Honey Harlot by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page B

and for ever. For my husband being asleep in the cabin after a night disturbed by some trouble with the steering, or I know not what, I heard muffled laughter and went out on to the deck—and she was there.

CHAPTER V
    I WAS WEARING THAT day my dress of a pale sepia, with bands of amber brown which I knew lighted up the colour of my eyes; what talents I had lay in such directions as this. But what was I in my pale auburns and ambers?—against all that opulence of honey and scarlet? For the dark dress was gone now and the black shawl and indeed I never saw them again and can only suppose they’d been borrowed to serve her purpose; she wore a brilliant scarlet with a heavy white braiding. Nor was this gown high to the throat as the other had been, but with a low, rounded neck, with buttons up the front of the bodice, but the buttons left carelessly open right down to the frilled white edge of her bodice. So creamy her slender throat was and her beautiful shoulders and bosom!—that golden creaminess, set off by the blue-white of white cambric and lace. About her shoulders hung a Paisley shawl in bright colours: with what abandon of her beautiful body had she paid for that Paisley shawl?
    Outrage opposed to cool mischief, we confronted one another. Panic fear—a pretended alarm. Innocence—experience; wantonness—virtue. The tigress amiably purring and the trembling white doe. But as though we were conspirators in some childish naughtiness, she turned her eyes towards the cabin where my husband slept, put her finger to her lips to hush me and beckoned me to follow her to the fore deck, further from harm’s way.
    Two men had dodged back into the shelter of the companion-way but now emerged and came with us. When we were out of earshot of the cabin, Volkert Lorenzen came up with me and caught me by the arm. He muttered, low-voiced, glancing fearfully aft towards the stern deckhouse, ‘Stowaway. Crew not knowing nothing. I swear; tell the Master, crew not knowing.’
    She led the way to where the roof of the fore deckhouse, where the crew lived, was raised six feet above the level of the deck, and in its shelter, stopped and turned to me. I stopped also, standing there, rigid with terror; so much, I think, in those days was ascribed to faults in myself that I believe it was the terror of guilt, as though J had been panty to her coming aboard. She saw something of my utter abandonment to fear, I suppose, for she put out her hand and touched my arm, looking at me kindly and pityingly. ‘Come, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Don’t be so anxious. I mean you no harm.’
    ‘For God’s sake,’ I stammered out, ‘what are you doing here?’
    ‘Whatever she’s doing,’ said Gilling, laughing, ‘it’ll not be for God’s sake.’ And he put his arm about her waist in a familiar gesture. ‘Wicked bitch, what could you mean by it?—smuggling yourself aboard and none of us knowing all this while.’ He glanced meaningly at me. I stammered: ‘She’s been hidden aboard all this time?’
    ‘Well, I haven’t just swum out to you,’ she said, always laughing; leaning back negligently against the wall of the cabin, her hair shining in the cold, bright sunlight reflected back by the mirror of the sea.
    ‘No one knowing anything?’
    ‘Only poor witless Blockhead,’ said Gilling, ‘smuggling food to her.’
    ‘ He didn’t know I’d come aboard,’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t make trouble for him. Once I’d revealed myself, he couldn’t let me starve, and he’s only a child, the great innocent hobbledehoy.’ She looked at me as Gilling had, and Volkert Lorenzen earlier. ‘Be sure to tell the Captain that.’
    I couldn’t take it in, I stood staring at her, unable to believe my eyes. ‘You’ve been here, aboard—? Why? Why have you come, what do you want?’ But deep, deep in my heart, far beyond my wits’ understanding, I knew what she wanted. She had not done yet with the soul of Captain Benjamin Briggs.
    ‘Just an