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This was the most incredibly uncomfortable bed. And it was wet, the roof must be leaking. And cold. She was certainly going to complain to the landlord of this inn when she…
Hebe stirred, found her mouth was full of wet sand and spat it out. Everything hurt, her ribs creaked when she breathed, her throat was raw, her eyes would hardly open. Shakily she managed to raise her head and found she was sprawled face down on a beach of shelving sand, the waves just tugging at her frozen feet as the slight Mediterranean tide slowly ebbed away.
What? With an effort of will she levered herself up on her arms, then pushed herself over until she was sitting up. Gradually she found her memory coming back. The great wave, going overboard, Alex’s voice in her ear, shouting at her, willing her to survive.
‘Alex!’ It was a cry of pain that tore her raw throat, but there was no answer. Somehow she got to her feet and looked around. The beach seemed to stretch for miles in every direction, deserted. The rain had stopped, the wind had dropped, but the sky was lowering and overcast and the air was bitterly cold for May.
Frantically Hebe scrubbed at her sore and swollen eyes with numb fingers and searched the beach again. Nothing, only a pile of storm wrack tossed up on the water’s edge. Or was it? She stumbled towards it and realised it was a man, face down, totally unmoving. ‘Alex!’
With the strength of desperation Hebe heaved him over and pressed her ear to his chest. Nothing. Then she saw the slightest movement of his white lips. ‘Alex! Alex, wake up!’ Still nothing. Desperately she slapped his cold face, then again. ‘Wake up, damn it!’ she yelled in his ear. ‘Don’t you dare die on me!’
With an effort that was visible one blue, bloodshot eye opened. ‘Don’t swear, Circe,’ he croaked. ‘It isn’t ladylike…oh, hell!’ and rolled over and was violently sick. Hebe held on to him, until he stopped retching. ‘Sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ she stormed at him, utterly, ludicrously furious. ‘You save my life, I thought you were dead, and you say “sorry”?’ And promptly burst into tears.
‘Oh, Circe.’ She could tell he was laughing painfully. ‘Come on, we must get off this beach and get dry or you’ll catch your death
of cold.’ Holding each other up— Hebe was not sure which of them was in the worse case—they managed to get to their feet. Alex took her hand and they began to trudge slowly through the sand and up the shelving dunes that fringed the beach. At their feet a lagoon stretched parallel with the coast. To their left Hebe could see the land beginning to rise sharply into cliffs.
‘Damn.’ He looked down at her. ‘I am going to apologise comprehensively for my language when we get out of this, in the meantime I’m afraid you will just have to put up with it.’
Hebe had not even been aware he was swearing. ‘Do you know where we are?’ she croaked.
‘Yes. In France, although it could be worse. That lagoon is fresh water for a start, so I suggest we have a drink and wash our faces. And if we had come ashore any closer to Spain we would probably have been dashed on the base of the cliffs.’
Hebe felt undeniably better once the drink and the wash had been achieved, although she was shivering with cold and famished with hunger.
‘Now, can you walk?’ Alex pulled her to her feet. ‘I daren’t leave you here, you’d be dead of cold before I could get back.’
‘Where are we going?’ Hebe forced one foot in front of the other. Both her shoes had gone, and in her haste to dress she had not troubled with stockings. At least they were walking on hard mud, not through the shifting sand.
‘South, into Spain.’
‘But southern Spain is occupied!’
‘I have friends amongst the guerillas. If we can get across the border we will be safe. We are close now, thirty miles perhaps.’
‘Close!’
‘If we steal mules, it is not too bad. If we can just get into the foothills behind Argelès, I know a shepherd’s cabin we can rest in.’ They trudged on in silence for a while, Hebe biting her lip as she thought about her stepmother and Sir Richard and what they would be feeling now, believing her dead.
‘Alex? Will the frigate be all right?’
He looked down at her. ‘I think so, there was enough sea room for it to run before the wind if they got that wreckage down.’
Hebe was grateful for the qualified reassurance. She would not have believed a hearty declaration that all would be well, but she had faith in the crew: if there was a chance, they would save the ship.
‘Hebe…’ Alex hesitated, obviously choosing his words. ‘If we are seen, I want you to run, immediately. Get under cover and keep heading south. Steal what you have to, but don’t be seen. Once you are in Spain, find a village, go to the headman. Tell him who you are, what has happened. You will be very unlucky to find yourself in the hands of collaborators: if you do, emphasise how wealthy Sir Richard is. They would rather sell you to him than to the French.’
‘But what about you?’ Hebe realised with a sudden jolt that Alex’s uniform coat had gone and that he was in his shirtsleeves. He did not answer. ‘If they catch you, they’ll shoot you, won’t they? Won’t they?’ At last, reluctantly, he nodded. ‘But they won’t shoot me, surely? They won’t think I’m a spy?’
‘No, Hebe,’ he said harshly. ‘They’ll rape you first, then shoot you.’
‘Oh.’ Hebe’s voice was very small, then she rallied. ‘Well, we will just have to make sure they do not find us. You do this sort of thing all the time, don’t you, and you keep coming back.’
‘I don’t do it without a disguise, without backup, when I’m soaked to the skin, exhausted and with a young lady to look after,’ he said grimly, then added with a smile, ‘Otherwise, of course, it is just the same.’
‘I don’t need looking after,’ she declared, prompting yet another smile. ‘And as soon as we can steal some clothes and a mule and some food, we won’t be cold and wet and tired, either. Look, there’s a hut, where the lagoon ends. Perhaps we can steal something from that.’
