In the pause, when he cast off the boarding cables that held
Gloire
close so that
Seahorse
's guns could do maximum damage, he could hear the deeper roar of the
Asp
's guns, the answering bellow of the
Aimable. Aimable
's broadsides were heavier but less rapid and less well aimed.
Asp
, with her mizzen mast trailing like an anchor in the sea and her own pouring spouts of blood still seemed to his eye to be holding her own.
Now he pushed away from the
Gloire
, and barely able to find a wind, he used the
Asp
's side to pull the
Seahorse
around and creep up upon the
Trounin
like a snail.
But the
Trounin
was fresh—from her position on the
Asp
's stern she had suffered only a little bruising from the stern chasers, and the nine great guns of her starboard side began a lively battering of Peter's poor ship—already more than half a hulk, tattered sails strewn over her cannons and the corpses of her men.
"Sir, they're saying it's hopeless!" Lt. Howe cried, loud enough to be heard from heads to stern gallery. "Even if we take the
Aimable
, how will we ever stand against the threedecker? They're saying it's being held in reserve to crush us when we've used our last strength here."
"Are they indeed?" he said, wishing that for once he could act like a common tar and punch the stupid man in the mouth. "Well you may tell them that it's possible the
Indomitable may
take us, but it's
certain
that I shall shoot the first man who leaves his post myself."
A roar and a crash, and for a moment he had no idea what had happened, until Howe leaned forward and plucked the oak splinter—a foot and a half long—out of his side. A brief wave of dizziness went over Peter but then, with a ponderous, grating slide, the
Asp
seemed to shake herself and glide gently forwards. When the
Aimable
tried to follow, her one standing mast bent under the strain of sail, and the backstays parted. The great, six ton timber came crashing down upon her men, and upon the
Seahorse
's head, driving it under the waves. Seas began pouring aboard, and as the
Trounin
's gunners kept up a relentless fire, the
Seahorse
's men abandoned their cannon to shift the dead weight before it sank the ship.
Thus tangled, Peter saw the
Asp
make sail, getting away. He wished Joslyn well, hoped he would escape with news of this unexpected fleet, this French occupation of what was, by treaty, British land. Only how would the
Asp
escape the
Indomitable
, which had been hanging back all this time, waiting to strike only if it proved necessary to do so?
The next few moments were taken up with the capstan, rigging ropes around the
Aimable
's mast and slowly winching it off the deck—the piper piping all the while, the men huffing shanties as they pushed at the long levers, and shot screaming aboard from both French ships.
There was a strange light in the smoke, like the rising of a sun, and at the same time, a knocking on the sides of the ship as British seamen began to come aboard up the main chains. "Sir! Sir!"
They were the
Macedonian
's men, some of them still with the jaunty straw hats and the ships name embroidered in glinting gold on the ribbon.
"Just you watch, sir. Just you watch!"
"The water is above the cable tier, sir," said Howe quietly, catching something of their awe. "And still gaining. If we don't send men to the pumps now, we will sink within the next quarter of an hour."
And sending men to the pumps would mean abandoning the guns. Would mean...
But he couldn't fail. He had never failed; it wasn't in his nature. Peter Kenyon did not...
The wind, blowing the
Trounin
's smoke back over it, briefly cleared a patch of brilliant sea, and he saw it all with minute clarity—the
Macedonian
in flames, driving into the
Indomitable
's bowsprit. Her sails were sheets of fire, and her decks blacker than pitch. The
Indomitable
's rested, eager crew were trying to fend her off with oars and poles but the wind drove her back each time. If he squinted his streaming eyes, Peter could imagine the figure at the helm, holding it steady, not letting them brush off this kiss of death. And then flame leaped the gap, the
Indomitable
was on fire too.
"Oh, my God, please, no!" he said, and something cracked deep inside the
Macedonian
's hull. Her masts flew into the air like the stems of rockets and a white sphere of fire too intense to watch pushed out of her, bursting her into tumbling, jagged shards, blowing a hole in the
Indomitable
large enough to row a captain's barge inside.
The
Indomitable
tilted, men flinging themselves off her into the sea, tilted again, filled with water and sank. There was nothing left of the
Macedonian
at all but strewed wreckage. Peter pressed his hand to his side, where the blood from his wound was making his shirt feel uncomfortably cold, and staggered, fighting for breath, for sense, for the right words.
"Strike our colors," he said at last in a small, dead voice. Yes, dead—Josh was dead, so what did it matter? "Tell them we surrender."
Chapter 18
"Well, Captain, you will give me your parole and be free as a guest in my house, or not, and spend the summer down in a jail cell. It's your choice, I don't very much mind either way."
The destruction of the
Indomitable
had caused feelings to run high in the French fleet. A three-decker, she had gone to the bottom with over a thousand men onboard, broaching to in seconds, and though all the ships on the bay had been pouring with the blood of the dead, Peter could understand the horror. To sink with no hope of quarter, it was not one of the accepted risks of the game.
As a result of Josh's ferocious action, Captain Duarte of the
Aimable
, expecting a counter strike as soon as Commodore Dalby could send one from Bermuda, and with considerably fewer working vessels to meet it, did not feel confident of his ability to keep his prisoners alive during the long journey back to France, where they would be incarcerated until they could be exchanged for French prisoners of equal value. He had therefore sailed to Boston and pressed them upon his unsuspecting American allies.
It was in the back of Peter's mind that he should refuse to give his parole. He should be working, even now, to escape and return home. But something had broken in him, and he was not certain even what it was, let alone how to mend it.
"Mr. Ward," he said, when the silence had grown so deep they could both hear the cries of the dockers in the harbor, "I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman that I will not attempt to escape until I am released, either by fair exchange or by the end of the war."
"Can't say fairer than that," said Ward, a portly, businesslike man, who seemed to have come in for this duty by virtue of having a large house and a French wife who wrote revolutionary pamphlets. Peter suspected the duty was little to his liking, and the relief at not having to turn jailer was apparent on Ward's round red apple of a face.
"May I write to my friends in Bermuda?" he said after another pause in which both men felt they should be saying something but neither knew what. "I ... there is unhappy news to tell to many, which I would wish them to hear from a more sympathetic source than the naval gazette."
His calm began to fracture at that sentence; he could feel the cracks spreading out from it, as they spread from an incautious foot stepped on thin ice. He was fragile at present, but beneath him the cracks were widening above the plunge into icy depths. He tried to ease away from the flaw but could not. It spread and spread beneath him, and he tensed for the sudden final break.
"Of course. Just go on into the drawing room; I'll have Nancy bring you paper. I heard about the fight, of course. Don't let my wife hear me say this," he shook his head at the thought, his eyes shining, "but that must have been something! A French ship of the line and a little, tiny thirtytwo? Hoo! I don't mean to be unpatriotic, but that was a brave man."
"Yes." Peter was startled into a small smile, "Yes, he was. He was my particular friend, but I had no idea he intended anything so rash or so ... so glorious."
"Your friend, was he?" Ward rocked back on his heels. He wore no wig, so to Peter he seemed always informal, but the look in his pale eyes was unmistakably kind. "Well then, I won't say that all this could have been avoided if Westminster had chosen to treat with us like civilized men. How they ever thought they could beat us into submission is probably as much a mystery to you as it is to me. So go and write your letters, son, and mourn your dead. You won't be the only man doing the same."
* * * *
As Peter worked his way through the letters of condolence, his handwriting growing progressively shakier as his own grief insinuated itself under his guard, he considered the justice of this rebuke. He had never failed in anything, and yet when had he ever done anything but what was expected of him? He had great sympathy for the colonist's desire for self rule, but when had he ever said so? When had he ever stood up for those things that really meant something to him? He had not. He had chosen always do to what everyone else thought was right, not what his own heart told him.
And in doing so—he put the pen down, rubbed his stinging eyes, telling himself it was fatigue that made them burn—he had rejected the one thing in his life that had ever made him completely happy.
He looked out at the sea, the ships in the harbor visible and yet so far away and wondered if he could pray. He wanted to pray, "Oh, God,
please,
don't let him have done this because of me, because I hurt him, because I put an end to something that
he
said must end."
Pulling a fresh sheet of paper towards himself he took up the pen again and began to write
My dear Mr. Summersgill, I am happy to inform you that I am alive and well, though confined. I am under house arrest in the dwelling of a worthy gentleman of Boston named Mr. Ward. I am quite comfortable and lack nothing but my freedom.
I am including here my wish that you should have power of attorney over my small estate in Bermuda and beg leave to ask you to see that my servants are paid and are not in distress in my absence.
Peter wondered if he should express some conventional sentiments of attachment to Emily, but his disordered thoughts rose up against such base hypocrisy. When the world lay at his feet it had seemed natural that every prize should be his, but now he wondered if she even liked him, and more, he wondered if—beyond a basic physical appreciation of her charms—he even liked her. How much did he know about her? Not half so much as he had known about Josh, and he had cared not half so much to know.
Please pass on my love to my mother, and the reassurance that I am as well as it is possible to be, though I may not be able to send her the bird of paradise feathers she asked for in her last. My regards to Emily, and I remain, sir,
Your most obliged servant,
Peter Alexander Kenyon.
Folding up this last letter and sealing it left him finally with
nothing to do. He bowed his head into his hands and closed his eyes. He wanted to pray, "Please, tell him I loved him," but he was not sure God would allow him such a prayer. Suicide and sodomite, was Joshua Andrews even now in Hell? If he was, what then? What then became of all the things Peter had fought for? If God himself was an unjust tyrant, and the navy only an instrument of oppression, and good and love not possible in the world, not worth striving or fighting for, what then was the point of being Peter Kenyon? What then was the point of anything?
Chapter 19
Josh was in Hell. He could see the blood pulse scalding through his closed eyelids, feel his skin tighten beneath the licking flames. When he breathed the air was molten lead; when he tried not to, he smothered and panic forced him to open his mouth and gasp the boiling metal once more.
There had been flames and then cold, striking to his heart like a lance of ice. Then darkness. Now Hell tossed like a boat on rough water, and his voice shocked him, as agony tore the outcry from him unwillingly.
Voices spoke above his head—a man and a woman—but he could not understand the language. There was a pleasant, rhythmic noise, accompanied by the drip of water and a large rustling full of bird-song. Then small hands pulled him into a sitting position, spread something cool on his achingly tight, tender face, and he found himself cradled in a woman's embrace. "Sleep," she said, her voice full of tenderness. "You are safe."
He thought of his mother and of the gentleness of Irish skies, gray as an arch of pearl. He fell asleep again, yearning for a day of long, cool Irish rain.
* * * *
When next he woke, he was being lifted out of the boat onto the bank. There were male arms about him and his head lolled against a strong shoulder. With great labor he managed to haul up his eyelids for a moment, to find his face nestled into another man's neck, cushioned by a long fall of ebony hair, glossy and soft.
"Peter," he said, for there couldn't be two men with hair so fine and dark. "Oh, Peter, thank God!" and he clung and wept like an infant, in some hinterland of the spirit well beyond pain and dignity. Closing his aching eyes again he set his mouth to Peter's neck, in something between a kiss and a baby's instinctive need for its mother's skin, then drew back, puzzled and afraid. The smell was wrong. Peter smelled of pomade, wig powder, ink and steel, a smell he thought the best thing in the world, but this man smelled of leather and other scents, unknown and disturbing.
He opened his eyes again, drew back and met the surprised look of a young man the color of baked terracotta, with dark, dark eyes as beautiful as his hair. "Mother of God!" Josh whispered. Then the young man gave a broad grin that did not suit his sullen good looks and carried Josh over a short scramble to his camp, setting him down gently on a mattress of spruce branches, covered with furs. Trying to work out what this meant—that he was not dead, that he was not captured by the French, that he was, perhaps, captured by some tribe of Indians who wanted him for God knows what, Josh fell asleep again.