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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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“Thrumming,” Fayette summoned. “I need a remedy.”
Thrumming’s hollow cheeks compressed further as he surveyed Judith. “Hmmm. I would bleed her first.”
“I’ll consider your suggestion. Would you like to take a promenade of the deck?”
Thrumming nodded, put his book under his arm, and left.
Fayette brought Judith inside the small room, and lifted her onto its lonely surgeon’s stool.
“Fayette,” she protested, “I’m not ill.”
“Shhh,” he admonished, as lightly as he had Washington. Then he set to work.
Tiers of shelves crowded with green bottles and gallipots lined all four sides of the cubicle. Beneath the shelves, drawers were inscribed in Latin. From one, Fayette removed a gnarled root. He added powder, and began to mash them together in a mortar.
Judith watched, oddly comforted. He had been doing this a long time—standing, harnessed by the small space, patiently making up remedies.
“My father and I dined with the captain,” she said.
“I see.”
“His darkness, Fayette. Thou cannot protect Washington from it much longer.”
“I know.” He ground something black beneath the pestle.
“Thou art not Lafayette. His name is not Washington. Who is he?” Judith demanded. “Why is he on this ship?”
Fayette looked up, amused. “What’s this, anger?”
“Bluntness. We Quakers are known for being blunt, remember?”
“Your knotted fists betray you, Judith.”
“Anger, then! At—”
“Anger? From a gentle persuader seeking the seed of Truth within this poor fellow here beside you?”
Judith concentrated on the stiff fingers in her lap. He was right; that was the worst of her humiliation. This rationalist Frenchman was right. “I ask thy forgiveness,” she said softly.
He uncorked a bottle and added its liquid to his concoction. It smelled like blackberries. He stirred, then poured it all into a chipped crockery cup. He put it in Judith’s hand. “Drink.”
The draught was curiously sweet, spiced by ginger and licorice. She finished it in the second swallow. “What was that, Fayette?”
“A
love potion.”
“Thou cannot resist teasing me, even now?”
“No,
rose blanc
.”
“Rose—?”
“White rose. Have none of your lovers ever called you by the names of flowers?”
Her hands were now folded in her lap. “Stop.”
He sighed. “Very well. But you will not be so without mercy as to disallow me my dreams?”
Safe. He was teasing her again. She met his eyes.
“And who was I, in thy dream?” she challenged.
“My dream?”
“The one as we stood beside the hammock?”
He exhaled an exasperated snort. “You are like him, do you know that? Chipping away at my rational being with your infernal visions!” He took in a pained breath. “Madeline and I, we used to lean over the cradle together like that. Exactly like that. Not quite believing.”
“Believing what?”
“Our good fortune.”
“She was a Friend, thy Madeline,” Judith realized.
“Disowned when she married me—Reason, the Devil himself.”
“Thy wife, child, are they … ?”
“A lifetime ago I lost them, back when you were playing with your dolls.”
Judith felt a warm glow pass between her and this charming, provoking man. He didn’t even think her older than her years, as most men did, because of her hair’s early graying. He had erred on the other side.
“I am two and thirty.” She protested his idea of the vast difference between their ages.
“My daughter would be eight and twenty come spring. You were playing with your dolls then? Surely you had a poppet at four, dear Judith? Do concede me that. Allow me to win one argument with you.”
She nodded, remembering the doll her mother made her. A faceless doll, and dressed plain, of course—but how she’d treasured her baby, and the real one that her mother birthed soon after, and the three who came after him. She treasured them still, though they were becoming as faceless as the doll.
Judith watched the broad-shouldered man return his remedies to their proper drawers.
“Has he become ours somehow, then, Fayette?” Judith whispered. “Is that why we fight so?”
“Perhaps.”
“Thy potion was not necessary,” she told him. “I did love thee already. Since I saw the brother thee is to my countryman,” she said, reverting to the more informal American turn of her people’s speech.
“And your countryman? Do you love him, Judith? Not with this obligatory, universal Quaker love you bestow on me, but with the passion that springs from your heart? I fear my Washington will not survive out in the wide world without that love.”
“He is not in the wide world. He is in this place of terrible risk. What of his survival here? If the captain should know …”
“He is a demon of the captain’s own guilty mind, whom he wrestles nightly. To the others—both the ones who think Washington a crippled imbecile, and the ones trusted with the truth?—to them he is a charm against their own deaths. Sea battles rage around the globe, but this ship has not fired a shot since Trafalgar.”
“The captain rails about this.”
“I did not make any of it so. I am a rational man. I only take advantage of the consequences, for the sake of my friend.”
“It’s coming to an end. We both know that, don’t we?”
“You’ve become a second demon to Willis, I know that!” he proclaimed, pacing the few steps the small space allowed him. “Perhaps he believes you to be that other Judith, the apocryphal giant-killer, who slew the mighty Holofernes for the Israelites. Your Inner Light is your sword, yes? What did it slice out of the captain tonight? Come, Judith, I am sure you went through your own terror and found all manner of—”
“Washington was impressed from the
Ida Lee
.”
“His ship. You learned his American ship? I’m damned.”
Judith frowned. “That I doubt. But I’m sure thou will find aspects of Heaven to complain about.”
Fayette threw back his head and gave out a blast of laughter. She should have ignored his impiety, Judith decided, but she did enjoy the sound.
“Washington was weeping over the loss of a midshipman when they took him from his American vessel,” Judith continued.
Fayette sobered. “The other boy, the boy with his face.”
“Boy?”
“When he was fevered from the lashes, he called out for another boy. Sometimes he’d call him the boy with his face, sometimes the boy with no face. So, he was a midshipman aboard the
Ida Lee,
this other. What else, what else?”
Judith’s fingers flew to her temples. “Let me think, baneful man! Oh, yes. What are powder monkeys?”
“The messengers to the cannons during an engagement. They bring fresh gunpowder from the magazine. Powder monkeys are a very short-lived breed.”
“Captain Willis called Washington one of them.”
“Ah. That would explain the burns on his face. Cannon blast. From before the battle off Trafalgar, then? But, Judith, does the United States teach her powder monkeys Latin and Greek and celestial navigation?”
“Was not thyself his tutor in those subjects?”
“No. I come from bourgeois shopkeepers. My father was only concerned that I learned English, the language of commerce, and my numbers, an ability at which Washington exceeds me. My further education was through Paris literary and social salons, the maxims of Camfort and the ravings of Danton, before I awoke one morning a citizen marine. This powder monkey who reads to me from
Plutarch’s Lives,
he of the beautiful shirt—who was he, Judith? Was the
Ida Lee
of the American navy or was she merchant marine?”
“I don’t know. But the captain said she sank off the Bermudas. Washington is now her only survivor.”
At this news the Frenchman’s eyes went melancholy. “Perhaps he has people, then, after all.”
“People? I don’t understand.”
“That is why no one’s ever come for him, inquired about him all these years. The messengers, those who could have told your government how he was taken, where he is, they are all dead themselves.” His green eyes sparked. “All but you, Judith.”
“Me?”
“He’s from the South of the United States, you said?”
“I think so, though his speech is so influenced by thine own—”
“You must travel your southland; you must find his people.”
“It’s a very large area, Fayette.”
“How large?”
“Larger than all of France; and beyond the seaboard, much of it is still wilderness.”
“Ah, but this is nothing, not for you! Your father will be your aide-de-camp. First you and I, in the time we have left, we will badger our Washington’s muddled head about his remembrances. His dreams, you must ask him about those pictures in his head, traces of his childhood are in them. Night and day we will badger him!” He laughed. “Shall we pledge it together, Mother?”
Judith was startled by the appellation. It connected itself with Washington’s picture of two dancing mothers. She was his third, the Quaker one, the one who didn’t dance. The name linked her to Fayette, in the same capacity as his Madeline. Dearly.
She took the Frenchman’s outstretched hand to seal their pact. No, not a pact—she must not swear. She took it in friendship. Warm. He caressed her fingers between his big hands with a delicacy she didn’t think he possessed.
“Find his people, Judith,” he said. “Bring him home.”
Her lips parted. Not in objection to the task, but at the sudden, searing thought of being left alone, without him, to do it.
He came closer. Her feet dangled like a schoolgirl’s from the stool. She was no schoolgirl. She was a grown woman who had convinced herself she could live a full life without this. He touched her cheek, watching her eyes, always watching, as he lowered his mouth to hers.
Their chaste kiss lingered, somehow mingling her licorice love potion with his lime-and-rum grog. His fingers glided down her neck, deftly maintaining intimacy as his lips left hers.
“Perhaps your parents should not have chosen such a fierce model in your namesake,
chère
Judith,” he whispered at her ear. “Perhaps you were gifted with too much of that lady’s fire to remain light only? Should gentle Ruth or David’s wise Abigail have guided their selection?”
Judith found her voice. “My deficiencies are my own, Fayette. Leave my parents blameless.”
His mouth discharged another snort of laughter before he took up her hand and deftly, defiantly, kissed protesting fingers. “There,” he conceded. “Some humor, even if you people have no art. I suppose I could be giving Washington to a blasted Calvinist.”
“Giving?”
“You heard me. He is yours.”
This was the old Fayette—cynical, angry—and Judith was waking reluctantly to spar with him again. “Why?”
“Because you are right. It grows less safe for him daily. I should have somehow gotten him ashore years ago, but I’ve seen how the lame are treated out there, and every time I thought of not being able to protect him, of that fine spirit broken, I chose the evils we already knew. Foolish.”
“Fayette …”
“You must hurry. My joints ache so I can barely lift the small weight he is. Washington cannot survive without me, and I am long past my prime out here on the sea.”
Judith felt a bone-numbing cold invade her being. “Dear God. Don’t say that,” she whispered.
His index finger gently traced the line that appeared in her forehead. “No grief. Yours are not a grieving people, remember? The ten years aboard this cursed English frigate have been the brightest of my life after Madeline. My
petit général
has exceeded me. Could a father want for more? When he was a child, I told him that his fine, principled President Jefferson would rescue him. We were too patient, yes? No one came. Now is your turn, Judith Mercer. Find his people, tell them he lives, and make them procure his release. Help him find himself with them, after.” His eyes went sad. “Protect him from his enemies,
brave little Quakeress, because I have never been able to teach him guile. In return he will love you forever, in whatever mode you desire.”
“The steaming of the pudding plumps the raisins,” Washington
explained. “It mixes with the oats, makes the pudding taste—”
“Delicious,” Judith finished for him. Washington watched their honored guest swallow the cracker mashed in boiled water. “Thy plum duff is delicious, Washington.”
Judith was good at the game he and his friend had played with their food for years.
How beautifully she graced the chestnut-and-gold filigree of Fayette’s chair. How could he find the courage to steal her soul? He
could
barely steal glances. Why must he do this? he’d asked his friend.
“In war as in love, we must achieve contact to triumph.”
Fayette had proclaimed Napoleon’s maxim. And he’d only snorted when Washington pointed out that Napoleon was now in lonely exile.
When Judith had met with him on deck, her changeling gray eyes transmuted with the density of the night air, with the color of her garment. But they took on no color here in the blacks and whites and grays of their home below the waterline.
Judith was not used to their quarters. She should not stay any longer. Couldn’t Fayette see that? They must fetch her father to bring her to her berth, and, tomorrow, to her own country. No, not that; not gone. Washington fought the notion of her being gone from them. He must not think of that. Not yet.
Standing beside Washington’s hammock, Fayette grinned. “You are succumbing to it, Judith,” he warned.
She raised her head. Washington pretended he’d see that defiant gesture for a lifetime, that he’d continue to mediate the altercations between these two people he loved best in the world.
“Succumbing? To what?” she demanded.
“To the power of Washington’s imagination,” Fayette parried, his
light eyes flashing. “It has turned our meager fare into a feast of oysters and quail eggs and plum duff, our humble ration of grog into the finest wine of Champagne. And has made you, dear Judith, the most desired woman since Helen of Troy.”
Her mouth curved into a smile. It was not the taut, wary one she usually wore when sparring with Fayette. It was wide, open, astounding Washington more than Fayette’s improper words.
Judith raised the bleached-bone cup Washington had made for her, looking past the delicately carved tulips in its rim. Her eyes turned green, suddenly. From where did the color come? The green serge of her gown? Washington blinked. She and Fayette laughed like doting parents over a dreamy child. He was not a child. It stung at him, their laughter.
“I can hardly protest, not tonight,” she said in that bell-clear voice. “Not when thy fine-wrought imagination has given thee a life in thy captivity, dear Washington.” Judith raised the cup higher, to his friend. “And it has helped transform this bitter revolutionary into the most devoted of fathers.”
Judith watched the men’s cups touch the rim of hers. What was she saying? The overseers of her Monthly Meeting would not approve of these words, praising imagination. The cup in her hand lost Washington’s fanciful design and became bone again—ugly, broken, like the bones of his leg. What was happening to it?—to her? The hazy film of a vision enshrouded them all.
Judith glanced desperately past the men’s faces to seek her stability in the sight of the miniature ships. Their masts were shredding. Her hair strands whipped and lashed at the fine cloth sails. The ships plowed into each other, then shattered as they hit the floor. A voice, abandoned and lost, repeated the French words over and over.
“Catch her, Fayette.” Washington’s urgent whisper cut through the haze of Judith Mercer’s vision. Too late. She fell on the bones.
 
 
J
udith felt a cold wetness at her temples, and the familiar scent of cloves. She opened her eyes. Washington returned her smile. She was not lying on bones, but on his hammock stretched out there on the floor. The vision was over, her eyes clear, everything in place again. Washington’s deft hands were both at work, one fanning her face with a torn page of one of their precious books, the other gliding something over her lips. “Sip, Judith,” he urged.
She did. “What is it?”
“Ice. Fayette went into the officers’ provisions for it. He’s locking up now, and fetching your father.”
The sliver of ice melted. Washington’s fingertips tasted of the steel of his needles. “There,” he said. “Your color returns.”
Judith took his arm and sat up slowly. She felt better there, on the floor with him, away from the pomp of Fayette’s chair. How tenderly, how calmly he cared for her, after she must have frightened him to the marrow. What a wonderful doctor he would make, her Washington. She raised her hand to her brow. “I was saying something, wasn’t I? Something foolish … .”
“Not foolish. You were making us the artists of our lives. Fayette was the foolish one, comparing you to the Grecian queen, embarrassing a religious woman by calling attention to her beauty. It was rude, and he has taught me better. I apologize for him.”
The face that had been forlorn and drifting all night now found its focus in indignation. Judith let out a small rush of laughter that somehow ended in a sob.
“Now, don’t do that,” he admonished. “Fayette will think I was not a gentleman, and made you cry.”
“I’m not crying.”
“No? What is this?” He turned her face to the candlelight.
“The ice. The last drops of the ice.”
Washington came closer. His tongue swiped her cheek and followed up the side of her face. “Salt,” he declared. “Tears. For whom do you weep, Judith? What did you see in your vision?”
How could she hide it from him? “Thy ships, falling from the shelf, breaking,” she whispered. “Bones, all the bones broken. And French words.
Plus tard.
What does that mean, Washington?”
He spoke gently. “‘Later,’ it means only
later.
Some rough seas ahead, is it? We must tie the ships down to the shelf, yes? Do not cry. They are not worth your tears.”
“Yes, of course.” Her voice shook out the words. “Foolish. Didn’t I tell thee I was being—”
“I love you, Judith,” Washington whispered. “Across the water, beyond time and the stars and remembrance, I love you.”
She swept his gleaming hair off his brow. It was a mother’s or sister’s gesture, and he knew it. Judith felt the searing heat of his anger as he caught her hand, pressed it to his face, kissed into its palm. Deeply, tasting her sweat, her skin. He traced her life line with the tip of his hard, unyielding tongue, leaving her breasts tingling, her body faint with longing. He knew what he was doing. He knew exactly.
“Washington,” she gasped out. “Stop.”
He did, lowering his head until she could only see the spiraling crown of his hair.
“I do not please you,” he whispered.
“You do please me. And you know you do,” she said, abandoning her Quaker “thou.” “Washington, you are not an innocent.”
He raised his head. His man-child eyes, already too wide, too beautiful, went wider still. “Is that required in your religion?”
“When? How?” she heard herself demanding.
“Only once! And she was full of courage, like you … . No, not like you, nothing like you. Fayette says I must not talk of her, because you will think of it as a sin because it was not sanctified, and the money he paid for her favors, and—”
“You miss her. You loved her?”
“No. Yes. She said she would come back, she promised! Did she lie? Am I so hideous, so damaged?” He ground his teeth in frustration. “Wrong. I’m doing it all wrong.”
“Doing what, impossible man?”
“You are angry?”
“Yes!”
“As angry as you get with Fayette?”
“Fully as angry!”
His mood underwent a sea change. “This is good!” He laughed. Then he kissed her.
Judith felt the urgent breath bursting from his nostrils across her wet cheek. When she shivered, his lips pressed harder against her yielding mouth. She felt his even, gleaming teeth under her tongue’s bold sweep. Her fingers raked the abundance of his hair shamelessly as he probed her mouth. The kiss sweetened with the raisins of his imaginary plum duff. Joy followed on the heels of surprise, both unfettered by thought. He pressed so close she felt the taut sinew of his muscles, the bones underneath, the strong heartbeat, farther still. Fayette’s kiss in the apothecary had paved her way toward this one, she thought, when it ended.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
He smiled, taking her hands in his, swinging them in a small, graceful arc. “Stolen your soul,” he admitted, like a boy caught pulling the tail of a cat. “A small part only, but you will have to come back to us for its return.”
“I will come back,” she said. “But not for my soul. I’ll come to bring thee home.”
“I cannot leave without Fayette, Judith.”
“I know,” she whispered.
Fayette slouched in the doorway, his shoulder pressed to the rafter.
“Mon dieu!”
—he announced his presence. “For this I have bribed the
yeoman for ice with my medal of the Egyptian campaign? For a woman with rose cheeks, full of life and health?”
He stormed in, stepping over their clasped hands. Eli Mercer, his shirt tucked hastily into his breeches, followed.
“I’m well now, Papa.” Judith assured his anxious eyes as she took his hand, linking her father to her flushed young lover.
Fayette snatched the worn book from the floor. “My Moliere!” he shouted at his charge. “You could have just as easily torn pages from your bloody Shakespeare!”
 
 
T
he
Standard
’s bow shrouded in mist as the launch pulled farther toward shore. Judith raised her arm to the men’s farewell.
The English frigate had performed its small duty of delivering the Quakers and the letters of the men at Dartmoor. It would sail on. Captain Willis stood in full-dress uniform on the quarterdeck, ramrod-straight as if he were made of tin.
He’d remained beside Judith during her farewells, and so she could only hold Fayette’s hand a little longer than the rest as she gave him her gift. He’d stared down at the black cut paper.
His silhouette placed him high on the mizzenmast, where he’d served in his prime. It had been Washington’s suggestion to place him there. Judith had not been sure Fayette would view it with approval. She should have relied on the younger man’s instincts. As Fayette regarded her gift, his sharp eyes had lost their icy cynicism. For one lovely moment, they’d almost darkened. It was as if he’d turned part of himself into Washington, so that she could see them both for this last time.
From her native shore, with the packet of the Dartmoor prisoners’ letters under her arm, Judith looked out to sea. The land sounds were strange, as was the solid dock beneath her feet.
“The coach waits,” her father urged. “They cannot see thee any longer,” he said more quietly, touching her arm.
“Go on,” she said. “I’m coming.”
As his footfalls faded, she whispered the last verse of a lullaby. Practical songs, lullabies, used for the purpose of drawing children to rest. Had her mother sung them? She must have—from whom else had Judith caught the words?
Take time to rest, my ray of hope,
In the garden of Dramore.
Take heed, young eaglet,
Till thy wings
Are feathered fit to soar.
A little rest and then the world
Is full of work to do
.
Sleep, Washington, through the dog and night watches. Sleep and stay engaged with thy sails and ships until I return,
she sang.
Judith walked to the waiting coach.
“I believe we should bring the Dartmoor prisoners’ letters to James Madison, Papa, so he can touch the lingering effects of his war. Our new mission of securing Washington’s release may as well commence there too.”

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