Chapter 6 #2
D’Arcy sighed. “To be sure, I hadn’t planned on murder for a nightcap.
Unfortunately for the man, I recognised him.
He’s the same foreigner who replaced one of my own night watch, night before last. The same night they brought in…
” He trailed off, waving, and scoffed into his glass. “As though I wouldn’t notice!”
“But why—”
D’Arcy finished his drink. “I don’t know. It’s not coincidental, for damn sure. But he was just an obstacle, not why I came tonight.”
He leveled a gaze on Thom, who was listening rapt and trying to look as though he wasn’t.
“Too late for that,” Everard said resignedly. “Too late when you handed him your ring.”
D’Arcy grunted. His gaze didn’t waver. “And when he didn’t swim to Kingston to pawn it.”
Expressionless, Thom calmly plucked the glass out of D’Arcy’s hand, refilled it, and replaced it.
D’Arcy said, “Hmmm,” shrugged, and faced Everard, elbows on knees.
“Come morning, Everard Rubén, the Marines will arrest you for conspiracy against the Crown.” He sipped at his brandy, pillow across his middle, and waited for a reaction.
Everard had none. His heart had dropped out of his chest. Beneath, there was nothing but awful freefall. He cleared his throat in an attempt to forestall the drop, and swallowed, but it did nothing.
D’Arcy went on cheerfully: “So, that obviously cannot be allowed to pass.”
Arrested? Him?
“But—I’ve declared myself witness! They can’t detain me ’fore the trial; it’s not done!”
“It’s not legal,” D’Arcy corrected. “As to whether it’s done, well, they’re going to do it; so, what’s the difference?
They’ll have you detained and your pirate hanged well before you can pen an appeal to the Secretary.
For that matter, Johnson’s already sent out the letter recommending your name be added to the Black List. I watched him draft and seal it. ”
“He’s done what?” Everard took a deep breath. To be black-booked meant no commission, no position, no half-pay, no legacy, nothing. “That’s to be done upon conviction only! How dare they.”
He paced. “Why do they wait for morning?”
“Why does anyone put off anything?” D’Arcy said. “Why not wait, in their eyes? Where would you go?”
“Where, indeed.” Everard didn’t know the answer himself. But anywhere was preferable to being held uselessly captive while Vitaliy repeated the experience of court-martial, with no one to defend him.
If it were just him and his fate, Everard would not run and hide. He would withstand the ignominy of a trial like any other unfairly accused, innocent man, and that would be the end of it.
But it wasn’t just him. Vitaliy sat dehydrated in Brigitte’s prison hold. D’Arcy had killed a man, cold and calculated.
And now there was the boy, too, currently flitting around, packing Everard’s trunk as though they were merely going back to Bess’s Boarding-House on extended shore leave.
“Ja—Thom. Stop,” Everard said. “You’re a good, steady lad. But I cannot in good conscience—”
Thom pulled himself out of the linens, indignant. “Sir!”
“—a year and you’ll make midshipman, three more you’ll be nineteen and sit your exams—”
“Sir—”
“—run and deny everything they ask you, make yourself scarce, you’ve heard nothing tonight, seen nothing—”
“Sir, I’m Boy, third-class,” Thom said, bravely. He met Everard’s eyes, spine straight, feet together. “Sure as they’ll make me sit witness and gi’ me back my articles, no matter what’s said. You can’t leave me!”
Everard looked to D’Arcy for support. The man only shrugged. “He’s right. A thousand others wait to replace him, too.”
“You gave him your ring,” Everard retorted.
“Ah-ah, don’t you blame me. The moment you gave your name and word towards a pirate, Ev, you put him at risk.”
This was painfully true.
“But as it stands, he won’t be hanged!” Everard hissed. He turned again to Thom. “Beyond tonight, I can’t be sure that won’t change. You must understand that.”
Everard was only beginning to understand it himself.
Thom opened his mouth, closed it again.
“And furthermore,” Everard went on, “His Majesty has paid your wages up to now. I can’t afford to keep you in my employ on my own.”
But at this, Thom scowled, turned away, and renewed the rolling of shirts. “If I cared about coin, I’d’a stole the ring.”
“There you are,” D’Arcy agreed. “He’s worth more to you than you are to him, by far.
Especially if we are heading into what I think we are…
a loyal servant could be indispensable,” he said practically.
“And we are speaking of capital crimes against the Crown, yes? Those which we do not normally commit?” He grinned.
Everard put a hand to his head and paced more. “God. God. Yes, we must be. We are.”
“What… sirs…” Thom seemed to be struggling with the new, untested boundaries of their relationship, and no wonder; it had vaulted from master-servant to co-conspirators in remarkably short order.
“I want to go, don’t mistake me. But… can I ask what we’re doing?
” He blinked solemnly. “In the interest of being fully informed.”
“That accent!” D’Arcy laughed. “A boy chameleon.” He held up a fist. “Near as I can tell, Jack, we’re going to flee the rightful pursuit of the law…
” He ticked one finger. “… break a pirate out of the hold of a very large ship…” Another finger.
“… because said pirate is the former lover to your dear captain, who has a heart the size of the Atlantic…”
Everard made a strangled noise.
D’Arcy’s eyes were warm and laughing as he ticked another finger. “… your dear captain,” he repeated, “whom I’ve always loved, madly and unequivocally.”
Everard stared. Was he serious? Surely not. How hard had his head been bashed?
D’Arcy held out his hand, palm up. “… for whom, it seems, I would do absolutely anything.”
There in D’Arcy’s spread palm was a small iron key. Everard’s gaze was torn between D’Arcy’s handsome face and the ordinary-extraordinary object he’d presented.
“That— You…”
“So, shall we?” D’Arcy finished on a whisper.
“You cannot just… That wasn’t even a proper list!” Everard croaked at last. He carefully took the key. “Thank you, Preston.”
D’Arcy smiled wide for a moment longer. Then, sober-faced, he turned to the boy.
“And if, dear Jack,” he said warningly, “you find anything objectionable in all of that, I must inform you that you’ll be shut up in this here cabin until we accomplish our crimes. You understand.”
“Errr—no. Of course not.” Thom shook his head vehemently, eyes wide. “I mean yes. I agree with all o’ that.” The youth flushed hot-red. “I mean—mebbe not all—”
D’Arcy laughed and laughed. Everard covered his eyes with a hand.
The boy blew out a breath, and tried again. “It’s very romantic! Especially… especially the bit about him being a pirate.” His eyes lit up in the way only a fifteen-year-old’s eyes can at the prospect of excitement, of adventure, of unknown.
And then: “Are there pirate girls?”
D’Arcy had recovered enough to say tearily, between fading chuckles:
“God, yes. Absolutely. What kind of sailor are you, haven’t heard of Anne Bonny?”
It was only as Everard went abovedeck for the second time in the early hours of la madrugada that he felt it: freedom. True liberty.
Not like the Yanks called it, liberty and property, or somesuch. This was liberty of the mind and spirit, knowing one was taking one’s own destiny firmly in hand. It was a feeling of finally; por fin y postre. At last; at the end.
And to the end it might very well be; but God, was it exhilarating.
He felt it as the three of them filed up out of the hatch, and he walked quickly, his heels snapping on the deck. It was loud. He didn’t care.
Is this how D’Arcy felt all of the time? Fearless, and flying for it?
In a blink they were beside the larboard jolly boat, and D’Arcy and Thom began relaying her down rapidly, rope falls whooshing in the blocks. Two could do it; thanks to the Netley’s size, its jolly was hardly larger than a canoe.
For they did need a boat. There were three of them, and were taking along all of Everard’s worldly possessions in a small ironbound trunk besides.
Everard could’ve swum the harbour as well as D’Arcy had, and Thom surprisingly assured them that he could swim, too, but in wake of the sudden cold, in the interest of conserving energy towards infiltrating the prison hold of a frigate-of-war, they decided on the risk of the boat.
As the jolly slid down, Everard stood observing: straight, unmoving, heart thumping wildly beneath his own hastily donned undress coat. As though everything in the world were normal, and he were still captain of this little ship, awaiting transport. At three in the morning.
His uniform was their temporary shield against enquiry, and then he’d cast it off—forever.
D’Arcy looked strange tonight, and it was not so much that he was working ropes like a common sailor as that he was without his blue superfine coat and breeches.
Tonight he wore wide-leg cutoffs and tie-waist shirtsleeves; Everard’s loaded pistol hung belted at his slim hip.
His arms were taut muscle against linen clinging rather damp and close.
As he let the boat down slowly, lit by the silver moon, he grinned over to Everard; chestnut hair shone silky and curling from lake-water.
Memory hit Everard with acute force, and he remembered—though he tried and tried not to—precisely why he’d let the man break through the shell of strict acquaintance and let him have his way with him, rank or no rank.
Had he been speaking seriously earlier? About love?
The jolly hit the water and steadied, and D’Arcy clambered over the rail and down, Everard’s little trunk under a strong arm.
Everard was to go second. He swung himself over the rail, and looked to Thom standing waiting, ropes in hand.
Taking the boat meant desertion in no uncertain terms. Desertion, grand larceny, intent to conspire; and all of that only the beginning of their criminal acts.
“You’re quite sure, lad?” he whispered. “Absolutely and totally?” The youth could still go back, say he’d been ordered under threat, say he’d been coerced—
Thom threw ropes to D’Arcy and nodded, once. “Yessir.”
Everard climbed down. Well, he’d tried.
Meanwhile, D’Arcy had sat himself to larboard and was readying the oar in the row-lock. Everard scowled and muttered into his ear:
“Away with you. You swam the harbour, for God’s sake. Thom and I will pull her.”
D’Arcy gave him a long look, then stood and sat to stern. He put crossed ankles on Everard’s trunk like it were a footrest and lounged with elbows back.
“Aye, cap’n,” he mouthed, and saluted as easily and insolently as he had three years before. It made Everard smile.
He gestured Thom to the starboard oar, and sat himself, removing his hat and unhooking his captain’s coat, laying it down folded.
He removed his black glove with his teeth.
As useful as the leather was aesthetically, he preferred the grip of flesh on wood when rowing.
Other men got by perfectly well with assistive hooks; he had a whole thumb, two knucklebones, and a working wrist. It’d taken some time to get right—and he could only pull on the larboard side—but it worked.
D’Arcy inhaled sharp. His face was calm, and he was still lounged, but Everard knew precisely what had shocked him. He had forgotten: the man had not yet seen his hand as it was now.
D’Arcy, never a coward, met his eyes with wide, sympathetic ones. He said nothing, only bit his lip.
Everard looked down. In the foggy dark, the hand was stark and pale and odd-looking on the oar.
Or so he imagined it was odd-looking to D’Arcy; to him it was just his hand.
Sometimes, his missing fingers seemed to have complete sensation, the same as they had before York.
Sometimes, it felt as though he’d never had fingers there at all.
He wiggled the knuckles, and wondered what to say.
Would D’Arcy think him incapable, insist on rowing himself?
D’Arcy smiled. “Not a thing,” he echoed his earlier self softly. He flopped back, one hand behind his head, the other holding Everard’s pistol across his lap. “Pull her, boys.”
D’Arcy murmured into Everard’s ear as he raised oars just within range of the Brigitte:
“Barring any mole watchmen… see you in a moment.”
He saluted, handed back Everard’s pistol, and, with Thom providing counterweight to starboard, slid himself agilely into the lake, feetfirst. Then he was no more than a wet sable head treading soundlessly forward, and they watched him climb up, up the quarter gallery.
Like the Netley, Brigitte was a skeleton at harbour, with her men at liberty ashore; still, Everard’s heart squeezed, watching him push up and over the quarterdeck rail.
D’Arcy had taken an incredible risk tonight. Had said we and us and let’s. But he couldn’t truly mean to give up rule of the Brigitte—could he?
Everard hadn’t answered his letters, but he’d read them.
He knew D’Arcy had been intended for bigger ships in the Caribbean—ships of the line, even—before he’d mysteriously requested the Lakes Service.
God knew why he’d done that, except that despite his heroics in battle, his ruthless reputation, he’d never burned with ambition like Everard had.
Maybe that was reason enough.
In the starboardside quarter-gallery window, lamplight bloomed to a soft glow. Ready, go.
They rowed quickly to the docks, tied up the jolly. Everard entrusted his belted trunk and pistol to Thom.
“To Bess’s,” he said simply. “Await us there.”
Thom nodded and jogged down the dockyard, out of sight.
Bess’s Boarding-House was the winter establishment for officers and their manservants, tidily kept by an honest widow—to whom Everard paid a full year’s rent, regardless of his occupancy. The boy was well known there. Everard could only hope he wouldn’t be robbed on the way.
He stripped down to breeches, touched the key knotted safely round his neck. Took a deep breath, and dove.
It was time to rescue a pirate.