Dawn on a Distant Shore (49 page)

She flushed so that
her sunburned skin mottled. "And whose fault is
that?
Who let Nathaniel
Bonner leave this ship with the gold and never raised a finger to stop
him?"

Stoker leaned in
toward her. "If that gold had been on my ship, do you think I wouldn't
have known it? No, it's your doing, sweetings. You let an old black woman and a
little girl come between you and the gold."

"You can't prove
that!" Giselle spat.

"And what does it
bloody matter?" roared Stoker. "There's no gold on this ship, and
you're not going to France without it. So shut your bleedin' gob, woman, and
get out of the way of men's work!"

Giselle pursed her
mouth. "Oh, I'll keep out of your way,
Captain
Stoker. As long as
we're bound for Scotland, I'll make it my concern to do just that. I give you
my word on it."

"Is that
so?" Stoker produced one of his terrible grins. "There are bloody few
hiding places on the
Jackdaw
, me darlin', and I know every one of them.
And I give you me word on
that
."

"Captain!"
Micah called again, his tone urgent enough to get Stoker's attention.
"She's a Tory frigate, and she's comin' this way at speed!"

"Damn!"
Stoker swung away, Giselle forgotten. "All hands! Jemmy, rouse Connor, and
tell him to bring Granny up on deck!" He trotted away, shouting orders for
more sail.

Robbie narrowed his
eyes at Giselle. "Giselle, ma sweet. Ye ken weel enough why we're bound
for Scotland."

Hawkeye watched
Giselle's face and saw there what Stoker would never understand about her: she
had a mind ten times sharper than his own, and she would always calculate her
own gain first, and that down to a tin penny.

"That is none of
my concern," she said. "I made arrangements with Captain Stoker for passage
to France. I have no intention of going to Scotland."

She spoke directly to
Hawkeye, staring him in the eye like a man who wants a fight. The last time
they had had words of any kind he had been a reluctant guest at her table.
Party games and sugared fruit, and now she wore a knife on her belt.

He looked away, but he
answered her. "France, is it? A bloody place these days for the wellborn.
And there's the blockade, I suppose you ain't forgot that."

All around them the
sailors jumped to Stoker's commands, but Giselle took no note of any of this;
she was still studying Hawkeye, one corner of her mouth turning down while the
opposite brow went up. "Still trying to interfere in my affairs, I
see."

Hawkeye laughed.
"You're a fine one to talk, missy. Or are you going to tell me that you
ain't had a part in Moncrieff's scheme, right from the start?"

A plain woman is
always well served by a smile, but when Giselle bared her teeth there was nothing
pretty about it.

"Of course I had
a part in it," she said. "Did you think he could have managed it on
his own? It was time to see old debts settled. Moncrieff made sure you three
went off to see the captain of the
Providence
, and then I saw to it that
the governor knew where to find Elizabeth while you were gone. The only
question was whether he would take her to the château to question her, but luck
was with us."

"You're right
proud of yourself," Hawkeye said dryly. "But tell me this, what would
those old debts be?"

"That is between
your son and myself," Giselle snapped.

Robbie swayed as if he
would lose his footing.

"Ye canna mean
that ye had a hand in this, lass. Wad ye take babes from their mither, tae suit
your hurt pride?"

Giselle drew herself
up. "If you are looking for some remorse or soft feelings, then you will
strain your eyesight to no good end, sir."

Robbie's face fell as
if she had spat at him. "I wadna ha' thoucht it."

"Come now,"
said Giselle, creasing her brow in irritation. "You have seen what Pink
George is capable of, after all. Why should you expect anything else from his
daughter?"

"Because,"
said Robbie hoarsely, his whole body shaking. "Because I ken yer mither,
too. And it's a shame and a pity that ye're no' mair like her."

Hawkeye wondered if he
had heard right. Robbie MacLachlan had not been off the North American
continent for some fifty years--how could he know a Frenchwoman who had never been
farther south than Montréal? But he saw by the man's expression that he had
spoken a truth so long held secret that letting it go had torn a hole in him.
Robbie was breathing as though he had just fought a battle and lost.

Giselle had not moved.
There was nothing in her expression to show that she had even understood except
a tremor at the corner of her mouth.

"You're
lying." Her voice was steady. "You cannot know my mother."

Robbie ran a hand over
his face. "If that's what ye want tae believe, lass, then it's just as
well. I should ha' held ma tongue."

Granny Stoker let out
a cry of alarm louder than any war whistle.

"Jack Twist, ye
reeky kack-handed gudgeon, you'll bleed for that!" Stoker roared.

"Oh,
Christ," muttered Robbie. "He's broke the turnbuckle."

Hawkeye didn't know
what a turnbuckle was, but he could see well enough that the line that hoisted
the sail had given way. The jib slid down the forestay, snapping wildly and
spilling wind. All the aft sails were suffering for it and their speed was
falling off fast. From her sling on the middle mast Granny Stoker keened as if noise
might fill the faltering sails.

Giselle was pulling on
Hawkeye's sleeve. "If you think such sorry lies will change my mind about
France, you are wrong. You can swim to Scotland for all I care, Mr. Bonner."

"I wouldn't count
on France right now if I was you." Hawkeye had to raise his voice to be heard
over Connor's alarm rattle. He turned to Robbie: "What's to be done?"

"They'll take
doon the jib tae try and fix the turnbuckle. I'll see if I can help." And
he ran off without another glance at Giselle.

She reached out and
grabbed Hawkeye's lower arm before he could follow Robbie.

He shrugged his arm
out of her grasp. "Christ, woman! Can't you see we're in trouble
here?"

"Tell me what he
meant. You owe me that much!"

Her expression made
him pause. "Old debts again, is it?" Hawkeye studied her pretty face,
the fine lines around her mouth and eyes that deepened in anger and something else,
something that smelled of fear that lives deep in the gut. "Sometime
you'll have to explain to me exactly what it is you think you're owed."

"
Tell
me."

"I don't know
what he meant."

"You're
lying!" Her voice cracked and wavered.

"Is that so? And
what could you do about it if I was?"

The ship rolled hard,
and Giselle was thrown up against him. Hawkeye put both hands on her shoulders
and pushed her away, feeling the heat of her through the thin shirt, feeling
too much, his gut lurching like the deck underfoot.

"Mac's not
watching, little girl," he said harshly. "Rubbing up against me won't
get you what you want from him."

She curled a hand into
the fabric of his shirt, her knuckles pressing against his chest. "Did you
think I wanted something from Mac Stoker?" She laughed. "Your famous
eyesight is failing you."

Hawkeye pushed her
away again, feeling his temper flash and slide, ready to break its bounds.
"I don't know anything about your mother. But if I did, I wouldn't tell
you. I ain't a boy to let himself be sucked dry and cast off."

All around them the
ship was in a dead rage as the Tory frigate gained on them, Stoker ranting, Granny
screeching, the whole crew shouting as they struggled with the jibsail. But
Giselle stood there pure deaf to it all. The blood left her face, and Hawkeye
saw that he had struck too hard, hard enough to put her back against the wall.

"Daniel
Bonner." Her mouth worked silently for a moment. "All these years
I've had something of your son's, and none of you ever knew it." Her voice
had dropped, but he could hear every word, more clearly than he wanted to.

Here it is, now.
Finally. The first shot in the battle, or the last?

"And what would
that be?"

Her mouth worked
again, trying to spit out what lay so long and heavy on her tongue. "Your
firstborn grandson. He turned sixteen the same week that bluestocking of an
Englishwoman gave birth."

He kept his peace;
anything he could say would serve her purpose better than his own.

"It is true. I
see you do not believe me, but it is true."

Hawkeye braced one arm
against the longboat and stared at the deck. Giselle might be lying; it came to
her easy enough. He shook his head to clear it.

"You're on your
way to find this boy of yours, is that right?"

She pushed out a sigh.
"Yes. He was taken from me when he was born and sent to my mother."

"In France."

She nodded
impatiently. "My mother is in France. Yes."

Hawkeye considered his
own hands. Skin like overworked leather, but the tattoos around his wrists were
still the same deep indigo they had been when they were new, in those days when
he hadn't yet learned to think of himself as white.

Giselle was watching
him warily, things moving behind pale eyes that were beyond his understanding.
She had borne Nathaniel a son, and kept the boy away from him all these years.
One part of him wanted to laugh in her face; the other did not dare.

"Does he have a
name?"

The muscles in her
throat worked. "Luc," she said. "The woman who attended me
baptized him Luc."

Baptized.
Some small connection
flickered far away, and Hawkeye reached for it. A midwife, a Catholic.

"That would have
been Iona," Hawkeye said.

"You know
her?"

He had made her
uneasy.
Iona is Robbie's good friend
, he might have said. But he kept it
to himself.
A grandson who had never set his foot on Hidden Wolf, who knew
nothing of his forefathers
. Hawkeye said, "Does the boy look like
Nathaniel?"

She frowned, her
suspicion digging a furrow between her brows. "He had my coloring when he
was born, but he was long of bone."

"Fair and light
eyed, about eighteen." He spoke these words out loud, and each of them
seemed to draw her closer, until her raised face was no more than a few inches
from his own. But Hawkeye was far away, remembering the night of the fire at
the garrison gaol in Montréal, and the boy who had led them to the river. Luke,
Robbie had called him. Iona's grandson, he had called himself. Hawkeye closed
his eyes and tried to draw a picture of the boy in his mind.

"Well grown. Big
boned, but he moves cleverly. Like Nathaniel at that age."

Giselle's mouth contorted.
"What are you talking about? Who are you talking about?"

"I ain't
sure," Hawkeye said. "But it looks to me as if Rab MacLachlan has
some explaining to do."

She pointed to the men
working so frantically on the jibsail. "There he is. Call him over."

"You,
Bonner!" screamed Granny Stoker, waving her cane at him. Hawkeye didn't
know how long she had been calling his name.

"Are you deef,
man! Come here!"

It displeased Giselle,
and maybe that's why he did it, simply walked away from one angry woman to another
one, and was whacked twice with her cane for his trouble.

"Wake up,
man." She jabbed toward the stern with her chin. "Look!"

The Tory frigate was
closing fast, no more than fifty yards off now and bearing slightly away to
come up broadside. Overhead the
Jackdaw
's sails still fluttered and
snapped, snatching at the wind but getting no purchase.

She thumped Hawkeye's
shoulder. "Lift me up so I can see!"

Hawkeye did as he was
asked, lifting the lumpy bundle of fidgeting woman out of the sling, taking in
her smells: the dry rot of oldest age, sour tobacco, sweat. Her baubles slid and
slithered around her chest; her legs flopped like sticks.

"Capting!"
Behind them Jemmy was shouting shrill as a whistle above all the confusion.
"Hulls down the horizon!"

Granny pushed on
Hawkeye's shoulder to bring him around, even as she raised her long glass. Her
hand trembled, the skin blotched with the sun and yellowish.

"Jaysus Mary and
Joseph," the old woman breathed.

A forest of masts had
appeared to the northeast, a world of sails. A hundred ships or more, maybe
five miles off: no distance at all in good winds. Hawkeye felt the skin on the
back of his neck rise in a slow shimmer.

"Micah!"
Stoker grabbed the young sailor and shoved him hard. "Up the mast, lad,
and see what you can see. Be quick about it! Connor, raise that jib now."