Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle (99 page)

“My friend?” laughed Emily. “It would’ve been nice to have had a friend here beyond Fleda’s dog and the resident magpie.”

“You are speaking in past tense.”

“Am I?”

Somerton looked confused. “I thought we were friends.”

“Your actions toward me have been perplexing at best. At times you have shown kindness, but you’ve also shown an absolute disdain.”

“You’ve read me wrong. I have no disdain for you. I only have —”

Emily lifted her chin, curious to know how he would complete his sentence, but seeing his colour change she switched the subject. “And here you are at your desk when the fawning ladies shall soon be descending upon Hartwood? Don’t you have a pair of satin pumps to dust off?”

“Some of us must work. The estate does not run itself.”

“And you … not even the heir.”

“No. But you’ve met my father and eldest brother. I’m certain it wouldn’t surprise you to know that we’ve come close to losing the estate before.”

“Was it your hope to end up your father’s steward?”

“It was not.”

“Didn’t you want a career?”

“No. I wanted —” he hesitated. “I
want
Hartwood.”

“Ah! Was the thought of me ending up mistress of your ancestral seat a repugnant one?”

Somerton eyed her as he untied and yanked off his neckcloth.

“It’s not much fun, is it, Lord Somerton, wanting something you cannot have.”

His gaze did not waver. “No.”

“Your youngest brother wanted a career in law.”

“Did he? I scarcely knew my youngest brother.”

“Why do I have the impression that only Fleda was well acquainted with him?”

Somerton snickered. “Well she would have been. Octavius used to read to her, and take her riding. He even listened to her play the pianoforte, and before he left for the sea, he bought her that mutt.”

Emily had trouble imagining the
Isabelle
’s first lieutenant — the one she had known — showing patience for a younger sister. “And yet, when Mr. Walby was here, you displayed a zealous interest in your brother. I didn’t understand your behaviour last evening, in spite of Miss McCubbin’s assertion that you are a kind soul.”

Somerton’s mouth went missing in a grim line. “If my brother had lost his life when the
Isabelle
was set afire, you would have said. I cannot accept waiting until the trial to hear all. And now who knows whenever
that
shall take place with Trevelyan at large.”

“It came as a shock to find myself living with your family.”

“Why? My father opened Hartwood to you as a favour to your uncle.”

“Did he?” Emily challenged him with a sneer. “At first I thought so. It might also have made sense that your family wanted me here to provide them comfort and solace — someone who might recount their dead son’s final days on his ship and delight in his memory.”

“You’ve provided no comfort.”

“No.”

“Because my brother mistreated you on the
Isabelle
?”

“No, because I discovered early on that, with the exception of your little sister, none of you were genuinely in mourning. But then it was easier that way, for I didn’t know how to tell a girl of eleven years how her brother had died.” Feeling an enervating constriction in her chest, Emily crept toward the nearest chair and sat down, conscious of Somerton’s expectant gaze boring down on her. “I had an uncle named Octavius. He too was his father’s eighth son. I never met him — he died as a child — but upon his passing my grandfather was inconsolable. He believed there would be no heaven for him if he couldn’t find his beloved Octavius there.” Tears sprang to her eyes as her heart swelled. “I cannot understand a mother who does not love her child; therefore, I can only conclude that Helena invited me here for selfish reasons.”

Somerton began shuffling papers about. “You — you never actually said why you were looking for me.”

“I want my letters.”

He looked up quickly, his features falsely indignant. Emily stared him down.

“If you won’t get them for me, I’ll go post-haste to your mother. I believe she will know where to find them.”

A pall of silence settled on them like a dust cloth tossed upon the furnishings of a shuttered house. Mumbles of laughter and conversation filtered down the corridor from the kitchen, and outside in the courtyard wagon wheels grinded to a halt on the gravel driveway, inciting a series of welcoming barks from Fleda’s dog. Somerton’s sigh, which arrived only once he had contemplated the scenes beyond the windows, was almost inaudible. “Tell me something of my brother and I shall return what is yours.”

Emily rubbed her bare arms as if a ghostly presence had suddenly aspirated its dead chill down her neck. The ugly words would have to be uttered with celerity. “He died of a gunshot wound to the head.”

“What … in battle?”

“No.”

Somerton blanched, melding into the beam of pale sunlight streaming across the room. “No?” he echoed, shaking his head, his eyes scudding over the jumble of objects on his desk. “Are you saying he was executed?”

Emily would not reveal the traitorous exploits of Octavius Lindsay. His family did not need to know about them — not yet anyway.

“It was self-inflicted.”

His stare came back to her; incredulous and angry. “How do you know? Is this hearsay? Grist for the rumour mill? How can you be certain of this?”

“Because your brother killed himself in front of me.”

36

11:30 a.m.

(Forenoon Watch, Six Bells)

Aboard the
Prosperous and Remarkable

Leander gazed down at
Magpie to see his small compressed mouth working against the horrors of the hospital. “Would you like to see if Mr. Austen needs your help now?”

“Are ya tryin’ to send me off, sir?”

“It — it might be best.”

“If it’s all the same to ya, sir, I’d like to stay.”

Leander moved away from his operating table and gently guided Magpie toward the ladder, as far away as was possible from the desperate, weeping wounded. He could feel the boy’s thin shoulders quaking beneath his palms, and see his single eye transfixed upon the macabre wall shadows of the men huddled together in misery, mouths twisted and gasping in agony.

Leander drew himself up, his features grim. “You’ve worked yourself ragged these past hours.”

“Ya’ll need me to scatter the sand fer ya, sir.”

“Perhaps you can go find yourself something to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Better still … bring us both some coffee. Biscuit always has a pot on the boil.”

“Send Mrs. Kettle in me stead, sir,” Magpie pleaded, nodding at the laundress who was rocking back and forth on a rum cask, her eyes vacant, mouthing the words to a silent song. “I kin prepare the tar fer ya! I kin hand ya yer knives and saws and stuff when ya needs ’em.”

Leander caught his breath, unable to oppose Magpie’s youthful resolution. How he wished he could just lower himself into the hold, and go to sleep for days on end among the barrels and the rats and the dead bodies of Biscuit’s dreadful tales. He made an adjustment to his pirated spectacles, which were determined to sit upon his nose like a heeling ship. “It’s not an easy thing to watch.”

“I won’t vomit or nothin’, sir.”

“That would be most helpful.”

Dragging himself back to his wretched table, Leander could sense the frightened child behind him as he examined Morgan’s shattered left leg. The foot was already gone, so was most of the tibia, and what remained was mangled right up to and including the patella; he’d have to amputate above the knee. One of Prosper’s ruffians who had kindly offered up his services — the one whose nose resembled a tumorous strawberry — had already administered a draught of rum and laudanum to the patient, while a second volunteer named Jim Beef, one of the Amethysts who’d scrambled aboard the
Prosperous and Remarkable
when the American ships first appeared on the sea, had a leather gag at the ready. Hardly recognizable as the intrepid carpenter, Morgan thrashed about in delirium, breathing in gulping snatches, mumbling incoherently except to ask for his sisters now and again. Clods of crusted blood and guts had lodged in his hair — someone else’s, Leander assumed — and his pallid face was slick with perspiration and misshapen with pain.

Cannons and pistols and muskets still fired, but now their roar seemed muffled, as if they were mere echoes of Leander’s dream. For over an hour the battle had raged on, the
Prosperous and Remarkable
’s ceaseless pitching and shuddering leaving any and all faint-hearted languishing in sickness. But she was still fighting, still afloat, and Pemberton had seen fit to abandon his post to report the news to the hospital — with sober propriety — that one of the American vessels was sinking. The men who were still conscious had cheered and clapped and raved; most had said nothing at all.

“I’ll need you all to hold him down.”

Magpie timidly came forward to stand beside Leander, and closed his hands around Morgan’s left arm with care, as if he feared it might be afflicted too. Morgan rolled his head around and looked at Magpie, though his feverish eyes seemed fixed upon something stirring in the darkness behind him. Selecting the knife that would slice through skin and muscle and ligaments, Leander listened to the words that passed between them; their voices so whispery and husky with fear, he cursed the racket of the brig’s grinding pumps.

“You’ll tell them where I’ve been?”

“Who, sir?”

“Brangwen and Glyn; they’ve been wondering these past seven years.”

“Didn’t ya send them a letter, sir, when ya was in Bermuda?”

Morgan tried to raise his head up; his voice despairing. “What if it doesn’t reach them?”

“Then ya kin tell ’em yerself, sir … when yer better.”

“They need to know I wasn’t spirited away.”

“What’s that, sir?”

Assailed by another sweep of pain, Morgan clenched up, breathing heavily, and eased back on the table to fight it, leaving Leander to answer for him.

“It means when one is secretly taken, stolen by a gypsy or some kind of spectre.”

Magpie’s eye leapt across Morgan’s recumbent form and landed on the volunteer, Jim Beef, where it swelled in magnitude as if the lanky man was the sort capable of spiriting children away from their mothers. But Morgan’s fearful cry distracted him.

“Magpie? Are you still there?”

“I’m here, sir.”

“Please stay near.”

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“You won’t forget about my thrum cap, will you?”

Magpie’s face began to crumple. Bereft of words, he could only touch his little fist to his temple in a salute. “Sir.”

For an instant Morgan’s face brightened; he tried to smile. Drawing a slow breath, he turned away to accept the leather gag, sank his teeth into it, and braced for what was to come. Stinging with tears, Magpie leaned his meagre weight upon his friend’s arm and buried his head next to him on the bloody cloth. Together the older men bore down upon Morgan while Leander cut into his leg.

Noon

In the abrupt,
disquieting silence, Leander plodded toward the main deck, pausing after each climb to steady himself and catch his breath, his journey taking him past the fatigued gunners, most of whom were either sleeping or slumped upon the floor, curls of acrid smoke still prowling between them and the scorching carronades, and tripping over charred planks and unrecognizable bits of the brig. Reaching his destination, Leander stared up at the severed web of rigging stays traversing the blue brilliance of the sky, astounded to find the two masts unbroken, towering over the ship like fearless, inexhaustible combatants. The sails had not fared as well, many of them depleted by black-edged holes; nonetheless, there was enough canvas left to catch the wind.

As if he were working in the security of Portsmouth Harbour, Pemberton was organizing small groups of ruffians to begin making repairs, the damage report having included an unfortunate but complete destruction of the seats of ease. At the brig’s wheel, a subdued Prosper kept his eyes focused on the fore horizon, a steely determination on his fox-like features to put distance between the
Prosperous and Remarkable
and the American vessels he had failed to blow to kingdom-come.

Leander shook with relief when he spotted Fly standing alone by the starboard rail — whole, unharmed, alive — gazing back over the wake of the brig at the destruction and horror they had left behind them; his sad, slumped figure hauntingly reminiscent of Captain Moreland studying the white horizons, watching for Trevelyan.

Sensing his cautious approach, Fly moved his head slightly, but did not turn around. His voice was desolate. “If we’d continued fighting, those larger ships would’ve caught up and raked Prosper’s stern to pieces.”

“You did your best, Fly.”

“Did I?”

“What more could you’ve done?”

“I wish I knew. The
Amethyst
— she’ll be boarded, taken a prize, most likely sailed into New York Harbour under an outpouring of thunderous applause, and Prickett and Bridlington and the others — those that have not already fallen — will be herded into cold, crumbling jails and prisons. I’d prefer to be buried alive than become a prisoner of war.”

Fly’s hand — the one gripping the rail — was trembling, and the slackening pockets of flesh around his dark eyes gave him the aspect of a much older man.

Leander stood quietly beside him and listened.

“Such a gut-wrenching realization to discover — in the end — you are powerless and insignificant. All of your training, your exertion, your seemingly sound judgement, your extraordinary seamanship … what does it amount to when you know that, despite your efforts, this day, this season, is nothing more than the second summer of war. The fight will go on, and our lads will continue to be needlessly slaughtered, and we shall not triumph until more ships and supplies and men are redirected to America. The theatres of this war are too varied, far too vast, and Napoleon and his French Navy are slowly sucking us dry.” He heaved a despairing sigh. “I am so battle and sea-weary. I — I believe I now understand Captain Moreland’s need to ask for my forgiveness before he breathed his last on the blood-soaked deck of the
Isabelle
.”