Chapter 2
Two
It was plain: Everard should not have worn his favourite hat. There really was nothing like a summer on the Ontario.
The ship’s boy had made perhaps his umpteenth round of bucket ladle to the Brigitte’s crew audience. They were beginning to show serious signs of wilt; some had even sat down. Nobody had the heart to tell them otherwise, even the admiral.
Everard thought of the pirate, as yet to appear before them, and hoped the ship’s boy had got round to him at some point, too: it would be suffocatingly hot belowdecks.
Then he remembered. Gagged. It was enough to make him sit straighter in his chair.
The admiral’s new secretary did indeed have a quicker hand than his predecessor, and appeared to know a good deal of shorthand, thank God; but everyone was still obliged to pause, silent, as he scratched down every word that was said in the proceedings.
Two deserters. A crew of mutineers, five in number. A thief. Charges proved on all.
Finally it was time for the pirate.
Heat forgotten, the Brigitte’s crew revived themselves and stood. Intent. Everard felt mildly sick. Was it that the prisoner was a pirate that had their attention rapt? Or was it the last-minute sodomy charge?
He knew what made the newsprints.
Three marines carried the pirate up through the hatch.
This was absurd in itself. One marine had lost his hat, and little wonder: the pirate kicked, though his legs were shackled; he bucked, pale broad shoulders twisting in strain; he screamed and swore, the King’s English identifiable from the biting rhythm even through the gag.
He was blindfolded, linen tight over his eyes and knotted behind a long rope of braided blond hair that was un-matted and surprisingly clean-looking.
After days in the hold, in this heat, a prisoner ought to have been rendered limp and delirious.
At the very least, he should have been resigned to his fate.
This man was none of those things. He was spitting with rage.
It made Everard’s face burn to watch them struggle to drag him, as though he took on the man’s own indignity.
The marines wrested the man down, until he fell to his knees with a thump, the sound as heavy as dropped cannon shot; Everard winced.
They pulled his ironbound, biceps-tied arms back and knotted them to his ankle shackles, so that he was spread out, ribs splayed before them, as though someone would cut out his beating heart to splatter on the decking.
“Jesus,” D’Arcy muttered.
Once, one particularly hot summer—hotter than this, even—they’d had to upend a bucket of water over a swooned prisoner to wake him; legally, he had to stand and give his defence. And that had been bad.
But Everard had never seen anything like this.
The prisoner had stopped cursing by now. Other than his harsh breaths, there was a stunned silence.
The admiral cleared his throat and began to read the man’s charge sheet.
What pirate had skin so milk-white, untouched by the sun? What sailor, for that matter? Could they have got the wrong man?
“… not limited to desertion, mutiny, sedition, piracy, and unnatural offences against his fellow seamen,” he finished.
There it was. Unnatural offences.
D’Arcy made a distinctly discomfited noise.
Everard glanced over. Though D’Arcy still leaned lazily, ear to palm, he had recoiled into his chair as far as he could go, and his left hand had shoved itself deep into his breeches pocket, seeking shelter from trembling.
Preston D’Arcy, Post-Captain of His Majesty’s Navy, with a fifty-eight-gun frigate-of-war and a crew upwards of 250—some of whom he was obliged to stripe—was far from a squeamish man.
Everard found he, too had hunched his own shoulders in reflexive sympathy for the prisoner’s wrenched ones, and had hands in pockets, though he didn’t tremble. His stomach rolled instead, frothing bubbles liquifying his insides.
Even knowing the sodomy charges were likely unfounded, it still turned his stomach.
It wasn’t commonplace to be arrested for fucking men, especially as an officer, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
It didn’t mean that he or D’Arcy wouldn’t find themselves someday court-martialled under the very same charge, just for being the way they’d always been.
If the wrong person found out, cared too much, paid a witness…
The admiral, unmoved, waved at his face with a chicken-skin fan, eyes narrowed with contempt and impatience as his secretary laboured over the transcription of the long charge sheet.
At the point where Everard hoped he was near the end of it, the man pitched over the ink pot with a trembling pull of his quill.
He groped frantically to stop its roll. And then—Everard opened his mouth to warn too late—the whole stuck-hinged writing desk fell straight over onto the deck, landing with a bang.
It startled damn near everybody, but had an extraordinary effect on the pirate: he flinched hugely, went as hunched as he could go in restraints. A pause; a frisson of clear relief shuddered down like liquid over his skin. The braided head slumped for the first time.
It didn’t matter that a fallen desk sounded nothing like a shot’s echo over lake water and decking; to a bound, blindfolded man it must have been close enough.
What mattered were those relieved, trembling shoulders, the strained breathing.
Pirate or no, the man had seen gun battle and suffered for it.
That was it for Everard.
“For God’s sake, enough,” he spat. “Can we not let him have his sight?” He used his most authoritative, crisply squared captain’s voice, and pointed to the marine to the right of the prisoner. “You, there. Take off that damned blindfold.”
The marine—a sunburnt fellow—hesitated, damn him. “Sir?”
The pirate had gone still.
“If you please, Private.” Move your redcoat arse. Everard had some authority left; he might as well use it for aught.
“Aye, sir.” The marine leaned in, and he was the least vicious of the three chosen, apparently, because instead of slicing it, and probably a good chunk of the prisoner’s blond braid along with, he carefully picked at the knot.
Admiral Johnson sighed but said nothing. His secretary was still scrambling to reset his desk in any case. D’Arcy shifted in his seat, hands in pockets. And when the marine had the knot nearly there, Everard spoke once more.
“And the gag. He needs must speak his defence.”
“Aye, sir.”
The broad shoulders twitched again, the strained abdomen spasmed. The gag was spat vengefully out; the blindfold fell away.
Beside him, D’Arcy inhaled sharp.
Everard couldn’t breathe.
It couldn’t be. Absolutely, not in a thousand years was it he.
D’Arcy nudged at his knee, and whispered, frantic, “Ev. Ever. Hey. You’re pale as ash, man.”
He meant for Everard not to visibly react, not to obviously recognise the defendant. It was too late for that; he’d felt his jaw go slack.
It can’t be him, he thought idiotically. No.
The secretary had got his desk upright again, and began transcribing Everard’s words—his words, championing the prisoner’s welfare.
The pirate levelled his teary—teary, oh God—gaze on Everard.
His face, in utter contrast to the white chest, was tan and smooth beneath an unkempt beard, with sharp angles all over, and hard blue eyes, too; but the lips weren’t hard at all but the most beautiful pair Everard had ever seen on a man—save one. This one.
Everard hadn’t listened for the man’s name in the charges. It maybe wasn’t even the same. But he knew it. Knew it well. Had thought of it too often in the past three years, alone in a swaying bunk.
Vitaliy. Vitya. Vitya…
“Thank you, de Anglada,” Vitaliy Gray said.
D’Arcy cursed beneath his breath, groaning. “God’s teeth.”
That was about the size of it.
“What?” The admiral shifted himself to glare, hand on a hip. “Anderson,” he barked. “You have prior acquaintance of the prisoner?”
Prior acquaintance. Did he ever. The problem, Everard thought, was that he in fact had a very good memory.
It took no prompting at all to remember the thick, blond-fuzzed thighs pressing close and warm.
Not even a glance, to remember wrapping his hands on either side of the tapered waist, to remember marvelling down at pale, furred valleys gleaming with sweat. Vitaliy Gray.
An eidetic memory, it was called. While extremely useful for sine, cosine, and tangents, ship’s logs, and correcting the purser on the occasional “slip-up” in crew pay—it was also absolutely, positively horrendous when trying to deny one’s acquaintance with a pirate and remembering instead the man’s prick stuffed inside him.
“Ah…” Everard cleared his throat. What to say?
Captains were recused out of courts martial for conflict of interest as a matter of course. But this morning they were at minimum: five officers. He could recuse himself now, and if he did, Vitaliy wouldn’t hang today.
“Anderson?” Admiral Johnson pressed, sounding impatient.
But certainly he would hang, just as soon as another officer could be had and the trial held de novo. It wouldn’t take long. A day. A week. Multiple offences and felony sodomy? He’d hang.
He looked up. Vitaliy still stared at him, but his deep-set, dark-blue eyes had narrowed, and those beautiful heart-shaped lips had lifted: the soft smile of expectation.
In calling him out by name Vitaliy had reciprocated his mercy. Everard could claim conflict of interest, claim simple recusal, and not have to see his once-upon lover hang. Not have to give his voice to convict him on unnatural—passionate, sweat-streaked, earth-shatteringly natural—offences.
Or—or Everard could simply deny it, his captain’s word against a pirate’s, and the trial would go on.
It was an easy choice.
“Yes, sir,” Everard said carefully. “I have in fact had his acquaintance.”
Beside him, D’Arcy let out a small, miserable groan.
Everard listened to the scratch of quill point on parchment, testimonial. Every word, recorded. Every word.
“Then do recuse yourself, sir! As is right!” The admiral, in sharp syllables.
Vitaliy raised his chin. Take it, he said silently. Take what I’ve offered.
But no. Everard’s resolve solidified, lead cooling lumpen at the base of his throat. No decision had ever been easier.
He was about to commit perjury.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “That is to say, no, sir,” he said, more firmly, as Vitaliy’s eyes widened. “I cannot merely recuse myself. You see, this man has served on my ship.”
The admiral’s fan flapped wildly again.
“The Netley? Then it is even more necessary that you recuse—”
“I beg your pardon, sir. On my previous ship.”
“Ev,” D’Arcy whispered urgently in his ear; luckily, the crowd had got loud again in their consternation. “What in hell are you doing?”
Trying to save a man’s life was what. Was it not obvious? Everard glanced right. D’Arcy was the only man there who could refute what he was about to say.
“You mustn’t do this,” D’Arcy hissed. “Not like this. Recuse yourself and we’ll sort it. Later.”
Everard ignored him.
“The Wanderer, sir,” he said loudly.
The admiral was red-faced. “Quiet!” he demanded of the crowd. They hushed, gradually. “The Wanderer? That cannot be. His charges—mutiny, piracy—three years ago is out of jurisdiction!”
“Yes indeed, sir. Respectfully, it doesn’t matter.”
Vitaliy himself was frowning now too, brow furrowed and confused at Everard’s lie—no, this was not what he’d meant at all.
But—Vitya, dead and twitching from the yardarm. No, no, no. What was a little perjury?
Everard took a deep breath. “I do formally recuse myself on conflict of interest.”
Hushed murmurs shuddered throughout the crew audience, the Marines. The secretary’s quill scratched furiously. Scritch-scritch-scritch.
“However…”
The admiralty might hang all the rapists they pleased, and with Everard’s blessing. They might try to make all sodomy out to be criminal and reprehensible and wrong, regardless of circumstance or consent. But they would not get this man.
“… I feel obliged to make it known that this man should not be on trial at all. And that if he is to be tried de novo, I shall have no recourse but to serve as witness to his defence.”
Gasps and disbelieving laughter from the crowd, quickly silenced by elbows. Beside him, D’Arcy had his brow in hand.
“What!” Admiral Johnson was beside himself in waiting for the secretary to finish.
Finally: “Witness?” he spluttered. “But the inquiry… all charges were deemed viable! He’s a bloody deserter marine—turned pirate! A sodomitical pirate!” he emphasised.
“With due respect, Admiral,” Everard began, “I was not present at this inquiry. And I am telling you now the charges are inviable, without foundation. This man is not a pirate, or a deserter, or a sodomite. I’ve had contact with him these three years past, and he could not possibly have done any of those within that time frame.
What we have here, I believe, is a case of mistaken identity. ”
Everard would thwart all of Vitaliy’s charges if he had to do so one by one. He likely couldn’t have them dismissed—Vitaliy would not go free on felony charges, not when the admiralty clearly had it out for him—but he could at the very least throw certainty of guilt.
Vitya would be transported, never to be seen again, but he wouldn’t hang.
Admiral Johnson stared. “That’s impossible. Did you not hear who—”
“He’s married,” Everard said doggedly. “I know him well.”
The admiral muttered to his secretary—likely striking whatever was forthcoming from the record—and said, “I don’t care if he’s your goddamned brother-in-law; these sorts of crimes ought not to go unpunished under any circumstance! You do understand me, Anderson?”
Everard understood perfectly.
“Ordinarily,” he lied, “I would of course agree with you, Admiral. But in this particular instance, I have some means of proof. In my possession I have three years’ worth of correspondence that proves this man cannot have—and would not have—done these offences within the admissible timeframe.”
Well, come tomorrow he would have, anyway.
“I trust these will prove more than acceptable to the court, once I have been sworn in properly as witness.” Everard stood, put back on his nonregulation hat, set it exactly straight. “I will have them brought you on the morrow. Sir.”