Fletch’s pumps churned, vomiting water onto the sand from openings near what had been her waterline. Downstream a party of prisoners and, to their disgust, sailors, pulled hard on a towrope fastened to the yacht’s stern. Farley supervised them, still on his courser. He had stripped off his tattered jacket and looked almost civilian in his white undershirt, its sleeves rolled up beyond the elbow.
“Heave!” He shouted at intervals as the men pulled Fletch from the riverbank line by agonizing line.
Near her stern Badrine conferred with Granger, who was seated on a wicker chair to rest a wounded leg. “We will cut the mizzen free and stow it along the deck. It should be able to be mounted again, although it will lose half an arshin or so in length if the yard rips off the damaged fastenings and fabricates new ones further up, which they’re liable to do. Steerage and steam are in fine shape, the hull will need patching but not in a graving dock, it can be done, I think, by swimmers or from inside.”
Granger sipped at a mug of rum: “How long?”
“If the Admiralty smiles on us, two weeks. The port here was intended in part to refit frigates so the equipment can handle a ship of this size easily enough.”
“Did you lose anyone?”
“No. All my stokers are accounted for. I kept them below deck as long as I could in the hopes we might be able to reverse off the sand. By the time they came up Farley’s relief was not far behind. Should anyone call them cowards for not going up straightaway I will tell them myself they were under my orders.”
“You are lucky to have your crew intact.” Granger observed. “Boyle’s department lost 22 men.”
“Lord, that’s over half the complement.”
“Threlfall has been in touch with Sophie. Halstead has more than enough survivors from Beatrix aboard to furnish replacements. Most of them have never worked anything but a pure steamer, nevertheless I will take them. They are eager to send anything that so much as looks Bexarian to the bottom.”
A shudder rose from the bottom of the ship. The Chief Engineer turned away from his commander and looked over the rail. “We’re nearly there.” He stated. “I should go below.”
Fletch’s fires, never dead but now quite weak, were stoked up again. A gang of men with shovels worked to free her screw and rudder. Boyle helped Granger to his feet and led him to the bridge. The master barely managed to scale the ladder. Once there, he approached the engine room speaking tube.
“Mr. Badrine, we are ready up here.”
“Ready as well, sir.” The engineer replied.
“Full astern.” Granger commanded, he grasped the helm.
Fletch groaned. Barely a line above the riverbed her bronze screw came alive. The ship’s fore was still locked in the sand and silt. Straining, the engine cranked fruitlessly at the propeller shaft. All on deck heard the steel hull hum with un-damped vibration. Heavy black smoke alight with sparks chuffed from the funnel as the ship seemed to reject the maneuver.
Then, gently, she moved backward. The wet sand burbled as it gave way, allowing Fletch to settle into the water.
“Stop engine!” Granger ordered but Badrine had already done so. There was a pronounced list to port, but she was floating, her whistle sang and the crew joined in, whooping with joy.
A warm rain was falling, the droplets glowed with the setting sun. Fletch left the river the same way she had entered it and steamed slowly toward the mole. Unyielding came alongside, her crew lining the rails and gawping at the battered little ship. The monitor’s captain rendered a salute then, through a speaking trumpet, offered: “Stop and we will take you under tow.”
From his wicker chair, Granger replied: “Very gracious but we will make our own way, thank you.”
Fletch’s crew cheered this. Unyielding answered with a long whistle that, farther offshore, Sophie echoed. Soon, the yacht was alongside the mole. A launch was lowered and went ashore with a party to catch her ropes and secure her. A gangway was scrounged and installed as one of Badrine’s men went along the mole lighting lamps so the refit might go on through the night.
Granger and Farley watched the proceedings from the bullet riddled gunnel. Softly, Granger instructed the Marine: “Have your prisoners start digging graves. Pick a fine spot, on high ground so they never flood out. I want to get our boys under before they start to rot.”
At four bells in the morning watch the steward rapped at Bethany’s door. It hung loose on its hinges, the latch was broken, and light poured through countless bullet holes in its face. It may as well have been a vault door, however, for no one had dared open it since she had stumbled through it and slammed it shut the preceding afternoon.
“Miss Esterhouse?” The steward called.
He allowed some time for a response but, when none came, opened the door. He found Bethany in the same bloody clothes from the battle, sprawled on her bunk. Setting his tray of coffee on her writing desk, the steward, fearing she might have bled to death from an unnoticed wound, held his hand near her mouth. Feeling breath he relaxed somewhat and moved on to rousing her. He could not touch her, so set to whispering “wake up” in her ear. As he did, he saw dried blood and bits of brain clinging to her hair.
Bethany’s eyes flicked open, regarded him, then closed again.
“Let me rest.” She whispered.
“I should like to, but Mr. Granger has ordered me to wake you.”
Bethany stirred a little but kept her eyes closed. “On what account?”
“They are burying our dead in two hours. Our orders mark you as the captain so you must be there. You should wash, and if you’ve a uniform, wear it.”
Bethany sat up in her bunk. “Very well.”
Leaving the tray of coffee the steward went out of the cabin.
Bethany had recovered the kit of papaver syrettes and there were more of them in her blood now than perhaps at any other time. As soon as Fletch had started to move the preceding day she had taken enough to put her to sleep. Upon waking every few hours of the night she had taken more. In doing so she was dancing near a precipice, it was not her usual behavior. She considered herself a disciplined user - it was her medicine, not her vice - but in those moments in the dark, when she began to smell the dead flesh below deck and the blood and filth on her own body and see so many fall dead again, not as fluid memories but as stilted images - a vile magic lantern - it was all she could do. She did not know what would happen to her if she let the thoughts go on unchecked, perhaps there was some sort of clarity at the end, but madness lay along the way.
Bethany rose and gulped down the coffee. This done, she looked at herself in the now cracked mirror above the wash basin. She had seen this face before, the darkness beneath the eyes and sallow complexion wreathed by hair matted to the texture of hay. It was not an uncommon visitor to the cheap glass hung in her garret but she had hoped to be rid of it. The blood and entrails were a new and different complication but not a hopeful one.
She opened the door to send for the steward but found he had already left water and soap outside her door.
The procession followed a dirt track from the mole to a low hill above a burned out settlement. Barely up, the sun was still quite hot and rankled the men turned out in their most formal uniforms. An ocean wind and occasional rain shower provided some relief. Farley’s courser hauled a cart stacked with 24 corpses. Most still wore the clothes they had died in and a dusting of lye clung to them like fresh snow. All were from Fletch’s rolls. Sophie would take much of her dead back to the mainland, for she had the space, and the soldiers would lie with their comrades at the Army cemetery which was now being dug on the other side of the island.
Bethany walked near the end, though, as an officer, she had begun at the head, she seemed unable to keep up. Granger was being carried in his chair, Sophie’s surgeon had counseled that his wounds would heal only if he did not exert himself. The procession stopped at the mouth of a large hole. Bexarian prisoners had dug it through the night and into the early morning. They were now being guarded somewhere out of sight lest their presence taint the service.
Two stokers set down a crate and opened it to extract Fletch’s bell. Placing the lid back on the crate they positioned the bell atop it, near the grave. The cart was backed up to the opening while the surviving sailors formed neat ranks on the opposite side.
After the bell was tolled once, the corpses were placed one by one in the hole. When this was done, Boyle read the list of the dead, ringing the bell for each name. At the end of the list Granger haltingly raised himself from his chair.
“Men. I know on account of my wounds you were going to permit me to attend without saying a word of the fellows who died under my orders. Nevertheless I know I must speak.” The Sailing Master drew a slip of paper from his coat and consulted it, then quickly put it away. “Every sailor and marine takes an oath when they begin their service. They swear loyalty of course to the Assembly but they swear it also to their fellow sailors and marines. In falling in battle they have fulfilled their obligation to the Assembly as best as any man could, but their loyalty to you endures, indeed, truly begins in death. When one hand slips from a rope in a storm but the other holds fast, there they are. When your shot lands and the enemy falls, there they are. When this war is over and you haul in a net full of fish, there they shall be. When you hold your child, there they shall be. When in old age you gather about you your family, large and healthy, there they shall be. When you finally die, there they shall be, and you, at last, shall be with them. From this day live in the knowledge that men who died in glory work each day to defend and better your fate. Make yourselves worthy of their efforts.”
Granger sat. The marines fired a few volleys. As the smoke from their rifles drifted across the assembled sailors the bell was rung one final time. On this the sailors’ neat rows melted, most began to move back down the path, but a few peered over the edge of the grave.
“It may be plain but don’t begrudge it.” Farley said to them. “Any man might be buried where he was born but it is a special thing to lie in ground you took.”
The Bexarians had shot or starved all of the colonists. This left roughly 100 natives of Kjell as the sole civilians on the island. A small party of them lined the path leading back to the mole, near the burned town. There were no young or middle aged men among them, the Bexarians had put them to work on the fortifications, but an old man in a bright blue robe swung a pot of incense as Fletch’s crew filed past.
A sailor elbowed Threlfall and whispered: “Are they blessin’ us or do we stink?”
Threlfall did not answer. The remnants of families - grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers, and children - stood in knots beyond the man in the robe, an elder. Once more at the tail of the procession, Bethany looked behind her to see Bexarian prisoners on the hill filling the grave under the guard of a young soldier. As she turned back she felt a tug at her uniform. The source was an ancient looking woman in black. She stood alone, separated from the others by the elder. Bethany half expected her to ask for money, and, prepared to give some, she stopped.
The old woman spoke: “You!” She began, grasping Bethany’s wrist. “You! Go no further!”
Before Bethany could react a marine appeared and raised his carbine, ready to bash the woman’s face with its butt. “Step back!” He barked.
The elder approached the old woman. Placing a hand on her shoulder he tried to pull her back. The tension went out of the marine’s stance as she seemed to relent and follow him. Suddenly, she planted herself and repeated: “Go no further.” The marine brought his carbine up again, causing the elder and another man to drag her clear.
Bethany walked on, endeavoring to ignore the chill that clung to her wrist where the old woman had touched it.
Bethany’s cabin smelled of varnish. Fletch had been laid up for four days now, and, since there were no intact accommodations on the island, the living spaces were repaired first. Some things could not be replaced, her cracked mirror had been thrown out and though her door had been patched and painted a simple bolt now stood in for the destroyed lock. Mercifully, there were clean sheets. Outside on the deck, even as night fell, hammers rang. The sulfur odor of a smithy rose from the mole. Badrine and some experts borrowed from Sophie worked it, making new fittings of every shape and size, including those for the mizzen, which hung from a coaling crane, stripped of rigging and paint, ready to be rebuilt. Beneath her the bloody sand had been hosed away and the deck rubbed raw with saltwater soap. Every day more and more bullets were plucked from the deck, their holes patched with tar. Soon the principal evidence of the battle would be the entry in the ship’s log. The 24 bodies on the hill had only a painted piece of wood as a marker and Bethany suspected the ocean wind would carry it away.
Bethany bolted the door and put a match to her lamp. In the warm light she opened her box of papaver and injected one. This left her very comfortable but still lucid. Dreamily, she replaced the papaver and drew her paintbox out, approaching the blank bulkhead behind her bunk. On deck Boyle, drunk since the burial, sang between fits of tears and laughter, both of which he desperately hid. Bethany half-considered offering him some of her medicine so he might sleep soundly. There was talk of putting him off the ship, but Granger was holding any decision until Fletch was ready to sail. After all, he had observed, only Boyle knew the names and faces of each dead sailor. Bethany touched a brush the the bulkhead, making a circle. The gentle yielding of the wet horsehair as it went around seemed to flow into her, a drug unto itself.
On the eighth day the mizzen went up. Bethany had not left her cabin except in the dead of night, when she would stand or sit at the taffrail and look out to sea. The circles on the bulkhead multiplied. They were joined by other shapes and unfinished portraits. She was eating and so, from his wicker chair, Granger had pronounced her “fine.” There was nothing for her to do to help the refit and her new found reclusiveness kept her conveniently out of the way. Threlfall accompanied the steward when her meals were brought and had once been allowed past the threshold. Bethany had held him limply but said nothing. Twelve days into the refit he returned to the cabin after bringing dinner and waited by the door until, well past midnight, she opened it. He let her walk aft a little before rising to follow her. She seemed not to notice him.
Bethany sat on the taffrail. Her dress, spattered with paint, played in the breeze. Badrine emerged from below decks and looked at them, an unlit cigar in his mouth. He chose to go forward, and, sitting on a capstan at the forecastle, struck a match.
“Did I scare him away?” Bethany asked, inclining her head.
Threlfall was startled. He took a few steps toward her. “No. He just didn’t wish to disturb you, I’m sure.”
“Did you see what I did?”
“Yes, it’s what anyone in your place would have done, you likely saved more lives than your...”
Bethany stood. “No, no. In my cabin. I saw you stare when I let you in. I suppose you think I’ve gone off entirely. My sister did, or they say she did, they’ve her in a place where the mirrors are polished tin so you can’t smash them and slit your throat.”
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Threlfall drew very close to her. “We sail tomorrow. I need to make my weather prediction.”
“Then why are you out here troubling me?”
“You can help, if you’d like, you seem to be in need of distractions.”
“How would I help? Don’t you just sit down consider the weather or what have you until it comes to you?”
Threlfall drew a small pouch from his coat. “That’s how it is done at the most basic level but the Academy has developed more precise means that also give greater range.” Holding the pouch near Bethany’s hand he went on: “Open your palm.”
Bethany complied and Threlfall poured a pinch of glistening powder into it. “What is this?” She asked.
“Can’t you tell, well perhaps not in this light... it is refined moldavite. Waste from the forges where they make pens or bits of keel. Until about 25 years ago they simply swept it up and melted it down until quite by accident some fellow found it carried on the wind.”
Bethany began to tip her hand. “No, no.” Threlfall interjected. “Wait for the wind to come up a little, then blow.”
The near constant southern breeze soon shifted and grew a touch stronger. Bethany blew gently at the moldavite. It flew from her hand and grew brighter, drifting free for moment. Then, as if alive, it regrouped into a gold-orange ribbon and returned to Threlfall, spiraling around him. Fletch’s stern lamp winked out. Glowing licks of the apparition reached out, probing the area around Bethany. After a moment of this, half of it flowed over to her. “It’s beautiful, but what is it doing?” Bethany wondered.
“Figuring out who its master is.” Threlfall answered. “Speaking of, if I may...” The seer reached out a hand and drew the flock of moldavite away from Bethany and back to him. With a flourish he cast it over the taffrail and into the air. “They will go sniff around for a while, ride the currents and updrafts.” He explained.
Bethany felt suddenly exhausted, she sat again on the rail. “And then? Do you just know all at once?”
“It will come in bits and flashes, very soon for the immediate area and slower for the rest up to about 200 versts depending on the wind. I need to go to the chartroom to mark it all down, I’m sorry but that was all I had for you, you should try to sleep.” He began to walk toward the fore of the ship.
Bethany rose haltingly. “I’ve slept enough. I’ll accompany you.”
“It will be rather boring but I won’t stop you.” Threlfall replied as Bethany came alongside him.
Threlfall opened the chartroom door and lit the lamp. Taking off his cap he found pen and paper, then sat in the only chair. For a while little happened, then he began to write, referring to the chart of Kjell and the surrounding sea and noting the conditions at certain coordinates. His activity ebbed; leaning in the chair he looked at Bethany. “Could you do with coffee? I could.”
“At this hour?”
“I’ll be here until dawn and you said you don’t wish to sleep.”
“True enough,” Bethany shrugged. “What about the steward? I must admit as far as I know it only comes from him.”
“It’s in his compartment but try not to wake the poor man. You can make it, can’t you?”
“I’ve seen it done.” Bethany replied, stepping out of the chartroom.
She ducked down the stairs into Fletch’s sole liveable lower deck. It was near total darkness, sleeping sailors swung gently in their hammocks. Passing by the only lit lamp mounted high on a bulkhead she heard a scratching sound and looked down to see Boyle. He sat cross legged in the puddle of yellow light it gave off, whittling. “Oh, Miss Beth, it’s good to see you moving about.” He said in a hoarse whisper.
Bethany regarded him carefully. She had heard he was on a long drunk and he smelled of rum but looked relatively dry now. “Have they told you we sail tomorrow?”
“Aye, I’m bearing up to it.”
Bethany nodded with a small smile and began to move off. Boyle stopped her. “I owe you an apology. You must remember, for ‘twas such an insult, that I asked you if you were mad. I wanted to hear you deny it, for I did not with to believe it. Yet, I know now you’re mad indeed, and so am I. And, by making you speak of it I was only being cruel. It may be I felt it in you as it lay in me waiting to spring out as it has done.”
“It’s far from the worst ever asked of me. Anyway you’re not mad, you’re only grieving and you said yourself you are bearing up.”
Boyle’s hand slipped at his whittling, causing his penknife to nick his thumb. Wincing, he mused: “From your lips to heaven above.”
Bethany left him there, continuing down the passageway until she found the steward’s compartment. It was actually two very small rooms, one with a bed and the provisions, the other with a small, dead coal stove and a table for preparing food. As Bethany stepped inside the steward sprang from his bed wielding a mallet. “Scapegrace! If you’re here for the rum you’ll have to...” He blinked and slowly lowered the mallet. “Oh, Miss. You aren’t after a knife, are you?” The steward asked with honest concern.
“Only coffee.” Bethany replied. “You should go back to sleep.”
The steward sat on the edge of his bed and pointed into the next room, “You’ll have to light the stove for that. There are matches just there.”
Bethany could hardly see. “Have you a lamp?”
The steward lifted something from the table by his bunk and held it out to her. Grasping it she found it was a cheap candle. She located the matches largely by feel and put one to it. In its murky light she next discovered a fire starter - paraffin and tallow cut into a small cube - and cast it into the coal stove. She was about to strike another match when the steward protested “Light the other end of the first one with the candle. Waste is a sin.” She did this and tossed it burning onto the starter which went up quickly, spreading flames across the uneven bed of coal. The growing heat was not particularly welcome on the tropical night but the light was. When it was great enough to illuminate the whole compartment the steward pointed out the coffee grounds and cups then laid flat on his bunk and was quickly asleep.
Bethany made three cups of coffee, sugaring each. Shutting the stove’s damper she picked them up and went back into the passageway. She bent before Boyle: “Coffee, if you’d like it.”
The bosun set aside his whittling and took it with a pleased nod, “Very good of you.”
Four bells brought the dawn and two launches laden with the new crewmen salvaged from Beatrix. None had worked a sailing ship before and several were products of the press. To Fletch’s original complement they were little better than lubbers and so they were set to the worst task on the water, coaling. Wagon loads of fuel were brought down the mole from the depot and hatches low on the yacht’s hull were opened. The new men formed a shovel and bucket relay, stuffing their ship’s bunkers. It would take the better part of the morning to complete the work, which produced a cloud of black dust consuming the entire mole-side half of the vessel.
Bethany managed to sleep through the racket, no small feat as the sailors sang and cursed their way through every ton, but was awoken by the cry of a steam whistle. She rolled over in her bunk, resolving to go back to sleep or at least hold her eyes shut for a few more hours when an elated rush of voices ran across the deck. Dressing and donning her sun hat she went blearily through her door. The men not assigned to coaling were lined up along the seaward facing gunnel, watching a ship come into Kjell’s harbor.
She found Boyle among them in a freshly brushed set of clothes and newly shaven. “What’s the news?” She asked, gesturing to the excited sailors.
“Supply ship coming in. New orders, fresh food, and, most special, prize money!” He replied.
Soon the ship was tying up at the mole. Named Cornflower she was slender, painted dull gray all-over, and had the bearing of a fast freighter, built to Admiralty specifications, rather than a common tramp. Granger, standing with the aid of a stick, was dressed to meet her in a clean uniform. Accompanied by Farley he went down the gangplank, rendezvousing with a party of officers from the supply ship. By now every idle eye on Fletch had shifted from the watching the sea to peering down at them on the mole.
“What are we looking for?” Bethany whispered to Boyle, who had gone so far as to deploy his spyglass.
“Anything out of the ordinary. They might be telling Granger we’re being sent home and our prize hasn’t been bought in, or they might be handing over a small fortune.”
Without warning a group of sailors in dress uniforms came down Cornflower’s gangplank, led by a drummer. This lit a fire beneath Fletch’s complement. Even the coaling crew stopped their work, undeterred by Badrine’s glare. When the ceremonial party reached the officers they halted and handed a mahogany box to Granger. He opened it and beamed at its contents before passing it to Farley so that he might receive a folded flag. He gently unfolded it, finding it to be a narrow pennant, and held it up to Fletch.
“For our river engagement, the Star of Merit with two stag’s horns!” He bellowed. Fletch’s crew cheered and whooped, as did the men on Cornflower’s deck.
Cornflower’s officers shook hands with Farley and Granger and then returned to their ship. As they did so sailors began to offload provisions for the island and Fletch with two large deck cranes. Granger came aboard Fletch waving the pennant with his one free hand as the other precariously held the stick. Gleeful sailors surrounded him.
“Quiet, quiet, let’s have quiet!” He ordered. The sailors went silent and fell into uneven ranks. Handing the pennant to Farley he took the box and from it removed a letter.
“To the officers and men of the S/Y Fletch,” he began reading “I have received detailed reports of your action on the river at Kjell. For once, Navy and Army dispatches agree, and they make clear that your ship fought in the finest tradition of the service, fought indeed like a ship three times her size and five times as armored. In light of this, by my power as Admiral of the High Seas Fleet, I am honored to present to the ship the Star of Merit with two stag’s horns, for valor. To Mr. Granger, Sailing Master, I am honored to present the Thanks of the Assembly and the Star of Merit, to Mr. Farley, Captain of Marines, the Marine Morning Star for land warfare, with three stag’s horns for valor, to Mr. Badrine, Chief Engineer, the seaman’s medal. Finally, to Mr. Boyle, bosun, the seaman’s medal with one stag’s horn, for valor.” The sailors cheered, nearly embracing Boyle before Granger made it clear he had more to read: “Further, in view of your gallantry I have expedited the prize hearings for the Bexarian raider Nebel. She has been bought into the service, netting a prize, to be disbursed immediately by the purser aboard Cornflower of one million two-hundred and twenty-five thousand Ritters. Signed, with the complements of the Admiralty and the Assembly on your success so far and wishes of good hunting, Admiral John Oliphant.”
“Three cheers for the Fletch! What might kill a cruiser but wounded her!” A sailor belted. This was followed by “Three cheers for the Admiralty!” and “Hurrah for the prize!”
The pennant, which bore a representation of the Star of Merit and stag horns was run up at the mizzen promptly, to a drum roll and the whistles of Fletch and Cornflower.
“Rum for everyone, even the new lads! Watery now and double strong after we sail tonight!” Granger ordered, settling back into his chair. The steward brought a barrel and tankards on deck. On the fantail, under the shadow of their new honor, the men toasted themselves many times, and, once, in absolute silence, the 24 men on the hill in the distance.
A welcome but heavy rain came down. It washed the decks clean of coal dust and the coaling party stood blissfully on the mole as it did the same to them. The rain clouds caused an early dusk, Fletch and Cornflower were alive with lamplight as the former’s provisioning drew to a close. Granger stood on deck looking almost like a fisherman: in place of the fine peaked cap called for by the Navy he wore an old oilskin to keep out the weather. Badrine walked along the mole with a lamp, checking that the coaling hatches were shut tight. He came up the gangplank, nodding to Granger.
Sitting up in her bunk Bethany listened to the rain beat against the cabin window. Cornflower was sailing for the mainland in two days and she was sure she could find some way to be on her. She could not imagine the officers’ denying her passage if she feigned some illness or a desperate desire to go home. These would be only half-lies. She was ill, she knew, the papaver was enough alone and her lingering ‘shock’ made it still worse. As for going home, well, they would think that to be Bray, the seat of her family, which was no longer true. If they took her there, so long as she could catch a train she could go anywhere and in the more likely case that they went to the capital she would be home indeed.
An envelope lay on her writing desk, bulging with 70,000 Ritters, her share of the prize. Only Granger’s was equally large. She had given much thought to making a present of most it to Fletch’s crew until, when she mentioned the notion to Threlfall, he had told her that the sailors had already too much money. If they came into more, he insisted, the levels of drunkenness and gambling would threaten to cripple the ship. Still, she hoped to perhaps endow some sort of trust for the men, though they would have to take more prizes first. Seventy-thousand received all at once was enough to excite the imagination of any man but could be spent in a few years by even the most frugal. Spending it herself was a distant option, to be exercised only if she did find her way aboard the freighter, again on the run. She would be on the run if she left Fletch. Her father would know within days, even minutes if the news was sent by scribe. The strain of war on the constabulary and communications might make it easier for her to vanish for a while but the war would end and Mr. Esterhouse’s wrath would not.
Bethany heard a thud outside her cabin and went to the window. In the failing light she saw a party of men drawing the gangplank away. She had known this was coming, known they were leaving tonight, and despite her thoughts of Cornflower was pleased to see it. As much as it galled her to hold to her father’s instructions, yield to his threats, she loved movement. Travel, even into harm’s way, was the ultimate distraction, and Fletch’s orders had her covering many thousands of versts. Bethany rose and donned a coat from Walkinshaw’s, while not an oilskin it was waxed and would hold back much of the rain. She stepped onto the deck as Fletch’s mooring lines slipped.
Sophie and Unyielding were not far from the mole now. They were approaching slowly, with their coaling hatches already open, ready to feast.
Granger called to the helm “Dead slow astern!”
Badrine had spent much of the afternoon with a bucket of grease in one hand and can of oil in the other, tending to everything on or in the engine that moved. Accordingly, as the first live steam in two weeks passed from the boilers, through the throttle valve, and into the four cylinder machine it began to make power effortlessly. Fletch backed along the mole until she was a ship-length distant from the freighter’s stern.
“Slow ahead, now.” Granger ordered. The yacht drifted a moment as the engine’s reversing mechanism disengaged, each cylinder coming to a complete stop before running again in the opposite direction. With the helm gently turned she chuffed away from the mole.
Braving the rain, tens of men on Cornflower’s fantail stomped their feet and whooped good luck. Their ship whistled, as did the two steaming toward the mole. Fletch passed the warships and turned in the channel, pointing her prow at the open sea.
Granger, despite his walking stick, moved briskly along the deck to where Boyle stood behind the foremast. They spoke and a moment later Boyle lifted his bosun’s pipe. “All hands! Make sail! Step lively there’s plenty of eyes on us!” None of the lubberly Beatrix men were in this watch, by design, so Fletch’s canvas sprung forth smartly. A fine wind caught them and though her engine was still running slow ahead the yacht picked up speed as it passed out of the harbor.
“Take a good look. You’ll not be seein’ land again until we’re out of coal, out of food, or too heavy with prize money to keep afloat!” Boyle told his men while casting a glance at Bethany.
Well beyond the mouth of the harbor, over the open sea, lightning flashed at the heart of a storm. Bethany found Threlfall, keeping out of the rain by standing just in the chartroom hatchway. “Did you predict that?” She asked, indicating the storm.
“I did, yes.” He replied.
“Then why are we sailing?”
“We’ll be going around the worst of it, and besides, this is fine weather. Storms mean wind, and...” He pointed to the filled sails above them “...we’re fairly fond of wind here.”
“Don’t play clever with me.” Bethany admonished.
“I mean it, it isn’t plainly obvious. A day on which you’d never take a pleasure yacht out is often the finest for covering much sea under sail.”
“My father said the best yacht race he ever ran was on the back-end of a cyclone.”
“I’m surprised he found enough fools to make it a race.” Threlfall laughed. “Then again he laid down the specifications for this ship, so he’s no dilettante.”
“He has a master shipbuilder for an uncle so he’s not going by intuition alone, but, I’ll grant you he’s mad for these things.”
Threlfall took a few steps back, into the chartroom. Bethany followed.
“Speaking of...” He began, “are you well again? You seem to be but...”
“Was I unwell?” Bethany asked, breezily.
“You were better off than poor Boyle perhaps, but don’t pretend I didn’t see. You had a reaction.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“Personally, I don’t like to see anyone sad or shaken up, professionally, well, as a witch what you feel has material power that might be beyond your conscious control.”
Bethany looked away from him, pretending to study a chart.
“You’re worried I’ll hurt someone?”
“Yourself, more than anything.”
“I’m not that sort of person.” Bethany protested.
“I didn’t say you were but let me put it like this, in the last century, it was considered very dangerous for a wizard to outlive his wife, for, in the anguish, even if he was in perfect health for his age he might drop dead at her grave side, or, worse still, commit some atrocity against the townspeople and find he had no memory of it even as they led him to the gallows. More often than not these were meek men but when moved they slew themselves or others.”
“Have I outlived my wife?” Bethany smirked.
“Don’t be pedantic. You saw more death in a few days than a lady of your station sees in a lifetime. You killed, too.”
Bethany turned, “You saw that?”
“Glimpses but I heard from some sailors. You should be proud of yourself.”
“...and the sword?” Bethany wondered.
“What of it?”
Bethany walked out of the chartroom with Threlfall following her. She stepped into her cabin. After lighting her lamp she slid a case from beneath her bunk. Opening it she produced her rapier. Before she could speak, Threlfall, noting blood on the blade, advised: “You really should wipe it down. It’ll rust.”
“It was rusted.” Bethany murmured, “that’s just the thing. It was in this box, dull and rusted, when I was set upon by an orc. It came to me out of a clear sky, just formed in my hand.”
Threlfall reached for the rapier, “May I?”
Bethany handed it to him. He held the blade in the lamplight. “It’s no wonder. There’s plenty of moldavite in this. Not only in the forging but also in the embellishments, see these engraved patterns, they’ve been filled with an alloy of gold and moldavite.”
“I know.” Bethany replied.
“Then why have me look?”
“It came to me, but it was also knocked from my hand and when I saw it again it had killed the orc itself, stabbed him in the head where I could never hope to reach. How? Has it a mind of its own?”
“It has your mind, that’s plenty.”
“Come again?”
“Everything it did you willed it to do, like the marble.”
“Might I do it again? Without being seconds from death, I mean?”
“Surely.” Threlfall nodded. He picked up the rapier and lay it gently on the floor of the cabin. “It will take a lot to conjure it from nothing as you did but maneuvering it should be fairly simple. Call it to you with one hand.”
Bethany reached out with her right hand. The rapier shuddered a little then began to rise. It moved slowly but, soon enough, was in her hand.
“Can I send it away from me? Or was that something of a miracle?”
“As a sort of throwing spear, as with the orc? You might, but I wouldn’t try it in here.”
Bethany blushed. “When this weather clears I should like to try.”
“We can but I must warn you the sailors will probably gamble on it, whether or not you manage to hit what you’re aiming at, I mean.”
“I would rather they didn’t see. I don’t think they know I have the talent.”
“They know enough. There are rumors.”
“I can live with rumors. I’d rather not to be asked to heal wounds and raise the dead. My grandmother was quite the witch, as I’ve said, and she spent half of each day sending away desperate people until, in her old age, she retreated to my father’s house.”
Threlfall’s eyes narrowed, “Why did she send them away?”
“People expected more than she could give, pre-Assembly things, the sort not taught anywhere anymore, even in her youth, I was told if she tried it may well have killed her.”
“Was this her sword?” Threlfall asked.
“How did you know?”
“It’s an outdated style, nobody’s made a rapier like this in a long while. Saber’s are the fashion. Further, what you did, if I understand it, conjuring it in a battle without even being able to see it, I could not do that. I know of nobody that could.”
“Am I so powerful?”
“No, no, it’s the connection. It’s a part of your line. I suspect that even if there wasn’t a lick of moldavite in it, the lingering touch of your ancestors would allow you to at least maneuver it as you just did. If I had such a family weapon I might be able to replicate your feat but alas the only thing I inherited was a folio of historical woodcuts and 76 Ritters.”
So small an inheritance was alien to Bethany and her face showed it. “What became of the rest?”
“It burned with my parents. It was an accident, maybe a log rolled from the fire, maybe a lamp fell, but their rooms and the shop below all went up.”
“I was a fool to ask, I’m sorry...” She stammered. When she was sure by his look that the memory did not phase him, however, she went on, “...but you were shopkeepers? Your family, I mean?”
“Yes, why?”
“I suppose I expected your father to be a Navy man. Going to sea is practically hereditary, at least it is in the south.”
“With scribes and seers it is a little different. We are, in effect, required to join a service. The ones that work as public scribes are the washouts and, if you ever see a man with the talent that is not in uniform, chances are he has hidden his abilities all his life, or at least whenever he was in the sight of someone who might report to the government.”
“Can you refuse?”
“The charter gives the authority to press us into service, but that is seldom used. The alternative is the payment of special tax, onerously high, to account for the ‘risk’ one would present to the public by going among them without the oversight of the military. My father had the talent - I got it from him as you did with your mother - and he chose the tax, he couldn’t bear to leave home. In most years the shop brought in enough to cover it but it always galled him, made him a sour man. Even before his death I had resolved to join up. Better to give them my body for a decade than half my labors for life.”
“Are you really content with that? Either way you’re being lorded over.”
Threlfall leaned against the bulkhead, “Had I been born before the Assembly, I would have been a wizard’s helper, not his apprentice, I’m too weak, merely his helper, a virtual dogsbody. My talent would have determined the course of my entire life, rather than only ten years.”
“It still seems rather unfair.”
“Have you ever truly encountered fairness outside of a schoolroom?”
“I’m not sure I found it there.” Bethany observed. “Talking of unfair, what are you going to do with your share of the prize?”
“Nothing yet, but, should we take more, I have a plan. At the Academy a group of us resolved, should a war come during our service, to pool our prizes and stake a privateer. Perhaps not an entire one, but buy half or whatever. We wouldn’t have to sail in her, in fact we are prohibited to do so, but we would share in her prizes in proportion to our investment.”
Bethany smirked, “There it is.”
“What?”
“I didn’t sense a whiff of enterprise in you, I didn’t quite believe you were a shopkeeper’s son, but now I do.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“No, after all, I’m a shopkeepers great-granddaughter, well he did not keep a shop, but a mill. The point is the same, Esterhouse is not a noble name, merely a rich one. Since the Assembly that’s where all the fine families have come from, one fellow good with ledgers who can raise a bit of money.”
Threlfall looked out of the window, the clouds were beginning to break, allowing starlight to play on the waves. “I have half a mind to send for tea, would you like some?”
“No, actually, I think I might try to sleep.”
Threlfall opened the cabin door. “That’s a fine idea.”