Page 1 of The Trials of Alaric
Chapter One
Off the coast of the Isle of Claddach, June 1819
The storm cameas a surprise to the crew of the good shipFlora Louise. They had confidently expected a smooth run across the Irish Sea and into Liverpool.
Alaric Redhaven, their passenger, was not surprised. Alaric had not predicted that a storm would blow up out of nowhere, but he had been waiting for something else to disrupt his journey home.
Nothing had gone right for him since he had allowed himself to be captivated by a lying jade. She had married his brother. He had been exiled to Brazil, to join the staff of the British envoy to the Portuguese court in exile.
Alaric was not cut out for a diplomatic career, a fact he had known from the first. He had tried to tell his father he wanted to be a land steward somewhere. On the lands that would one day be his brother’s, for preference. He had been caring for them without the title since he left university. Anywhere else in England if need be.
Instead, the Earl of Elsmouth had decreed a new career for his unsatisfactory second son, who was born too late to become a general in the recent wars, was as unlikely a potential bishop as anyone could imagine, and who refused to be an idle ornamentof Society. Alaric was exiled to become a diplomat and reflect glory on the Redhaven family name from ambassadorial heights.
The ship he had taken from London in obedience to his father’s command had been blown off course by a storm, attacked by pirates, and saved in the nick of time by the United States Navy. Alaric arrived at his post three months late, after the United States authorities had eventually decided he presented no threat and was, besides, too young to have been involved in the 1812 war.
From his arrival in Rio de Janeiro, he had not distinguished himself in any desirable fashion, and the litany of his accidents and mistakes was far too depressing to think about. His brief eighteen months as a diplomat had been a disaster. When he had inadvertently insulted the Spanish Ambassador at a reception in Rio de Janeiro, it had been the last straw. He, his uncle and sponsor, and the British envoy to the Portuguese court in exile had all been in agreement for the first time since Alaric had arrived.
Alaric had been dismissed and found a berth on the first ship leaving Rio de Janeiro with England as its destination. Now that ship was stuck in a rising storm while the experienced crewmen ran around in a panic, arguing about which sails to reef and who was going to do it.
To make things worse, the captain was nowhere to be found—probably lying in a hidden corner in a drunken stupor. They were without the first mate, too. He came up on deck when the weather first turned foul, was struck by a flying belaying pin, and knocked out before he could take charge.
Which meant they were trying to stay afloat in an unexpected storm, with a minimal crew and the two most senior officers disabled.
Drowning in the Irish Sea was a more permanent disruption than the arrest of their captain in Fortaleza and the shortage ofsupplies that kept them for two extra weeks in Jamaica. Not to mention the desertion of a good third of their crew in Dublin.
Alaric felt he should do something, but what? He knew nothing about how to sail a ship. Telling the crew to stop bickering and do their jobs was likely to get him hurled over the side. And suddenly, it was too late. First one mast broke, then another, then the third.
And then it got worse.
“We’ve lost the rudder!” shouted the man on the wheel.
“Rocks!” screamed someone else.
Some of the sailors leapt into the sea. Others clung to the nearest solid object as the ship pitched and yawed with every wave and gust of wind. Alaric tossed a mental coin, shrugged out of his coat, and jumped overboard. He would take his chance with the sea.
*
From her bedroomin one of the castle’s towers, Lady Beatrice Collister had a grandstand view of the foundering ship, though only in glimpses, between curtains of clouds and rain.
She could hear the storm bell—the tolling of the treble bell that summoned all able-bodied people to the beach below the castle. All people, that is, other than the Earl of Claddach, his wife and daughter, and the guests at his house party.
Some of the guests trailed upstairs to see if they could see anything through the storm. None of them wanted to go out in the rain for a better view or, heavens forfend, to help.
Which meant that Bea, as the earl’s daughter, was going to have to be quick and sneaky if she was to be of any help at all. She dug through to the bottom of the trunk in her dressing room for the trousers, shirt, and jersey she wore for shipwreck rescues, and was soon dressed in wool that would stay warm no matterhow wet it got. With luck, those who watched from a distance would take her for a boy.
She pulled a knitted hat over her hair, which was fortunately in a simple crown of plaits. The hat came low over her eyes and should further disguise her identity from the house party gawkers. She hurried down the tower stairs to the door into the top of the mansion that had been built around the bones of the ancientCashtal Vaaish—Castle Death, the stone fort that had protected Claddach and its people from marauding Picts, raiding Irish, pillaging Vikings, and invading Normans.
Bea walked swiftly along the hall and let herself into the servants’ stairwell. That was the risky part done. If her parents had come looking for her—unlikely, but possible—they would have stopped her. As it was, she made it to the ground floor and joined the others donning boots and oiled coats and hats.
They hurried down the path from the clifftop to the beach, most of the servants of the castle, joining a stream of people who had come over the hill road from the town. On an afternoon like this, they could not put out the boats, but they could go out into the surf, roped together, to bring in anything the spotters saw from the cliffs.
Not Bea. Her people would not hear of her putting herself in danger. She would stay on the beach, help build the fire, and wait to give aid to those recovered from the sea.
There should have been at least fifty crewmen on a ship of that size, but fewer than twenty were pulled alive from the water, and several of those would need careful nursing if they were to live. One the most alert men explained they’d been short-handed from the beginning and had lost fifteen men in Dublin. “Captain’s a drunk,” he said. “He shouldn’t have sailed without hiring more men. He shouldn’t have been drinking when the storm struck.” He bowed his head and looked solemn. “God rest his gin-soaked soul.”
The doctor had finished bandaging the man’s arm, where it had been ripped by something in the water. “You’ll do,” he said. “Who’s next?”
“You said you wanted to have another look at the man who wasn’t breathing,” Bea reminded him.
