False Colors (22 page)

Sailors with bloodied boarding axes began to wander back into the clearing, hands cupped around looted jewels. Alfie seized the nearest pair. “Get these men down!”

The axes made short work of the tree, digging out the pins of the chains. As more
Britannia’
s returned, sobered up enough to understand what they were seeing, the mood in the clearing hushed to a kind of awe. Careful and silent, they lowered the victims down to lie on the blanket of ash, picked through the debris left among the skeletons for tokens to send home, wrapped in one of the many letters of sympathy Farrant would have to write. Something for loved ones to remember them by. Though it was a vital and generous action, Alfie did not stir to help the men— couldn’t. He couldn’t move.

Coming up with Dr. Bentley beside him, Farrant looked down at the three crimson men, then up into Alfie’s stricken face. “You know them,” he said. Not a question—it was obvious enough.

“It’s John.” Alfie’s throat closed as he shivered with nausea. He should say something—Farrant deserved that of him—but the gleam of bones at John’s wrists, where he had pulled the cuffs deep into his own arms, made words superfluous. Pointless. Blowflies crawled over the ugly bruise on John’s throat.

“Ah,” said Farrant, meaningfully. His eyes and mouth thinned, briefly, his face gray in the dawn light. Then he swallowed, tilted up his chin and gave a rapid-fire volley of orders. “Stretcher bearers, get the living onto the ship. Doctor, I rely on you to separate corpse from casualty. Master, organize a party to get some kind of grave dug for the others. Mr. Carver, you may see to distributing prize crews…”

Alfie vaguely registered Farrant turning towards him, his mouth open. He was speaking. But then John opened his eyes. John’s face could not have been more bloody had it been peeled off. His eyes were silver as swords, inhumanly cold. So must Mars Ultor have looked before unleashing the first war of vengeance across the world.

“You may go back to the ship, Mr. Donwell,” said Farrant’s voice, a long way away, also faintly cold. “Deal with this.”
“Yes, sir.”

Farrant was right to be angry, Alfie thought, as he sat in the launch supporting one end of the stretcher on his knee. He’d taken Alfie on board after the promise that Farrant would not end up being involved in Alfie’s romantic disasters. Alfie had sworn he would not bring condemnation on board, and yet here it was in the very person of John Cavendish, cut up so badly he more resembled a side of beef than a man. John with his delicate conscience on board the
Britannia
—the most irregularly run ship in the kingdom. It didn’t bear thinking about.

Deal with this,
he thought unhappily. Deal with being in love with two men at once—both of them so very proud, so unsuitable, so stiff necked and intolerant, each in their separate ways. Deal with the lure and threat and heartbreak that John represented. Deal with it, and report back afterwards, when it was done.

A kind of morbid hilarity seized on the whole party. When Bill Drake on the tiller said, “Well, mates, I reckon from now on we’ll call this the dead center of the Caribbean,” Alfie joined in the general, somewhat hysteric laughter.

“John,” he whispered. But John just looked at him with that reptilian look, with no sign of recognition or even humanity; no voice, no tears. They rolled off Alfie’s chin instead, falling on to John’s face, making tracks in the blood, while old Ezekial White handed him a handkerchief and said, “Friend of yours, is he?”

“Yes. A very good friend.”
“He’ll maybe come out of it,” the seaman gave a reassuring grin. Scurvy had stripped all the teeth from his mouth, and the set he had now was wooden. Alfie found himself examining the grain as though memorizing every swirl was vitally important. “Those as don’t go mad generally do. If I could have the wipe back when you finished with it? I only got the one, like.”
“Naturally, Zeke. I thank you.”
Alfie wondered what he had brought down on the ship; what he had done to Farrant. And he felt—now that it was too late— all the remorse appropriate for forgetting the man so completely the moment this other, more unsuitable love came back into his life. So much for his vows, so much for the second-rate affection he had had to spare for the captain. In a small corner of his heart he felt like a heel, but the rest was incapable of thinking of anything but grief for the ruin before him, and terror that it might never be rebuilt.
“Wake up John. Wake up. You’re safe now. I’m with you.”

Darkness filled John’s dreams, full of agony and fire. For a time he had entertained thoughts of rescue. Indeed there had been a long period where he seemed to be lying on his back under the open sky, sun above him, and Alfie Donwell of all people weeping over him. He regarded the vision with the contempt it deserved. He didn’t need the comfort of illusions. Above all he feared to believe, even for a moment, that he was saved. If he let himself hope, if he let go now, only to find himself picked up and drenched in piss again, he would break. He would break into such tiny pieces he might search for the rest of his life and not find them all. Best not to soften, even for a moment; best to face down the vision and stay braced for the next blow.

It wasn’t long before the darkness returned, and fire with it, floating above him. Straps on his ruined wrists held him down, and slow, deliberate pains pricked him all over, like needles. He laughed aloud at the thought—they could hardly think that
needles
held any terror for him now—and saw a new man’s face floating above him; a white face above a white cravat with a bloodied bow, floating disembodied. It seemed a very gentle face for a pirate, with soft round cheeks, round glasses and a disapproving expression, as though it felt laughter was not appropriate.

He dreamed of white boiled bandages slipping around his wrists, concealing the black blooded holes of them. And then someone said, “Drink this,” and he was thirsty enough to do so, though he knew it too would be a cup of piss.
But it tasted like laudanum, and before he could be astonished at the thought, work out what it meant, there was an alteration in the fabric of the world, as though someone had taken the loose ends and tucked them back in. He worked out what it was—the pain going away—just before he fell asleep.

When he woke he recognized the darkness as the close fug of a ship’s orlop deck. He swung in a hammock, the sea rocking him from side to side, the wood of the deck only an arm’s length above him, and the “fire” a lantern swinging above the doctor’s desk. He tried to pull himself up, but discovered he was as limp as a wet rag. The effort, however, alerted the doctor, who checked his watch, made a notation in the margin of his book, and walked over.

“Got your body back,” John observed, in an attempt at levity. He could now see that the doctor’s fine black suit had blended into the darkness, giving the impression that the head was floating. It was too much of an effort to explain this, however, and he received only a quizzical look in return. “I’m sorry….”

There was a pressure under his breastbone, quite unlike the natural pain of the rest of his body—a pressure that seemed to demand he apologize for the state of the world. He had been so very angry, and now he was ashamed.

“Well, Mr. Cavendish,” the doctor picked up his wrist to feel the pulse, and John jerked it back out of his grasp before he finished closing his fingers. He found himself poised on the point of hitting back, stopped only by the owl-like gleam of the man’s glasses. “I should recommend bathing in urine as a general cure,” the doctor said, as though nothing had happened. “I have never seen cleaner wounds.” He cocked his head to one side and pushed his glasses further up his nose. “I must take your pulse now. So let us not have any prudery.”

“Forgive me.” John, back on the other side of the oscillation again, allowed the touch though it made his skin want to creep away. “Captain Smith, is he…?”

It was hard to see the man’s eyes. Lantern light caught in the spectacle lenses, and John scrambled to turn, seeing the reflection of darkness, fires, behind him. But there was nothing of the sort, only a handful of further hammocks, swaddling other invalids. Seeing them he was ashamed of his fear. He was being a trouble to his hosts. He should stop. “And Collins?”

“All dead.” The doctor indicated the chrysalis forms of the other patients with a sweeping, possessive gesture. “These are all
Britannias
, injured in our own battles. Of your own ship, I do assure you, you are the only one left.”

This was surely another dream, for God would not spare John, who was wrongly made and deserved execution, while allowing the innocent boys to die. But, when John turned his face into the side of the hammock to weep, the material scratched against his cuts as though it was real, and the tears soaked into his pillow and spread, stinging, beneath his face.
Why am I not dead too?
They had moved on to Collins when they finished with him; when they could wring no more anger or agony out of him. He should have held on, had more to give.

John woke to the sound of a mocking, good-humored voice he recognized. For a moment he wasn’t sure where he was, whether the whole year of doubt and failure had been a fever dream, and he woke now in a soft bed to the early morning sounds of Gibraltar; birdsong and street calls, pigeons in the dovecot of the nunnery a few streets below, and the whiskey and brown sugar of Alfie Donwell’s voice. His mind tangled itself in turmoil and confusion, but deep inside something unfolded like a seed in the spring. His muscles, which had been clamped up tight against further pain, relaxed, as his body—wiser than his mind—told him he was saved.

On deck, the Caribbean heat pierced through his aches. He felt himself come together again, the sap rise through the barren husk. There was no lack of willing hands to secure his hammock in the rigging, tilting him up so that he could watch the activity on deck. When he slept he was left alone, but when he woke it was usually to find one of the tars, or Mrs. Shaw, or a beautiful youth from the launch crew, on hand to offer him cool drinks and undemanding conversation about the weather.

The weather which continued hot and bright. The same wind which had blown them so swiftly to Tobago continued to blow. Now, rather than run before it,
Britannia
had to work her way back against it, tacking and tacking again. The journey that had taken days on the way out from Jamaica took weeks returning, and John spent them soaking in the beauty of sky and sea, the white wings of the ship above him, the great clean expanse of the water, and the kindliness of
Britannia
’s crew. Day by day he felt the treatment wash away stains, restore his bruised faith.

Britannia
, he could not help noticing, was a happy ship. True, the tendency for even the officers to wander about without neckcloths or coats, hands in pockets, chatting audibly even on duty, was informal to a point that made him wince. But he couldn’t accuse the crew of being sloppy in their duties. And their kindness, the small gestures of goodwill he received, unearned, un-asked for, bespoke a humane influence he would never have believed.

The captain did not go out of his way to speak to John. But John felt he deserved that, for all the terrible things he had thought of the man. Besides, Captain Farrant did not look well. Under his tan he seemed flushed, and John—with nothing to do but watch—at times caught him limping when he thought no one was watching. The man had his own troubles, and though John would have liked to thank him for the rescue, he received the impression that his thanks were unwelcome.

Alfie too, after the first days, stayed away. John knew he had amply earned indifference, if not active shunning, and said nothing in complaint, but he felt the absence as a hurt worse than his wounds. So on the second week, after John had managed to hobble from his hammock to the heads and back, and was sitting watching the improbable string of prizes behind them, it was as if another broken bone had healed to find Alfie’s shadow over him.

He looked up and smiled. The first smile since Tobago—it made his face feel odd. “How can you man them all?” he said, unable to face saying anything else. There was such a lot lying between them.
Such a gulf! How could words reach across it?

“Once we were in possession, many of the pirates began sneaking back to give themselves up. Forced to join the pirate crews or die, they had never consented to the life, they said, and begged us for a chance to return to civilization.”

Alfie’s brow was scored with worry, and his eyes strayed to the captain, as to a problem he needed to solve. But he looked back in time to catch John’s flinch of fear. “Don’t fret. They’re well spread out in ones and twos, and being watched. King Cardinal let us take as many of his men as we needed, and for all they’re inveterate lubbers who don’t understand English, they can haul on a line at need. It’s only ’til Jamaica. And think of the money! We’ll both be set up for life.”

Pulling himself upright, John looked more intently at Alfie. It was a mistake. The climate clearly agreed with the man, for his unfashionable tan only succeeded in making him look radiantly healthy. The newly bronzed tone of his skin lightened his brown eyes to amber, and his hair too—worn uncovered on this informal ship—the sun had streaked with platinum. John found he had forgotten the presence of him, forgotten that merely being beside him felt as though there was a second sun shining a warm light on his skin. Alfie wore only breeches and shirt in the heat, and the width of his shoulders was apparent through the thin white linen, while the breeches hugged tight around his muscular legs and ass. It was the first time John had seen the man after that moment on the deck of HMS
Albion
when he had first become aware that he was surrounded by beauty. He felt as though Alfie’s confession in Gibraltar had set him on a long, complex calculation. All his process of self-examination this last year had been working out the sums in the margins. But Alfie…Alfie was the answer.