William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

that he was leaning forward on his seat, his muscles aching with the effort as if he were hauling the great sail himself, putting his own strength against the heavy canvas, the sun in his eyes, the light blinding him off the river. Slowly the ship pulled ahead of them again, widening the distance.
    Not a man in the longboat spoke. The oarsmen moved with steady rhythm, faces intent, breath forced from their lungs. Beside Monk, Orme never took his eyes off the ship ahead. Her sails were bellying full now, the white wake creaming behind her as she sped down Limehouse Reach with the Isle of Dogs to the left. Monk looked at Orme and saw the horror and grief in his face, seawater mixed with tears.
    Durban was forced to come about clumsily on the bend. For a moment he lost control, and they closed in on him again. Monk ached as he watched. They were within twenty yards of her. They could see him working frantically to control the great booms and stop her from luffing and going over.
    Orme was standing up, half crouching forward, his face a mask of passion and despair. Monk did not even realize that he too was shouting.
    But Durban took no notice. He succeeded in coming about and righting the ship. All the sails filled again, and the
Maude Idris
pulled away from them past Greenwich. The sun was low, a pool of fire on the horizon behind them. Only the gathering purple of the evening lay ahead, and the darkness over the Bugsby Marshes, to the south.
    Durban was on the deck again, black against the shining gold of the sails. He raised both arms in a signal, a gesture of victory and farewell, then he disappeared down the forward hatch.
    Monk clung to the gunwale of the boat, his hands frozen, his body shaking and numb with cold. He could hardly breathe for it. Seconds went by, a minute—it seemed like eternity—then another minute. The
Maude Idris
was still gaining speed.
    Then it happened. At first it was only a dull sound. Monk did not even realize what it was until he saw the sparks and the gout of flame. The second crash was far louder as the ship’s magazine exploded and the flames roared upward, engulfing the decks and leaping up the sails. Soon she was a pillar of fire in the encroaching night, an inferno, a holocaust of burning wood and canvas sweeping towards the deserted mud of the shore, carrying with it Durban, Louvain, the river pirates, and the corpses of the crew.
    It was at once a Viking’s pyre and a plague ship’s burial. She lurched into the shallows and stuck, the white heat gone, the light dying red, the water rushing in.
    Monk stood in the boat beside Orme, his body freezing and exhausted, his mind burned through to the core with grief and pride. The tears were wet on his face and his hands too numb to feel Orme reach out and grip hold of him in a moment of understanding, a loss too deep to endure alone. He was barely aware of one of the other men taking off his own coat and putting it around his shoulders.
    The warmth would come later, in the time still ahead.

By Anne Perry
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
    F EATURING W ILLIAM M ONK
    The Face of a Stranger
    A Dangerous Mourning
    Defend and Betray
    A Sudden, Fearful Death
    The Sins of the Wolf
    Cain His Brother
    Weighed in the Balance
    The Silent Cry
    A Breach of Promise
    The Twisted Root
    Slaves of Obsession
    Funeral in Blue
    Death of a Stranger
    The Shifting Tide
    F EATURING C HARLOTTE AND T HOMAS P ITT
    The Cater Street Hangman
    Callander Square
    Paragon Walk
    Resurrection Row
    Bluegate Fields
    Rutland Place
    Death in the Devil’s Acre
    Cardington Crescent
    Silence in the Hanover Close
    Bethlehem Road
    Highgate Rise
    Belgrave Square
    Farriers’ Lane
    The Hyde Park Headsman
    Traitors Gate
    Pentecost Alley
    Ashworth Hall
    Brunswick Gardens
    Bedford Square
    Half Moon Street
    The Whitechapel Conspiracy
    Southampton Row
    Seven Dials

A Ballantine Book
    Published by The Random House Publishing Group
    Copyright © 2004 by Anne Perry
    All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
    Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
    The Shifting Tide
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products
of the author’s imagination or are used