Chapter Fifteen:

He would not miss the stink of below deck, nor even the relief at walking out of it into the light of midday, the sea air blowing away the smoky filth of it. The sense of the dirt that crawled along his skin for being in that place, no amount of tangy, salty air would diminish that, and James found himself wishing for a bath, even a cold dip in a stream as he had once done when in the country.

That seemed a long time ago, and he wondered if he had stared too long at his first sight of gently rolling hills and trees where he had somehow thought there would be buildings. He would stare the same at the shores of France no doubt, though he knew he would not find there what he had sought once in Jamaica. That was not to be found in any place, at least not for him, though he could see the lights in the eyes of some of the men around him as they drew closer to France, the growing hum of constant conversation.

He own eyes he shielded from the bright light sun as he came out of the darkness, habit now and done without thinking, welcoming how the sun’s shine felt on the back of hand, against his neck as he moved. It promised him rewards, and though he deserved none, he allowed himself to enjoy the remembrance of them before he shut himself away from them once more.

None of them deserved to bathe in the sun’s shine, not as an innocent man sat bound in the dark and the stink of below decks, betraying themselves as men for allowing it to happen even if it was not their doing. His own betrayal all the worse for the small comforts he offered, the brief visits before he returned to the clean air.

Dark eyes in a pale face accused him even here, and James knew he flinched from the memory of the rough, unshaven jaw and the dirt smeared with remnants of paint. He could not quite bring himself to offer to clean Etienne’s face, not with the surprising sneer that curved the other man’s lips and the coolness in his voice, when he chose to speak.

He had done nothing but curse, the first two times James had risked going down to see him, pausing only to laugh at the obvious surprise in James’ expression to see him. Despite Thierry’s words, he had not expected to actually see Etienne Saint-Cyr a prisoner on René’s ship.

René’s orders, James reminded himself quickly. He was here on René’s orders, though not a word of Saint-Cyr had passed René’s lips since he had woken from his fever.

“Why am I here?” In a voice nearly as dry as René’s, Etienne had greeted him today, his head leaning elegantly to one side as though he were at court and had only the mildest curiosity as to James’ answer. There were the signs of bruising on his cheeks, as though someone had struck him once or twice, but Etienne seemed almost to have forgotten them. “They will kill me when we reach France,” he had added, his ease of manner so like René Villon that James had found himself snapping back.

“Do you welcome death too, then? We can slit your throat now if you don’t wish to bother.” The words burst from him and he recognized them with a heat that left his eyes dry. But Etienne had barely blinked.

“You are harder than I thought,” Etienne slowed briefly to say the word in English, and then shrugged and let his eyes fall to floor.

James had thought the nobleman would have perished long ago from the heat and ill treatment aboard this ship, and yet he still sat quietly down in the hold, doubtless surprised that James would stand alongside these pirates. He even looked one now, with a borrowed shirt and pantaloons, feet still bare for the moment.

With a rough exclamation, James shoved his sleeves back to his elbows, annoyed with himself for taking the shirt at all. He would need something until he could purchase better in Paris, but the shirt was a gift from the lady Mirena, taken from one of her crew that had died, and James was near certain it had belonged to Gabriel. Another one he claimed as friend that had been killed in the Caribbean, and it was only Pym, alive and well though on board the lady’s ship now, that kept James from thinking himself cursed.

His belly tight with a new anxiety, James pinched his glasses harder into place and observed the crew, noting not for the first time that each seemed to have forgotten the battle that had taken place here just over a month before, that some of their fellows had died at the ends of their blades.

Looking about him gave him sight of Ben easily enough, as he had known it would. The boy was watching a game two other men were playing, throwing down little cards of paper over a stack of coins and jewelry. Gambling was something frowned upon on most ships, creating fights when there was little room for bad spirits, and it was only the absence of any one leader that gave them the freedom to continue their merriment.

For a moment, James turned his eyes to the door of the small cabin, and then he was looking away, toward where the coast of France should appear before them soon. Any day if he understood the murmured conversations correctly. His stomach tightened again with apprehension, but then he made himself return his attention to Ben, to the fact that Ben also added his cards to the pile on the ground.

“Ben,” he said the name simply, without shouting he was sure, and watched how the thin shoulders hitched. For the smallest amount of time, the boy was still, and then he was smiling and picking up a piece of the pile on the ground, settling it in his lap as though it now belonged to him.

James closed his eyes under a frown, suppressing the urge to speak again. What had made him speak then he did not know, but it was his own foolishness when he knew that the boy would not respond. It seems he had ended their friendship though it had not been his intention.

One hand rose to touch his lips before he stopped it and returned it to his side, nearly blushing to recall the boy’s mouth on his. The eagerness of it, and the shame when Ben had realized that he had not pleased. Whatever had possessed him to do it? His head felt as though someone had taken a screw to it, and again James turned his eyes to René’s cabin door.

René Villon, even half mad with fever and weakened by injuries, had seemed to see straight into the boy’s mind and heart, and had not hesitated in condemning him for it, hurling insults so vicious that James would have felt his insides sliced to pieces to have them directed at him.

And yet Ben had shown only a white, cold face to him since then, and it was René who had needed the tears wiped from his cheeks.

Sweet Jesu…the shock of that too. Upon seeing that, he could almost believe that it was the return of his cross of gold that caused those tears, though he should know that to be false.

It was a pretty enough cross, perhaps too ornate as was the French fashion. Gold inlaid with a bit of tarnished silver, scrollwork that James had traced with his fingertips during the long hours of waiting for René to either fall into his fever dreams or waken from them. Small, coloured stones decorated each corner as well, too dark blood red to be rubies but still far grander than anything James had ever thought to own. Marechal had taken the cross but he had not stripped it of the jewels. No time, perhaps, or mayhap even he had recognized its true value.

The weight of the gold had kept James from returning it to René immediately after Thierry the navigator had given it to him; the other man so cautious with it that James knew that he had known it belonged to René. Surely a man so frail did not need the extra burden of an old cross, no matter how beautiful. But he had reached for it, in his sleep, one of a thousand memories and longings that even Deniau had been silent to witness.

He was wearing it now. It would be tucked underneath his clothing, but René would have it on. James had seen the traces of gold chain at his neck, easy to see now without long lengths of hair falling over it.

René had not spoken of the cross either, at least not to James; the few words that had been directed at him had been short inquiries about the crew, as though James were one of the ship’s mates. James had in turn ignored the smaller man, or at least his words, and simply watched as Thierry had been pressed into service, left to wonder if Thierry would do where both Marechal and he had failed. As long as there was a body at his side, it seemed that René did not mind their changing faces.

The seeds in his mind were bitter indeed, and James longed to be rid of them, for true or not, they would not grant him clear judgment, and that is something he needed, with Saint-Malo rapidly approaching and a thousand choices awaiting him at the port city. He was closer to England than he had thought to be for many more years, and it was that idea that had stayed in his dreams the longest. And still there was a life here, though not one of his choosing it had somehow fitted itself to him, and possibly there was a sign in that if he could only see it for what it was. France herself lay before him as well, a country he had never thought to see at all. But the Lord had guided him here, kept him alive as he had made the foolish decisions to end up here, and perhaps he owed a debt. There was of course no sign to guide him, and there would not be, this was not a test to be answered so easily, and he feared that it was not the last, nor the greatest.

Still, he stood in the light of the sun, the wind teasing the ends of his hair as he thought of it, of Ben as well, and even Villon, and his future, up to his own choosing now that they had drawn from him.

With the appearance of ease, James stepped from the doorway and raised his eyes to René, who stood with his hand on a railing on the deck above them all. Thierry was close at his side, and if a man were far enough away not to see the ghostly white of René’s skin, he would also be blind to the reason for Thierry’s nearness, for the hand on the rail.

The very stillness of René’s body should have been clue enough that he was not well, too weak to even have walked that far to James’ mind. But from the moment he had first truly awoken he had insisted upon this, being out of the cabin for several hours each day.

James had not seen them walk up there this time, and wondered if he had been so lost in thought as to have missed that. No matter what René claimed, there was no hiding his slow pace, or the slight curve to his back, or the length of silk shirt that René had calmly had torn apart to use to hold his bad arm. James was no longer certain René needed that; already he walked faster, impatient and terse with Thierry’s presence always at his side. But it was the navigator who had helped keep the ship in order during his illness, and fortunately the crew was satisfied with their single battle and hold full of treasures from the months before Jamaica and their share of Sir Marvell’s sugar. Only the discipline had slipped in the past month, and James glanced back to the card game.

Fools. For the smallest moment James smiled, not surprised to see how the two men jumped at the sudden command from above, a single word spoken sharply but without threat. Perhaps it was the lack of a threat that had them frightened. René Villon was an unpredictable man, and now there was ice when there ought to have been fire.

Thoughts of a weak and bent body and an arm in a sling did not stop them as they gathered up what remained of their monies and slipped away, leaving Ben on the ground behind them. Ben still held his cards, and his lapful of treasure, but his face held a frown now though he turned his eyes from above.

Without pausing or even seeming to notice, a quiet murmur of conversation resumed from the high decks, too far away for James to make out words or meaning. He did not need to; that René had chosen to speak at all was meaning enough. He had not truly expected to be disobeyed, and Ben’s small moment of defiance had already been forgotten, as they had both been forgotten.

Except that they were well remembered indeed.

A glance upward gave him the sight of the side of René’s face, and James considered it for a moment, observing the uneven spikes of René’s hair, cut off in a moment of his delirium to ease his discomfort. Bloodied, matted locks littering the floor as Thierry had worked the scissors, James holding the smaller body still. Now the other man seemed to be frailer, his purple and gold earbob large against the pale skin of his neck, creating shadows that looked like bruises.

“If he grows more pale we will be able to find him in the dark, Englishman,” a deep voice spoke from behind him and James nodded once to acknowledge Deniau’s words, glancing once at the black man when his silence seemed to go unnoticed. “We could still slit his throat.”

The phrase he had repeated only moments before made James give Deniau another look, questioning whether the other man had listened to his words with Etienne. Deniau was grinning, leaving James to wonder.

“I am surprised that someone has not,” James remarked softly, pushing away thoughts of Etienne for now and observing the hard faces of the crew. René was weak enough, and the temptation to kill him and return to the Caribbean as pirates had taken stronger men than these. The mutinous thought played darkly at the back of his mind even now, as he watched René talk calmly with Thierry, eyes always on the water. A vision of striking out at René Villon left a sickness in his stomach, but James was almost accustomed to the feeling and did not attempt to dispel it.

There were stains in the wood at their feet, the blood of those who had had the same thoughts for different reasons, and perhaps it was those that had stayed the hands of the men.

It was where he stood now, that René had been struck across the shoulder and fallen down the stairs below the deck. A man who had not hesitated as James had, and James could feel the odd echo up his arm once again, the strange stillness as the sword had pierced flesh and held fast, his strength not enough to pull it free as the man had fallen screaming to the ground.

He had killed and disregarded it as nothing in order to hurry down those stairs, held back by stronger arms when he would have continued on. And then he had stayed, the blood of the man he had murdered still on his clothing as he had sat vigil, only to discover the betrayal, tied up and hidden in the hold like the blackest of secrets.

“Fear.” Deniau spat as he said the word, his spittle smearing across one of the dark streaks on the wood at their feet. His smile was like the knife at his belt, and James glanced at it before hurriedly looking away. If it had been fear of Deniau that had kept the men in line during René’s illness than James could well understand their lack of action. What the other man and Thierry had done during that month was mostly unknown to him, and his guesses would have left him with shivers if he had had feeling left.

“Take one and the rest will follow,” Deniau went on suddenly in his thick French, deciding to talk and distracting James momentarily from the heaviness that had not left him.

“A leader?” Despite himself, James turned to look Deniau in the eye, curious about what exactly had taken place. The black man’s smile fell away as he noticed the look, a threat in his eyes that he was almost unaware of. Yet James did not feel his feet moving him backwards, and the cold eyes remained steady in his line of vision. Sickness tightened his belly once again as he remembered the flash of Deniau’s blade in the night, but that was all, and then Deniau was shrugging as René might have done and looking away.

“The one who sinned first. There is no God but me, Englishman.” As though that were humourous, Deniau laughed loudly and stepped from the doorway, looming for a moment before walking easily away. None joined him as he moved across the ship and up to where René stood.

James’ eyes followed him and caught the swing of René’s earbob as the man moved, greeting Deniau solemnly and without surprise.

Blasphemy.

James swallowed the word and narrowed his eyes, wondering if the whole world thought him a fool. If so then mankind was wrong, for James knew himself to be a fool, and unschooled in the ways of the world, and a harlot for the way his blood still burned after these insults. If those were his only crimes then he could sleep untroubled.

Deniau’s words were pains that would linger. That he had claimed to be God was no worse than René crying that none existed, when each held the stamp of their Divinity in their faces. But to be without sin and look upon another and find them guilty of it… None were free of the taint of it; it was only to reach beyond that to what good remained underneath. Surely even hardened men had not always been so, but would he change as they had, if he remained here?

He had heard once that the papists had a belief in the separateness of the sins of the body and the mind, and that the one always came before the other, and that one still had a chance to fight the lesser sins of his thoughts before they corrupted the body. But what if a man’s thoughts were good, and his body tainted? Or if the taint of the mind were a result of the wickedness of others? Which sin was the greater?

He knew also that to the followers of the Pope all men could be redeemed if only they repented before God. To repent was to claim a hand in the sin itself, but to be innocent and sinned against, like a woman stripped of her honour. What then?

In a moment black eyes would shoot swiftly in all directions, and René would turn to direct a glance over his shoulder, searching for a body that was not there.

And if there was no hope… James exhaled softly. If a man were damned and left with nothing, what would he not do, to ease the pain of his soul? They had claimed some sins to be lesser than others, and it was understanding surely that the Lord had taught. That and charity above all else. So long as a man remained humbled, were his mistakes not his own, God’s curse and gift to man, in the midst of his sorrow.

He closed his eyes at the sudden thunder of footsteps about him, the murmurings that held no interest with the way his brain burned and his skin itched. Even a woman had more pride than he possessed it seemed, with the way his mind would convince him of anything in order taste René again. It was madness, and a shame to his family to have these desires, to find them unreturned only made it more so.

“James.” How René had spoken while in his sleep, a voice hard and eager and a body trembling though it was he who had pushed, opened his mouth to demand kisses that had taken the stiffness of fear from his limbs and coaxed him back into dreams less vicious.

Swallowing the bitterness was suddenly something of little effort, not to also recall the fragments of those dreams that had been thrust upon him, had made the others in the room gasp before James had shouted for them to leave, extending his arms as though he was a shield of any use or value.

He did not think his anger would leave him however, and felt his muscles shiver as he fought to remain still, opening his eyes for the distraction. A new sound reached him as he observed even Ben lined up at the rail with many of the other men, staring at a speck of colour in the distance.

The speck flattened itself, squashed down into something like a line drawn with an old man’s hand, and above in the sky was a dark spot that moved, floated above them all, and with a small cry he realized it was a bird. His lips parted, his eyes filling with what had to be a shoreline, and he felt his chest move, expanding with a breath so sweet that he could not release it.

He closed his eyes quickly as they grew dry and opened them wide at the vision before him, staring as he had always done into eyes unlike any others he had ever seen, rarer and darker than ebony. René had not moved, it was his own eyes that had traveled, but he would not be shamed by it, not when he knew that René’s had not traveled at all. It was not France that had captured his gaze, and James lifted his chin and turned to look at what lay before him.

“My father will not pay a ransom for me,” Etienne had told him with a challenge in his manner though he was in no position to offer one. “There are hundreds of bastards across Paris to prove that he will have no difficulty in getting another son.” The man had laughed as he had said it, an unfeeling laugh that had seemed to pain him even as his shoulders shook with it.

Deniau leaned in close to René, and James watched the nearness of their heads as Deniau spoke, saw the intent in his expression as he glanced down at James, and the attention in René’s as he shifted his eyes and listened. To his surprise the full mouth curved into a smile, and then the lips parted, looking for all the world as though René Villon laughed.

A tightness at his brow made James fight to ease the frown from his face, and he directed his feet toward the railing, to be with the men as they anticipated their return home though his heart was not nearly so light.

No strange sounds of laughter reached his straining ears as he stood and gazed at his future, but he remained. The skin at his back itched but he did not turn. It was enough for now to look upon France and feel the regard of René at his back.

“It will be my pleasure to enjoy the royal bastard,” René had promised someone in his delirium and only moments later begged for him, each enough to heat James’ cheeks.

He would beg again, James knew, and thought of something that had left him hard many nights this past month, spitting into his hand for comfort as he had sought to ease the pain of it. There had been another promise to him once before, and though he had long since translated the words they still meant nothing to him.

“So you will lie on your back for me, René.” James spoke so softly that the man next to him did not so much as twitch at his odd words. “I would like to see that.” After a few moments he allowed a smile to curl his lip though he knew it was not a pleasant one.

Copyright R. Cooper with all rights reserved

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