A Ravelled Flag (Strong Winds Trilogy) Read online

  “Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds ...”

  William Shakespeare

  Books by Julia Jones

  The Strong Winds Trilogy:

  Volume I The Salt-Stained Book

  Volume II A Ravelled Flag

  Volume III Ghosting Home (forthcoming 2012)

  The Allingham Biography series:

  The Adventures of Margery Allingham

  Cheapjack by Philip Allingham (edited

  with Francis Wheen)

  The Oaken Heart: the story of an English village at war by Margery Allingham (edited with Lesley Simpson)

  Fifty Years in the Fiction Factory: the working life of Herbert Allingham

  (forthcoming 2012)

  Books by Claudia Myatt

  RYA Go Sailing: a practical guide for young people

  RYA Go Sailing Activity Book

  RYA Go Cruising: a young crew’s guide to sailing and motor cruisers RYA Go Cruising Activity Book

  RYA Go Inland: a young person’s guide to Inland Waterways

  RYA Go Green: a young person’s guide to the blue planet

  RYA Go Windsurfing (forthcoming)

  Log Book for Children (new edition)

  Buttercup’s Diary and other tales

  Julia Jones

  VOLUME TWO

  OF THE Strong Winds TRILOGY

  First published in 2011 by Golden Duck (UK) Ltd.,

  Sokens,

  Green Street,

  Pleshey, near Chelmsford,

  Essex.

  CM3 1HT

  www.golden-duck.co.uk

  All rights reserved

  © Julia Jones, 2011

  ISBN 978-1-899262-10-6

  All illustrations © Claudia Myatt 2011

  www.claudiamyatt.co.uk

  Design by Megan Trudell

  [email protected]

  Mobi conversion by Matti Gardner

  [email protected]

  This book is dedicated to Francis and to Frank

  with gratitude for all their good advice – whether I took it or not.

  Contents

  Donny’s map and chart

  Diagram of Strong Winds

  1.Ship Wreck

  2. Striking the Colours

  3. Who’s There?

  4.Just Formalities

  5. S.S.C.R.A.M.

  6. Hawkins

  7. Shipping a Hostage

  8. Night in a Foreign Port

  9. Neaped

  10.Inappropriate Behaviour

  11.Don’t Joke with the Tiger

  12.Planning an Expedition

  13.Parting Friends

  14.Oboe

  15. Out of the Nettles

  16.Vexilla

  17.Stormy Weather

  18.A Winter Holiday

  19.Journey to the Easternmost Point

  20.Messages from Mars

  21.Room at the Floating Lotus

  22.Ghosts

  23.Ben Gunn

  24.Rule Britannia

  25.Farewell and Adieu

  From the Ship’s Log

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ship Wreck

  Tuesday 26 September 2006, morning

  Donny woke slowly and luxuriously that first morning on board Strong Winds.

  He felt the fragments of a dream evaporating from his head. He was waving from a boat to an island. And his friends were waving back. No, not waving. They had been signalling. With flags. Somewhere else in the dream he sensed two children, outcasts on a deserted shore, sharing their last few crumbs.

  Donny shook the dream away. This was the first day of his new life. He didn’t need distraction.

  When he’d woken yesterday he’d found himself lying on the hard deck of a schooner, soaked by fog. It had been his fourteenth birthday but he’d been alone and frightened.

  He shifted one shoulder experimentally against the softness of his bunk. Yes, it ached. And so did the other. The palms of both hands felt chafed but not blistered any more. The salty water was definitely toughening him up.

  So good to be here. To be together again. To be safe.

  He let himself re-live the moment – also yesterday – when he had first seen this boat, Strong Winds, scudding in from the open sea with the afternoon sun glowing golden in her sails. Bringing Great Aunt Ellen home.

  It was his second best birthday present ever.

  Getting his mum back had been the best.

  Donny rolled over, ignoring his aches, and peered across the cabin at Skye’s sleeping heap. Her long dark hair was un-plaited and tangled across her face so he couldn’t really see her properly. It looked dank and greasy as if it hadn’t been washed all the time she’d been away. There were no bright ribbons twisted in its strands and the bits of her skin that he could see were as dull as unworked clay. Her mouth was open and she was snoring slightly.

  She was there. The person who mattered most in the world.

  Last time he’d seen her had been in the dim light of a hospital ward. She had been sedated. The time before that, she had been screaming.

  It was over.

  Push it deep down into the nightmare bag and pull the choke-strings shut.

  Donny stretched his legs out with a sigh of pleasure and lay on his back watching the pale sun as it danced across the cabin roof. It was almost worth having a few aches and pains. They sort of spiced-up the comfort.

  He hadn’t felt anything so good for ... months? There was a fleecy blanket underneath him, so thick it must be doubled; an unzipped sleeping bag light and warm on top; and a blissfully soft cotton pillow smoothed beneath his head.

  Skye had the same. Gold Dragon must have put them there. That’s what she liked to be called, his new great-aunt.

  She was a small woman, more than eighty years old, with a hook instead of one hand. She had spent yesterday and most of the day before sailing solo across the North Sea from Holland. And she was famous. Polly Lee, pioneer yachtswoman. There had been a TV camera waiting by the lock gate when she and Strong Winds had arrived.

  Donny wasn’t sure where Gold Dragon slept or what time of the morning this was. He definitely didn’t want to disturb her if she might still be asleep. So he carried on lying there, basking, as he watched the flickers of light chasing like minnows across the cabin roof. The air in the cabin felt clean and slightly chilly. There must be a breeze outside, a breeze fresh enough to ruffle even the sheltered waters of the marina.

  Donny could hear halliards tapping against masts. He was surrounded by boats. Better than any dream. And the yacht that was moored closest was beautiful Snow Goose. His friends, Xanthe and Maggi, and their parents would be sleeping there.

  If people were still asleep?

  He didn’t have a watch so he listened harder, hoping for clues. He caught the cry of a seagull, a passing engine and then, from across the harbour came the round-the-clock rattle of cranes loading and unloading container ships in the Port of Felixstowe.

  Donny shifted less comfortably.

  Cranes and halliards wouldn’t waken Skye. When he’d been younger his granny, who was dead, had sometimes put her hands over his ears so he could feel what it might be like in his mother’s silent world. But his head hadn’t really been silent at all: it had rumbled and buzzed as if
it was a machine on stand-by.

  There’d been one bad shock among his birthday surprises, gate-crashing his happiness like a cackling black witch. He’d discovered that Granny hadn’t been Skye’s mother: that she wasn’t, in fact, his granny.

  They said that babies in the womb could hear their mother’s voice, muffled and far-away like whale music. Skye had been deaf ever since she’d been born but presumably unborn babies didn’t hear in the same way. It was probably more like feeling sounds than hearing them. But if Skye had felt her mother’s voice, it hadn’t been Granny’s.

  Granny – Miss Edith Walker, who had looked after Skye and him for all their lives – had been an aunt, a senior aunt. Gold Dragon – Miss Ellen Walker – was the junior one. Skye’s birth mother wasn’t Edith or Ellen but a middle sister called Eirene. Someone who, until yesterday, no-one had ever mentioned.

  Great Aunt Ellen had told him last night that Eirene had ‘gone’ soon after Skye was born. How could this Eirene have gone away and left her baby – a tiny, deaf, brain-damaged baby who wasn’t expected to survive?

  Donny looked fondly at his mum as her eyelids flickered in dream-sleep.

  Eirene! What sort of a stupid name was that?

  The cosy waking-up feeling had gone. Donny urgently needed a pee. There was a toilet block somewhere at the end of the pontoons and a keypad with a serial number that he hadn’t managed to remember. He pushed his sleeping bag off and sat up. Glad he was still wearing socks. No time for shoes.

  Skye moved restlessly as Donny hurried up the companionway. He couldn’t wait. He could see Joshua Ribiero about to get into his car.

  Donny ran along the pontoon to catch him. He didn’t notice the limited edition electric-blue Mercedes parked strategically overlooking Strong Winds.

  “Good morning, Donny. We thought that you would never wake. June has taken the girls to school and your great-aunt has walked to buy groceries. We offered to help but ... she’s a very independent lady.”

  “Yeah, right. Er, sorry, what’s the code for the toilet block?”

  “898132. You reverse the telephone number. And, Donny, please don’t linger. It’s best for your mother that she’s not left alone until she has completely understood where she is. She has been given a large quantity of medication and it’ll take some time for her body to readjust. We can expect physical symptoms as well as considerable disorientation. Possibly distress.”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll be really quick. Er, thanks a lot,” said Donny and sped away. Eight nine eight, one three two, eight nine eight, one three two. That seemed about the most urgent information right now.

  Joshua hesitated, then left. He had patients waiting.

  A blond woman in a Gucci business suit swayed briskly towards Strong Winds in her Louboutin shoes. Making bad worse was her special gift. You could call it mal-fare.

  Donny punched the numbers into the keypad and heard the automatic lock click free.

  It wasn’t so easy to exit. Someone else was fumbling with the lock, outside. Didn’t seem to understand the combination, wouldn’t listen when Donny tried to help. All he could do in the end was stand back and wait until the man, or whoever it was, got fed up trying and went away.

  Donny didn’t see anyone when he finally got out. He didn’t really look because now he could hear shouting.

  Something was happening on Strong Winds. The junk couldn’t be ... moving?

  Donny ran.

  “Mum!” he yelled, as he hurtled down the access ramp.

  That was a waste of breath.

  Skye was standing on Strong Winds’ foredeck in her old jersey and her long dark tie-dye skirt. She was pushing against the wooden staging with a boat hook. The junk’s mainsail was half unfurled and the mooring lines were loose. There were trailing ropes everywhere.

  She was looking towards the lock gates and the wide spaces of the harbour and sort of howling as she shoved the boat fiercely away from the pontoon. The fresh breeze was already catching the top section of the unfurled mainsail, threatening to make the heavy junk unmanageable in this confined space. The next row of expensive moored yachts was only metres distant. Donny knew he must do something quickly if he were to avert a massive collision.

  But what?

  Snow Goose, the Ribieros’ pride and joy, was lying just ahead of Strong Winds. Both boats had been moored in the central area of the marina, where there was room to lie alongside instead of having to manoeuvre into narrower, car park-style spaces.

  Donny ran to Snow Goose and vaulted on board. As he’d hoped, there was a spare coil of mooring line, neatly positioned on the yacht’s aft deck, ready attached to her starboard samson post.

  “MUM!” he shouted again. And hurled the line straight at her.

  His aim was good. The rope snaked out and hit Skye hard on her shoulder and the side of her head. She stopped shoving and looked to see where it had come from.

  Then she saw Donny.

  He could use sign language now. “Tie the rope onto something! Quick! Tie the rope on!”

  The middle section of the mooring line had fallen in the water but Skye had caught its end. She dropped the boat hook and began to pull, hand over hand, heaving herself desperately back to her child as if this rope was some super-sized umbilical cord.

  She was pulling much too strongly. The slack was lifting too quickly out of the water. This could be another disaster. Strong Winds hadn’t stopped moving backwards. She’d never be able to take the strain once the full weight of the boat came onto the rope. It’d burn the skin off her hands, pull her overboard.

  “Tie the rope on!” Donny kept signing. “Wrap it round something!”

  He saw her look about, then bend forward and wind the rope round and round one of the solid wooden cleats, which were positioned inside the bulwarks on either side of the junk’s high bow.

  Not a moment too soon. The curve in the line was straightening. Could slender Snow Goose bear Strong Winds’ full weight?

  The rope twanged taut, shaking off drops of water in sparkling curves on either side. Donny felt Snow Goose shift under him as she took the strain. She pulled back hard on her own mooring lines. A moment of tension. Ropes and cleats creaked.

  Everything held. It was going to be okay. Strong Winds stopped slipping backwards. She was several boat-lengths away from Snow Goose, momentarily at rest.

  Another section of her big mainsail tumbled free.

  Donny was trying to work out angles. Should he attempt to winch the junk back to her berth? Would she swing in against the pontoon? The space behind Snow Goose was empty and Strong Winds had plenty of fenders to minimise the impact. He could be there in seconds and get a rope to her stern. Skye would be there too. They could hold the junk steady; then sort out the mooring lines in safety.

  Was that what was going to happen? For a moment Donny hesitated.

  Skye was uncertain too. She looked at the rope, then looked at her child, still parted from her by a stretch of rippled water.

  Skye wasn’t used to water. This separation frightened her. The lies she’d been told were dripping poison through her head. She began again to heave on the rope that linked her boat to his.

  “No, Mum, NO! Don’t do that!” he signed.

  Hurried footsteps on the staging behind him. “Here ... son ... you look as if you could do with a hand.”

  One of the men from the marina office had seen his plight and was running to help.

  It was too late. At that moment an unlucky gust caught the top sections of Strong Winds’ loosened mainsail and set her sailing. The tide-less water offered no resistance and she picked up momentum in a couple of metres. The high strong bow, which yesterday Donny had thought so beautiful, was coming at him like a battering ram.

  Straight towards the pointed stern and varnished spars of the elegant Snow Goose.

  “Pairr
fect,” murmured the Mal-fairy, selecting one of the stored numbers in her BlackBerry. There had been all that unfortunate publicity yesterday. This should put the record straight. Or skew it, naicely.

  Donny was searching for something, anything, he could use to stave off the impact. He knew his own arms would be too short: his boy’s strength not enough. Was there an oar, a boat hook even? He pulled at Snow Goose’s tiller in the futile hope that it would come free and he could use it to avert disaster.

  The tiller was fixed in its position. There was nothing he could do.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Striking the Colours

  Tuesday 26 September continued

  The impact was crushing. Instinctively Donny leapt backwards onto the pontoon in the last second before the heavy junk struck the aft end of the yacht. It was only later he realised that, if he’d stayed where he was, he’d probably have been seriously injured.

  Strong Winds’ bow was so much higher than Snow Goose’s stern that it caught the yawl’s mizzenmast first and forced it backwards with a rending crack. The mizzen boom was triced up close to the mast so both were caught between the flaring bulwarks on either side of Strong Winds’ broad stem. The mizzen shrouds were wrenched out of their fastenings with an audible ping. Everything – mast, boom, shrouds, halliards and bundled sail – crashed to the deck in a tangled mess.

  Even this didn’t completely halt the on-coming junk. The impact shook out her entire mainsail so the wind drove her forward all the stronger. Once the mizzenmast had collapsed, the lower section of Strong Winds’ bow was forced directly against Snow Goose’s stern, shouldering it towards the pontoon.

  The yacht tried to twist away but was held rigid by her own mooring ropes.

  “Let go her bow-line!” Donny shouted to the man from the office.

  Then he ran a few strides along the pontoon and leapt up again onto Strong Winds. The junk’s deck was in chaos. Skye appeared to have undone every rope she could see – and three-masted Strong Winds had plenty to undo. Halliards, sheets, parells, warps, lines, hawsers – ropes, thick and thin, trivial and essential, were trailing, snaking, tangling from all sides.