had better use the opportunity to make progress with her enquiry.
‘You said that Mr Coleridge is in London, sir?’
‘He is.’ Barton held out a hand to help her into the skiff. ‘Mind your step.’
‘Aye aye, captain.’ Dora settled herself at the bow. ‘But his wife and children are here?’
‘That’s a long story.’
‘I think we have time, do we not?’
He pushed off from the bank and jumped aboard. The wind was kind for once and quickly filled the sail, though to Dora’s inexpert eye they looked to be travelling further south than they wanted.
‘And we’re off! We might need to tack but it won’t take long with this breeze.’ He trimmed the sail and settled back with a pleased expression that they had not yet met with any disaster. ‘I think I’m getting the hang of this.’
Dora looked down at the iron-grey water warily. ‘Might I mention that I can’t swim?’
‘Never fear, my lady. I’ll not spill you out. This is a steady vessel. The only ones of my friends who have ended up in the water fell out of their own accord.’
‘Fell out…?’
‘Luke Knotte– Slipknot as we’ve called him since. It might have involved drink. Yes, it definitely involved too much wine.’ He grinned at the memory.
‘Who else was on that fateful outing?’ She wondered who the closest were to him, the ones who most often came to his boathouse.
‘Wright, Langhorne and me. They’re all on the list I gave you.’
It sounded like the small boat was somewhat overloaded. The sooner they got this voyage over, the better. ‘You were saying about Coleridge?’
‘I would describe him as a man of intense passions– poets often are– and I’m afraid he’s rather fallen out of love with his wife and fancies another lady. Fortunately for all, Mrs Coleridge is sister to Robert Southey’s wife.’
‘Robert Southey?’ The name was familiar. ‘Another writer?’
‘Exactement. Southey now also resides at Greta Hall in Keswick where Coleridge first set up when he came to be near Wordsworth; the solution was for Mrs Coleridge to continue there and live with the Southeys and Coleridge to leave.’
‘And Keswick is… where?’
‘About eighteen miles north of here at the far end of Derwent Water– a beautiful spot, you must see it. It’s dominated by Skiddaw, which in my opinion is the most fearsome of the mountains in the district. There’s something bleak and terrible about it. I’ve tried writing about it but it escapes me. I fear my natural subjects are on a smaller scale.’
They were in danger of tacking towards the subject rather than heading directly to what she wanted to know. ‘But Mrs Coleridge…?’
‘Has been left high and dry.’ He swapped position as the boom swung to the other side. His eyes were on the sail rather than on his passenger, which allowed her to examine him. There was something endearing about him. He had a younger brother air, not that she’d ever had one of those, boyish and a little vulnerable. She feared he was the sort others would take advantage of. ‘STC suffers from ill health– the kind of ill health that opium addiction brings one. That probably explains the lack of constancy in his affections.’
‘I see.’ Jacob had explained to her the terrible grip opium got on a person who started using it too freely. He was still struggling to escape his own weakness for the drug. ‘Still, I pity his wife.’
‘So do I. It must be hard to be married to genius. Say what you like about Robert Southey?—’
‘I had no intention of saying anything.’
‘Many do. He has travelled from presenting himself to the literary world as a nineties radical poet to today’s staid writer of epic poetry. The flash new generation– the Byrons and whatnots– struggle to forgive him that. But it is indubitably in Southey’s favour that he has taken in Mrs Coleridge and her children. I believe the Wordsworths are also involved in their upbringing, having children of a similar age.’
‘I imagine that draws them closer.’
‘Especially since the two boys, Hartley and Derwent, are at Reverend Dawes’ school in Ambleside just near here. They all muck in to raise the children.’ He pointed to the little town that lay at the head of Windermere.
Could the theft of the manuscript be a childish prank, wondered Dora. If Wordsworth and Coleridge were on the outs with each other, could the boys have taken revenge on behalf of their father? It was easy to idolise the absent parent and buck against the paternal figures who tried to rein you in. She hadn’t considered that angle, but the oddness of the theft suggested it could be done for its mischief value.
‘Do you know the boys?’
