Chapter 21
Cowardice
The sailing had been put back two weeks because all of the necessary food and equipment had not yet arrived. Grey arrived at Percy’s rooms at nightfall, soaking wet and chilled to the bone from a day spent shivering in the rain on the docks, negotiating the terms under which the goddamned chandler from Liverpool would actually deliver the barrels of salt pork for which he had been contracted, and the terms under which the ship’s crew—contracted to carry said barrels—would actually load the goddamned barrels into the goddamned hold of the goddamned ship and batten down the goddamned hatches on top of them.
Percy rubbed him dry, gave him fresh clothes, made him lie on the bed, listened to his grievances, and poured him a brandy, which made him think that perhaps he wouldn’t die just yet.
“Do you suppose fighting will be easier than the struggle to get to the battlefield?” Percy asked.
“Yes,” Grey said, with conviction, and sneezed. “Much easier.”
Percy laughed, and went down to fetch supper from the tavern on the corner, returning with bread, cheese, ale, and a pot of something purporting to be oyster stew, which was at least hot.
Grey began to emerge from his condition of sodden misery, enough to talk a little and take note of his surroundings. To his surprise, he saw that Percy had been drawing; a cheap artist’s block and charcoal had been pushed to one side, the top sheet showing the view from the window, roughed in, but rendered with considerable skill and delicacy.
“This is very good,” he said, picking it up. “I didn’t know you could draw.”
Percy shrugged, nonchalant, but clearly pleased by his praise.
“One of my mother’s friends was an artist. He showed me a few things—though warning me that to become an artist was the only certain way to starve.”
Grey laughed, and mellowed by fire, hot food, and ale, made no demur when Percy turned to a clean sheet of paper and began to sketch Grey’s features.
“Go ahead and talk,” Percy murmured. “I’ll tell you if I need you to be still.”
“Whatever do you want a drawing of me for?”
Percy looked up from his work, brown eyes warm but serious in the candlelight.
“I want something of you to keep,” he said. “Just in case.”
Grey stopped, then set down his cup.
“I don’t mean to leave you,” he said quietly. “Did you think I would?”
Percy held his eyes, a faint smile on his lips.
“No,” he said softly. “But you are a soldier, John, and we are going to war. Does it never occur to you that you might be killed?”
Grey rubbed a knuckle over his mouth, disconcerted.
“Well…I suppose so. But I—to tell you the truth, I seldom think about it. After all, I might be run down in the street, or take a chill and die of pleurisy.” He put out a finger and lifted his soggy shirt, hung over a stool to dry before the fire.
“Yes, you might,” Percy said dryly, resuming his work. “The regimental surgeon told me that ten times more men die of the flux or plague or infection than ever are killed by an enemy. No reason you shouldn’t be one of them, now, is there?”
Grey opened his mouth to reply to this, but in fact, there was no good answer.
“I know,” Percy said, head bent over the paper. “You don’t think about that, either.”
Grey sighed, shifting a little.
“No,” he admitted. “Are you worrying?”
Percy’s teeth were set in his lip, his fingers making short, quick lines. After a moment, without looking up, he said suddenly, “I don’t want you to think me a coward.”
Oh, that was it. He ought to have known.
He was inclined to offer a simple reassurance, but hesitated. He had asked the same question, or something very like it, once. And Hector, his first lover, four years older and a seasoned soldier, had not given him the reassurance he’d asked for, but rather the honesty he’d needed. He couldn’t offer Percy less.
“It’s sometimes not so bad,” he said, slowly, “and sometimes it’s very terrible. And the truth is that you’ll never know what it’s going to be like—and you never know what you’ll do.”
Percy glanced up at him, eyes bright with interest.
“Have you ever run away?”
“Yes, of course. Doing your duty doesn’t mean standing in front of a battery and being killed. Usually,” he added as an afterthought. “And you must try to save your men, above all. If that means retreat, then you do—unless ordered to stand. If you do run, though, don’t drop your weapon. Firstly, you’ll likely bloody need it—and secondly, the quartermaster will stop the cost of it from your pay.”
Percy flipped open his sketchbook and set his pencil to the page, frowning intently.
“Wait, let me get that down. Primum: save…men. Secundo: do not…drop…weapon. Tertio—what’s the third thing on this list?”
“Suck my prick,” Grey said rudely. “Ass.”
Percy promptly flipped the sketchbook shut and came toward him, eyes brighter still.
“Wait! I didn’t mean it!”
“Just following orders,” Percy murmured, pinning him to the bed with a deft knee on his thigh, and getting a hand on his flies. “Sir.”
The brief and undignified struggle that followed—filled with muffled accusations of insubordination, high-handedness, disobedience, arrogance, contumacy, despotism, mutiny, and tyranny—ended in a truce that left the respective parties on the floor, breathless, flushed, disheveled, panting, and entirely satisfied with the negotiated terms of surrender.
Feeling boneless but peaceful, Grey struggled up from the floor and crawled onto the bed, where he lay half dozing as Percy tidied up the scattered remnants of their supper.
“Are you brave, John?” Percy drew a blanket over him, and kissed his forehead.
“No,” he said, without hesitation. “The only time I ever did act from what I thought was courage ended in disaster.”
He was astonished to hear his own voice saying this.
He’d told the whole story—perforce—to Hal at the time, though he would infinitely have preferred to be shot for desertion or flogged at the triangle than do so. He could still remember Hal’s face during that telling: relief, dismay, fury, laughter, renewed fury, and—damn him—sympathy, all shifting through his fine-boned face like water over rocks. And the rocks beneath—the deep-cut lines and smudges of exhaustion, signs of the sleepless night Hal had spent searching for him.
He’d never told anyone else, and felt for an instant as though he were on a sled, about to plunge down a steep, snowy slope with an icy abyss at its foot. But Percy’s weight sank the mattress beside him, and his hand was warm on Grey’s back.
“It was my first campaign,” he said, with a deep breath. “The Stuart Rising. I hadn’t got my commission yet; Hal took me with the regiment into Scotland, to have a taste of soldiering.”
Which he’d taken to like a duck to water. He’d loved the rough camp life, the routines and drills, the intoxicating scents of steel and black powder. The exciting sense of danger as they marched upward, pressed on into the bleak crags and dark pines of the Highlands, the men drawing closer, becoming more watchful, as civilization faded behind them. Most of all, the simple pleasure of the company of men, and the sense of himself as one of them.
He was quick, eager, and comfortable with weapons; had been taught to use a sword nearly as soon as he could stand, and to hunt with both gun and bow. He’d quickly made a place for himself as a forager and scout, and the men’s wary regard of him as the colonel’s younger brother ripened into a casual respect for him as a man. For a sixteen-year-old on his first campaign, it was more intoxicating than Holland gin.
He went out regularly with the other scouts, casting about in the evening to be sure there was no lurking threat as camp was made.
“Usually, we went out in pairs; I’d been out with a soldier named Jenks that evening. Decent fellow, but built like an ox. He’d get out of breath easily, and didn’t care much for climbing in the steep mountains.” And so when Grey had thought he’d seen smoke, a half mile high above them in the Carryarick Pass, Jenks had assured him he hadn’t.
“He might have been right; the light was going, and I couldn’t be sure. We turned back to camp. But it niggled at me—what if I had seen it?”
And so he’d slipped out of camp after supper. Should have told someone, but didn’t. He wasn’t afraid of getting lost. And if it was nothing, he didn’t want to be mocked for making a fuss or seeing shadows. He might have told Hector—but Hector had gone to the rear with a message for the captain of the Royal Artillery company that was traveling with them, bringing cannon for General Cope.
He did see shadows. Nearly three-quarters of a mile up the side of one of Scotland’s crags, the wind brought him the scent of smoke. And creeping through brush and bracken, stealthy as a fox in the gathering gloom, he’d seen at last the flicker of a small fire and the movement of shadows against the trees of a clearing.
“And then I heard her voice. A woman’s voice. An Englishwoman’s voice.”
“What, on a mountainside in the Highlands?” Percy’s voice reflected his own incredulity at the time. Even now, a decade and more past the Rising, the barbarian clansmen crushed or removed, the Highlands of Scotland remained a desolate wilderness. No one in his right mind would go there now—save soldiers, whose duty it was. But a woman? Then?
He’d crept closer, sure his ears were deceiving him.
“It couldn’t be Jacobite troops, in any case, I thought. It was only a single tiny fire. And when I got close enough to see…”
His heart had given such a lurch of excitement that he nearly choked on it. There was a man in the clearing, sitting on a log, relaxed.
He could so vividly recall his first sight of Jamie Fraser, and the fierce rush of emotions involved—alarm, panic, dizzying excitement. The hair, of course, first of all, the hair. Bound back loosely, not ginger but a deep red, a red like a stag’s coat, but a red that glinted in the firelight as the man bent to push another stick into the fire.
The size of the man, and the sense of power in him. Plainly a Scot, by his dress, by his speech. He’d heard stories of Red Jamie Fraser—surely there couldn’t be two like him. But was it, could it be, really?
He’d realized that he was holding his breath only when spots began to swim before his eyes. And, trying to breathe silently, had seen the woman come into view on the far side of the fire.
She was an Englishwoman, he could see it at once. More than that, a lady. A tall woman, crudely dressed, but with the skin, the carriage, the refined features of a noblewoman. And certainly the voice. She was addressing the man crossly; he laughed.
She called him by name—by God, it was Jamie Fraser! And through his haze of panic and excitement, Grey made out the man’s reply and realized with horror that he was making indecent insinuations to the woman, stating a plain intent to take her to his bed. He had kidnapped her, then—and dragged her to this distant spot in order to dishonor her without the possibility of rescue or interference.
Grey’s first impulse had been to retire quietly through the brush, then tear down the mountain as fast as possible and run back to camp to fetch some men to apprehend Fraser. But the presence of the Englishwoman altered everything. He dare not leave her in the Scot’s grasp. He had so far had one experience in a brothel, and knew just how quickly immoral transactions could be accomplished. By the time he got back with help, it would be far too late.
He was sure his heartbeat must be audible at a distance, hard as it was hammering in his own ears.
“I’d come armed, of course.” He kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling, as though the egg-and-dart molding told some gripping tale. “A pistol and a dagger in my belt.”
But he hadn’t loaded the pistol. Cursing himself silently, he’d grappled for a moment with the problem: risk the delay of loading, the sound of the shot, plus the possibility of missing, or use the dagger?
“You didn’t think of taking him prisoner?” Percy asked curiously. “Rather than trying to kill him?”
“I did, yes,” Grey said, a slight edge to his voice. “But I was reasonably sure that his own men were somewhere nearby. He was well known, one of the Scottish chiefs; the clans were gathering—he wouldn’t be alone at all, if it weren’t for the woman.
“And it was dark, and the clearing was completely surrounded by forest. You’ve never seen a Scottish pine forest—two steps into the trees, and a man has vanished from sight. If I tried to take him prisoner, he might either shout for help—and I certainly couldn’t take on a horde of clansmen—or simply dive into the brush and be gone. Which would leave me and the woman as sitting ducks; his men would be on us long before I could get her down off the bloody mountain. But if I could kill him quietly, I thought, then I could get her away to safety before anyone knew. So I drew my dagger.”
“That’s what you meant about courage.” Percy’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “My God, I wouldn’t have had the nerve even to think of doing something like that!”
“Well, you would have been a good deal more intelligent than I was, then,” Grey said dryly.
His face felt hot, flushed both with embarrassment at the memory and with the memory itself, of blood pounding through his body at the prospect of his first kill.
He’d marked out the distance carefully—three paces, to be covered at a bound. Then fling his arm round the man’s head and pull it back, rip the dagger hard across the stretched throat. That’s what Sergeant O’Connell had instructed them to do, taking an enemy unawares in close quarters. They’d practiced, he and several of the younger soldiers, taking it in turn to play victim or killer. He knew just what to do.
“So I did it,” he said, with a sigh. “I flung my arm round his head—and it wasn’t there anymore. Next thing I knew, I was somersaulting through the air.”
The dagger went flying from his sweating fingers. He slammed hard into the earth and something fell on him. He’d fought back by instinct, dazed and breathless, but knowing that he fought for his life. Kicked, punched, clawed, bit—and for the most part, encountered only empty air.
Meanwhile, some elemental force had set about him, and a bone-cracking blow to the ribs drove the rest of the breath out of him. He reached out blindly, something grabbed his arm with a grip of steel and twisted it up his back. He lunged upward in panic, and his arm had snapped like a stick.
“Well…the long and the short of it is that the Englishwoman turned out to be Fraser’s wife, curse her. And I, for my pains, ended up tied to a tree and left for my brother’s men to find in the morning.”
“Jesus! All night, you were there? With your arm broken? You must have been in torment!”
“Well, yes,” Grey admitted reluctantly. “It was more the biting midges, though. And needing desperately to have a pee. I didn’t really notice the arm much.” He didn’t mention the searing pain of the burn along the edge of his jaw, where Fraser had laid the hot blade of his dirk—or his raw back, where he’d rubbed most of the skin off, trying to free himself. None of this bodily discomfort had seemed important, by contrast with the agony of mind occasioned by the realization of the depth of the betrayal he had been led into.
“Meanwhile—” He cleared his throat, determined to finish. “Meanwhile, Fraser and his men had crept round behind the camp, to the artillery park, taken all the wheels off the cannon, and burnt them. Using information I’d given them.”
Percy had been looking at him with sympathy. At this last confession, his mouth fell open. For an instant, shock showed in his eyes. Then he reached over and took Grey’s left arm in both hands, feeling gently through the shirt. The bone was lumpy, where it had healed.
“What did he do to you?” Percy asked quietly. “This Fraser?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Grey said, a little gruffly. “I should have let him kill me.” He had in fact been convinced that Fraser did mean to kill him—and hadn’t spoken. The truth…well, he’d told Hal. He shut his eyes, but didn’t pull his arm away. Percy’s hands were warm, his thumbs gently stroking along the bone.
“It was the woman,” he said, resigned to complete humiliation. “He threatened her. And I—idiot that I was—spoke, in order to save her.”
“Well, what else could you do?” Percy said, his tone so reasonable that Grey opened his eyes and stared at him. Percy smiled a little.
“Of course you would protect the woman,” he said. “You protect everyone, John—I don’t suppose you can help it.”
Astonished, Grey opened his mouth to contest this absurd statement, but was forestalled when Percy leaned forward and kissed him softly.
“You are the bravest man I know,” Percy said, his breath warm on Grey’s cheek. “And you will not convince me otherwise. Still…” He sat back, surveying Grey with interest. “I admit to surprise that you did become a soldier, after that experience.”
“My father was a soldier, so was Hal. I never thought of being anything else,” Grey said, truthfully. He managed a crooked smile. “And you do see the world.”
Percy’s face lighted at that.
“I’ve never been outside the British Isles. I’ve always wanted to see Italy—pity there’s no fighting there. Shall I like Germany, do you think?”
Grey recognized Percy’s attempt to leave the subject of his humiliation, and gave him a look saying as much—but accepted it, nonetheless.
“Probably, if you don’t catch the flux. The beer is very good. But as to Italy—perhaps we will go there. In the winter, when the campaigning is done. I should like very much to show you Rome.”
“Oh, I should like that of all things! You have been there—what do you recall most vividly?”
Grey blinked. In truth, his impressions of Rome were largely jumbles of ancient stone: the flat black paviors of the Appian Way, the marble baths of Caracalla, the dark, grease-smelling pits of the catacombs, their heaps of dusty brown skulls seeming as much a part of the cave as the rock itself.
“The seagulls on the Tiber,” he said suddenly. “They call all night long, in Rome. You hear their cries ringing from the stones of the streets. It’s strangely moving.”
“Seagulls?” Percy looked incredulous. “There are seagulls on the Thames, for God’s sake.” Grey glanced at the window, dark now, and streaked with rain.
“Yes. It’s…different in Rome. You’ll see,” he said, and rising on his elbow, kissed Percy back.