Chapter 26

"My God."

Kit wasn't sure who'd spoken. He wasn't sure what he was seeing. It made no sense. Everything below was chaos. Instead of copses, fields, cottages, there was churning water, nearly black with debris. Treetops protruded, and roofs.

What had been a riverside hamlet was now within the river, almost fully submerged.

Fence posts were spinning in the currents. Branches. A chicken coop. Other bulky shapes he hoped were hay bales but feared were sheep.

"Is that…?" Kemble clamped his arm. "In the water there…"

"Yes." Muriel answered, and her certainty sent a cold prickle down Kit's spine. She had excellent eyesight, years of experience identifying small, half-hidden things.

"Where?" asked Deighton. "What?"

"A child," she said. "By the oak."

Kit was focused on the tiny form, bobbing and flailing. Kemble was still holding his arm.

"We have to do something." Butterfield turned to Deighton. All the wheelmen did. They looked lost, overwhelmed, and strangely childlike themselves as they awaited their orders. Deighton stood stock-still, rain streaming down his face. His eyes were vacant.

"Captain?" urged Prescott.

He shook himself. "We'll ride down at once."

"No, we won't."

Every head snapped toward Muriel.

"That will take too long," she said. "We'll go this way."

"Off a cliff?" Butterfield blanched.

"It's not quite so steep as that. You'll have to pick your path carefully. The rocks will be slick, and the earth may crumble. Take small, sideways steps, and try not to lean back. Unless you need to sit and slide. There's no shame in it. Ready?"

She gave them a rallying look, gaze landing briefly on each of them in turn. Kit found himself nodding, even though his stomach churned like the water below. She didn't pause to acknowledge his nod, or to solicit Deighton's response.

She turned, hunching slightly against the wind, and ran parallel to the hillside, away from the sheerest drop.

Kit tensed. The low roar of the river had made a strange silence in his head. He watched, frozen, as she shifted her horizontal motion, angling down, then zigzagging back, then angling down. Half the hillside seemed to cave beneath her feet. She was carried with it for several seconds, during which Kit forgot how to breathe, then she lunged and snatched at a sapling, swinging herself to firmer ground. She skidded, skipped, and didn't stop. She hadn't misrepresented herself. She was like a mountain goat.

Kit was not. He'd never plunged over the edge of such a dauntingly perpendicular slope, at least not deliberately. He felt dizzy as he started forward.

The wheelmen didn't move.

"I can't." Butterfield's voice cracked.

"Sit and slide," called Kit, as his feet shot out from under him. He slid on his arse over mud and wet grass, found his feet for a few hopping steps, then slid again. Plummeting off a literal cliff could hardly have brought him down to the valley floor faster. This was a kind of plummeting, plummeting by giddy stages. He reached the bottom with shocking rapidity, heart banging out of his chest. Muriel was already wading out through knee-high water.

The next moment his breath exploded, his whole body jolting with a sudden impact. A hand grasped his collar to keep him upright. He made a strangled noise and jerked free. Deighton stood behind him, panting. He might have banged into Kit by accident or aimed for him, so as to break his own momentum.

He met Kit's eyes without apology. "How do we find the boy?"

It was a reasonable question. Without the bird's-eye view, Kit had no idea where to start. Acres of water spread before them.

"We follow her," he said, and waded after Muriel.

"He was by a tree." Deighton lurched along beside him. "But which? They look the same."

"Not to Mrs. Pendrake."

"And why is that?"

"She's a botanist." Kit gritted his teeth. Had Deighton learned nothing about his traveling companion but the fact that she contained the female organ? "Botanists can discern subtle distinctions in trees."

"Mrs. Pendrake can pick out a tree she saw from the top of that mountain? In the midst of all this?" Deighton's disbelieving gesture brought home the point. The flooded valley seemed alien, even things that should have been familiar difficult to recognize in their strange new context. Chickens were roosting on chimneys. A pink armchair drifted by.

"She can," said Kit. He wasn't sure of that either, but he needed to believe it. He needed to believe that someone could interpret this devastation and tell them what to do.

"There!" Muriel had stopped to point. She stood fifty feet away, in water as high as her waist. "That's the one." She cast a bright glance at Kit, expression torn between hope and fear. "The big sessile oak."

"He'll have got himself up into it." Deighton lurched faster, trying to run. With a grunt of frustration, he shoved his cap inside his coat and dove.

Kit did the same. The current was pushing him off course as he swam, and objects he didn't care to identify battered his legs and arms.

What if the boy hadn't got himself up into the tree?

He wouldn't think of the alternative, that tiny bobbing figure swept away, slipping down beneath the choppy waves.

Deighton reached the oak first, grabbed a branch, and hauled himself up. His head and shoulders disappeared in the dense foliage.

Kit heard him halloing, saw the leaves shake as he climbed higher.

"He's not here," he shouted down to Kit. "Dammit all." He sounded almost shrill. He climbed higher, higher than any little child could climb. Kit rolled onto his back in the water, looking up into the gray sky, blinking against the rain, lighter now. He let the current tug him.

"Griffith!" Deighton was screaming now. "Griffith!"

Kit tilted his head in time to see him jump. He had a long way to fall. The resulting splash slapped Kit in the face, and then Deighton was rising up from the water below him with the violence of a kraken.

The ensuing struggle dunked them both.

Kit wrestled himself free of Deighton's grasp and shot to the surface, choking. "What in the bloody hell are you doing?"

"Saving your life." Deighton treaded water furiously. "You were immobilized by cramp."

"I was floating, on purpose, to check the direction of the current. I think…" Kit didn't want to say it. The current was sluggish and slow, but a tired, cold, terrified child could hardly have resisted. The current would carry them to wherever he'd fetched up.

Kit let the current tug him again, away from Deighton and the oak, and bumped an obstruction that didn't give way. It was an enormous branch that must have curved down from the oak's trunk, so that most of its length was underwater, except for the leaves and smaller branches at its distant tip. A thin arm was hooked among them.

Kit did feel a cramp then, in the soles of his feet, and he felt too all the hope and all the fear he'd seen shining in Muriel's eyes.

He swam, the strokes jerky and frantic. At last, between the green leaves, he glimpsed a small, wet, bone-white face. Water lapped the boy's chin. His eyes were half closed, and his lips were blue. He was alive.

"Thank God," breathed Kit, and sank—just for one wet second—with relief.

Deighton towed the boy to the knoll where the hamlet's stunned residents were gathering. He swam a one-armed backstroke, bracing the boy protectively against his chest. Kit followed, grimacing, trying to shake the spasms from his feet.

A woman broke away from the huddled crowd when she saw them. She stretched out her arms, a wail emerging from her throat.

Deighton staggered through the shallows, and the woman raced toward him, a fierce blur wrapped in a sodden shawl.

"God bless you," she gasped, as she gathered her son to her. She was smiling at Deighton through her tears. "God bless you."

Deighton stared. The woman's attention was drawn immediately back to her son. She soothed and cuddled, bundling him in her shawl.

"At your service," mumbled Deighton, far too late. He looked at Kit, who'd hobbled over to stand at his side. There was something soft and awed in his face that he schooled quickly into a surly frown.

"Let's go," he said, and stalked back into the flood.

The sun was breaking through the clouds, and light glared on the water. Boats had appeared, sculled by grim-faced men. The rescue effort was underway in earnest now. Rescue would eventually become repair, and these Cornish folk would rebuild their lives, together. Kit hesitated, wondering if he had a further role to play, or if he was intruding on other people's pain. No one paid him any mind. On the knoll, the mother knelt, rocking her son with her lips in his hair. Some women, and men, stood conferring, and some were striking off in different directions.

Kit turned and scanned for Muriel. She was trudging with Deighton, heading back toward the hillside, looking from time to time over her shoulder, for him. Hesitation evaporated. He went after her as fast as his feet would allow.

When the three of them arrived at the base of the hill, Deighton addressed the wheelmen, who hadn't made it farther than the water's edge. Butterfield and Egg looked to have had a particularly rough way down.

"The boy's safe." He fitted his crumpled cap on his head. "We found him."

Was it the royal we? Or was Deighton crediting the collective effort? Muriel blinked and caught Kit's eye. He gave a conspiratorial shrug, delighted by the answering twitch of her lips.

"Back to the bikes." Deighton tucked his chin and pushed between Kemble and Prescott, tackling the hill with long strides. Butterfield looked up toward the hilltop. His face was so vividly expressive of misery, Kit felt the absolutely ludicrous instinct to give him a hug.

"He's scared of heights." Kemble sneered.

"I'm not." Butterfield straightened.

"After you, then." Kemble bowed and made an ushering motion.

"Ladies first." Muriel glanced between Kemble and Butterfield. "Mr. Butterfield will come up behind me." She gave Butterfield a lovely, muddy smile. "Just watch where I step and put your feet in the same place."

He was too petrified to resent her aid, let alone reject it. He nodded.

"How did you become such a champion stepper?" asked Kemble, later in the climb, when Muriel's zigzag path had them walking toward each other, at different elevations.

"She's a botanist and a plant hunter," snapped Kit, from yet lower on the hillside, annoyed. "She has traveled the world over. Do none of you know that?"

"I know it," offered Prescott, from behind him.

"I know more," said Egg, from behind him. "Mrs. Pendrake didn't tell Prescott about the giant panda."

Kit was regretting the question.

"She didn't tell me about the giant panda," he muttered.

"Please tell us," said Butterfield fervently. It was clear he'd prefer listening to anything other than the thoughts in his head. He hadn't looked up from the ground once.

"What's a giant panda?" Kemble was walking away from Muriel now, scowling. "I've never heard of such a thing."

Deighton stomped irritated, impatient circles on the brow of the hill as the rest of them finally struggled up to him, talking loudly and longingly of favorite meals. The topic was a non sequitur introduced by Kemble after Muriel concluded the tale of the giant panda, and everyone was hungry enough to find it inexhaustible.

Kemble had launched on a paean to roast duck sauced with brandy, claret, and port, which a hot blue glare from Deighton cut short.

"We can't ride to Newquay." Deighton's hands were in fists. "We won't even make it to Padstow." His throat worked above his wilted necktie, as though the next words were hard to get out. "It is decided. We ride inland."

Kit looked at the sky. The sun still winked through breaks in the clouds, but to the north, a line of thunderheads towered. More weather was coming. And floods likely rendered the coastal paths impassable.

Deighton was using the correct organ. No wonder he was irritated.

Kit opened his mouth to congratulate him, then figured it would do more harm than good and took himself over to the pile of bicycles to see what, if anything, had to be set to rights.

All the machines were serviceable, but only barely. The journey to Bodmin was sloppy, slow, and painful. There was flooding there too, in the town center. Overflowing drains. Swamped shops and houses. They chose to lodge on the highest ground, at a former coaching inn, the Travellers Rest, where the red-nosed, white-haired innkeeper ceded the old tack room to their bicycles, then ushered them into the bar.

Night was falling, and the storm had regrouped. Wind raged noisily along the narrow street. There was no roast duck on the menu, so Kemble had to content himself with chicken. Kit savored the warmth more than anything. Wind slicing through damp clothing as he cycled had chilled him to the bone. Deighton spent most of the meal simmering in silence at the head of the table.

"We were supposed to ride to Newquay." Deighton shoved away his emptied plate, which nearly forced Kit's plate off the table. "Bude to Padstow to Newquay. That was the plan. And tomorrow, Newquay to Porthtowan to St. Ives. Now we must do it all tomorrow, rain or shine."

The windows rattled, and a man eating alone in a booth whistled. "Lord, she's blowing now."

"We are on a ten-day run." Deighton crossed his arms, clutching his biceps, revealing fingernails bitten to the quick. He looked supremely ill at ease. "It was printed in the paper. With all the destinations. Everyone in St. Ives is taking bets on whether or not she will complete the run. If none of us do?" His eyelid was twitching again.

"There's no controlling the weather," said Muriel. She'd raked her hair into a messy braid and somehow exuded command. Now that Kit considered it, she had been commanding the Mutton Wheelers for much of the day. The experience seemed to have shifted the balance of power. Butterfield and Kemble were both nodding along to what she said.

"I control myself." Deighton dropped his hands to the table and gripped the edge. "And my club. We will complete the run tomorrow, even if there's a tempest."

"Tomorrow, then." Muriel raised her glass of ale.

Deighton snarled. "You should take the train to St. Ives. We're going to be riding excessive miles, through excessive mud. And this time, I won't turn back for you."

"Understood." Muriel sipped. "I'll take my chances."

"I'd put my money on Mrs. Pendrake," said Butterfield, with an admiring shake of his head. "When I saw her go charging down that cliff…"

"What are you saying?" Kemble started. "You can't put your money on her. That means putting your money against us."

"Does it have to mean that?" Butterfield smoothed his mustache. "It's not the end of the world if she completes the run. The Rover is a well-designed machine. We wouldn't be the only club switching over."

Kemble was gawking. "We'd have to let women in the club."

Butterfield shrugged. "Frankly, I don't see the problem."

"In the club means also in the clubhouse. It's squalid!" Kemble paused. "I suppose the women might make it less squalid. They could tidy. Maybe even embroider our emblem on chair covers." He seemed to be warming to the idea.

"We could call them the Wheelettes." Egg perked up as well. "Or the Muttonettes."

Kit wondered if Deighton was about to flip the table. His knuckles were white and veins bulged in his forehead.

But at that moment, the bar flooded—not with water—with people, more and more, all disheveled, with slightly dazed expressions. The innkeeper's wife answered Deighton's questions as she stacked the emptied plates, and overheard snatches of conversation supplied the rest. These weary souls were marooned rail passengers. Sections of the line connecting Bodmin with Wadebridge were underwater, and a tree had come down and blocked the train bound for Truro. Some of the passengers had waited hours for seats in the plodding, insufficient three-horse omnibus that had started from Bodmin to collect them. Others had trudged through fields and along roads thick with mud.

Chairs were in high demand, so Kit, Muriel, and the wheelmen rose. Rooms were going to be in high demand as well. They'd already taken theirs, but as the wheelmen trooped upstairs, Muriel hung back with a significant look.

"We should share," she whispered. "For the common good." She flagged down the innkeeper's wife as she bustled by.

"I think there was a mistake." Muriel smiled at her, but her eyes slid back to Kit. "My husband and I only need one room."

My husband and I…

That phrase on Muriel's lips instantly conjured all the warm fantasies he usually tried to fight. He and Muriel traveling the world together, or even better, staying at home, their home, mostly windows to let in light for all the plants and to facilitate his painting. Late nights. Late, lazy mornings.

He gave his head a rueful shake, dispelling the visions.

Even so…My husband and I. It lingered like a sweet taste.

He let it. There was only so much sweetness a man could resist.