Mr. Ramírez had thanked Benjamin, and no more had been said of it, but Lydia had thought he seemed dispirited.
And strangely, it had seemed to her that Benjamin as well had grown more thoughtful as the meal progressed. She didn’t know what troubled him, but they’d been too close growing up for her to leave him now without a confidante.
He turned, as had the mare, and watched her walk the last steps up to join him before smiling, very slightly, as he looked away again across the deep blue of the Sound, the sun above the farther shore exposing a dull patchwork of brown fields and greening meadows and the darker lines of trees, while in the foreground a brave scattering of billowed sails and tiny ships moved busily about.
She’d stood in nearly this same spot to watch him sailing out on El Montero. That had been barely six months ago, but he seemed older.
He’d always stood with confidence but now he held himself with true authority, head up and shoulders braced.
“You’ve changed,” she told him.
“Have I?”
“Yes.”
“I would suspect that’s part of growing up,” he said. The smile tightened briefly, and then faded. “Am I better now, or worse?”
“I’ve not decided. Either way, you’re still my brother.” She had come to stand directly at his side now. “How was William, when you left him?”
“He was well.” He paused. “He thinks you’re angry with him. Are you?”
“Yes.”
“But you’ll forgive him.”
“Possibly.” She saw no point in skirting round the obvious. “What did you think of Monte Christi?”
“I enjoyed it. There’s not much to see besides the harbour, but that’s always lively.” With his focus on the sails he told her, “William isn’t wrong, you know. About the British.”
“We are British.”
“Not to them, we’re not. To them, we’ll always be Colonials, and never equals. Their ships can sail freely where they wish, and carry what they wish, and trade at any port that strikes their fancy, but let one of our ships dare to try the same and we are suddenly a danger to their profits. No, the Flour Act is a hard and unfair law, and if we do not stand against it there’ll be harder laws to come.”
“You sound like William.”
He looked down at her. “I’ve seen things these past months that I could never have imagined.” For a moment he appeared to be considering the wisdom of describing what he’d seen, but in the end he simply told her, “I know what the British are, and what they’re capable of doing. And I know exactly what they think of us.”
The wind blew cold along the bluffs and chased a bank of clouds across the sun so that a shadow fell across the shoreline opposite—a long, dark line that settled on the forests and the fields like an impassable divide.
He told her, “William’s made me captain of the Bellewether.”
She knew how much it meant to him, and yet the word “congratulations” had a hollow feeling on her tongue.
“When she’s rebuilt and ready, we will find a crew and take her out. My first command.”
“Does Father know?”
“Not yet.”
“Where will you sail?”
“That is for William to decide.”
The clouds were moving swiftly and the shadow on the farther shore had faded.
In a quiet voice, she said, “He promised me she’d never sail to Monte Christi.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And?”
“And you have my word as well. The Bellewether will never enter Monte Christi harbour.” He was looking in her eyes, and she could tell he meant it.
“Thank you.”
Reaching out he hugged her close against his side. “I’m not so changed,” he said, but in a low, abstracted tone that made her wonder whether he was trying to convince her, or himself.
Jean-Philippe
For years the spring had meant the start of the campaigning season. It should have left him at a loss, as April softened into May, to have no men to train, no orders, no objective, but he’d found new outlets for his restless energy.
There was the ship, of course, although the work on that progressed in stages broken by some new instruction from the elder brother in New York, whose interference at first frustrated Ramírez then amused him.
“He is doing it on purpose,” said the Spaniard to him one day as they worked to caulk the seams between the hull’s new planks, a tedious chore that involved driving strands of tarred hemp into place with a mallet and sharp-edged iron.
“Doing what?” asked Jean-Philippe.
“Delaying the repairs.” They were working side by side and speaking French but still Ramírez glanced behind to make sure Joseph Wilde was out of earshot. “He’s no fool, the brother. If he lets the ship be launched too soon, the English will impress her for their service, do you see? To carry troops up to their camp.”
The British had been mustering their troops for some weeks past, and Captain Wheelock was in Massachusetts now, apparently, attending to the business of recruiting there. He’d sent a letter from a town called Worcester, to explain what he had done in seeking justice for La Réjouie.
Your sergeant’s case was brought before a Regimental Court Martial, and I regret to say the charges were dismissed against the private soldier and the corporal who attacked him, but I’ve written General Amherst, giving my opinion that the charges, as a capital offence, are great and serious enough to warrant civil jurisdiction, and I hope to see the case tried in another court. Meantime, I did succeed in seeing all your other men included in the late exchange of prisoners and assure you Captain Bonneau, who went with them, gave his word he’d see them safely up to Montreal.
With luck, they would be rested and rearmed by now and ready to retake the city of Quebec.
It would be half a month or more before the British could assemble all their regiments at Albany, equip them, send them north, and see them properly encamped. If William Wilde preferred to keep this ship from being used to aid that effort, Jean-Philippe was not about to argue.
He set another twisted strand of caulking in the seam that he was working on and with his mallet drove it home. Ramírez did the same, except his caulking iron stuck between the planks and as he wrenched it out he lost his balance. In a reflex action Jean-Philippe reached out and grabbed Ramírez by his shirt, and though he felt the fabric tear within his grasp the older man was saved from falling.
“Thank you.” Straightening, Ramírez set his clothes to rights and, noticing the torn seam at his shoulder, drew his waistcoat up to cover it, but not before the shirt had gaped enough that Jean-Philippe could see the scar.
No, not a scar. A brand made by a heated iron, for although it was slashed across, the letter R was still as clear to read as if it had been printed. He could feel Ramírez watching him, and he knew why.
He met the Spaniard’s eyes. “If you are worried that I’ll tell, I won’t.”
Ramírez looked behind them once again, and this time Jean-Philippe knew he was looking to see who might be a witness, and because he also knew no man who bore a brand like that had cause to trust another’s promise, he showed his own trust by turning back to his work.
“The year my father’s mother died,” he said, “my grandfather brought home a slave, a girl he bought from a ship’s captain who had come from the West Indies. He had other slaves already. Panis. You know what this is? Pani?”