An Echo in the Bone (58 page)

“
Fois shìorruidh thoir dha,”
he echoed. God rest his soul. “Makes ye wonder, ken? How it might be for a king, to come before God and answer for your life. Might it be a great deal worse, I mean, having to answer for all the folk under your care?”

“Do you think he would?” I asked, intrigued—and rather uneasy at the thought. I hadn’t known Louis in any intimate way—bar the obvious, and that seemed less intimate than a handshake; he’d never even met my eyes—but he hadn’t seemed like a man consumed by care for his subjects. “Can a person really be held to account for the welfare of a whole kingdom? Not just his own peccadilloes, you think?”

He considered that seriously, the stiff fingers of his right hand tapping slowly on the slippery rail.

“I think so,” he said. “Ye’d answer for what ye’d done to your family, no? Say ye’d done ill by your children, abandoned them or left them to starve. Surely that would weigh against your soul, for you’re responsible for them. If you’re born a king, then ye’re given responsibility for your subjects. If ye do ill by them, then—”

“Well, but where does that stop?” I protested. “Suppose you do well by one person and badly by another? Suppose you have people under your care—so to speak—and their needs are in opposition to one another? What do you say to that?”

He broke into a smile.

“I’d say I’m verra glad I’m not God and havena got to try to reckon such things.”

I was silent for a moment, imagining Louis standing before God, trying to explain those ten minutes with me. I was sure he’d thought he had a right—kings, after all, were kings—but on the other hand, both the seventh and the ninth commandments were fairly explicit and didn’t seem to have any clauses exempting royalty.

“If you were there,” I said impulsively, “in heaven, watching that judgment—would you forgive him? I would.”

“Who?” he said, surprised. “Louis?” I nodded, and he frowned, rubbing a finger slowly down the bridge of his nose. Then he sighed and nodded.

“Aye, I would. Wouldna mind watching him squirm a bit first, mind,” he added, darkly. “A wee pitchfork in the arse would be fine.”

I laughed at that, but before I could say anything further, we were interrupted by a shout of “Sail, ho!” from above. While we’d been alone the instant before, this advice caused sailors to pop out of hatches and companionways like weevils out of a ship’s biscuit, swarming up into the rigging to see what was up.

I strained my eyes, but nothing was immediately visible. Young Ian, though, had gone aloft with the others, and now landed on the deck beside us with a thump. He was flushed with wind and excitement.

“A smallish ship, but she’s got guns,” he told Jamie. “And she’s flying the Union flag.”

“She’s a naval cutter,” said Captain Roberts, who had appeared on my other side and was peering grimly through his telescope. “Shit.”

Jamie’s hand went to his dirk, unconsciously checking, and he looked over the captain’s shoulder, eyes narrowed against the wind. I could see the sail now, coming up rapidly to starboard.

“Can we outrun her, Cap’n?” The first mate had joined the crowd at the rail, watching the oncoming ship. She did have guns; six, that I could see—and there were men behind them.

The captain pondered, absently clicking his glass open and shut, then glanced up into the rigging, presumably estimating the chances of our putting on enough sail to outdistance the pursuer. The mainmast was cracked; he’d been intending to replace it in New Haven.

“No,” he said gloomily. “The main’ll be away, if there’s any strain put on her.” He shut the telescope with a decisive
click
and stowed it away in his pocket. “Have to brass it out, best we can.”

I wondered just how much of Captain Roberts’s cargo was contraband. His taciturn face didn’t give anything away, but there was a distinct air of uneasiness among the hands, which grew noticeably as the cutter drew alongside, hailing.

Roberts gave the terse order to heave to, and the sails loosened, the ship slowing. I could see seamen at the guns and rail of the cutter; glancing sideways at Jamie, I saw that he was counting them and glanced back.

“I make it sixteen,” Ian said, low-voiced.

“Undermanned, God damn it,” said the captain. He looked at Ian, estimating his size, and shook his head. “They’ll likely mean to press what they can out of us. Sorry, lad.”

The rather formless alarm I’d felt at the cutter’s approach sharpened abruptly at this—and sharpened still further as I saw Roberts glance appraisingly at Jamie.

“You don’t think they—” I began.

“Shame you shaved this morning, Mr. Fraser,” Roberts observed to Jamie, ignoring me. “Takes twenty years off your age. And you look a damned sight healthier than men half your age.”

“I’m obliged to ye for the compliment, sir,” Jamie replied dryly, one eye on the railing, where the cocked hat of the cutter’s captain had suddenly poked up like an ill-omened mushroom. He unbuckled his belt, slid the dirk’s scabbard free, and handed it to me.

“Keep that for me, Sassenach,” he said under his breath, buckling his belt again.

The cutter’s captain, a squat middle-aged man with a sullen brow and a pair of much-mended breeches, took a quick, piercing look around the deck when he came aboard, nodded to himself as though his worst suspicions had been confirmed, then shouted back over his shoulder for six men to follow.

“Search the hold,” he said to his minions. “You know what to look for.”

“What sort of way is this to carry on?” Captain Roberts demanded angrily. “You’ve no right to search my ship! What do you lot think you are, a raft of bloody pirates?”

“Do I look like a pirate?” The cutter’s captain looked more pleased than insulted by the idea.

“Well, you can’t be a naval captain, I’m sure,” Roberts said coldly. “A nice, gentlemanlike set of individuals, I’ve always found His Majesty’s navy. Not the sort to board a respectable merchant without leave, let alone without proper introduction.”

The cutter’s captain appeared to find this funny. He took off his hat and bowed—to me.

“Allow me, mum,” he said. “Captain Worth Stebbings, your most humble.” He straightened up, clapping on his hat, and nodded to his lieutenant. “Go through the holds like a dose of salts. And you—” He tapped Roberts on the chest with a forefinger. “Get all your men on deck, front and center, cully.
All
of them, mind. If I have to drag them up here, I won’t be best pleased, I warn you.”

Tremendous bangings and rumblings from below ensued, with seamen popping up periodically to relay news of their findings to Captain Stebbings, who lounged by the rail, watching as the men of the
Teal
were rounded up and herded together on deck—Ian and Jamie among them.

“Here, now!” Captain Roberts was game, I’d give him that. “Mr. Fraser and his nephew aren’t crew; they’re paying passengers! You’ve no call to molest free men, about their lawful business.

And no right to press my crew, either!”

“They’re British subjects,” Stebbings informed him briefly. “I’ve every right. Or do you all claim to be
Americans?
” He leered briefly at that; if the ship could be considered a rebel vessel, he could simply take the whole thing as a prize, crew and all.

A mutter at this ran through the men on deck, and I saw more than one of the hands’ eyes dart to the belaying pins along the rail. Stebbings saw it, too, and called over the rail for four more men to be brought aboard—with arms.

Sixteen minus six minus four is six
, I thought, and edged a little closer to the rail to peer into the cutter rocking in the swell a little way below and tethered by a line to the
Teal. If the sixteen
doesn’t include Captain Stebbings. If it does…

One man was at the helm, this being not a wheel but a sort of sticklike arrangement poking up through the deck. Two more were manning a gun, a long brass thing on the bow, pointed at the
Teal
’s side. Where were the others? Two on deck. The others perhaps below.

Captain Roberts was still haranguing Stebbings behind me, but the cutter’s crew were bumping barrels and bundles over the deck, calling for a rope to lower away to the cutter. I looked back to find Stebbings walking along the row of crewmen, indicating his choices to four burly men who followed him. These jerked his choices out of line and set about tying them together, a line running from ankle to ankle. Three men had already been chosen, John Smith among them, looking white-faced and tense. My heart jumped at sight of him, then nearly stopped altogether as Stebbings came to Ian, who looked down at him impassively.

“Likely, likely,” Stebbings said with approval. “A cross-grained son of a bitch, by the looks of you, but we’ll soon knock sense into you. Take him!”

I saw the muscles swell in Ian’s forearms as his fists clenched, but the pressgang was armed, two with pistols drawn, and he stepped forward, though with an evil look that would have given a wiser man pause. I had already observed that Captain Stebbings was not a wise man.

Stebbings took two more, then paused at Jamie, looking him up and down. Jamie’s face was carefully blank. And slightly green; the wind was still up, and with no forward way on the ship, she was rising and falling heavily, with a lurch that would have disconcerted a much better sailor than he was.

“Nice big ’un, sir,” said one of the press-gang, with approval.

“Trifle elderly,” Stebbings said dubiously. “And I don’t much like the look on his face.”

“I dinna care much for the look of yours,” Jamie said pleasantly. He straightened, squaring his shoulders, and looked down his long, straight nose at Stebbings. “If I didna ken ye for an arrant coward by your actions, sir, I should know ye for a fig-licker and a fopdoodle by your foolish wee face.”

Stebbings’s maligned face went blank with astonishment, then darkened with rage. One or two of the press-gang grinned behind his back, though hastily erasing these expressions as he whirled round.

“Take him,” he growled to the press-gang, shouldering his way toward the booty collected by the rail. “And see that you drop him a few times on the way.”

I was frozen in shock. Clearly Jamie couldn’t let them press Ian and take him away, but surely he couldn’t mean to abandon me in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, either.

Not even with his dirk thrust into the pocket tied beneath my skirt, and my own knife in its sheath around my thigh.

Captain Roberts had watched this little performance openmouthed, though whether with respect or astonishment, I couldn’t tell. He was a short man, rather tubby, and clearly not constructed for physical confrontation, but he set his jaw and stamped up to Stebbings, seizing him by the sleeve.

The crew ushered their captives over the rail.

There wasn’t time to think of anything better.

I seized the rail and more or less rolled over it, skirts flying. I hung by my hands for a terrifying instant, feeling my fingers slide across the wet wood, groping with my toes for the rope ladder the cutter’s crew had thrown over the rail. A roll of the ship threw me hard against the side, I lost my grip, plunged several feet, and caught the ladder, just above the cutter’s deck.

The rope had burned through my right hand, and it felt as though I’d lost all the skin off my palm, but there was no time to trouble about that now. Any minute, one of the cutter’s crew would see me, and—

Timing my jump to the next heave of the cutter’s deck, I let go and landed like a bag of rocks. A sharp pain shot up the inside of my right knee, but I staggered to my feet, lurching to and fro with the roll of the deck, and lunged toward the companionway.

“Here! You! What you doing?” One of the gunners had seen me and was gaping at me, clearly unable to decide whether to come down and deal with me or stay with his gun. His partner looked over his shoulder at me and bellowed at the first man to stay put, it wasn’t but monkey business of some sort, he said.
“Stay put, God damn your eyes!”

I ignored them, my heart pounding so hard I could scarcely breathe. What now? What next?

Jamie and Ian had disappeared.

“Jamie!” I shouted, as loudly as I could. “I’m here!” And then ran toward the line that held the cutter to the
Teal
, jerking up my skirt as I ran. I did this only because my skirts had twisted in my undignified descent, and I couldn’t find the slit to reach through in order to get at the knife in its sheath on my thigh, but the action itself seemed to disconcert the helmsman, who had turned at my shout.

He gawped like a goldfish, but had sufficient presence of mind as to keep his hand on the tiller. I got my own hands on the line and dug my knife into the knot, using it to pry the tight coils loose.

Roberts and his crew, bless them, were making a terrible racket on the
Teal
above, quite drowning out the shouts of the helm and gunners. One of these, with a desperate glance toward the deck of the
Teal
above, finally made up his mind and came toward me, jumping down from the bow.

What wouldn’t I give for a pistol just now? I
thought grimly. But a knife was what I had, and I jerked it out of the half-loosened knot and drove it into the man’s chest as hard as I could. His eyes went round, and I felt the knife strike bone and twist in my hand, skipping through the flesh.

He shrieked and fell backward, landing on deck in a thump and nearly—but not quite—taking my knife with him.

“Sorry,” I gasped, and, panting, resumed work on the knot, the fractious rope now smeared with blood. There were noises coming from the companionway now. Jamie and Ian might not be armed, but my guess was that that wouldn’t matter a lot, in close quarters.

The rope slid reluctantly free. I jerked the last coil loose and it fell, slapping against the
Teal
’s side. At once, the current began to carry the boats apart, the smaller cutter sliding past the big sloop. We weren’t moving quickly at all, but the optical illusion of speed made me stagger, gripping at the rail for balance.

The wounded gunner had got onto his feet and was advancing on me, staggering but furious. He was bleeding, but not heavily, and was by no means disabled. I stepped quickly sideways and glancing at the companionway, was relieved beyond measure to see Jamie coming out of it.