JOHN GREY WAS ALLOWED to exercise on deck twice a day—for as long as he liked, while they were at anchor. He was accompanied throughout by a powerfully built monoglot sailor whose sole apparent purpose was to keep him from leaping overboard and swimming for it and whose one language was neither English, French, German, Latin, Hebrew, nor Greek. He thought it might conceivably be Polish, but if it was, the knowledge wouldn’t help him.
The rest of the time, he was not only confined to his cabin but attached to it by means of a shackle round his ankle, this equipped with a long chain, this in turn attached to a ring set into the bulkhead. He felt like a limpet.
Reasonably adequate meals were provided, as was a chamber pot and a small pile of books, including several treatises on the evils of slavery. If these were intended to reconcile him to his presumably eventual fate, they had missed their mark by several miles, and he had pushed them out of the small port before settling down with a translation of Don Quixote.
He’d been held captive before, but not often, thank God—and never for very long, though the night he’d spent—at sixteen—tied to a tree on a dark Scottish mountain with a broken arm had seemed endless. Why think of that now? He’d largely forgotten it in the confusion of circumstance that had attended his acquaintance with a man he’d thought he’d never see again, and good riddance. But Jamie Fraser was not a man to be easily forgotten, damn him.
He wondered briefly what Jamie would think of his present circumstance—or worse, of the circumstances of his eventual death—but pushed that out of his mind as pointless. He didn’t bloody mean to die, so why waste time envisioning it?
The one thing he was reasonably certain of, regarding Richardson and that gentleman’s singular motives, was that he, Grey, wouldn’t be killed until Richardson managed to locate Hal, as his life had value—to Richardson—only as a lever to affect Hal’s actions.
As to those … He scratched absently at his jaw. Richardson didn’t trust him with a razor; his beard was growing out and itched considerably.
Hal had, now and then, made intemperate remarks about the conduct of the war, and had, more than once, threatened to go to England and denounce Lord North to his face about the waste of lives and money. “There are things that need to be said, by God—and I’m one of the few who can say them” was the last such remark Grey had heard from his brother … when was it? Six weeks, at least, perhaps longer.
But John was morally sure that Hal had gone north to find Ben—a conviction supported by the fact that Richardson had so far apparently failed to find him in any of the southern ports. He knew as much from the comings and goings of Richardson’s shore agents; his cabin was directly below the big stern cabin, and while he couldn’t make out many words, the tone of frustration—with the occasional stamp of a boot overhead—couldn’t be mistaken.
How long might it take Hal to find Ben? he wondered. And what the devil would happen when he did? Knowing Hal, the only circumstance in which he would not find his errant son was if the damned boy actually was dead now, whether in battle or from illness—he remembered William’s description of Dr. Hunter’s vaccinating the populace of New Jersey for smallpox.
The wind had changed. It blew into the tiny room, lifted his hair, and prickled his skin. He closed his eyes instinctively and turned his face toward the port. Then he realized that it wasn’t the wind that had shifted; the boat had moved. He glanced up, then went to the door of his cabin, where a small latticed opening at the top provided occasional light from the hatchways. He pressed his ear against the opening and strained his ears. No. There was no sound of order and rapid feet and the rumble and snap of unfurling sails. Thank God, they weren’t about to up anchor and leave.
“I suppose it’s just caught a hatful of wind, as my old grandmother used to say about a stiff breeze,” he muttered, trying to ignore the spasm of alarm that had clenched his belly for a moment when he thought the ship might be about to sail.
Richardson had moved the ship several times, though not far. Grey had recognized the harbor at Charles Town, but there were two other, smaller ports that he didn’t know. Now they were back in Savannah; he could see the stumpy steeple of the small church near his house.
He’d tried not talking to himself, fearful that he might go mad, but he found that the effort not to was making him clench his jaws, so he allowed himself the odd remark. He also talked to the might-be Pole, which amounted to the same thing, but was less socially reprehensible.
Still, he found himself staring absently out of the port for increasing lengths of time, eyes following small boats, flights of pelicans, or now and then a fleeting sight of porpoises, sometimes one or two, sometimes dozens, who proceeded in a remarkably graceful fashion, leaping rather than swimming, but so smoothly that they seemed still part of the water.
He was engaged in this sort of mindless abstraction when he heard a key turned in the lock behind him and whirled round to see fucking Percy Wainwright.
Who, to add insult to injury, stood staring at him for a moment, openmouthed, and then dissolved in laughter.
“What?” John snapped, and Percy stopped laughing, though his mouth still twitched. He hadn’t seen Percy in weeks. Evidently Percy had served his purpose, and was allowed ashore.
“I’m sorry, John,” he said. “I didn’t expect—I mean …” He giggled. “You look like Father Christmas. I mean—a very young Father Christmas, but—”
“God damn your eyes, Perseverance,” John said crossly. He touched his beard, self-conscious. “Is it really white?”
Percy nodded and edged closer. “Well, not entirely white; it’s just that your hair is so fair anyway that it, um, blends in, rather.”
John made a gesture of irritation and sat down.
“What are you doing here, anyway? I take it you haven’t come to liberate me.” Someone had accompanied Percy; he’d heard the key click in the lock again when the door closed behind his visitor.
“No,” said Percy, suddenly sobered. “No. I would if I could, John. Please believe me.”
“If it helps you to sleep at night, I believe you,” John said, with as much vitriol as he could put into the words, and had the bleak satisfaction of seeing Percy’s face fall. John sighed.
“What the devil do you want, Perseverance?”
“I—well.” Percy steeled himself enough to look up and meet John’s eyes directly. “I wanted to say two things to you. First … that I’m sorry. Truly sorry.” John stared at him for a moment, then nodded.
“All right. I believe that, too, for what it’s worth. Which is not all that much, as I’ll likely be dead soon, but still. And the second.”
“That I love you.” The words came softly, seeming to be addressed to the tabletop rather than John, but he heard them and was both shocked and annoyed to feel a small lump in his throat. He looked down, too, not answering. The sounds of the river and the marsh and the distant sea washed through the tiny room, and he could feel the blood pulsing in his fingertips where they rested on the rough wood.
I’m alive. I don’t know how to be anything else. He cleared his throat.
“Why do you suppose pelicans don’t call out?” he said. “Gulls scream and cackle like witches, all the time, but I never hear the pelicans make any sort of noise.”