Chapter 16 #2
The wagon creaked up the drive at the usual hour, and Benjamin was already standing at the entrance to meet it, hands clasped behind his back, waiting rather than working for the first time since the crew had arrived.
Jacob was first down. "Good morning, Capt— Master Benjamin."
"Men. I need to speak with you, before we begin."
Jacob glanced at Thomas, then back, an attempt at lightness creeping into his voice. "Do we have to start calling you by yet another name?"
Nobody laughed. Benjamin's expression stayed level, and Jacob's own face fell almost at once.
"Sorry," he said quietly. "I did it again. Spoke before thinking."
"It is not your fault." Benjamin gestured toward the low wall where they usually took their meals. "Sit. I will explain."
They settled, tools still in hand, and Benjamin remained standing before them.
"I have not been honest with you," he said.
"That changes today. My real name is Benjamin Russell.
I am the son of the Duke of Beaumont — the man they called a traitor, and executed for it.
" He let that sit a moment before he went on.
"Within a matter of days, this news will travel through Ashcombe.
Likely beyond it, in time. You will face scrutiny for having helped rebuild this house — the house of a traitor's son.
I owed you the chance to hear that from me, plainly, before it reached you any other way. "
Nobody spoke. Several of the men exchanged glances, uncertain what was expected of them.
Thomas was the one who finally broke the silence.
"You should have told us sooner," he said. "Truth be told, most of us had already guessed something of the sort."
"I should have told you," Benjamin agreed. "I chose not to. I will understand entirely if any of you wish to leave now that you know the whole of it."
Thomas looked at him for a long moment. Then he reached down, gathered his tools back into his hands, and stood.
"I do not recall signing any papers that said I work for a man called Benjamin Sterling.
" He said it plainly, without any particular weight, as though stating a fact of law rather than an act of loyalty.
"So I do not see that there is any problem here.
We may not be much use to you in whatever battle it takes to win your name back.
But we gave our word we would see this roof finished, and that kitchen besides — and we intend to keep it, if only because your lady will have our heads if we do not. "
Benjamin felt something in his chest ease that he had not fully realized was tight until that moment.
"Thank you."
"I am with you, Captain," Jacob said, quieter than usual, but certain. "Until the job is done."
Benjamin looked at him and something like a smile pulled at his mouth.
Jacob caught it. "I can still call you Captain, though? I have grown used to it."
"It would be more fitting," Thomas said, clapping him once on the shoulder, "to call him Your Grace, now that the whole thing is out in the open."
Jacob considered this with real seriousness. "I like that better, actually." He turned back to Benjamin. "Where do you need us, Your Grace?"
"The roof today, and one bedroom finished besides. I want to bring Mrs. Miller here as soon as the house can hold her properly."
"As you command, sir," came the reply, a few of them already rising, tools in hand, and Benjamin nodded, satisfied.
"Jacob." He caught the boy's eye as the others moved off toward the scaffolding. "I will need your help with the fence line after that. And a little with the garden. The rest of you can finish the kitchen."
"Yes, Your Grace."
And with that, the morning's work resumed around him, no different in its rhythm than any other day — only now, every man on that yard knew exactly whose name they were building a roof over, and not one of them had turned to go.
They had been at it perhaps an hour when Fletcher came down off the scaffold.
He did not go to the water butt or to the tool pile. He came across the yard to where Benjamin was working the north wall, and stopped a few feet off, and waited to be noticed, which was not how any of them had approached him in three weeks.
Benjamin set the hammer down.
"Fletcher."
"Sir." The man turned his cap over once. "I have been thinking on it. Up there. And I believe I had best go."
"Right."
Benjamin said it without any particular weight, and did not ask him for a reason, and after a moment Fletcher gave one anyway.
"It is not what you are thinking, sir. I do not care a damn whose son you are and I would say so in front of any man here.
" He got that much out steadily enough. "It is my wife.
She did not want me taking this work in the first place.
She had a great deal to say about that house and what happened at it, before I ever set foot on this drive, and I told her it was only a roof and she let it go.
" He stopped. "It is not going to be only a roof by Sunday.
Somebody will tell her in the market and she will hear your father's name in it, and I am not going to be able to say anything to that at all. "
"No," Benjamin agreed. "You will not."
"I have four children at home, sir."
"I know it."
"And I want you to understand that I am not—" Fletcher's jaw worked. "I would not have anyone think I—"
"Fletcher."
The man stopped.
"I would do exactly as you are doing," Benjamin said. "In your position, with your wife, and children at home, I would have gone last night and not waited for the morning. There is nothing here for you to explain to me."
Fletcher nodded, once, and looked at the ground.
"Come on," Benjamin said. "I shall walk you down."
They went together, the two of them, the whole length of the drive.
Nobody on that yard said a word or pretended to be doing anything else. Thomas stood on the scaffold with a nail in his hand and watched them go the entire way, and Jacob had stopped altogether and was standing quite still by the timber pile with his mouth shut for once.
At the piers Benjamin paid him out of his own pocket, for the full week rather than the four days he had worked, and Fletcher looked at the coin in his hand for a moment and did not say anything about it, and Benjamin did not either.
"Good luck to you, sir," he said. "I mean that."
"And to you. Give my regards to your wife, or do not, as you judge best."
Something that was almost a laugh went out of Fletcher then, and he put his cap on, and went off down the lane, and did not look back.
Benjamin came up the drive alone.
They were all watching him by then. There was no pretending otherwise, so he did not try; he stopped in the middle of the yard where they could all see him and put his hands behind his back.
"I want to be plain about this," he said, "and then I will not raise it again."
Nobody moved.