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Chapter Text

Prologue

June 1705

London in early summer: steel-grey sky, fine misting rain, smooth wet sheen over the cobblestones. Smoke scudded across the clouds out of chimney stacks. The Earl of Ashbourne's carriage was making its way from the Earl's townhouse out of the city, towards the Royal Dockyard at Deptford.

The mizzling rain had slowed to a stop by the time the carriage turned onto the street leading up to the dock. The sun was beginning to wink out from behind a cloud, a breeze was ruffling the water, herring gulls shrieked from the masts of ships at anchor in the river. Sailors and stevedores were strolling up and down the dockside as Thomas alighted from the carriage, throwing up sprays of rainwater as they went.

Thomas made his way against the flow of the crowd towards HMS Kingfisher, sitting with her wings folded in the harbour. She was a fourth-rate ship, who dwarfed the launches and supply boats shuttling back and forth across the water, and who was dwarfed in turn by the first-rate men-o'-war sitting beside her. Thomas did not know anything about her, except that James would be on board overseeing her refitting, straight-backed and severe and his hair neatly combed back into its queue. He began walking faster. He felt loose-limbed and light. He had to fight to keep a smile from spreading itself over his face.

When he came to the Kingfisher he found a midshipman lingering by the gangplank, and asked for the commander's permission to come aboard. The boy ran off, and came running back again a moment later to say that His Lordship had it, and His Lordship would, if it please His Lordship, find the commander on the quarterdeck. His Lordship sprang up the gangplank.

Thomas stepped down onto the ship and saw James standing just as he had imagined him, surveying the men scurrying like ants over the gun deck below. The weak sunlight had caught and tangled in his hair, turning it a bright poppy-red. Thomas stopped and stood for a moment by the gunwale, admiring him. It was June, and pleasantly warm—the recent good weather had begun to draw out the freckles across the lieutenant's nose. Even from here Thomas could see him frowning, strict and domineering. The men all looked terrifed of him. Thomas had never been so in love with anyone in his life.

Eventually James saw him, too, and he had to tip his hat politely in greeting and make his way to the quarterdeck with something like an air of aristocratic indifference. When he smiled and nodded and shook James' hand, his expression was as far from adoring as he could get it. He knew by James' answering smile that he had not got very far.

Safest not to look at James at all. He turned to stand at his side instead, and pretended to be interested in the activity on the deck below. Not very long ago it would have been easy enough to find something to catch his attention on a ship full of men exerting themselves in the summer sunshine, but now all he could think of was James. He had to swallow the urge to laugh at himself.

This was not to say that he wasn't enjoying the view, and by the glint he could see in the corner of James' eye James knew it. They stood silently together for a while, taking pleasure in their shared secret. The sun against their backs grew hotter.

'She's a handsome ship,' Thomas said, after several long indulgent minutes. Being totally ignorant of ships, he had no idea if this were true.

James snorted softly. 'She's decrepit, she ought to be hulked.' But he smiled fondly as he said it.

'This is the ship you're to take to Nassau?'

James nodded, and looked her over again, cool and critical and commanding. He seemed satisfied with what he saw. 'She's fast enough, and she was built for disguise—we can pass her off as a merchantman if we need to. And,' he smiled agian, a little cynical and self-deprecating, 'no one's going to miss her.'

The sun was out in earnest now. 'Will you be all right with just one ship?'

'The Admiralty can hardly spare any more. And it's not as though we're planning on getting into trouble. It's just a reconnaissance mission.' He turned his head to meet Thomas' eyes and smiled, more sincerely this time. 'I'll be fine, my lord.'

'If my father's interfered with your efforts to secure a ship, perhaps I can–'

'Thomas, it's fine. She'll do well enough for our purposes. We'd be better off saving whatever goodwill we have with the Admiralty for the plan itself. It may only be two ships, but we are asking them to spare two ships of the line in the middle of a war with Spain. I'd like to make sure we get our pick of them and not the Admiralty's, if possible.'

The sun at their backs began to grow oppressive. Thomas was uncomfortable, sweat prickling against his skull and pooling in the small of his back. His throat was sore. His armpits were beginning to itch. He surveyed the sad old ship again, and no longer thought it handsome. It looked ready to sink into the silt at the bottom of the river. Thomas felt himself responsible for the state of the ship—more responsible, certainly, than the men straining to get her seaworthy in the summer heat. It was not James, after all, of whom the Admiralty thought so little. The sweat along his brow stung.

To Thomas' surprise, James spoke again before he could. 'My father sailed on this ship.'

James so rarely volunteered information about himself that for a moment Thomas didn't know how to respond. Eventually he settled on: 'Oh?'

James had not taken his eyes off the men on the deck. 'When she sailed against the Algerines in the Mediterranean, in '81.'

He offered no more than this—just one small impersonal scrap of his father's life. Thomas wondered if even knew any more than that. 'That must have been only a few years before he died, no?' He said it gently.

James nodded, apparently unmoved. 'Mm. But he wasn't on the Kingfisher then. He died while we were serving on the Essex.'

One of the gulls above their heads bean to shriek. 'I didn't realise you were with him.'

'He took me to sea with him after my grandfather died. Fell off the yardarm on the Essex while she was being repaired a few months later.'

'I'm sorry.'

James gave a careless one-shouldered shrug. 'Just bad luck. That's how I first met Admiral Hennessey, actually: he was captain of the Essex then.'

'And he felt sorry for you, a poor orphan boy? Took you under his wing?' He had meant it almost as a joke, though it didn’t quite sound like one when he said it aloud.

'More or less. I had to fend for myself for a while.' James turned at last to meet Thomas' eye, that endearing lopsided grin transforming his already handsome face. 'Lucky for me that he did, really. Otherwise I'd probably have ended up getting tossed over the side.'

'Does the Navy usually do that to its ship's boys?' Thomas asked lightly, glad he hadn't ruined James' good mood.

'Well,' here James turned a little rueful, 'actually, Hennessey only really took an interest in me after I started getting into fights with the other men.'

Thomas smiled. 'Fights? You?'

James' own smile flickered and dimmed, but he managed to force a laugh. 'Me, my lord. In truth, I'm sure you would've found me an uncivilised little terror.'

Thomas tried to imagine meeting him then: when he was twelve, bored of spending his days indoors with his tutors preparing for Eton, and James was perhaps ten, already well used to running around the deck of a warship and entirely alone in the world. Not being able to say what he thought, Thomas swallowed the lump in his throat and said nothing at all. The gull overhead went on screaming into the summer air.

Chapter Text

I.

July 1715

Late one night in Savannah, when neither of them could sleep, Abigail crept along the corridor of the plantation house to Thomas' room on her small and soundless feet. She found him sitting in the windowsill, one leg dangling on the floor and the other crooked to rest his elbow on his knee. He turned his head when she came in, and his face in the moonlight was silvery and strange, not quite human.

'You ought to be asleep,' he said, hypocritically.

Abigail padded across the room and slipped into Thomas' bed. 'I couldn't.'

Abigail settled in the bed with one thin sheet around her waist and her knees drawn up to her chin. Her fine cotton dressing gown was embroidered all over with little blue flowers, and seemed to have been made for a much older woman. It gave the impression of a child who had been playing in her mother's wardrobe. She looked back at Thomas out of the dark, eyes huge and lidless as an owl's.

If Thomas had been told, when he had first seen Abigail standing exhausted and implacable in Oglethorpe's office, that two months later he would still be living on the plantation despite all her efforts, he would've killed himself on the spot. If had been told that, once freed, he would go back of his own accord, he would have killed whomever was doing the telling. And yet: here they were.

Nights in Savannah in July were sluggish and thick, full of the whining of insects and the scent of stale sweat. After seven years on the plantation, Thomas was well used to it, but Abigail had still yet to sleep easily since summer had come in earnest. She ended up in Thomas' room more often than not.

He had only been away from the plantation two weeks when he realised that he would have to return. It had been on a night like this, both of them awake, when Abigail had sought him out in Peter's vast and empty house. She'd found him sitting at the desk in her father's study, sifting through her father's letters by the wavering light of a candle reflector. The letters were spread out before him on the desktop like one of Miranda's open fans discarded after a party. Thomas was staring at them blankly, one knuckle running back and forth over his bottom lip. The candle was beginning to gutter.

Abigail had slipped into the study and stood at the edge of the circle of light. Thomas had looked up to see her full-moon face peering at him out of the dark, like a shy little ghost. He'd held out an arm to her and Abigail had padded over to him and curled up on his lap—the first time she'd done so. She'd tucked her head against his shoulder and traced the neat, well-mannered handwriting laid out before them. She had recognised those letters. She'd found them in her father's desk the night after Charles Town was destroyed.

She had ordered her father's carriage to turn back as soon as she'd heard the cannon fire. They had made it to the outskirts of the city as the sun was sinking below the horizon, long after the world had gone quiet again, though the ringing in Abigail's ears had gone on for hours. That night she had sat up in her father's study, not sleeping, sorting through his ledgers and account books and packets of correspondence. She'd had some vague sense that it needed to be done, and that she needed to be the one to do it—and anyway, she hadn't been able to sleep. By the time she'd found these letters she'd been so tired her vision was starting to blur. The lowest drawer on the left-hand side of the desk had a false bottom; she'd discovered it while feeling about for any stray papers she'd missed. Inside it had been a box. Ebony and mother-of-pearl in geometric patterns, like a smallish jewellery box. The letters had been tucked inside, tied up with lengths of string.

The letters from Mr. Oglethorpe were uppermost now, the ones from Alfred Hamilton peeking out from underneath. She wondered which Thomas had read first. She remembered the feeling of reading the letters for the first time more than the words themselves: that sense of being at once too heavy and light-headed. It had been hot and stifling in the study that night, and even as awareness of this had rushed in on her she had felt cold and clammy all over. She'd thought for a moment that she would throw up.

She felt she ought to try and comfort Thomas, and casting about for something with which to do so she finally said: 'They're dead.'

Thomas pressed her closer against his chest and rubbed at her flank with his thumb. 'But Oglethorpe isn't.'

Abigail wriggled her head out from under Thomas' chin to look him in the face. 'You want to go back?'

He smiled, miserably, and glanced down to meet her eye. 'No. But I think I need to go back.'

'What about Woodes Rogers?'

Peter's letters from the would-be govneror of Nassau were also on the desk, tied up together again as they'd been when Abigail had first found them.

'Oglethorpe seems to manage to receive his post out there well enough.'

'What about Mr. McGraw?'

A muscle in Thomas' jaw spasmed. He didn't answer.

After a while Abigail spoke again, more quietly. 'What will you do? If we do go back.'

'I don't know. But I can't leave them all there.'

And so they had gone back. In the end it had been very simple. Oglethorpe's plantation made almost no money, except by taking large donations from wealthy families looking to get rid of inconveniences, and he was therefore easily manipulated by threatening this source of income. Thomas, who knew the name of every man on the plantation—and Abigail's guardian, according to the copy of Peter's will they'd forged before leaving Charles Town—was in control of Abigail's inheritance until she reached her majority; they'd paid Oglethorpe off and sent him away.

Abigail had worried he would talk. 'What if he goes to the authorities? About us, about– about the will, or about you.'

'I don't think he's likely to. If he tells anyone what he knows, he'll have to tell them how he knows it. And if he lets slip how many noble families' dearly departed sons and nephews and cousins are alive and well and no longer in his custody, I imagine it'll be the last thing he ever does. No; Oglethorpe's best choice now is to quietly disappear and he knows it. I doubt we'll be hearing from him again.'

So far, they hadn't. Thomas had learnt on his last trip into Savannah that Oglethorpe had taken rooms there, and was making some vague noises about writing to his friends in England to set out the boundaries of a new crown colony. Thomas suspected his plan was not to tell anyone he had given up the running of the plantation and hope everyone forgot about its existence. It would probably work, too; the plantation's appeal, after all, had always been in its obscurity.

Most of the men imprisoned there had stayed. Some of the ones held on indentures had left, with money enough to get them to Boston or Philadelphia or New York. A few had decided to take their chances going back to England. Thomas, deprived of the opportunity to blackmail Oglethorpe by writing to his inmates' families, had spent an enjoyable afternoon forging their release papers instead. None of the men like Thomas, whose families had paid Oglethorpe off to take them in, had left. None of them had anywhere else to go.

The ones who had stayed had moved from the long, low, white-washed dormitories across the cane fields into the plantation house, which had required some creative rearranging of furniture. Oglethorpe, viewing his plantation above all as a place of spiritual renewal, had taken no female prisoners to avoid the risk of fornication among the inmates, so Abigail was the only person with a proper bedroom to herself. Thomas had taken a servant's box room at the top of the house, so small it could not fit more than a single bed and a washstand. It was stuffy and dark, and the bed wasn't even long enough for Thomas—but it was his.

Tonight, however, Abigail had taken it over, as she often did, sitting in Thomas' bed hugging her shins like a child up past their bedtime. Her eyelids were beginning to droop, and every few minutes she would cover her mouth to yawn. Thomas knew, if he asked, that she would still claim not to be able to sleep.

'Have you heard anything from England yet?' she asked.

Thomas shook his head. 'No. I doubt we'll get anything before the end of the month.'

Abigail nodded, unsurprised. She knew from experience how slowly news moved across the Atlantic. But she could not help being impatient. Ever since they had come to Savannah she had felt frozen, anticipatory, with almost the same breathless feeling that comes in the few dark seconds before the curtain rises on a play. It had been almost two months, and still the action had not started. She was nearly desperate for something to happen.

'Do you think your brother will do as you ask?'

She heard Thomas sigh from his perch on the windowsill. 'I don't know. I think so.'

Abigail pulled at a loose thread on the sheet to avoid having to look at Thomas when she asked: 'Are you sure he didn't know? That you were alive? Are you sure he wasn't...'

Thomas shrugged, a short dismissive gesture. 'I can't be sure. But I don't think he knew. My brother was never very,’–he searched for the word–‘cunning. My father didn't ever really include him in things. And he and I were close, when we were young. Besides, it was your father Oglethorpe was writing to for money all these years, not my brother.'

Certainly there hadn't been any stray letters from the fifth Earl of Ashbourne hiding among the papers Oglethorpe had forgotten in his hurry to leave. Abigail pulled the thread until it snapped.

'What about Woodes Rogers?'

'Now there I really don't know. You've read his book, read his letters. You have as much of an idea of him as I do. What do you think he'll do?'

Abigail considered this. The Woodes Rogers presented in A Cruising Voyage Around The World and the Woodes Rogers who had written to her father were not quite the same, and she suspected neither was an entirely accurate portrait of the man who was now on his way to become governor of the Bahamas. The swashbuckling, slightly rakish adventurer of the Cruising Voyage had given way in the letters to her father to someone sharper, colder, more calculating. He had been as deferential as he ought to be to her father's superior rank and his long experience as a governor in the New World—and no more. And he'd got what he'd wanted out of him.

'I think he'll take your offer,' she said, slowly, coming to believe the words as she spoke them, 'not because he wants to, but because he doesn't like surprises, and he'll think you won't be able to surprise him so easily if you're in Nassau with him. And because he wants to be away as soon as possible, and this is the easiest way for him to do it.'

Thomas nodded, absently, staring off into the dark beyond the windowpane.

Abigail's head shot up to look at him, hard. 'But you must be careful. I don't trust him.'

'Lord, no,' said Thomas with a snort, 'I don't trust him at all. But I think there's a little more of him than he meant in his book; he's made himself predictable. Putting it out it at all says more about him than I imagine he really wants anyone to know.'

Thomas hoped more than believed that he was right. Writing to Woodes Rogers had required exercising muscles grown weak and atrophied from long disuse; for the first time in a decade, Thomas was playing politics again. He had been apprehensive, given how his last attempt had turned out. He'd agonised over his letters to his brother and Rogers for days, knowing all the while that the window to send them before events progressed out of his control was closing fast. In the end he had written two fairly short missives to them both and ridden with them to Savannah to send them off himself. Although he didn't know it yet, they had both been remarkably effective.

For all his self-doubt, Thomas had calculated right: his brother hadn't known anything about what their father had done, and had been so overcome at receiving a letter in his long-lost brother's careless hand that he'd fainted dead away at the breakfast table. His joy had been so total and so sincere that he'd been ready to do anything Thomas asked of him, just as Thomas had hoped. Woodes Rogers on the other hand—angry, impatient, more than a little desperate after the death of one of his most important partners—had been in no mood to look too closely at the offer Thomas and his brother had made him. The Earl of Ashbourne's estate was now heavily invested in Rogers' plan—Thomas' plan—to pacify Nassau, to the point that they might at any time ruin Rogers by calling in his debts, and a letter was on its way to Savannah ahead of Rogers and his fleet offering Thomas a position as a special advisor to the new regime. They couldn't have hoped for better.

It had come to him quite naturally, once he'd stopped over-thinking it: manipulating Rogers and his little brother. Although he hated to admit it even to himself—despite ten years in Bedlam and in prison— despite how intensely he had hated him— before he'd ever been anything else, Thomas had been his father's son. It was past time, he thought, to start making up for it.

Chapter Text

II.

July 1715

In the decade that he had lived in Nassau, no one on the island could swear they had ever seen Captain Flint visit the brothel. Were it not for the mysterious Mrs. Barlow, very few of his fellow pirates would have believed he ever fucked at all. It was no surprise that he had not been seen with a woman since her death. He spent almost all of his time off the Walrus alone, now—he had barely even had so much as a civil conversation about anything other than business in months. He might almost have been an anchorite, if he hadn't taken to drinking so hard.

In between raids, when one had ended and there was not yet another one to plan, Flint could reliably be found in the tavern, getting soused. He would drink until he was just shy of being too drunk to walk, at which point he would stop and disappear to wherever it was he slept off his hangovers. He had never yet turned up foxed to a meeting, with Vane and Rackham and Mr. Scott or with his own crew, and seemed to manage the after-effects well enough to be only a little more waspish than usual when he came to them hungover. He did not drink when the Walrus was being resupplied or refitted, or when there were reports of Navy ships nearby. He did not drink at sea. But when all was quiet, in the lulls between one thing and the next, when there was nothing else to occupy him—he drank.

So Mr. Scott should not have been surprised to come across the captain loitering in the shade of the tavern stableyard, his head tipped back against the wall, face upturned to the big sky above, harshly blue in the midday sun. There was a storm coming in from Jamaica; the air was thick and wet and still. 

Flint's chest rose and fell as he breathed too hard through his nose. He'd shed his coat onto the bench beside him, rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. Sweat had soaked into his open collar. There was no one else around—the rest of the island was all hiding indoors, out of the sun. The captain was alone in the punishing heat.

At first, Mr. Scott had hoped to avoid him. He waited in the far corner of the yard, sheltered by the sharp lines of shade cast by the tavern's stables. Flint did not move, or seem to see him. His eyes continued to flicker back and forth beneath their lids, his limbs limp and relaxed in a way Mr. Scott had rarely seen. He stood watching him for a while, breathing in the strong, sweet smell of hay and horseshit.

'You might as well come out,' Flint said, slurring only slightly, 'seeing as I already know you're there.'

Mr. Scott stepped out of the comfort of the shade. He made his way across the yard at a stroll until he came to stand in Flint's patch of shadow with him. Flint rolled his head to watch his approach.

'May I sit?' Mr. Scott gestured at the bench. The shadow cast by the wall at Flint's back did not extend far enough to cover Mr. Scott's face. Beads of sweat had begun to prick at his temples.

Flint dragged his coat off the bench, nodded, grunted. Mr. Scott sat.

Mr. Scott flicked a glance down at the bottle of rum between Flint's feet. More than half full, but missing several glasses' worth. Better to have come across him now than earlier on in the proceedings. Captain Flint was one of those rare men more likely to turn violent sober than drunk. After a few glasses he simply became hard to reach, travelling somewhere far away, deep into the wilderness of his grief. He didn't look over at Mr. Scott again.

Mr. Scott watched him for a while from the corner of his eye. Flint's head was resting against the wall again, his eyes closed, still breathing a little too hard. Mr. Scott decided to take a chance. 'You ought to curb that,' he said, indicating the rum with a slight nod of his head, though Flint didn't see it.

Flint's eyes stayed closed. He didn't ask what Mr. Scott meant. 'It's under control.'

Mr. Scott had seen a lion once when he was a boy. It had been napping in the shade of a tree, one ear twitching away the insects which came to land on it, all its rough power temporarily at bay while it snoozed in the midday sun. He had got much closer to it than he should have. He remembered how he'd felt, how frightened and how awed at how huge it was and how easily it could have killed him. Flint had something of the same effect on people. But he was only a man, and Mr. Scott had not been a boy for a very long time.

'For now. But it will not be for long if you continue like this.'

Flint's eyes opened and glinted at him in the light. 'It's under control.'

Mr. Scott had not come to the tavern to argue with Captain Flint. He was due to meet Eme here once it seemed that all was clear; he had planned to wait in the yard because he had assumed that it would be deserted in such unbearable weather. It would be too suspicious for him to leave and come back, and Eme would not appear until they could be alone. So he would have to wait with Flint for him to go.

He didn't speak to Captain Flint again, but nor did he move away to the stables or the storehouse, for reasons that neither of them could have guessed. Flint settled more comfortably against the wall and Mr. Scott stared squarely ahead as he waited for him to leave. Nassau was quiet around them, its insects deafeningly loud.

'Was there something you wanted?' Flint asked after a while.

Mr. Scott smiled, a tight contraction of his face that didn't reach further than the corners of his mouth. 'No. Forgive me, captain, I only wanted to get out of the sun.'

Flint shrugged, unoffended by either Mr. Scott's indifference or his company, and reached down between his legs for the bottle of rum.

'But, Mr. Scott said, poking at the opening Flint had given him, 'I meant what I said. You should restrain this habit, while you still can.'

Flint looked at him again, with less hostility this time. 'I don't imagine you really care if I drink myself to death, Mr. Scott.'

Mr. Scott had learnt better than to let his annoyance show on his face a long time before he came to Nassau. He remained impassive. 'You do me a disservice, captain. I have sailed with you before. And I have known you a long time.'

Captain Flint was rarely surprised; Mr. Scott had surprised him now. He took a secret pride in it.

He carried his advantage. 'More importantly, it is of no small concern to me that the man who has taken it upon himself to lead our combined naval forces against the English if and when they arrive remain in a fit state to do so. I do not say this to offend you, captain, but you are no longer as young as you were when you first came to Nassau. You will not be able to maintain such a habit for long before you begin to feel it.'

Flint turned his attention to the inner recesses of the bottle of rum as though he might find some revelation at the bottom. Instead he found the rum. 'Perhaps you're right,' he said, so long after Mr. Scott had spoken that he'd assumed the captain had forgotten he was there, 'but you can hardly blame me.'

For the first time in their conversation Mr. Scott looked directly at Flint, who was still staring into the bottle in his hand. 'No,' he said slowly, 'I suppose I cannot. I know the loss of Lady Hamilton has been very painful for you.'

Flint's face spasmed. He took another long drink of the rum.

'I did not know her well. But it was clear to me from my short acquaintance with her that she cared for you. Very much. I believe it would have pained her to know that her death has been the cause of this. If you cannot stop for your own sake, or for ours, perhaps you might do it for hers.'

When Flint spoke next it was as though he hadn't heard Mr. Scott at all. 'How did you do it?'

'Do what?'

Flint swallowed around nothing, and gazed into the open neck of the bottle. 'I know that you lost your wife and your daughter in the Rosario raid. I never– Miranda wasn’t my wife, but she was– she was a partner to me. And I know what that kind of loss is. I can imagine what you must have felt then. What you still feel now. How did you...'

Barely a flicker passed over Mr. Scott's face as he stared at the side of Captain Flint's head. 'How did I cope,' he said, 'with losing them?'

'Yes.'

Mr. Scott turned his head to look out over the stark white earth of the tavern courtyard. He was very still. 'It was very painful– it was more than painful, to be parted from them. Every day since they left me, I have felt their absence.'

Flint said, very softly, into the bottle: 'Like an open wound.'

'Yes. But I had a responsibility to this place, to the people still living here. To Eleanor. I could not afford to fall into despair. And most importantly, if I had, my wife would have thought less of me for it. And even though she is no longer here with me,' he smiled, 'I still care to keep her good opinion, foolish though that may sound.'

When Mr. Scott turned to look at Flint he found the captain already looking back at him, eyes glassy, expression unreadable. 'It doesn't seem foolish,' he said.

The sun moved briefly behind a cloud, and the world went dim and cool. Mr. Scott looked at Captain Flint, and Flint looked at Mr. Scott. For a moment the two men, no longer squinting into the harsh white Caribbean sun, saw one another clearly.

'I'm sorry,' Flint said, 'about your family.'

'I am sorry,' Mr. Scott said, 'about Lady Hamilton.'

Flint looked down again to the rum still in his hand, and seemed to come to a decision. He left the open bottle on the bench, stood up, shrugged his coat over his shoulders. He turned to Mr. Scott and nodded. Mr. Scott nodded back. Before he could say anything Flint was gone, disappearing under the lintel of the tavern doorway into the dimness beyond.

It was only a moment or two later when Mr. Scott heard quick light feet making their way across the yard towards him. Eme looked back over her shoulder at the tavern before she came to sit besisde him on the bench, in the spot where Captain Flint had just been sprawling. She looked tired and hot, and there was a soft white smudge of flour on her skirt. She smiled at Mr. Scott as she sat.

He smiled back. 'How are you?'

Eme titled her heard in reply: so-so. They shared a knowing look.

'The skiff came back this morning,' Eme said, quietly.

It was a pleasure to speak Yoruba again, though not one in which Mr. Scott could ever indulge for long. 'What is the answer?'

Eme's mouth compressed itself into a thin, unhappy line. 'The answer is no. And that you should know already why it is no.'

Mr. Scott sighed, unsurprised. He squinted at the bright bleached yard before them and nodded.

'All right. Is everything ready to be moved tonight?'

Eme looked at the side of his face for a little while too long before she replied. 'Yes.'

'Good. Give Obaseki and his men the day to rest, and tell them they can set out again come nightfall.'

Eme nodded, and understood herself dismissed. She hurried back through the same door through which Flint had vanished moments earlier. Mr. Scott allowed himself a sigh, and tipped head back against the wall behind him. His eyes, blinded by the hot white sun, squinted and slid over to the dark wood of the empty bench beside him. Flint's abandoned bottle of rum was still sitting at the other end, open, half-empty. Mr. Scott reached out and took one quick, forceful swig. He stood and wiped his mouth and walked coolly back into the tavern.

Late that night, while the campfires burnt along the beach like fairy lights, Mr. Scott was making his way back to Nassau through the rocks. He had seen Obaseki and his men safely away, the skiff laden with munitions, Obaseki bearing a message from Mr. Scott to Madi in his head. The air was still and stagnant; the storm had not yet hit. Mr. Scott could feel the sweat rolling down his back, soaking into the fabric of his shirt.

He was irritated, above all with himself. When he had sent the message to his wife suggesting the possibility of an alliance with the pirates of Nassau, he had known what the answer would be. He did not even disagree with her reasons for rejecting it. He had never trusted Nassau's pirates, even when he'd sailed with them, and they had never proven themselves unworthy of his mistrust.

And yet: it was on the pirates of Nassau that the survival of their people depended. It was thanks to the pirates and their opposition to English rule that their people had been able to thrive, kept secret and free. They could not hope that it would last forever. Every day that passed brought them closer to the day when an English governor would arrive and proclaim Nassau his, and then it would only be a matter of time, weeks or months, before they were found out. In all probability Mr. Scott would be sent back to the Guthries in Boston or Philadelphia long before that anyway; Richard had never signed his emancipation papers.

Flint could not have known the effect he'd had on Mr. Scott. He did not know that Mr. Scott's family was alive and well, just out of reach, nor the contents of the message Mr. Scott had sent to his wife, nor her reply. He could not have known Mr. Scott wanted a reason to trust him. And all this only made it worse. Flint had not been trying to win Mr. Scott over, or manipulate the situation to his own advantage. He had, for once, been entirely sincere. So Mr. Scott would abide by his wife's decision—and part of him would resent her for it.

Not wanting to be angry with his wife, he cast about for something else to think of instead on his way back to town, and landed, quite naturally, on Lady Hamilton. He had learnt the true identity of Captain Flint's late mistress from Richard Guthrie, before he'd tricked him into the hold of Bryce's ship. Mr. Scott had heard of Lord Hamilton, and the rumours of his plan for Nassau; he had heard too of his incarceration and his suicide, after the discovery of his wife's affair. Richard had always liked to gossip. Mr. Scott had not paid much attention to any of it, once it had become clear that the English would not be returning to New Providence Island.

If he'd known Lord Hamilton's wife and her lover had come to Nassau after their affair was discovered, he might have taken more notice. He considered this as he balanced between the rocks. Plenty of women cheated on their husbands; not many of them went from countess-in-waiting to pirate's mistress for the sake of their dead, cuckolded husband's dream. And what kind of man became a pirate for the sake of his mistress' husband? He'd accepted Flint's sympathies for what they were, though the captain hadn't really known what he was offering them for. He wondered now if his own had been equally misplaced.

He passed around the curve of a rock, and the wavering amber torchlight of Nassau town came into view. He was nearly home. His room above the tavern awaited him, sparsely furnished and spacious enough for one man to live comfortably in it, as far from the noise and heat of the taproom as it could be and still not far enough to be really quiet. It held his clothes and his books, the little gifts that Richard or Eleanor had given him over the years he'd belonged to them—more from Eleanor than from Richard.

He had not seen Flint in the tavern tonight, for the first night in weeks. Childishly, he kicked a stone at his foot and listened to it bounce off into the night. That had always been the problem, one that had only compounded itself over the years since he had sent his wife and daughter away. They were safely isolated on their island to nurse their suspicion and their anger; Mr. Scott had to live with these people. It was easy for his wife to reject the idea of an alliance with these white men out of hand. None of them ever made her laugh or shared a drink with her, or offered her their soft and sincere condolences for everything they thought she'd lost. His wife could be steadfast in her hatred; Mr. Scott was cursed continually to hope.

There was a rustle of leaves and twigs and a shout, then a burst of raucous laughter. Mr. Scott stopped, shook himself, adopted the air of a man coming back from a quick piss behind a rock. He nodded to the group of men as he passed them, but none of them turned to see.

Chapter Text

III.

Exit Wound

By the time Thomas and Abigail had set out from the port of Savannah, heading south, July was passing quietly into August. Savannah being a genteel sort of place, they had found no ships there willing to stop in Nassau, or anywhere near it, but the merchant captain who'd agreed to take them to Jamaica had been quite sure that they would find someone unscrupulous enough to do it in Port Royal.

Even so close to the shore, Jamaica in full summer sweltered. The air was thick with salt and sweat, and all along the harbour men lolled against walls or sprawled on barrels, sitting idle, moving as little as possible while they waited out the worst of the heat. Thomas and Abigail walked slowly through the dockside, drawing more attention than they liked.

Thomas had tried to persuade Abigail to remain on the ship, or in some other more civilised part of town. She was not sorry he'd failed, as they wove their way down the docks, but she would have been glad to get out of the sun, and the sights of all these men.

Thomas eyed a tavern which looked promising—a dim, smoky, seedy place, whose doorway thronged with sailors, all of them scarred and tattooed. They slipped in after a man who leered over his shoulder at Abigail in a way that made her skin prickle as though she'd been stung by a nettle.

She realised at once that it was no better to be indoors. The sun could not reach in here, with the shutters closed over the windows, but the air was so hot and close and full of alcohol that it was almost difficult to breathe. It was dark, dark enough after the blinding light outside that for a few long moments she could not see anything at all. The thought came unbidden into her head that perhaps this was what it was like to die, and go to hell, and for a moment she felt herself start to panic. But she blinked hard a few times, and began to get her sight back, and the smell grew less intense after a while, if not less unpleasant.

When she could make out more than dark hulks and vague shapes, she peered at the men and one or two strangely-dressed women around the room, as though she might be able to tell by looking at them which ones were headed for Nassau. Any of them might have been pirates—though pirates often looked very much like any other sailors, in Abigail's experience.

But slumped against the left-hand wall, playing idly with the rum in his glass and people-watching, was a man Abigail recognised, and who recongised her. They caught sight of one another at the same moment, Abigail's eyes alighting on him just as she stepped out from behind Thomas' elbow. He was a great deal more surprised to see her than she was to see him.

Abigail turned sharply to Thomas and tugged hard on his coat sleeve. 'Thomas! I know who'll take us to Nassau.'

'Who?'

She nodded over at the man still blinking in shock at her across the room. 'Look, over there—that man sitting by the wall.'

'Who is he?'

'Charles Vane.'

Charles Vane watched Abigail Ashe drag the man with her over towards his table, feeling like he'd been hit round the back of the head. What this troublesome little girl could be doing in Port Royal, much less in this tavern, he could not begin to imagine. He had no desire to find out. But before he could collect himself enough to slip away she was there, standing in front of him with her hand still wrapped around the elbow of the man beside her, tightly coiled, eyes bright, a little manic.

'Captain Vane,' she said, louder than he would've liked; Port Royal was a lot more civilised than Nassau. The man with her said nothing. He just looked from Charles to Abigail and back again, quietly observing them both.

Charles observed him, too. He was tall, much taller than Charles, which Charles found annoying. His clothes were plain enough, but new and well-fitting, and on his left hand Charles caught a flash of gold from a signet ring. He'd clearly come from money, been well-fed and cared for a one time in his life—but the hand where the signet ring resided was tanned and scarred and callused, and he was broad across the shoulders and arms, like a man used to working in the sun. He didn't look like a gentleman, or a plantation owner, or a day-labourer. He didn't look like anything. Charles' scrutiny didn't seem to bother him at all.

It looked unlikely that Charles would be able to get out of this conversation quickly without causing a scene he wanted to avoid. He turned his attention back to Abigail Ashe. 'What the fuck are you doing here?'

'We need your help,' she said, and without asking pulled out a chair and sat down on the other side of the table. The man with her sat slowly down beside her.

Charles stared at her. 'My help.'

'Yes. We need to get to Nassau. As soon as possible.'

Charles didn't even bother responding to this. 'Who's he?'

'He's...my guardian.'

Charles grunted.

'My name is Thomas Hamilton,' the man said, when neither of the others seemed inclined to say anything further. His voice was low and careful. 'I believe you and I have a mutual friend. Not her.'

'Who then?'

'Captain Flint.'

Charles looked him up and down again. 'You know Flint?'

'I do. And I need to see him as soon as I can.'

Abigail spoke again before he could: 'Which is why we need you to take us with you back to Nassau.'

'And why the fuck would I do that?'

Abigail took a deep breath, and with more bravado than she really felt, said: 'Because you owe me a debt.'

For a moment they all sat and looked at one another, until Charles realised she was serious, and laughed. 'The fuck I do.'

Abigail bristled. 'You kid-'

'Is Nassau important to you, captain?' Thomas had asked it quietly, cutting Abigail off with a gentle hand on the back of her shoulder. Apparently he was also keen to avoid drawing too much attention.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Is Nassau important to you? Is piracy important to you? If you had the chance to give it up, find some legitimate employment—would you do it? Would Flint?'

'Flint tried that. In Charles Town. Went to the governor and tried to get us all pardons from King George.' He cast his eyes meaningfully over to Abigail. 'I'm guessing you already know how that turned out.'

Unpleasant noisy laughter rang out on the other side of the tavern, where a table full of men Charles took for sugar merchants had done something to make the girl serving them scurry away into the kitchen. She was very obviously trying to hide the fact that she was crying. Abigail glared at them, unnoticed by anyone but Vane.

'My freedom's worth more to me than a piece of paper,' he said at last.

Thomas Hamilton looked back at him, gravely. 'In that case, captain, I have some information you and Captain Flint will want to hear.'

Despite himself Charles stirred in his seat. 'Go on.'

Thomas smiled. 'Take us to Nassau and I'll tell you all about it.'

***

Alone in the dark, on Ned Lowe's ship. The Fancy, an inappropriate name. A pale face hovered next to hers, indistinct, speaking softly and soothingly. There was a hand in her hair, stroking it. She was scared, but the voice and the weight of the hand on her head calmed her. She remembered the feeling: being a small child, perhaps five or six, scared of the dark, and her nursery maid gentling her to sleep. She couldn't make out the woman's face in the blackness of the hold, but she knew it wasn't her nursery maid.

A burst of light from the other side of the room. The door flying open. Two dark silhouettes stood in the doorway, and they might have been pirates or they might equally have been militiamen. She turned to the woman beside her, and for a second she saw Lady Hamilton's face clearly in the light before there was an ear-splitting crack, and the back of her head exploded against the hull.

She thought the dream would end there, but it didn't. The men in the doorway did nothing more, just stood there silently, watching her. She couldn't say anything to them, couldn't scream, couldn't stop staring at the corpse. Lady Hamilton's eyes gazing vacantly at nothing. Blood and brain matter and shards of bone across the floor, the wall. Smell of gunpowder and copper.

She woke up abruptly, and found herself in the dark again. The ship around her was quiet, the open window letting in a little breeze that ruffled her hair and carried up the sound of water slapping softly at the hull. She must not have made a noise, since no one had come running, and Thomas was still asleep on the other side of the room. In the dream she hadn't been able to scream.

The first time she'd had some version of that dream had been on this ship, before Lady Hamilton had died. Then it had only been hiding in the hold, Lowe's men bursting in, lunging. It had been Lady Hamilton who'd soothed her through its aftermath. She'd thought, at the time, that she was over the worst of it, that that was as bad as things would get. She'd even been relieved at the thought of seeing her father again. With a shudder she drew her knees up to her chin.

She hadn't gone back into the dining room of the governor's mansion until after they'd come back from Savannah, and by then the blood had been cleaned up. The room had smelt strongly of lye. There was a dark stain on the floorboards, but it might just as easily have been wine.

It had unnerved her more, somehow, the orderliness. There had been a chip in the panelling on the wall, which at first Abigail had thought was a splinter. But when she'd got up close to it and poked at it one night, she'd realised it was a tiny fragment of Lady Hamilton's skull which had embedded itself snugly into a gap in the wood. She'd decided to leave it there, as evidence.

She didn't sleep for the rest of the night.

***

Four days later, New Providence Island shimmered into view along the horizon. Thomas got his first glimpse of Nassau in the soft purple twilight of an early August evening, the grey sea rippling gently below them. A storm hovered in the south-west, a dark angry smudge low in the sky, and the wind driving it north pushed them along ahead of it. Thomas leant against the gunwale on his elbows, enjoying the breeze and the night air.

It appeared to him first as a kind of smear at the edge of the world, barely visible. As they moved slowly and steadily closer it grew into a hulking shape, like a great black beast slumbering on the sea, fires blinking like eyes along the shoreline. He watched it grow larger as the light dropped away. Evening did not last long here in the tropics, and soon it had vanished back into the dark. But he knew it was there.

Strange to think that he'd once, from a world away, presumed to dictate the lives of all the people crowded onto the back of that island. He had thought at the time that he was doing it for their benefit, which might be all that could be said for him. That, and that he had failed. He shuddered, though the night was warm.

Abigail was below in the captain's cabin, given over to the two of them for the duration of their short voyage. Vane's crew hadn't quite known what to make of them, the girl they'd kidnapped and her strange aristocratic guardian with his farmer's tan and ropey, over-worked frame. They certainly hadn't been pleased about the idea of bearing them back to Nassau with them, like fine gentlemen on a pleasure cruise. Vane had shouldered past their objections as though they weren't there at all. Thomas hoped he wouldn't come to regret it, later.

Captain Vane was watching him now, lounging against the mizzenmast on the quarterdeck. Thomas ignored him. He was well-used to being watched, and by much less kindly viewers than Charles Vane. He dipped his head down to feel the breeze on the back of his neck.

The creak of the boards behind him announced Vane's approach before he came into view at the corner of Thomas' vision. He rested his elbows on the gunwale, mirroring Thomas. Thomas nodded cordially to him in greeting. Charles' only response was to stare back at him for a while, before turning his gaze out over the quiet sea.

'Hamilton,' he said.

Thomas shifted against the gunwale and said nothing. Waited.

'Flint had a woman. Lived out near the interior. She went with him to Charles Town—apparently she and the governor were old friends. Flint said her name was Hamilton.'

It was too dark by now for Charles to see Thomas' throat moving as he swallowed, but he heard it, a quiet clicking sound before he replied. 'My wife. Miranda.'

Charles considered this for a while. 'If you're gonna kill him–'

Thomas jerked. 'What? Of course I'm not going to kill him.'

'Good. 'Cause if you were planning on killing him, I'd have to stop you.'

Thomas looked sidelong at Vane. 'I didn't realise you and he were such good friends. From what Abigail's told me, I rather thought you didn't get along.'

He shrugged. 'It's not about that. We need him. If we're gonna defend the island, see England off, keep ourselves free—we need him. Can't let anything personal get in the way of that.'

'Of course. Well. You don't have to worry about that as far as I'm concerned.'

They were quiet for a while, both staring out towards the spot in the dark where Nassau lay, invisible, waiting for them.

Charles shifted his weight on the deck. 'You really don't want to kill him?'

'I really don't.'

'He took your wife.' Thomas could hear Vane's frown, even if he couldn't see it. 'Don't you want him to pay for it?'

'For what? Making her happy?'

This was not an answer which made sense to Captain Vane. He grunted, nonplussed. Out of the corner of his eye Thomas saw him shake his head. 'Never understood it. Him keeping house with a woman like her. Why a man like him would want that kind of life. But what I really can't understand,' he said, voice growing hard and sharp, like unsheating a knife, 'is why any man would find out another man had been fucking his wife, and not want to see him answer for it.'

Thomas settled back against the gunwale, unintimidated. 'James doesn't have to answer to me for anything. Certainly not for that. Their affair never troubled me.'

This was not quite true. When MIranda had first come home with her skirts rumpled and her hair falling artfully about her shoulders after a visit to James' boarding house, he'd been nearly sick with jealousy. It had been a new feeling, one he hadn't liked. His tastes and Miranda's rarely ran in the same directions, and when they did they'd never minded sharing. But something about James had been different from the start—or so it seemed to Thomas now. It hadn't been the first time Thomas had fallen in love so hard, or so fast; perhaps he only remembered the feeling differently because of what came after.

Perhaps it wouldn't have lasted. If they'd all come here together in '06, if James had had his way and Thomas had been named governor of the Bahamas, perhaps they would have drifted apart. Perhaps James would finally have made post-captain and gone somewhere too far away; perhaps Thomas would've been too wrapped up in his plans for the New World; perhaps they would have argued too much. They'd known one another barely a year, been lovers for a few short months. Perhaps it wouldn't have lasted.

But: that first meeting in London, mid-January, foggy and cold. The way his stomach had turned over at the sound of the lieutenant's voice. His face looking up at him in the grey morning, aloof and self-assured and unbearably handsome. He'd wanted to irritate him right away, crack open his deferential composure, take him home and rough him up and get his hands inside him, to poke around in all his soft and sensitive spots. Not love at first sight; something rawer, coarser, more durable than that.

And then Thomas had ruined his life. He came up suddenly for air, and realised how long it had been since Captain Vane had said anything. He looked over at the captain, the edges of his strong features half-visible in the amber light of the ship's lamps. He was frowning, whether in anger or in thought Thomas couldn't tell.

Both, as it turned out. 'How could it not trouble you? Him taking your woman from you.'

Thomas seemed to have touched a nerve, though he couldn't imagine how. He looked out over the silk-black water, unconscious of Captain Vane's eyes on him. He considered how to answer this. 'She wasn't my woman, captain,' he said at last, 'and he wasn't the one who took her from me.'

He felt Vane's surprise on the air. Before he could say anything in reply Thomas pushed himself off the gunwale, suddenly sick to death of this conversation. He nodded tersely to Vane and said: 'Goodnight, captain.' And he disappeared below.

A few hours later the ship glided silently into Nassau's harbour. Vane brooded about the deck, watching the men go through the familiar motions of dropping anchor and furling sails and lowering launches, putting the ship to bed for the night. Thomas lay awake in the cabin below his feet, in a hammock that was barely long enough for him. His legs dangled over the side of it, one crossed over the other. Moonlight stole in through the windows behind his head, washing the cabin in liquid silver. Abigail slept soundly across the room, soft pale cheek pillowed on one small hand.

He watched her sleep for a while, unwilling to wake her up. She'd had nightmares in Savannah, ones she woke from screaming and screaming. The men had tolerated it uncomplainingly; she hadn't been the only one. She seemed to sleep better near Thomas. Even here, among men responsible for their fair share of those nightmares, she lay quietly, snuffling occasionally in her sleep. He was protective of her, in a way he couldn't put into words. It was not fatherly feeling. Not as he understood it.

Eventually he swung himself out of his hammock and walked over to Abigail, and shook her gently awake. She blinked up at him a few times, seeming not to know where she was.

She made a soft noise in the back of her throat. 'What is it?'

Thomas smiled down at her, hand still lingering on her shoulder. 'We're here.'

Chapter Text

IV.

The Emperor

They left early, to avoid the worst of the heat, the day after Vane delivered the slaves for the fort and Teach came back to Nassau. The horses' hooves kicked up viscous clouds of dust as they walked. They could not be persuaded to go any faster, and the sensuous roll of their bodies as they went slowly along towards the interior was almost meditative. Thomas allowed himself to be lulled into a daydream.

Nassau had been difficult for him. There were people everywhere—shouting, loudly drunk, laughing at one another. It was even worse now that Teach had returned. Thomas, whose whole acquaintance for the last seven years of his life could have fit into one smallish drawing room of his house in London, found it made him light-headed. He'd decided to go and see Miranda's house today principally because it would be quiet. That it also provided an excuse for his being on New Providence in the first place was a happy coincidence.

Captain Vane had claimed not to know where to find the place. He'd said that Mr. Scott would, however, and to Thomas' surprise Mr. Scott had volunteered to go with him. Thomas was glad of the company. The prospect of a whole day alone in Miranda's empty house was not much more appealing than one spent among hundreds of strangers in Nassau. No doubt Mr. Scott had only come to spy on him, but he didn't mind.

They didn't talk on the journey. It was a sticky, stifling day, and neither of them was inclined to expend any extra effort on conversation. Bright purple and yellow flowers nodded their petalled heads in the breeze along the roadside, and the air was full of the hum of insects hiding out of sight. Despite himself Thomas found he was enjoying the sunshine and the companionable silence, the singing of strange birds overhead.

Then there was a bend in the road and suddenly, on the other side of it: two stone gateposts on a rough wooden fence, and a house beyond, a low one-storey building with a thatched roof and a neat veranda. The veranda was empty of furniture, the shutters closed tight over the windows, all of it scrubbed of grime and specifics. A tidy, impersonal house. Nothing moved in the wide open yard in front of it. There was a small shack off to one side, under the shade of a tree with bright green spreading leaves.

Thomas had stopped his horse. Mr. Scott did the same. Thomas' eyes were fixed on the shack under the goat-palm. 'Did she own slaves?'

Mr. Scott could not tell what Lord Hamilton was feeling, only that he was feeling it very strongly. 'No, she did not.'

He'd thought she must, as most of the families in the interior did, but the only people Mr. Scott had ever seen at the house besides Captain Flint and its mistress had told him quite proudly that they were free, and lived out, and that Mrs. Barlow paid them to help her every now and again with whatever work she could not manage alone. They had liked her, or at least found her easy to work for. Mr. Scott wondered what they were doing, now.

Thomas didn't reply. He kicked his heel against his horse's flank and walked her into the yard. Mr. Scott followed behind him. They tied the horses up and brushed them down, and left them with plenty of water to recover from the ride while they went up to the house.

It was cooler inside, though the air was heavy and stale. Thomas set about throwing open the shutters and pulling the windows up, eager for something physical to do. Mr. Scott watched him from the doorway. As the light poured in it became obvious how quiet and unlived-in the place was now, how still. Mr. Scott suppressed a shudder. Once Thomas had finished he just stood in the middle of the room, staring blankly around him.

'I will wait for you outside,' Mr. Scott said, not expecting him to respond. He left him in the empty front room, alone with the remains of his late wife's life.

Thomas, unconscious of Mr. Scott's departure, rested a hand on the smooth unvarnished surface of the dining table, in the spot where he imagined Miranda must have sat. He didn't need to wonder what sort of life she'd had here. It was obvious everwhere, in the way the room echoed, the neatness and the lack of wear, the few trinkets here and there which only served to make the absence of anything really personal more apparent. She had been lonely here.

He wandered through the house like a ghost, with the sick sense that somehow he'd been here before. There were three closed doors in the hall, the last of which led into a room which had obviously been Miranda's. There was a light cotton dressing gown draped over the back of a chair at a toilet table covered in familiar silver brushes and powder boxes, and the drawers of the bureau, when he opened them, smelt of lavender and rosemary. They were full of her shifts and stockings and garter ribbons, and spare bed sheets at the bottom. Almost without knowing he was doing it, he took out a ribbon—pretty, pale blue—and wound it too tightly around his wrist.

The bed behind him was neatly made, not slept in for months. He took off his coat and boots and laid down on it, to stare up at the plain white ceiling with its cobwebs and little spiders. There was another smell here, besides the lavender and dust: the faintest hint of salt, like sweat, or the sea. He rolled over and buried his face into the pillow, breathing it in until it choked him.

He ought to have waited for James to come back, instead of coming here without him. But the way his face had crumpled, gone pale at only the mention of Miranda's name, in the one brief conversation they'd had before he'd left, it had seemed cruel to ask him to come here. And they had not parted well.

The Walrus had been preparing to go on a raid when Thomas and Abigail arrived, ready to head out at dawn with the tide. They'd walked up to the tavern from the beach with Vane, Thomas growing dizzier and dizzier as they went, until his whole body felt at once numb and unbearably sensitive to the touch, heart beating painfully against his sternum, he'd been sure he was going to be sick—and then James hadn't been there after all. He'd had to stand impatiently at the bar waiting for the saucer-eyed boy Vane had sent to fetch Flint to return.

He'd waited for so long. He'd been so ill with waiting by the time James came into the tavern that he had missed the moment itself, when James had stepped over the threshold and they'd been together again in the same room for the first time in ten years. He'd turned his head and there he was, head shorn, scowling, swaggering, perfectly like a pirate, unmistakably himself. There had been a second, maybe two, before James had seen him. It wasn't until he had—face going grey, shaking and shaking all over as though he'd been visited by a ghost—that Thomas had been sure he was really there, and that the past three months hadn't all been some long, strange dream. James had crossed the room in a few great strides and, not wanting to give them away in such a public place, Thomas had asked him almost inaudibly can we go somewhere and James had led him to an empty parlour upstairs, left Vane blinking at the bar.

He had wanted to be careful, circumspect, not to force his slimy, viscid desperation onto James. Yet as soon as they were alone he'd been pushing James against the wall, mouth scalding his, the blunt hair of his beard rasping against his lip, and his hands digging too hard into his shoulders. James had made a noise in the back of his throat and Thomas had pulled away, hot and cold all over. Both of them were crying. He'd wanted to live in that moment forever: James sobbing too hard to smile, holding his face in both hands, warm and real between him and the wall.

He didn't want to remember the rest. He pushed himself off the pillow, and saw that it was wet. Wiping a hand across his face only smeared tear and snot and saliva everywhere, across his cheeks and his sleeve. There was a neat stack of folded handkerchiefs in the top drawer of the bureau, all embroidered with the initials M.B. He took one out to clean his face. A garter ribbon and a handkerchief: surely neither James nor Miranda would begrudge him that.

When he came out onto the veranda again Mr. Scott pretended not to notice that he'd been crying, for which Thomas was immensely grateful. Mr. Scott was clearly expecting him to suggest that they start back for Nassau straight away, though it was hot and getting hotter. Instead Thomas said: 'Do you want some tea? I think I saw some in the kitchen.'

After a moment Mr. Scott said: 'Thank you, my lord.'

He'd already told Mr. Scott not to call him my lord so often that he didn't bother saying it again, and went back inside with no more than a nod. It took a while to make tea in a house which had been empty so long. The simple, unfamiliar tasks of setting a fire and fetching water and measuring out tea leaves were a relief, too practical and too alien to give him time to let his thoughts wander.

A folding table and chairs were tucked away into a corner near the front door, so he brought them out onto the veranda and left Mr. Scott to set them up while he went to put together the tea tray. There was no milk, of course, but he found sugar and honey in the kitchen. After a moment's deliberation he brought the honey out with the tray and left the sugar where it was.

'I hope it's all right,' he said, setting the tray down, 'I've never actually made tea before.'

As the sun crawled across the sky, fat and sluggish and yellow, Thomas and Mr. Scott drank their tea—perfectly acceptable for a first attempt—and luxuriated in the feeling of having nothing better to do and no need to get out of the shade. Not that Thomas had entirely recovered, but after seven years of cutting sugarcane in the summer heat he was not about to let the moment pass him by. Mr. Scott seemed to feel much the same.

After a while Thomas settled his half-drunk cup of tea neatly back into its saucer, and turned to Mr. Scott. 'Did you come here very often?'

'No. Only the once, in fact, a few months ago.'

Thomas waited politely for him to go on.

'Richard Guthrie had been...injured, and he was convalescing here. I came to see to him.'

Thomas seemed to be about to say something, and then thought better of it. He frowned, as though trying to work out a problem. Eventually he gave up. 'Forgive me– I was about to ask if you worked for the Guthries, but that seemed an awful euphemism.'

'I am property of the Guthrie Trading Company, yes.'

'Still?'

Mr. Scott shrugged. 'Yes. For what it is worth to them now.'

'In town people seemed to think you'd be upset by the prospect of Miss Guthrie's trial.'

Mr. Scott's face remained perfectly impassive. 'I worked for the Guthries from boyhood. I have known Eleanor since she was born. I raised her, cared for her here when her father left for Harbour Island after the Rosario raid. I have been with her all her life.'

Thomas didn't fail to notice that Mr. Scott had stopped short of actually saying that it did upset him, but he let the subject drop and found another. 'My wife wasn't happy here, was she?'

'She did not seem so, no.' He waited, watching Lord Hamilton from the corner of his eye. 'But I believe that she and Captain Flint cared for one another. I believe that he treated her well. If that is any comfort to you.'

Thomas smiled. 'It is. Thank you. Although in truth I never imagined otherwise.'

'I am surprised that you did not want to wait for Captain Flint's return, to come here with him instead.'

Thomas looked sidelong at Mr. Scott, that enigmatic little smile still playing around his lips. 'Are you?'

Mr. Scott laughed and sipped his tea, and decided to try a direct approach. 'Why are you here, my lord?'

Thomas looked at him, calmly, over the rim of his teacup. 'My wife lived here for ten years. I wanted to see it.'

'That is not what I meant.'

'Do you know who I am?'

He hadn't said it accusingly. 'I had heard, ten years ago, that the Earl of Ashbourne's eldest son might be named the new governor of the Bahamas. I had heard too that his wife was rumoured to be unfaithful to him, that she had an affair with his closest friend. I heard that when Lord Hamilton discovered the affair, he had to be committed to Bethlem Royal Hospital. And I heard that he had died there.' He picked up his teacup from its pretty flowered saucer. 'Evidently what I had heard was not entirely accurate.'

'Evidently.'

If Mr. Scott had expected him to say more he would've been disappointed. They watched the weeds waving in the vegetable patch for a while, shivering in the summer breeze.

They both began at the same time: 'The slaves in the fort–'

'Your relationship with Flint–'

They both stopped. They must both look like that: stiff, unblinking, perfectly still. Like deer, he thought, deciding whether or not to run.

'What about my relationship with Flint?' he said at last. He sounded amazingly calm, under the circumstances.

'I was surprised—extremely surprised—to hear that Captain Flint still intended to leave for the raid even after your arrival. It occurred to me that it must have been you who persuaded him to go.'

Thomas said nothing. Waited to see if he should run.

'In all the years I have known him, the only other person who I believe ever successfully persuaded Captain Flint to do anything he was not already inclined to do was your wife.'

The eye contact was becoming unbearable now. Thomas didn't break it. 'If Captain Flint is as committed as he says he is to resisting the English when they arrive, then he cannot afford to appear to be wavering now. These raids are a demonstration of his resolve, of Nassau's resolve, as much as they are retribution for your fellow pirates' deaths. James knows that. All I did was remind him of it.'

It had clearly taken some reminding, Mr. Scott did not say. Instead he asked: 'You don't wish to see English rule restored here? You intended to be the governor once.'

Thomas, to Mr. Scott's surprise, laughed. 'James intended me to be the governor.'

Mr. Scott couldn't entirely hide his reaction. 'What happened?'

Thomas shrugged. 'My father did not intend for me to be the governor.'

They sat for a while in silence, while Mr. Scott considered his slowly cooling tea, and what Thomas had said.

'The slaves in the fort...'

Mr. Scott looked up.

'I don't imagine you're entirely happy about them being there.'

'Captain Rackham could not find another means of repairing the fort. And he has tried. It is a necessary evil.'

'Well. If at any point you consider it an unnecessary evil...'

Completely motionless, every muscle tensed, listening.

'If you have a way of getting them off this island, I know somewhere they can go.'

There were several long moments in which nothing happened. The weeds bobbed up and down in the breeze, two birds scrapped in a tree at the edge of the yard, somewhere far off a dog started barking. The sun continued to glare at them all. Finally Mr. Scott said: 'Where is that?'

'Have you ever heard of a man named Oglethorpe?'

***

It was a cloudless, airless night, a fat gibbous moon sitting low and sickly yellow in the sky. Fires burnt high on the beach, little stars close up. Everywhere smelt of smoke and burning meat, all-night barbecue.

Thomas stuck his head out of the window and breathed it in, filling his lungs with the rich dark smell. Abigail was sprawled on the sofa behind him in a thin white shift and open dressing gown, trying to read.

They'd taken rooms in a boarding house down a private side street, protected from the noise and sin of Nassau by a gate and a guard who was currently dozing at his post. Thomas had thought it best not to stay at the tavern. They had rented three furnished rooms on the second floor of the house, under the attics where the servant girls sweltered as they slept. Their two bedrooms were connected by a large drawing room, whose modish French doors opened onto a thin sliver of a balconet which looked out over the street. There were not many respectable residents of Nassau left; they were the only lodgers in the building.

From behind him came the sounds of Abigail throwing down her book in disgust. He turned, and saw her and it at opposite ends of the sofa, Abigail scowling at the book and the book staring despondently back.

'I cannot believe that you and Mr. McGraw really liked this.'

Thomas looked down at the other end of the sofa, where Marcus Aurelius' Meditations Concerning Himself were preparing to slide off onto the floor.

'Well,' Thomas said, wandering to an overstuffed armchair and sitting sideways across it, 'I did once upon a time. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I read it now.'

Abigail huffed noisily and reached to snatch up the book again. The heat must have been making her bad-tempered. 'But here! "When a man offends against you, think at once what conception of good or ill it was which made him offend. And, seeing this, you will pity him..."'

'"...and feel neither surprise nor anger." Yes, I remember.'

'But it's ridiculous! Either you agree with him about something so you can't be angry with him, or you don't agree with him so you still can't be angry with him.'

Thomas smiled at her. 'The stoics did place a great deal of importance on learning how not to be angry about things.'

Abigail was unmoved. 'Some things are worth getting angry about. Maybe not if you're the emperor of Rome.'

'Well. He was the emperor of Rome.'

Abigail rolled her eyes. 'You know what I mean. Some things are worth getting angry about. I just don't suppose he'd have had much reason to notice.'

'Mm. But anger in an emperor is liable to be a great deal more destructive than in other people. He might be thought to have had a responsibility to control his temper.'

Abigail mused on this, chewing the chapped pink skin of her lower lip. 'Was your father an angry man?'

'Yes. A reflexively angry man.'

'I never thought of my father that way. But then...'

Thomas sighed. 'I don't think your father or mine did what they did because they were angry with me. Or James. Or Miranda.'

'No. That's worse, though.'

'Well,' Thomas reached out and plucked the book out of Abigail's hand, 'the emperor would agree with you there. "Like a true philosopher Theophrastus says, that errors of appetite are graver than errors of temper. For clearly one who loses his temper is turning away from Reason with a kind of pain and inward spasm; whereas he who offends through appetite is the victim of pleasure and is clearly more vicious in a way and more effeminate in his wrong-doing."'

'"Appetite"?'

'Epithumia, I think. Desire. Yearning. Lust.'

Abigail drew her knees up to hug them against her chest, and realised immediately that it was far too hot to do so. She stetched out again, and her legs stuck out straight from her shift like a doll's. She spread her hands out on her thighs just above the knee, bunched the hem of her chemise up in her fists. Her voice, when she spoke, sounded small and old. 'That can't be the reason they did what they did, either.'

Thomas thought of Miranda's silent house; the sound of Charles Town blowing up, audible even in Savannah; the long shiny scar on his own left arm, from a machete which had missed the sugarcane four years ago and cut him instead. The cry he'd let out and quickly bitten off, metal bouncing off bone, blood soaking soundlessly into the black earth. 'Hard to believe it was just for the money, isn't it?'

He thought then of Mr. Scott, telling him quite casually that he belonged to the Guthrie Trading Company, that he was a good instead of a man, that Richard Guthrie had entrusted his business and his only child to him nonetheless. That he hadn't bothered to free him even in his will. Perhaps it was not so difficult to believe after all.

He shivered, and sat up more sensibly in his chair. Abigail watched him moving like a housecat. 'Come on. It's late. You ought to be in bed.'

Chapter Text

V.

Late August 1715

The Walrus crawled home after the raid, dragging herself sluggishly northwards from Antigua. A storm blackened the sky to the south-south-west and seemed to draw all the air around it into itself, leaving them only an anaemic, baffling wind on which to sail. The men were as slow and listless as the ship.

James felt like he was going mad. He stood scowling at the stern, cursing their half-full sails and the angle of the ship's bow. He'd have thrown every man aboard over the side to gain them an extra half a knot, and the crew knew it. His bitter seething impatience seemed to poison the air around him; the men would've sworn it was actually two or three degrees colder on the quarterdeck.

He was desperate to be home, in a way he couldn't remember being in years. Maybe not since the Maria Aleyne—but that had been more like the worn-out, hollow despair of a child looking to bury its face in its mother's skirts and scream until it threw up. There had been none of this itching frantic impatience then, none of this fractious energy. This, surely, was something else.

His mind seemed to race ahead of itself; the memory of killing Alfred Hamilton came vividly back to him before he could stop it. The quality of the light below on the Maria Aleyne— blood in his eyes, in his mouth— Alfred hadn't recognised him. It had taken the man a long time to die. He'd stayed until it was over. Afterwards he'd stood at the side on the Walrus and thought about jumping over. He shuddered now at the quarterdeck railing. It was possible that Thomas would forgive him for the murder, but he certainly wouldn't forgive him for having enjoyed it.

Shame rose up in his throat like bile. Everything he'd done for the past ten years had been for Thomas, but every new horror had set the two of them further and further apart. It hadn't seemed to matter when Thomas was dead. But now he was alive again, and James found himself stranded, hopeless, on the other side of Thomas' affections. He wasn't sure he had it in him to appreciate the irony.

It was difficult even to be happy that he was still alive. The initial shock had been so total he'd hardly had room to feel anything else, and by the time it had worn off all those other, uglier things had crept in behind it: fear, and guilt, and the knowledge that Thomas had been alive, somewhere, all this time, which sat in the pit of his stomach like a stone. He was happy, of course—more than happy—but there must have been a moment when that happiness had been pure and unalloyed, and he had missed it.

A sharp gust sent salt spray flying into his face and broke him temporarily out of his brooding. Far below him the ship ruffled the sea, and petrels weaved easily in and out of the topgallant mastheads above, not obviously going anywhere in particular. A sudden awareness rippled around the ship, passing from man to man all the way up to the bow. There was a great deal of nudging, grinning, leaning over the side, as every man aboard peered at something behind the stern. James glanced back and saw dolphins swimming lazily in the ship's wake, their sleek grey backs rising and falling smoothly through the surface of the foaming sea.

He seemed to be the only creature in the world in a hurry to get anywhere. But dolphins were always a welcome sight to a sailor; he felt the urge to smile at this good omen tugging at his sleeve. He was sunk far too deep in his misery to be pulled so easily out of it, however, and instead the sight of them only left him feeling even more wretched than before. He felt himself totally cut off from the world—not just from the men on the ship, but from the birds and the fish, the sea and the sky and the sunlight, as though all of these things were meant for other, better, realer people.

Always best, if at all possible, to attack while your enemy is weakest; from the submarine depths of his mind there emerged a memory of Admiral Hennessey. A few days after that disastrous dinner with Thomas' father, the admiral had invited James to dine with him. James had realised at once that he couldn't refuse, and that he absolutely did not want to go. He'd been pretending to himself for months by then that he wasn't avoiding Hennessey, that he was only preoccupied with his assignment, with business at the Navy Office, with travelling back and forth from St. James's. Then he'd got that note, and his heart had dropped out of his chest and onto the floor.

He'd considered a cold, a prior engagement, sudden pressing business in Tower Hill—anything to get out of it. But Hennessey would not have believed any of those excuses even if they had been true, and none of them would have bought him more than a day or two's delay anyway. He'd scrawled a note back accepting the invitation, and spent the rest of the afternoon feeling peevish and sick.

Hennessey had lived—perhaps lived still, for all James knew—in a respectable, unfashionable part of town on a neat orderly terrace whose residents could all be relied upon to be quiet after nine o'clock and sensibly in bed by midnight. James had arrived just as the evening was beginning to slip away, the sky purpling to a dark bruise over the rooftops. Through the wide front windows of Hennessey's neighbours' houses he'd seen mothers kissing their children goodnight, and grey-haired wives and husbands putting their feet up before drawing room fires.

For a year or two after he'd made lieutenant James had dreamt of a life on such a street. He'd get his own command, take some decent prizes—make post-captain, win some fantastical victory, they'd write about him in the papers—and then— a wife, children, a few servants, enough money to keep a carriage and buy things for his family just because they wanted them. The final reward for years of faithful service: financial security and unassailable respectability.

Even then, standing on the street ouside Hennessey's familiar black front door, James had known how hopelessly he'd fallen out of reach of such a life. Otherwise respectable men might sometimes have affairs with other men's wives, if the wives were willing, and the husbands forgiving or oblivious. But respectable men absolutely did not fuck their mistresses' husbands.

He'd walked up Hennessey's front steps like a man going to the gallows. He'd been sure Hennessey would sense it on him, somehow, that he'd know just by looking at him what James had done, what he'd let Thomas do to him. He'd thought of turning around and leaving anyway, consequences be damned, but a housemaid must have seen him coming up the steps and the door had opened before he could knock. He'd followed the maid miserably into the house, hoping that whatever happened next would at least be quick.

As it had turned out, he'd been worrying about the wrong thing. Hennessey had been staring absently into the fire in his parlour when James came in. When he heard the door open he'd turned and waved James into a chair.

'Sit, sit. Drink?'

James had nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Hennessey had poured them each a glass of brandy and settled into an armchair opposite James, stretched his legs out, one perfectly white stockinged ankle crossed over the other. He'd regarded James coolly while James had fiddled with his glass and focussed on keeping his hand steady as he drank.

'So,' Hennessey had said conversationally, 'you have made an enemy of the Earl of Ashbourne.'

What had happened with Thomas had eclipsed the row with his father so completely that it had taken James a moment even to understand what Hennessey meant. 'The Earl has spoken to you?'

'He has. He is most seriously displeased. He wanted you removed from your post.'

James had swallowed, not around the brandy. 'You refused? Sir?'

'I did. You've done the job assigned to you, and creditably, as fas as I can tell. I trust you will continue to do so.'

'I will, sir, of course.' He'd been so relieved. Just for a moment.

Abruptly Hennessey had slammed his glass down onto a side table so hard the brandy inside sloshed out onto the tabletop. 'For God's sake, James, what were you thinking?'

'Sir, I can explain.'

'You demanded the Earl leave his own house.'

'I did. But, sir, he– he did not...Lord Ashbourne did not conduct himself in a gentlemanlike manner, sir. He spoke appallingly to Lady Hamilton.' The Earl had spoken appallingly to Lord Hamilton, too, but James could not have borne the idea of mentioning Thomas to Hennessey just then. 'I could not allow it to go unchallenged.'

'You could and you should have. He is your superior—in rank, in wealth, in everything. My God, James, he could ruin you with a word.'

'I know, sir.'

'Do you?' Hennessey had looked at him—grave, fearful, disapproving— trapped somewhere between father and commanding officer— and said: 'How many times have I told you that you must learn to control these impulses? To master them? Not to allow your reason to be so totally overruled?' He'd shaken his head and turned away to gaze into the fire again. It had struck James that the admiral was getting old. When he'd spoken next his voice had been much quieter, almost difficult to hear over the crackling of the wood in the grate. 'If you do not take care, I fear you shall destroy yourself.'

Well, old man, James thought, eyes fixed in the direction of the dolphins still following idly along behind the ship and no longer seeing them, you were right.

The Walrus glided silently into Nassau's harbour fifteen days after she'd left, late on a moonless night at the tail end of August. The sea shimmered, silkily black, the amber light of ship's lamps pooling on its surface. Under the indifferent eye of the men and women loitering on the beach the Walrus dropped anchor with unhurried practised efficiency and began to send forth her boats to ferry her men to shore.

It was a humid and languorous night. The sky was cloudless and opaque with stars, the air thick with scent: rotting seaweed; hides in the tannery; warm flesh in the butcher's; blood; smoke; shit. Crickets sounded from the long grass at the edge of the beach, their low reedy music filling the night air. The first of the Walrus' boats came to rest gently on the sand. Captain Flint leapt out and began to stride up the beach towards the street.

Flint moved through the dark as though he belonged to it. Bonfires were burning here and there along the beach, and he passed in and out of their light as he walked. Strange, sulphurous shadows flickered over his face.

He was in Hell; he was sure he was in Hell. Lately he had begun to think that he must have died in Charles Town after all, and that everything since had been one long nightmarish journey into the hereafter. He'd never been under any illusions about where he would go when it all finally ended. He'd always imagined Hell as the bottom of the sea, deep, deep down where nothing lived and no light reached, not even the reflection of a reflection. But maybe this was all it was, and it just felt like living, forever.

It would explain why he'd been seeing Miranda everywhere. It would explain too why Thomas had come to him at last after all these years, only to send him immediately away again in disgust. It would explain why so many of the days had begun to blur together, why he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten, or slept. He must be dead. He wished it felt like a relief.

He walked along the street like a man watching the world from the other side of a glass. He wanted to see Thomas, but he didn't know where he was, or even if he were still in Nassau. He wanted a drink, but the idea of going into the tavern and ordering one seemed so impossible it became faintly ridiculous. He found himself swallowing the urge to laugh. It was funny, in a way: ten years spent unmaking and remaking this small corner of the world in the image of a man who'd wanted to do God's will, and he'd succeeded only in creating his own personal Hell. Thomas might have found it amusing, once, anyway.

He wandered through Nassau almost at random, his feet leading him nowhere in particular, waiting for something to happen to him. People moved around and away from him in the half-lit dark, faceless, shapeless masses flowing in and out of his sight. It was too warm; he wanted to take off his coat. He left it on.

He was entirely alone now, standing outside the bright orange circle of light cast by a lamp hanging over the door of a shop, closed up for the night. He leant against the wall, felt its rough wood scrape against the back of his head. The warm night air pressed heavily against his skull. He looked up, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, at the bright covering blanket of stars.

Across the street and two floors up a figure leant out of a set of French doors onto the railing of a little balconet—a woman or maybe a girl, her pale cotton dress unpinned over her shift and stays, dark hair falling in loose waves around her shoulders. Her face was turned towards the beach, into the breeze blowing in off the sea.

Her attention landed on something on the street below, and for a moment she was perfectly still. Then she hurried off into the dark recesses of the house behind her and disappeared. A moment later she emerged again, slipping out of a gate which closed off one of Nassau's little private alleys from the street. She ran across the narrow deserted stretch of compacted earth between them and came to a stop in front of Captain Flint, who struggled to stand upright against the wall, blinking rapidly back at her.

James stared down into the bright excitable face of Abigail Ashe, who looked up at him with a smile and said: 'Mr. McGraw!'

***

James saw Miranda for the last time the night before the Walrus returned to Nassau. He was lying on his bunk, somewhere between sleeping and waking, aware of the cabin around him and of the edges of it dissolving away into nothingness. He heard wings flapping at the stern window as though from the other side of the world. He turned his head, and out of the hazy shimmering darkness stepped Miranda.

There was no hole in her head this time, no fishy grey pallor to her skin. She looked warm and alive, her hair falling loose about her face, in an untied red brocade dressing gown which nonetheless looked too heavy for the hot summer night. She smiled at him for the first time in months, and came to sit on the edge of the bunk. James slid up to give her room.

'Hello.'

He smiled softly back. 'You're finally talking, then.'

She settled her skirts more comfortably around her legs. 'You're finally ready to hear me.'

His hand twitched against the blanket. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he knew he couldn't. Instead he looked steadily at her, drinking in the sight of her. She looked so much like herself again. There was no one in the world whose face he knew so well. It was more familiar to him than Thomas', more familiar even than his own. There was no one in the world who knew him so well; without her he no longer recognised himself.

He swallowed the hard and painful lump which had formed in his throat. 'Thomas is alive.'

'I know.'

Ghosts knew things the living didn't. She'd probably known before James did. 'I'm sorry.'

'Don't be.'

He wanted so badly to touch her, to rest his head in the warm hollow of her collarbone, against the side of her neck where he would feel the rhythm of her blood as it moved. He wanted to lay his head in her lap and fall asleep to the feeling of her hand stroking over his skull. It wasn't fair, to see her like this, and not be able to hold her again.

'When I thought he'd died, I...I was distraught. I raged. I wept. But now that he's alive again all I can think of is you. It seems so unnatural. To be with him without you.'

'I was the one who guided you to him, when you and he first began. And after he was gone I was everything to you. I'm not sure you know how to be without me at all.'

'We never talked about it. You said once that what I had with him was something else. Something different, to what you and he or you and I had. But we never talked about it,' he said quietly, afraid of looking at her, even more afraid of looking away.

She looked at him with fond sad resignation. 'You couldn't have talked about it. Talking about it would have required you to admit what it meant. To admit to what he and I each were to you.'

'Would you really have wanted me to?'

She said nothing, and her hand came to rest within a fraction of an inch of his on the blanket. From outside he heard wings beating again, some unseen bird taking off from the other side of the darkened window.