by Amelia Smith
Thomas gave up trying to sleep and got out of his bunk. Thoughts of India kept churning to the surface, needling him awake again and again.
On deck, all was quiet. The first mate, Mr. Bromley, stood at the helm. A few sailors were on duty to trim the sails if needed, but they sat in a group around the skuttle-butt, talking amongst themselves. They scarcely seemed to notice Thomas leaving his cabin. The ship’s prow lapped through the water. Thomas took his bottle of wine and walked to the stern. The ship's wake bubbled behind them in the moonlight.
A chill was in the air, reminding him of England – not an entirely sunless country, but nothing like the tropical climate he’d grown accustomed to. If Sarita had lived, he would have ignored that summons home, surely he would have ignored it.
He had first met Sarita a year after his arrival in India, in Trivandrum. She came from a respectable family that had fallen on hard times – the same sort of story that might be told anywhere in the world. She was never one of those women who could be had just for money or costly gifts. He’d courted her much as he would have wooed an English lady, but of course it had been different, and far more complicated as time wore on.
At the start, their relationship caused no comment. Many of his fellow recruits, and almost all of the veteran company men, had taken up with local women at some point, often with many at once. Thomas had always felt that his relationship with Sarita was different. He had loved her. He refused to set her up in the shabby conditions that most men considered adequate for their mistresses, and he didn’t hide his relationship with her, either.
They lived together happily for eight good, long years. Every now and again, he would think of home in passing, but he had adapted so well to life in India that he never seriously thought about returning to England. He had survived that first hard year when half his peers had succumbed to tropical fevers. His northern constitution proved more robust than those of his fellows, too, and so he rose in the ranks and began to amass a fortune that even his father, a blue-blooded miser if ever there was one, would have found noteworthy.
Sarita’s family had been scandalized by her decision to become his mistress. He would never have isolated her further by leaving her behind, or by taking her to England, either. He had heard that a few Indian women had made the transition to life in London in decades past, but they had been fairer-skinned, from the north, and in a different generation. As his years in the subcontinent wore on, company policy turned against the native women who had for so long been the companions of the men who set out to make their fortunes in the East. Against a rising tide of prejudice, Thomas had begun to think of Sarita as being almost his wife, although actual marriage was impossible because she would not convert to Christianity and he could not become a Hindu, even if he had wished to do so.
One day, not so many months ago, she had come to tell him that they might be expecting a happy event. He was terrified and delighted, and felt that at last things were certain. He would stay in India until he died. It would be his home and his children’s home. The murmurs of unrest from the sepoy camps did not scratch his resolve. There had been disputes before, and there would be again. He’d thought it could not touch his domestic bliss. Better still, Sarita had gone to her sister’s house to help while a new baby was being born. He rejoiced at this sign of reconciliation with her family, and looked forward to her return in a few days’ time.
The very next day, a letter arrived from England, from his father. Ordinarily, he would have torn it up unread, but the prospect of becoming a father had roused some kind of nostalgia in him. The letter informed him that his elder brother had died, making him his father's heir. Further, his cousin, who had always been a sickly boy, was next in line to become Duke of Windcastle. If he died, and that could only be expected given his frailty, Thomas’s elderly father would become next in line for the duchy, with Thomas after him. The letter demanded that he return to England. He tore the letter up and tucked its scraps into the back of his desk.
The following morning, a riot broke out in town. Thomas was kept busy all morning with one thing and another, trying to keep the factory running in the midst of the upheaval. He thought little of it, in fact. The Company had put down riots before and this one showed no signs of being serious, as riots went. It was only one small company of sepoys who had objected to a change of uniform, and negotiations were underway, being handled by one of Thomas’s junior officers, a man who had been in India for five years, who showed every sign of competence. Even when shots were fired, Thomas did not leave his work. When they continued, escalating into the early evening, he began to worry. He did not worry much for Sarita. She was supposed to be at her sister’s house, and had planned to stay there another day, so he'd thought she was safe, far away from the trouble.
Two soldiers accompanied him back to his bungalow. Though shots had been fired, only a few pieces of broken wood and torn cloth littered the ground to tell of the disturbance. Two of the company's men were reported killed. Thomas was sorry for that, but it could have been much worse. No one had told him of any injuries in the populace at large, and all appeared well until he’d seen her, slumped on the corner.
He recognized her sari at once. The men with him knew it, too.
“Is she sleeping, and so close to home?” he’d said, stupidly. He walked up to her, reaching down to the dusty ground. A lazy fly circled away from his hand and settled on her arm. She did not flinch, or twitch. He saw the stain of blood, dark on the ground beneath her heart, the hole the bullet had made in her back. He touched her hand, cold like the ground. No one had told him.
The street around her looked much as it usually did, but it was there, a few hours earlier, that the riots had been at their height. Surely someone would have seen her? How had she come to be here? He knelt on the ground, and touched her face.
The soldiers urged him on. Dumb with shock, he had carried her home, and from there to the muddy riverbank, where he saw her burned in the rites she would have asked for. He sent a servant to tell her family. He should have gone himself. They did not come. He didn't think he could have faced them. He stood all night beside her pyre, through the first lick of flame in the timbers, the cloth lighting, the ashes spiraling in the air and settling down to coals. They were raking away its remains when he stumbled home.
The days after that passed in a fog. He drank local whiskey, which burned away his senses. He avoided work and society. A fellow officer came to admonish him for shirking his duties, and he’d decked the fellow. Then he’d gone to the officer's mess, and someone had said something, he couldn't remember what, but through that slip of an utterance he discovered who had shot Sarita.
Her murderer was a young officer. He was as arrogant as any of the rest, but Thomas had thought him no worse than most. He had met Sarita. He should have recognized her, should have known. Instead, he had gunned her down just as if she’d been any other native, and not even bothered to send in a report that he’d killed an innocent bystander, the possible mother of Thomas’s son.
Thomas had challenged him to a duel and killed him the following morning. He was summarily dismissed. He left his servants to pack his trunks, not caring what they stole, and took himself, a few books, and his old English clothes down to the docks where he boarded an Arabian vessel bound for the Gulf. He was determined never to have traffic with John Company again… and that meant leaving India, at once.
In the moonlight, the Whistler felt like a phantom, as if only his dreams were bearing him away, and somewhere in the south of India his body lay sweating on fevered sheets, dying like so many had before him, dying far from home.
He took another drink, emptying his mind. Then he heard a footfall and a rustle of skirts. Miss Grey stood there, leaning on the rail, gazing astern as if she, too, left heartbreak behind.
#
As soon as Hyacinth lay down to sleep, her thoughts started racing. What would their father do when he discovered what had happened? Would he disown George? S
he chided herself for not keeping him close enough, for not allowing for his discontent. Was Mr. Smithson right? Did she keep George too close to her apron-strings? Had George jumped overboard to escape the confines of his female-directed world? What should she have done?
Some hours passed before she finally gave up trying to sleep. She put on her second cloak, an old grey one, lighter wool, soft and wearing at the hem, but not drenched with seawater. She stepped out on deck, covering her head. A soft breeze blew from the south, a favorable wind at last. She paced forward along the deck, nodding to the navigator as she passed the helm. The ship’s prow whispered through the water, turning up bright eddies, which bubbled away into the night.
England lay only another two weeks’ journey or so ahead, less if the wind stayed fair. She'd been born there, as had all her ancestors, and so the place was called “home,” but it wasn't a place that she knew. Home was a story that other people lived in. How could she ever be truly comfortable in England? Maybe Mrs. Hotham was right, and she would adapt, even if George refused to give the place a chance.
She drifted back along the deck towards the stern, hoping to summon happy memories of the world she was leaving behind. There wasn't much there, apart from managing her father's house and tutoring George. It had been a quiet life. She hardly went out in what little society there was. Once, a young officer had courted her, but after his ship left port, he'd only written her one poor letter, not even covering the paper. She wrote back to him, but there was little to say, and perhaps the letter had gone astray. Then the fever came, taking Rosa, and she’d had more important things to do than worry over being slighted in love. Her past few years had revolved entirely around her own studies and teaching George. On the rare occasions when she did go out in Gibraltar's small society, her father glared at any man who approached her, driving most of them away before they were even properly introduced.
She couldn’t summon much regret at leaving that life behind, especially because now, after the afternoon’s misadventures, she saw how she had failed George. Whatever direction she had given him wasn't enough, could never be enough.
Only on Malta, when she was a very young, had she known any real happiness. Hyacinth's hand went to the locket at her throat. She didn't need to look inside to summon the tiny image of her mother. She held onto it as she leaned on the rail, watching the wake roll away behind them like a road.
Then Hyacinth heard a breath behind her, and with a shift of the wind she smelled the wine. There was a man on the deck. For a moment, she thought it must be one of the sailors, but then the sails swung around, letting in the moonlight. Mr. Smithson crouched there, between the after-mast and a deckhouse, his cheeks wet with tears.
She should have ignored him, a man in the darkness, weeping, but instead she stared at him, slouched there, so unlike his usual, arrogant self. He must have been deeply in his cups. Even after her mother and Rosa died, her father had only cried when he’d drunk far more than he was accustomed to, and then only once – well, only once for Rosa. She didn’t know how long or loudly he’d grieved for Violet Grey, her mother, his only wife.
Mr. Smithson looked up, appearing as startled as if he’d seen a ghost.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Hyacinth said hurriedly. “We were so close to losing George,” she added, as if that excused her from intruding on his private grief. She turned her back to him and fixed her eyes on the receding wake, embarrassed for him, and for herself.
Mr. Smithson grunted, as if dragging himself out of a reverie. “Close enough,” he said, “though he is a strong swimmer.”
“In calmer waters he is,” Hyacinth said, attempting a normal conversational tone, “but we don’t have anything like this surf in the bay at Gibraltar. I’m afraid he was out of his depth.”
“He has a will to live, though,” he said. “You’re very attached to the boy,” Mr. Smithson observed.
“Of course I am. He’s…” Hyacinth supposed she shouldn’t actually say what he was to her, even though nearly everyone knew.
“Your brother,” Mr. Smithson finished for her.
The moonlight rippled across the waves. Hyacinth thought she saw a dolphin's fin, far away behind them, but she wasn't sure. She fixed her eyes on the sea near where it had disappeared.
“Why were you made responsible for him?” Mr Smithson asked after a while. “It’s unusual.”
“Maybe,” Hyacinth said. She leaned against the rail, still not looking back at him. “I mostly raised him after his mother died. I suppose it's just that there was no one else.”
“You must have been little more than a child yourself, then,” Mr. Smithson said.
“I was nineteen,” Hyacinth said. “Old enough, and George was only six.”
“And that was how long ago?”
“A bit more than four years.” They’d been long years, though, a lifetime.
“Ha. I’d have thought a young lady like you…” He trailed off.
“Thought what?” Hyacinth said.
“I don’t know what I was going to say,” he said. His face fell into shadow as the sails shifted above them.
“Why do you ask me these things? My life cannot possibly interest you, and you reveal nothing about yourself,” Hyacinth remarked. “You're quite a mystery.”
“On the contrary, every man on this ship knows all about me.”
“Do they?”
“They believe they do. That is all that matters. They believe I'm a man who was lucky in the East. That tells them I'm rich because I worked for it. Ha. And was lucky. Sailors set great store by luck. That's enough for them.” The ship swung slightly, letting the moonlight fall on his face again. The tears were gone. He must have wiped them away while her back was turned, but the sadness was still there, deep, impenetrable sadness. Not the look of a rogue at all, unless he were very good at crocodile tears.
“Is it who you are, though?” Hyacinth felt that she should return to her cabin, sleep or no. In the moonlight, Mr. Smithson's eyes entranced her. She'd avoided looking at him, she realized. She didn't want to be taken in too much by his tales.
“How are you different then from what they suppose?” she asked, stepping closer. She sank down to the deck to look at him and leaned against the deckhouse beside him.
“Oh, there are a thousand things,” he said. “I have...” he sighed. “Somewhere on a company ship, or in London now, I have chests bursting with treasures from India, the kind of thing poor boys hope for when they sign on to the company. Usually they get death instead, some dreadful thing like malaria, or cholera. I should have had that. I think maybe I would have preferred death, rather than face my family in England. Today, too.”
Hyacinth shook her head slowly. “But you and George both lived.”
Mr. Smithson took another long drink from his bottle, then passed it to Hyacinth.
She had never drunk straight from the bottle before. She tried it, tentatively. Drops of wine splashed onto her chin and cloak. She took another drink, more successful than that last, a deep, numbing, thirst-quenching drink. Belatedly, she rubbed at the stain on her pale cloak. She had to say something.
“Father said you dueled.”
“That's another thing the sailors don't know. I suppose your father said I was a rogue, too?”
“He did.”
“He doesn't like me; I know that much.”
“And are you a rogue?” Hyacinth asked.
“I was in love,” he said. “That was what they could not forgive. All the men there kept mistresses… or most did. Those few who didn’t spent their time entirely with each other. I shouldn’t be saying these things. You’re still a young lady, delicate, but I’m past caring. Death is close all the time, but not close enough for me. I’d rather it had taken me already.”
He was staring at the receding horizon.
“Was it love?” Hyacinth prompted. “The duel?”
“Well, a strong affection at any rate,” he said. “I regarded her as my wife
, but the distance between us… we came from very different worlds.”
“And now where is she?”
“Dead. And I killed the bastard who did it.”
“Oh.” Hyacinth shrank back.
Mr. Smithson straightened up against the deckhouse, but he didn't stand. Hyacinth passed him the almost-empty bottle. He drained it, then held the empty bottle with its neck pointing astern, like the barrel of a gun.
“What else did your father say about me?” he asked.
“Only that you were a dueler and a… a black sheep even in your family, he said, and that such a feat beggars imagination.”
Thomas laughed at that until tears rolled from his eyes. The laugh turned hysterical.
Hyacinth looked up towards the area amidships where the night watch were gathered. What if they saw her? What if Mr. Smithson really were deranged? Would they hear her if she screamed? Would they defend her honor?
She looked back at Mr. Smithson, clutching his stomach and weeping, and felt a strange yearning, with no fear or reasonable trepidation at all. She felt a reckless urge to cast her lot with this man. The sea hadn't swallowed him, had spared him and George, and here he was, looking as if he might just leap in again to give the Atlantic another chance to drag him under. He was hysterical and mad, or broken, but certainly not the kind of bounder her father had warned her about, not if he would risk his life for a boy he barely knew. She reached towards him.
At the touch of her hand on his arm, he fell silent and looked into her eyes. “I'm sorry,” he said.
“Don't jump.”
He shook his head, and then he reached for her, fell into her arms. He leaned his head on her shoulder as though she were stronger than he. She held him there, and had a last, fleeting thought of calling for help, then forgot it. If she were compromised, what of it? George could be going to the gallows. This could hardly be worse, to hold onto a man who wanted to drown.