by Eris Adderly
Could the man not still his tongue for a moment?
“I was leaving to study in Rome,” the older man continued, eyes less than focused on his surroundings, but still managing to deftly step around a puddle in the road. “I wanted her to come with me, but she wouldn’t scandalise her family in such a way. She begged me to stay, told me I could study the classics just as well from London. Promised me she could convince her father the match was acceptable, given enough time.”
“Enough, Symes,” Edmund warned him, grinding his teeth at the inopportune timing of such a tale.
“I went to Rome anyway, you know. Felt I owed it to myself to study at the source of antiquity.” Edmund chewed against his will at the man’s words as he would a mouthful of broken glass. “She was married off when I returned. Her family bought her into the peerage. Perhaps if I’d stayed? Chosen otherwise? I regret it to this day.”
“I said, enough!” It was a command now, that left his mouth in a hiss, and not a mere warning. His hand had risen of its own accord to grip Symes at the shoulder, his fingers a vice trying to clamp down on his talkative prisoner’s flow of words.
The linguist glanced back at him, rolling his shoulder in a casual attempt to ease it out of the hold he’d brought on himself with his continued prattle. The man seemed unconcerned with the threat of harm coming from his soon-to-be jailor. Perhaps his resignation had reached a level that bled into indifference. Edmund loosed his fingers and dropped the hand back to his side, but was truly ready to cuff the old man if he didn’t remain quiet, public street or no.
The narrow length of the wharf was now underfoot and the bulk of his ship loomed ahead in the remaining rosy daylight. He could be out of Boston and on his way with his prisoner soon enough, the man quartered safely below decks where Edmund wouldn’t have to listen to foolish nonsense about lost loves, when of course such stories didn’t apply to him in any way at all.
No, not in any way at all, Edmund.
* * * *
“Reeve, see this man to the brig.” Edmund handed Symes over to the stout man approaching them as they boarded the ship. It was the only instruction the sailor needed to take hold of the linguist and set about relieving the man of his effects, as was the custom. The older man stood and tolerated the search, allowing himself to be jostled about like so much cargo. Had there been fight in the linguist to begin with, Edmund would say it was all given up now.
“What’s this then?” Reeve asked, thumbing through a palm-sized leather bound book he’d brought from inside Symes’s coat. “Some sort of journal?” Edmund could tell from the way his deckhand was eyeing the pages of tiny script that the man was not among the members of his crew who had learnt how to read.
“Worry about that later, sailor.” Edmund hurried the man on, not interested in wasting time cataloguing the linguist’s few possessions. “Hand over his effects to Mr Osbourne and have the lot stowed in my cabin. We’ll take a look once we’ve put this port behind us—for now get him below and out of the way.”
“Aye, Sir,” Reeve said, taking hold of their stoic prisoner by the arm.
Edmund saw his bosun approaching and called to the man, his voice carrying across the deck, “Hezekiah! I mean to weigh anchor immediately! Do we have everything in order? Everyone accounted for?”
The bosun opened his mouth, ready to report, only for another voice ascending from below decks to interrupt him.
“No.” A very adamant, serious Ellis George thumped up the last of the stairs and out into the open, striding toward Edmund and Hezekiah. “Everyone is not accounted for, Captain. Graves is missing.”
Graves is mi—
“What do you mean, he’s ‘missing’?” Edmund demanded of the carpenter, the volume of his words rising with his ire.
“We sent down Platt to deliver his ration just before you left, Captain. I went looking for him myself when no one had seen him and we needed hands in the hold. Found him lying outside the open cell. Looks to have been strangled, possibly with some sort of strap or tie.” George was still catching his breath from his hasty ascent through the ship.
“Strangled? Is he dead?” Edmund was incredulous.
“No, Sir, just unconscious. Graves must have drawn him close enough to lay hands on him, take hold of his keys.”
That bloody surgeon. He’ll be long gone now. And I so looked forward to giving him up to the fate he was due.
What would he do now? Forget Graves and let Boston deal with him? He’d have to—they’d wasted enough time already finding Symes and enduring that trying meeting with—
Hannah.
His crew were watching him as his hands went limp at his sides, his jaw slack in realisation.
We sent down Platt to deliver his ration just before you left …
Where was the one place Graves would go? A man as obsessed as he was? Would he be deterred from his goals any more easily than Edmund himself?
You served her up on a platter for him once again, Blackburn. Congratulations are in order—you’re earning your villainous reputation quite nicely.
Ellis George was staring at his captain, awaiting some sort of orders. Reeve still had Symes in hand, and the two of them looked to him as well, the deckhand unsure whether this recent development would require some other action.
Edmund took a neat sidestep outside of time at that moment, making a quick decision to engage at last in the war with his doubts. His thoughts struck like lightning, fast and jarring in their unfettered power.
Will you leave her to him? Can you?
No.
You succeed in thwarting the surgeon. What then? Leave her here still?
He didn’t want to leave this port without her, of this he was certain. Regardless of what he could have, he would at least admit what he wanted.
If you don’t want to leave her behind, will you drag her along, against her will?
No. He didn’t want that either.
Go anywhere. Anywhere except Boston, and I will go with you. You and Benjamin. Please.
Edmund heard her words again, her plea, her offer of herself, if only he would relent.
And where the in the nine Hells was Benjamin? He growled to himself in rising agitation. There was no time.
She may still go with you if you release her uncle.
Then what of his father’s promise? All would be forfeit. Estates, the recognition he so wanted. These many, many years …
Edmund.
Clarity.
You hold to the threads of a dream. Your father made promises years ago in a state of passion to a bastard son he’s never had a spot of use for. Prometheus is a fool’s errand and you know it. You’ve found someone to approve of you, to speak your name with joy, and it isn’t that bitter old man in Kingston.
This voice was new, sure of itself. The part of himself that argued now didn’t flutter like the previous doubts and questions being waved back and forth. Here was some true portion of his self whose voice overruled all others.
You want her? Care for her?
Yes.
Do it Edmund. Choose.
He chose. And matters became simple, once again.
“Release Mr Symes.”
Reeve blinked at him. “Captain?”
“Change of plans. Let him go.”
The sailor’s brows rose at the abrupt reversal, but he loosed his grip on the prisoner’s arm all the same. The man knew to follow orders.
“Hezekiah, Mr George, continue to make ready, and await my return.” The two men gave brisk nods in response, moving away at once to their tasks.
“What are you about now, Blackburn?” The linguist eyed him with suspicion as he righted his coat.
“Graves will have gone after your niece. I need to go.”
The older man tugged the front corner of his hat lower and took a tentative step forward, testing the truth of his freedom. The widow’s uncle knew nothing of the surgeon’s fixation with Hannah, but the man seemed perceptive enough to understand t
here was a danger.
“I’m coming with you,” he said.
“I intend to run, old man,” Edmund warned, mounting the gangplank.
“Good.” Symes followed behind, features serious. “Why aren’t you?”
* * * *
Hannah had run out of tears some time ago, and now sat, empty and limp, in the chair her uncle had occupied as he wrote her the letter and handed over his ring.
Do your best. Find your way. You always do.
His words circled her head like so many vultures, in no way as encouraging as he’d meant them.
Find her way how? She knew no one in Boston save her uncle, who was, this very moment, marching toward his own dark fate. Her first urge was to find a ship bound for Bristol and return home straight away, but there were any number of obstacles to overcome before she could manage such a thing.
First, there was the matter of money, and she had none. It was possible her uncle’s partner—a Mr Kettle, if she’d read the sign on the front of the building correctly—could assist her in that area, once he’d seen the letter of introduction. And then, as her father had pointed out before she’d even embarked on this ill-fated journey, she’d need to hire another maid. She doubted very much Blackburn would allow Brigit the opportunity to leave the ship, and even if he did, there would be no reason for the young woman to seek Hannah out any longer. And for another maid, again, coin would be needed.
As well as for clothing. She fingered the neckline of the obnoxiously blue dress the captain had given her those many weeks ago. Another reminder of him, aside from the dozens in her head. The dress would need to be replaced, and the sooner, the better. Hannah wanted to remove all traces of him from her senses just as much as she also wanted something more respectable to wear in polite company.
And here was another question gone unanswered before her uncle’s departure. How long would his partner be absent? Would the man return tonight? Would he even come to this back room of the brewery if he did? She’d need to leave here before the sky became much darker, and she hadn’t a clue where she should go in a city new and foreign to her.
When she’d made her way down the main street earlier with the captain, she took note of the local styles of dress, the way eyes passed judgement on her as she went. Familiar, on some level, and yet not. There would be a definite adjustment on her part if she were to remain in Boston for any length of time.
And what if her uncle’s partner wouldn’t help her at all? Then she’d have to send word to her father and wait the many weeks it took for a letter to travel across the Atlantic and back. What would she do to provide for herself in the meantime, if there was no one to do so on her behalf?
She picked up the letter again, skimming through her uncle’s hasty script another time before tossing the leaf back onto the table. Just how much help would this provide? She’d never had to deal with such complications before, having always lived with either her father or late husband.
Chin on her thumbs, forehead leaning on the rest of her fingers, she found herself slumped in the same position her uncle had fallen into when he contemplated not being able to see his brother a final time.
Hannah idly wondered if she felt more helpless now, or on the day she was first cornered in the stateroom of The Devil’s Luck. Pathetic.
You put out that fire in the cabin on your own, Hannah. That was not so pathetic.
But she’d only been at the mercy of a fire in the first place because some man had forced her into a corner.
She shook her head in disgust, huffing out a breath of air.
Edmund had forced her. Though it was not the physical forcing that had hurt her the most. That almost seemed unimportant now. It was the way he’d forced her away by choosing to pursue her uncle. He could have let go, could have made it all so much easier. She’d made it very plain what she wanted.
And Benjamin. On one hand, she gave him credit—he’d made it clear that night in the stateroom when Edmund had been bent on his “discipline” of her: he wanted no part of such treatment. On the other hand, she saw little of him in the time that followed, other than the occasions he had to escort her about the ship, which he only managed with a quiet, faraway look on his face. She supposed he wouldn’t be able to openly quarrel with the captain, not and maintain order among the crew. Mr Bone had been correct, it seemed. The pair were as two halves of a single man, albeit halves that sometimes appeared to war with one another, but if the tide moved for one, it moved for both.
Edmund and Benjamin. It was a thing of such scandal as could never be spoken of, let alone seen and recognised in any proper social circle. Yet aboard the ship …
He uncle had told her to find her own way. Hannah felt the pressure building under her chin again, the heat in her eyelids. For a time, on The Devil’s Luck, she thought she had found her own way, reaching at last for what she wanted, even if the gossip at home would have been sure to set ears on fire.
Hannah thought she was empty of tears after the departure of her uncle, but that was simply not the case, and she hated the hardness in her throat and the way her hands clenched into fists as they came.
I wouldn’t even be in this situation if it wasn’t for—
“Shall we pick up where we left off, Little Dove?”
—that bloody surgeon.
She hadn’t even heard him enter through the open door, and now here he was, already halfway across the room.
How did he find me here? How did he even escape the brig? Surely the captain wouldn’t have let him go!
No! No no no no no!
Her heart surged in refusal, as though its furious tattoo in her chest could beat back the threat, prowling closer, come for her again. There was no strength left in her, on any level at this point, to handle fending off Graves a second time.
Hannah bolted up from her seat in a panic, knocking over the chair in the process. She scuttled backward to avoid his advance, only to meet the edge of the sideboard that lined the rear wall of the room as it came against her backside. The crackle and rasp of his laughter as she ran out of space for retreat made something thin and icy cold constrict in her throat.
Like the day at the mast, the surgeon filled her vision as he closed the distance between them. His eyes were dark, haunted in some way that made her feel wrong and foul under their scrutiny. She felt nearly as paralysed now as she had immobilised by the binding lines that first day at the mast.
“And what will keep you from me this time, Dove? No quartermaster, no captain. No fires.” He reached a bony hand toward her face and, in a repulsive demonstration of all that was wrong with the man, caught a tear drop that hung from the bottom of her chin with a finger and lapped it up with a swirl of a thin tongue.
“Yesss. You even taste like the One.” Madness glittered in his eyes as he slid himself against her, rolling his obscene gaze down her throat and past her neckline. “Your tears will be lovelier yet once I’ve shown you the way. A living angel, this time. And then … no more pain.” Graves’s mournful smile was the most horrifying thing she’d ever seen, more perhaps than even his sick threats with the scalpel.
And what is he on about? The One? The way? Angels? The man’s insane.
He fingered the cord around her neck, eyeing the key and her uncle’s ring from under a considering brow. “Gave you your freedom, did he? Left you behind?” Something terrible, obsessed, looked out from behind the eyes that came back up to seize hers. “I won’t leave you behind, Little Dove. Not until long after you’ve stopped crying.”
The weeks-long continuous hum of dispiriting whispers underlying her thoughts winked out completely as the last syllable left the surgeon’s lips.
Her mind echoed with silence.
I will NOT.
This man, this monster, had probably expected her to wail or cower or beg for her life. How could he have known this final offence would have another effect altogether?
The anger that had been simmering in Hannah, never quite doused o
ver these past weeks, came rising up into a furious boil.
The surgeon’s original trickery and more recent attempts on her person.
No.
The entire sordid adventure with her and Edmund and Benjamin. Her acceptance of the two men and all the discoveries that went along with it, now tainted.
No.
Trust rent apart by Blackburn’s ill-chosen loyalties, her hopes left in ruin like the gown he’d cut away from her that very first day.
No!
The loss of her uncle and her, powerless to stop it.
NO!
All these thoughts and more whirled together, churning upward into a deafening maelstrom of wrath and indignation, sweeping her up like the fury of a vengeful god.
Heavy footfalls in the alley. Men running.
Graves jerked his head around, startled, looking for the sound.
Now.
It was time to be free.
Hannah’s hand flashed to the surgeon’s waist even as he was turning back to her, teeth bared at the sudden movement at his hip. An instant later, his snarl became a gape of surprise and pain.
With a sickening wet crunch, liquid crimson bubbled from the exposed side of his throat, the end of his own dagger gleaming red where it stuck out the other side of his grimy neck. The twisted excuse of a man spluttered and possibly tried to cough, as his lungs began to flood with his own life, though the sounds were like nothing she’d ever heard. He only succeeded in spraying Hannah with blood as he wheezed and danced on his own blade.
Mewling, gurgling noises of useless protest paired with wide eyes that refused to believe the nature of his dagger’s new sheath.
“What was that you said, Graves?” She whispered now, her voice layers of velvet and steel. “About how I was ‘waiting for you to come along and provide me with a sense of direction’?” His eyes rolled at her words and for a brief moment, she wondered if he could even understand her through the red fog of pain that surely muddied his senses. She truly hoped he did.