by Eris Adderly
Edmund watched her now, as they all waited for one of the runners to return with word of Symes. She’d made herself scarce since he’d given her the key to her shackle the day of the fire, but today she stood at the gunwale, taking in the sights of what was a very new place to her altogether. The tightness he saw in her brow meant she was deep in thought, and he both did and did not want to know what those thoughts were.
Yes, whilst she’d originally been another advantage to use in his plans, she now held an entirely different sort of value, to him and Benjamin both. If he were able, somehow, to mend matters between them—a nigh impossible feat, he admitted—it would go a long way toward improving his friend’s opinion of him. Edmund was well aware the choice to carry on with his existing plans had deprived the quartermaster of the widow’s favour as well.
A fine mess, indeed, Blackburn.
He wanted to be able to see her, smell her, taste her, make her laugh and hear her words, day after day, without end.
But there would be an end, and today would be it. He’d known it already for weeks, and had been deluding himself that the situation might be otherwise. All of these reasons had caused him to insist on their docking in such a position as to complete this entire miserable affair in the shortest amount of time. The sooner he was away from Boston and this maddening woman, the sooner he would be away from pain. Distance and time would heal him; restore him to his former self.
In order to speed him away from New England once he had Symes in his possession, other matters would need to wait. The cargo they’d taken from the schooner would have to remain in the hold until they could reach a more friendly port where a captain of his repute could find a buyer under less scrutiny.
And Graves, that infernal thorn in his side, could rot in the brig until it could be determined whether a price might be fetched for his otherwise worthless head. Edmund’s thoughts drifted to the confrontation he’d had with the surgeon the day of the fire, and the man’s questionable presence in his stateroom.
“And what need did you have to even venture in to my quarters to begin with, Mr Graves?”
The corner of the surgeon’s mouth twisted up in a suggestion of indignant scorn. The man showed some spine to look at his captain that way while being questioned.
“You’d have me ignore a fire on our own ship, Captain? I saw smoke, and most everyone else was aboard the cargo vessel, securing the take.”
Edmund narrowed his eyes at the surgeon. Of course any member of his crew ought to do what was necessary to maintain the integrity of the vessel, but it seemed entirely too convenient that the fire had put Graves in the presence of the widow, the one person he’d been warned to avoid.
Other members of the crew were slowing their gait as they passed by their captain to watch him question this man whom none of them seemed to welcome among their ranks. Some of the men had outright stopped to listen. He didn’t bother dismissing them, though. Secrets didn’t keep well for long in a contained society, such as it was on a ship at sea, so there would be no point in hiding this interaction. And especially not if he needed help subduing the surgeon, if the answers he received weren’t to his liking, as he suspected they would not be.
“You saw smoke, did you?” He tilted his chin up very slightly, considering. That statement didn’t fit with the widow’s description of events. She’d claimed the fire had only started after Graves had entered the cabin. “What then?” He prodded the wiry man, waiting to see what second version of events there might be.
“I opened the door, Captain, and that whore of yours had already set fire to the table. She meant to see it damaged enough to pull her chain free.” The surgeon’s eyes glittered with excitement now as he recounted his side of the story.
Edmund’s fingernails bit into his palms in agitation.
“Mrs Collingwood is not a ‘whore’, Graves. You’d do well to keep your report to the facts.” He thought he saw the other man straighten out a smirk at his admonition, but he also noted the table had been the central point of fire damage in the cabin, though it left a bad taste in his mouth to pay any credence to the surgeon.
And yet you have seen her lie to you recently, have you not?
“Sir,” Graves said, nodding in an attempt to acknowledge the rebuke before continuing, “I put that fire out my very self, and took her confession. It appears your ‘Mrs Collingwood’ hoped to escape somehow and stow away on the schooner while we were busy with the cargo.” The man sounded very pleased with himself at this account.
“And just how did you ‘take’ this confession of hers, Graves?” Doubt and credulity were now in competition in his mind, where before he only suffered the surgeon’s words to give the man enough line to hang himself.
He watched the other man’s thumb trace over the side of his forefinger for a moment, as though he fondled something that wasn’t there.
“Surely, Captain, you should know—it’s a simple enough matter to get a woman to open her mouth. She let go of her secrets, soon enough.” The way the surgeon seemed to relish whatever it was he remembered only fostered more disgust within the captain of The Devil’s Luck.
But what had gone on in that cabin, then? He had no interest in believing Graves, and yet …
“You believe that, do you Captain?”
John Bone had come thumping across the deck then, having just ascended the stairs from the galley. Edmund gave a low grunt of irritation. This line needed tying off, for now, before it became more complicated. He made several decisions, and issued orders on them in rapid fire.
“Mr Bone, I’ll do without help in this matter,” he said, putting a stop to the cook’s involvement with a glance in the man’s direction.
“Graves: you’re confined to the brig for the duration, until I decide what to do with you.”
“The brig? I saved your ship from a fire, you—”
“So you say, Graves, so you say. Whether I believe you is another matter entirely. And if I decide that I don’t,” he warned the man with a threatening step closer, “then it’s the possibility I might fetch a price for your head that determines whether you leave this ship with your heart still beating.”
The surgeon had already fled one port ahead of crimes he’d committed. Edmund might still be able to turn him in, for a fee.
“Mr Till! Hezekiah!” He barked at the two larger men who’d been hovering nearby, watching the confrontation. “See Mr Graves to his new accommodations. Now.”
Yes, as much as he’d wanted to bury a cutlass point in the surgeon and heave his stinking corpse into the Atlantic, there was no profit in killing the man, and Edmund was ever mindful of material matters.
As he revisited these troubles and pieces of the plan in his mind, his eyes roved over the activity in the harbour. One man moving along the wharf with a purposeful stride stood out to him, and as the figure drew closer, Edmund saw it was one of the men he’d sent out to locate Symes.
Something went tight in his chest, and he strode toward the gangplank to meet the man half way, hoping to hear something useful. The sun had moved far enough since they’d docked, and he’d been growing restless at the lack of news received thus far.
He caught the widow’s attention as he moved to meet the approaching sailor—Winters, he could now see it was—and whilst her blue eyes locked with his, her face remained unreadable. Beautiful, as always, but unreadable.
“Mr Winters,” he said as he met the younger man at the gangplank. “What news?”
“Captain.” The sailor nodded with respect, out of breath yet eager to report. “I was making inquiries of a grocer of all people when I came by word of Symes.”
“And what does the grocer know?”
“It wasn’t him, Sir, but a cooper who was in the shop and happened to overhear my questions. He claimed to know a Bertrand Symes who has the run of a brewery. Established just short of ten years ago. I put him to some further question about the man’s age and family, and his answers seemed to say this man
is the one you want.”
Winters was taking a goodly long time to arrive at a point.
“Go on.”
“Aye, Sir. This Symes is the proper age, and no family here to speak of. And the timing is as you said, Captain.”
Edmund’s toes flexed in his boots, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. It seemed he was very close to his goals. The ones he could manage to achieve, at least. He glanced at the widow before settling his attention back on Winters.
“It does sound as though you’ve located our man, Mr Winters. Did you pass word as I said? That I wish to meet with him?”
“Sir, I have better.” The sailor grinned. “I asked the cooper to take me to Symes, but he refused. I then bade him go in my stead, with a promise to add weight to his purse when he returned, if he would convey the message to Symes himself.”
Edmund felt his own lips turning up at Winters’s ingenuity, but the report was not finished.
“The coin rightly put a skip in his step, Captain. The cooper came back with a return word from Symes himself. He’ll meet with you at his brewery, under the condition you bring along his niece. Unharmed.”
This was precisely what Edmund had asked for, and with less complication than expected. He not only had word of Prometheus, but a meeting agreed upon as well. Exactly as he wanted.
He saw Hannah out of the corner of his eye, and noticed she was well within earshot of the conversation between him and Winters, even though her gaze remained fixed on the activity along the wharf. He knew she’d been listening, even though she pretended not to be. Her face was a mask, jaw set.
Is this exactly as you want, Edmund?
Not entirely, it wasn’t, but closer to his original plans than any other course of action. The die had been cast; there was no debating it now. He stole another glance her way.
Unharmed, he was to bring her. He supposed she was, at least in body. In other ways … Well, they were beyond mending that now, weren’t they? He wrested his attention back to an expectant Winters.
“Very fine work, Mr Winters.” He gave the sailor his approval, a measure he did well not to forget, as a leader of men, no matter how engrossed in his own business he might be. “Tell me where to find this brewery, sailor, and gather some men to go on ahead and see to it our Prometheus hasn’t planned any nasty surprises.”
* * * *
His hand was at the small of the widow’s back as they made their way down King Avenue toward the crossing they needed to take to find Symes’s brewery. He could tell she didn’t care for the touch as she tried to outpace him to avoid it, but his stride was longer than hers was and the hand remained.
Edmund told himself it was a way to keep her in hand less obvious to passers-by than a grip on her upper arm, but this was merely a means to overlook the reality of his actions. The truth was that he wished to touch her while he still could.
It was afternoon now, and a fair number of people could be seen hurrying about their business along the streets of Boston. The populace of this city appeared to be more conservative in dress and demeanour than the sort he was accustomed to seeing in the ports of England, and even more so compared to the island colonies. Something to do with the pervading religious bent, he imagined. The women did not look at him, but a fair portion of the men gave him more than a passing glance. Their appraisals stopped short of outright suspicion, but there was something there. Something about his appearance didn’t fit here, and he would be glad to be back aboard his ship, sails lowered, and away from this place as soon as he was able.
They turned at the corner Winters had specified, the one with the dressmaker’s shop bearing a sign that hung at an odd angle, and found themselves on a smaller street. The brewery should be at the end. Here was a last opportunity to speak alone to the woman he ushered along. The one who’d made a perfect mess of his certainties.
“Hannah …” he began, not sure what words to say, or where they should lead.
“Don’t.”
“Hannah, please. Listen to me. I—”
“I’ve heard enough from you, Captain Blackburn.” Her tone was cold, sharp. She continued walking, not looking at him. “If you mean to carry on as you’ve already explained, there is nothing more for us to discuss. I’ll be led to the edge of this cliff in silence, if you please.”
The ice in her words was enough to tell him that whatever irrational plea he’d been about to make would be just that. Irrational. A wild fantasy, which could not exist at the same time as the reality of his plans, such as they were.
Kettle & Symes.
He’d been keeping one eye on the signs on the faces of buildings as they’d been moving along, and now the proper one was before them. The names hanging above the door called out his missing linguist’s new place of business. They’d arrived, and the time for sentiment was at an end.
Edmund didn’t knock on the door, or try to enter, however. The cooper had instructed Winters that they were to meet the widow’s uncle at the back entrance. A pair of the men he’d had Winters send ahead stepped out from between the buildings, giving him a nod and gesture that all was clear. He returned their nods and they waited for him to enter the alley himself, before slipping away back to the ship to help the others make ready.
Releasing a sigh, which seemed to rise up from the very soles of his feet, he prodded her along once more, hand at her waist, indicating she should precede him into the narrow gap between the brewery and the building adjacent.
“Mrs Collingwood,” he said, prompting. She made no reply, but took brisk steps where he directed, doing her own part to hasten the affair to a close. The widow appeared as intent as he was on having the painful event done with.
Mrs Collingwood.
He recalled the first time he’d spoken her name, those weeks ago in his stateroom, acting a proper scoundrel, by anyone’s measure. He and Benjamin having a bit of sport with what they thought at the time would be simply another pretty face to exchange knowing elbows in the ribs about later.
Hannah.
The name he preferred to call her, a sound ephemeral and free, a wind that filled sails, unseen. That one he’d used the first day, as well, but as a weapon. A tool to make her unsteady, to breach her standards of propriety and set the dogs of fear loose in her mind before offering her a choice of being tied to a mast or tossed over the side.
A perfectly normal way to begin any courtship, Blackburn, wouldn’t you say?
But how could he have known at the time it would become any such thing? How could any of them have known?
And less than a fortnight past, this same woman, to whom he’d done these things, whom he’d treated abhorrently as far as a lady of her status would see it, was prepared to remain on his ship, if he would only give up this, the oldest of his plans. Would he have given further opportunities to someone he felt had betrayed him? Used him poorly? Doubtful.
Never in the heights of imagination could Edmund have foreseen how difficult it would be to leave the woman he’d discovered aboard his ship at the next port. It felt as though he were asking Hezekiah to stay behind. Or Benjamin. Someone vital to his crew, his sanity.
By the time they reached the alley entrance to the ground floor of the brewery, Edmund’s heart was thumping in his chest the way it did on those rare occasions where a decision was about to alter matters irrevocably.
He rapped on the door and watched his lovely, lost widow cross her arms over her chest as they waited. They didn’t wait long.
The door swung inward.
“Uncle!”
“Hannah!”
* * * *
Her uncle drew her into the room with a fierce embrace, his circling arms crushing her ribcage and sending an involuntary oof of wind rushing up out of her lungs. She’d always got on well with the man. In fact, his love of languages had sparked some of her own earliest curiosities for learning. This warm display of affection, however, was more than she’d expected, considering the circumstances of their re
conciliation.
The embrace appeared to satisfy him with the reality of her presence, and he drew back, holding her at arm’s length to take in the niece he’d not seen for so many years.
The last time she’d seen him had been before he’d sailed for Jamaica, and she had been how old then? Sixteen? Seventeen? Her uncle’s face had aged considerably in that time, the marks of the years no doubt helped along by the stress of having to flee the islands.
Hannah wondered how she might appear to him now, a grown woman since they’d last spoken. She realised as well, with a hint of heat coming to her face, how she must look to him: still wearing the showy, revealing dress Blackburn had given her, hair barely reined in without anyone to help her in putting it up over these past weeks. A fright, to be sure.
“You’ve become a woman, Niece,” he said with an odd grin, “and nearly the picture of your mother.”
She couldn’t help but smile back at him, despite the captain hovering nearby, having followed her in to the room.
“And a widow at that, Uncle, some four years gone. Mr Collingwood was taken with pleurisy, God rest him.” Even now, she tried to speak of her late husband with respect.
“Is that so?” her uncle asked, considering. He had taken a step back now, rubbing a knuckle at his chin, and was eyeing the captain as he took in this new information, along with the cut of her gown.
“And just how did you come to be in the … ‘care’ … of this man, Niece? I expected you on The Mourning Dove weeks ago, and when it arrived without you on it”—he shook his head here, face grave—“I made inquiries. They said you never boarded in the first place. And yet now you’re here by some other means? And in the company of this … this …” He gestured at Blackburn, for some reason avoiding saying aloud what it was clear the younger man must be, in light of the vaguely threatening way the meeting had been requested.