Chapter Three
With resignation, Jack surveyed his quarters on board the ocean liner Strathaird for the next few weeks. Although he was travelling incognito, the budget of the Victoria police department was the one that ruled, and that put him in the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company's cheapest Second Saloon.
There was room for him, his suitcases, and his bed. There was not room or opportunity for a window. The engine room could be regarded as a reassurance, given his proximity to it; there would not be the slightest chance of his being able to forget about it during the journey.
He was already contemplating the stage in the voyage at which he would be able to cope on deck with just a blanket, when a smartly uniformed officer came hurrying down the companionway, sweating profusely.
"Mr Benedick? Sir? Mr John Benedick?" After a nonplussed moment, Jack recalled his alias, and turned enquiringly to the man approaching. "That's me. Something wrong?"
"Mr Benedick, I'm so sorry" the man was actually trembling in his worry. "It's been a terrible oversight. I can't apologise enough. My only excuse … we weren't sure which of you or your colleagues would be travelling, and trying to check the passenger manifest for several names when it's changing all the time ….please, sir, follow me ….I'm so sorry …" he was already scurrying away, like a gold-striped, peaked-capped White Rabbit. Jack, mystified, jogged after him before he disappeared up the stairs at the corridor's end.
Three more flights of stairs followed. Another two corridors. A different colour of carpeting and a marked increase in the number of stewards signalled a very different part of the ship.
"Ah …" the White Rabbit was slightly out of breath, but clearly enormously relieved. "Here we are! I'll have your bags brought up straight away."
His relief, as he flung open the stateroom door, was palpable. As Jack walked past him into the expanse of light and luxury, he struggled to argue with the sentiment; although his sense of disquiet as to the reason for the hasty switch was already heightened. He swung around to question the purser further, but the man, clearly at his wits' end trying to order his vessel for departure, had already vanished.
Instead, Jack shrugged, took off his hat and raincoat and flung them on one of the tastefully arranged (and heavily built, to keep them stable in a storm) armchairs. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he wandered over to the windows; at which point he realised they were in fact doors, leading out onto a balcony. When they started to move, he would be to the right of the ship; greeting the sun in the morning, and enjoying the cool of the shade in the afternoon.
Starboard, home. Well, it was scarcely home. But for a near-frozen soul only recently becoming used to the warmth of an extraordinary new flaming fire of female energy, it Would Do. It would Most Certainly Do.
Turning back into the stateroom, he surveyed his domain and noticed for the first time a slightly dog-eared envelope sitting on the dining table (a dining table? Was he expected to give dinner parties? A shudder was suppressed) propped up against a silver basket of fresh fruit.
He picked it up; it was indeed addressed to "J. Benedick, Esquire" in an elaborate hand he had come to know well. Turning it over, he saw an archaic wax seal.
Bearing a single, extravagantly cursive, letter B.
His brow furrowed. Picking up the fruit knife from its plate, he slit the envelope, and withdrew a single sheet.
I don't think the P&O will understand my allusion. Thou and I art too wise, though, my Jack. Your Beatrice.
Did he re-read the lines three times, or four? It wasn't as though he didn't get the full message the first time. In any event, the urge to sprint to the bridge and force the captain at gunpoint to cast off that instant, cancelling all intermediary stops on the way to England, was only fought by folding the note carefully, placing it in the left hand pocket of his blue wool jacket and walking slowly out onto the balcony of his stateroom to grasp the rail firmly with both hands and look unseeingly at the steady horizon.
Too wise to woo peaceably, indeed.