Winterwood, page 38
part #1 of Rowankind Series
“You’ve got something that belongs to me.” Walsingham kept his voice level. He even managed to sound reasonable. Did he mean the box or Philip?
“I might have something that you want, but I don’t have anything that belongs to you.”
“Hold her!” Walsingham said. “Search her—thoroughly.”
Two burly seamen sprang to, one at each elbow and a third began to run his hands over my body, pinching and poking my breasts and sliding his hands between my legs. He began to tug at the buttons on my breeches.
“Enough, Ned!” Jim’s sharp command caused the man’s hand to fall away. “Have some respect. Mrs. Tremayne is here at my invitation. She’s under my protection.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” Walsingham stepped past Jim and completed the search impersonally and efficiently, then stepped back. “Where’s the box, Mrs. Tremayne? I mean to have it, and it will go badly for you if you don’t surrender it.”
“As you can tell, it’s not here.”
“So it’s on your ship. You wouldn’t have left it anywhere else. Very well, it will go badly for them if you don’t hand it over. You may have noticed that there are four ships arrayed against you. Four broadsides. How will that go for your little Heart of Oak? She’s bonny, but I think her strength lies in her speed and maneuverability, not the toughness of her planking. I have no interest in your ship or the lives of your crew. No interest at all, one way or the other. In fact, sinking her with all hands might achieve the end I desire. You can hardly use the box if it’s at the bottom of the ocean, can you?”
I didn’t tell him that whatever he did, the box would come back to me whilst I lived. There was no use suggesting the obvious solution to his problem.
“Mr. Walsingham.” The strain was evident in Jim’s voice. “We agreed that the Heart would be mine, and her captain also mine to do with as I pleased. I thought that would be Garrity, but I can wait to settle with him. If Captain Tremayne is returned, that doesn’t alter our agreement. The captain is mine.” He glanced at me. “And she’s the captain.”
I didn’t set him right on that score. James Mayo was an infinitely better proposition than Walsingham.
“If I may—”
That was as far as Jim got.
Walsingham reached into his pocket and pulled out a twist of paper and yanked it straight.
Jim gasped out a strangled sound as his words were choked off in his throat. He clawed at his neck as if trying to loosen an invisible rope, face deepening to red and then with a sucking, shuddering sound, like a child with the whooping cough, he sucked air into tortured lungs.
I sought the breeze above me for enough energy to make a vortex, but though the wind kissed my cheek it still didn’t answer my call. Walsingham produced another twist of paper. Even from here I could see writing on it. Letters the color of dried blood writhed around as if possessed. He opened it out fully and said a word that my ears heard but my brain did not translate into speech.
Whomp!
It felt like an unseen hand, strong as a bull, had swatted me to the deck. One second I was standing, the next it was as if someone had yanked the ground away from behind me, and I crashed flat on my belly with the breath knocked out of me and my cheek pressed into the planking.
“I didn’t agree to this, Mr. Walsingham.” I saw boots as Jim stepped between me and Walsingham. “You said you wanted the Heart, you said nothing about Captain Tremayne.” I heard him loosen his saber in its scabbard.
A foolhardy moment of gallantry, or maybe the bravest thing he’d ever done, but he paid dearly for it. Walsingham didn’t even reply. All I could see of him was his ankles, which flexed as he thrust his weight forward. Jim’s feet left the deck completely and I heard him thump down somewhere behind me. The twist of paper fluttered down, the letters already fading away. Walsingham had prepared his spells in advance. What kind of magic did this man have? Whatever it was, it was more powerful than anything I could muster.
Jim’s crew gasped in unison, but no one uttered a word of protest, not even Tarpot Robbie, who’d sailed with Jim for as long as anyone could remember.
“I’m not here to play games.” Walsingham bent down low over me. “Give me the box, the halfbreed, and Philip, and I’ll spare your life.”
“No, you won’t.” With my mouth pressed against the deck and my head feeling as though it was being forced through the ship’s timbers, I could barely get the words out.
He sighed. “All right, I won’t spare your life. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, especially one who can overturn the order of Britain. You are a dangerous woman, Mrs. Tremayne. I’ve dedicated my life to finding the box before it could be used, and there have been others before me. Do you know what that kind of dedication does to a man? No family, no children. My mission is my wife, my little troop is my family, my apprentices my children.
“I was an apprentice once, myself, standing beside my master outside a house called Bullcrest. Ah, I see the name means something to you. You didn’t know I was there? Well, there’s no reason you should. I was the older of two apprentices. Geoffrey was the other one, Geoffrey Meadows—not his real name, but real to us. He saved my life that day by being directly between me and the blast your family caused. I got these scars.” He knelt and put his face close to mine. “You thought it was the smallpox? My face looked like ground meat. Geoffrey wasn’t so lucky, and neither was our master. I didn’t want a promotion to Walsingham. I was too young. I still had too much to learn. I believed your family all dead, and I celebrated even in the depths of my misery. I thought it was over. For more than two decades, I went about my business, overseeing the prevention of magical threats to the realm. Imagine my dismay when your brother came to my attention and I discovered there was another generation. It’s time to end it. Your family has been a threat to the Crown for too long.”
If I hadn’t been properly terrified before, that pronouncement sucked the courage out of me.
“I can’t spare you, Mrs. Tremayne. Even with the box gone, the Fae could use you as a catalyst. But please believe me, I’ll spare your ship and your crew if you give me the boy, the box, and your brother.”
“Go to Hell.” It was all I could manage to say.
He released the pressure and rolled me over. Cautiously I sat up, seeing Jim slumped either unconscious or dead, a spreading stain of blood beneath his head. I swallowed down rising sickness, not at the blood, but at the hollowness of a life thrown away. Jim and I had had our differences, but his last words had redeemed him in my eyes. I’d never loved him, but I had liked him.
Walsingham didn’t slap me down again. Glancing sideways to the rest of the crew, I saw they were all very busy minding their own business.
“You!” Walsingham pointed at Tarpot Robbie. “And you. Get rid of that.” He jerked his chin toward Jim. “Over the side.” He didn’t even watch them. I heard a splash, and the most fearsome pirate of his day was gone without ceremony. I’m not saying James Mayo didn’t deserve to die for any number of good reasons, but not like that, carelessly, swatted like a bug.
35
Fire Down Below
WALSINGHAM PACED THE DECK. As he turned away, Will’s ghost appeared, or at least his head popped up through the timbers. He looked at me and hummed a chantey. Will only sang when he was drunk, and even then he couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket, but I recognized what passed for his discordant version of Fire Down Below. He vanished before Walsingham turned and strode back toward me. What did Will mean? Fire down below was a common sailor’s term for the pox, unless . . . Did he mean it literally?
Walsingham stopped in front of me and took a small pouch from his pocket. He delved inside it and tossed a pinch of brownish powder into my face. I’d breathed some of it in before I realized what was happening, then he repeated the gesture and breathed in the powder himself. A spell of some kind, but I just didn’t know enough about his kind of magic.
“We’ll fetch them together,” he said. “I’m not much of a summoner, but you are.”
At first I didn’t take his meaning. I thought he meant fetch them literally, which would be foolish, even for someone as powerful as him. My lads wouldn’t stand by like Jim’s had. But then I realized that he intended to force me to use my power. The bullish pressure returned, monstrous, crushing, but this time, instead of squashing my body, it was inside my head, trying to burst out.
Walsingham invaded my thoughts, that very center of self, his touch more intimate than any lover’s.
“Get out!” I gasped.
“I think not.” He spoke between gritted teeth. All I could do was take comfort in the fact that, even with prepared spells, this wasn’t coming easy to Walsingham.
I tried to push him out of my head. Anything I could do to make this more difficult for him might give me some insight into how I could free myself. He flinched, but then he blew another pinch of the brown powder into my face and took another pinch himself.
He breathed deep. “That’s better. You’re stronger than I expected. I won’t make that mistake again.”
In less time than it took to blink, Walsingham’s magic stripped the whereabouts of the box from my thoughts. He took my summoning power and wore it like a hand puppet, causing me to do his bidding, making me focus on the box.
Come! I summoned it.
It slid across the chart table in my cabin. In my head—or maybe even through Walsingham’s eyes—I saw Corwen make a lunge for it, miss, and slam the door shut instead. I might be able to levitate the box, but I couldn’t move it through a closed door. Well done, Corwen.
I tried to fight Walsingham’s invasion, but his magic was powerful. This was a prepared spell that I couldn’t begin to comprehend. My heart raced, and I panted as though I’d run five miles. Walsingham’s power pounded through my head. I touched a trickle on my top lip and my hand came away bloody.
Again through Walsingham’s eyes, I saw Philip struggling to break free from Lazy Billy, Sim, and Nick Padder while they called for help and other sailors piled in to restrain him. He was struggling like one possessed.
Summon them! Walsingham’s voice was inside my head.
The box smashed itself against the closed window. The thick glass chipped, but it didn’t shatter. The box flew at the glass again and Corwen took another lunge, netting it in the Fae’s magical leather bag. He folded the flap closed and hugged it tight to him.
Walsingham turned against Corwen, using my summoning power as if it were his own. Corwen sank to his knees, pushing against the door even as he fell, making sure that his body trapped the door closed.
Corwen!
With a jolt I realized that my concern for Corwen had given Walsingham a hold over me. He began to force Corwen hard onto the floor. Through our link I could see it all, feel it all. It was as though it was me doing those things, building pressure inside Corwen’s head, waiting for the first precious blood vessel to pop.
No!
I couldn’t best Walsingham in a straight fight, so I did the only thing I could do. I flung a witchlight at his eyes.
Walsingham dodged and grimaced. “You won’t distract me so easily.”
Good!
I stopped trying to fight him, gave my power to him entirely, trusting that Corwen would keep the box safe a while longer and that no one would let Philip get away from them. I tried to wall off the terror of being used, and turned my attention to the witchlight now floating behind Walsingham. I sent it up, across, over, down the hatch, into the ship’s hold. Will moved to the head of the companionway, ducking his head to watch the light and bobbing back up guiding, pointing. I dropped the witchlight down to where he pointed, making it hot, hot, hotter still, nurturing a thin wisp of smoke, darker now, more dense. Finally, a tongue of flame. Though I couldn’t draw a whirlwind, I managed a light breeze, enough to fan the flames.
In our cabin, Corwen was now pressed flat to the floor, his lips almost blue. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. Hang on, Corwen.
A cry went up from somewhere aft. I was dimly aware of the sound of running and of bodies hurtling over rails and hitting water, but I was concentrating on creating a little breeze to push my flames toward where Will pointed—the ship’s powder magazine. I had to stop Walsingham somehow, even if it meant my own life.
Will’s ghost sprang up through the timbers. “Now, Ross!”
Walsingham turned his head and couldn’t fail to see the smoke billowing from the companionway. For an instant it distracted him, and, suddenly released, I scrambled forward and flung myself over the ship’s rail, scraping my ribs, not so much a clean dive as a desperate leap. The icy water took my breath away, but I surfaced, swimming for my life until common sense forced me to tread water to get my bearings. I was lucky: my instincts had taken me almost on a straight path toward the Heart, and I saw her boat already gliding out toward me, oars dipping together. But I was still way too close to the Black Hawk.
The Hawk gave a shudder. The deck bucked and splintered beneath Walsingham’s feet. Flames blossomed around his body. An immense roar; a scorching blast. The ship erupted into matchwood and fire. The explosion sucked the air right out of me. Something solid struck me a glancing blow on the side of the head. Something else hit my arm. Water closed above me.
“Ross?”
Ross!
Two voices calling me, one toward the day, the other toward a different kind of light. Corwen beckoning me to life, and Will to somewhere else entirely. I stood between life and death, between the love of my past and the love of my future. In my left hand, Corwen’s warm hand. In my right hand, Will’s cool, shadowy fingers.
Corwen; Will. Will; Corwen.
If at any time in the last three years I’d been offered an afterlife with Will I would have taken it without hesitation, but now, at last, I’d begun to give myself permission to be whole again, and I liked it.
Ross. Will’s warm breath kissed my neck. Together. Forever. He cupped my cheek with one hand. I leaned in toward him. Corwen’s grip tightened on my other hand in desperation, pulling me back.
It wasn’t only a choice between two lovers.
Life; death. Death; life.
Should I even hesitate about a choice like that?
Life!
“I’ll always love you, Will.” Slowly, oh so slowly, I let him go.
“Corwen?” He was in the water beside me.
“Ross? Oh, love, I thought I’d lost you.”
His lips moved, and I guessed the words from their shape, but I couldn’t hear anything for the roaring of the sea in my head. I let go of my spar and lay my head back on his chest, letting Corwen support me in the water. Willing hands lifted me up, and soon I was wrapped in a blanket, huddled in Corwen’s embrace.
I managed to put my hand on his arm. “I think Will’s gone.”
“He’s dead, Ross.” Again, I guessed the words from the shaping of his lips.
“No, I mean really gone.”
“Rest now.”
They lifted me onto the Heart by making a sling from my blanket. I tried not to cry out, but I don’t think I succeeded, if the number of times Corwen touched me was anything to go by. Finally, I remember the cabin and my little bed, and Corwen dripping some kind of bitter draft between my lips. After that I slept.
More crashing waves in my head. Dressings being changed. My arm, my head. Salve on my ribs. More pain. Another bitter draft, and another.
When I came to my senses, the Heart was moving steadily beneath me like a quiet mare afraid of throwing a nervous rider, the gentleness of her action at odds with the rushing wind and crashing waves inside my head.
“Hello,” Corwen said, his gray eyes bright with concern. “What do you need? What do you want?”
“Where are we?” I asked, raising my voice. “I have such a noise in my head I can hardly hear you.”
“Sailing for Bideford with all possible speed.”
“Why?”
“You’re injured. I’m taking you to the Lady of the Forests.” He kept his face turned toward me as he spoke so that I could see his lips move.
I would have protested, but just trying to raise my head told me he was right, though I wasn’t sure what the Lady could do.
“Philip?” I asked.
“Recovered. Says he remembers nothing.”
“Thank God he’s safe. Gentleman Jim?”
“We don’t know. The Rhodes turned and ran even though she was in no danger. She certainly picked up some survivors. We don’t know who.”
“He tried to help me. Walsingham had him heaved overboard. His crew stood by and did nothing.”
“Walsingham’s a scary bastard.”
“Was, not is. He can’t have survived the explosion. Please God, he hadn’t.” I put my hand up to my ear, but met with a thick bandage.
“Don’t mess with it.” Corwen pulled my hand away gently and kissed my fingertips. “I did the best I could, and Lazy Billy stitched your arm.”
“How did we get away? Even with the Hawk and the Rhodes gone, the other two ships had us cold.”
“Hookey asked for a parley with the captains. With Walsingham and Mayo gone they didn’t see any profit in taking the Heart for no reward and also buying a whole heap of trouble from Bacalao for breaking the treaty.”
I nodded and then wished I hadn’t as the roaring crescendoed.
“Rest now while you can.”
“Stay with me.”
“Of course.”
Tears flooded my eyes, and I squeezed them shut and turned to the wall.
We reached Bideford in two days. I slept most of the time away, helped by more of the bitter draft. I asked to see Philip, but when he came he was distant and quickly excused himself on the grounds that I wasn’t well enough for visitors. I tried to tell him that he wasn’t just a visitor, he was family, but I feared that ship had sailed a long time ago.
“I might have something that you want, but I don’t have anything that belongs to you.”
“Hold her!” Walsingham said. “Search her—thoroughly.”
Two burly seamen sprang to, one at each elbow and a third began to run his hands over my body, pinching and poking my breasts and sliding his hands between my legs. He began to tug at the buttons on my breeches.
“Enough, Ned!” Jim’s sharp command caused the man’s hand to fall away. “Have some respect. Mrs. Tremayne is here at my invitation. She’s under my protection.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” Walsingham stepped past Jim and completed the search impersonally and efficiently, then stepped back. “Where’s the box, Mrs. Tremayne? I mean to have it, and it will go badly for you if you don’t surrender it.”
“As you can tell, it’s not here.”
“So it’s on your ship. You wouldn’t have left it anywhere else. Very well, it will go badly for them if you don’t hand it over. You may have noticed that there are four ships arrayed against you. Four broadsides. How will that go for your little Heart of Oak? She’s bonny, but I think her strength lies in her speed and maneuverability, not the toughness of her planking. I have no interest in your ship or the lives of your crew. No interest at all, one way or the other. In fact, sinking her with all hands might achieve the end I desire. You can hardly use the box if it’s at the bottom of the ocean, can you?”
I didn’t tell him that whatever he did, the box would come back to me whilst I lived. There was no use suggesting the obvious solution to his problem.
“Mr. Walsingham.” The strain was evident in Jim’s voice. “We agreed that the Heart would be mine, and her captain also mine to do with as I pleased. I thought that would be Garrity, but I can wait to settle with him. If Captain Tremayne is returned, that doesn’t alter our agreement. The captain is mine.” He glanced at me. “And she’s the captain.”
I didn’t set him right on that score. James Mayo was an infinitely better proposition than Walsingham.
“If I may—”
That was as far as Jim got.
Walsingham reached into his pocket and pulled out a twist of paper and yanked it straight.
Jim gasped out a strangled sound as his words were choked off in his throat. He clawed at his neck as if trying to loosen an invisible rope, face deepening to red and then with a sucking, shuddering sound, like a child with the whooping cough, he sucked air into tortured lungs.
I sought the breeze above me for enough energy to make a vortex, but though the wind kissed my cheek it still didn’t answer my call. Walsingham produced another twist of paper. Even from here I could see writing on it. Letters the color of dried blood writhed around as if possessed. He opened it out fully and said a word that my ears heard but my brain did not translate into speech.
Whomp!
It felt like an unseen hand, strong as a bull, had swatted me to the deck. One second I was standing, the next it was as if someone had yanked the ground away from behind me, and I crashed flat on my belly with the breath knocked out of me and my cheek pressed into the planking.
“I didn’t agree to this, Mr. Walsingham.” I saw boots as Jim stepped between me and Walsingham. “You said you wanted the Heart, you said nothing about Captain Tremayne.” I heard him loosen his saber in its scabbard.
A foolhardy moment of gallantry, or maybe the bravest thing he’d ever done, but he paid dearly for it. Walsingham didn’t even reply. All I could see of him was his ankles, which flexed as he thrust his weight forward. Jim’s feet left the deck completely and I heard him thump down somewhere behind me. The twist of paper fluttered down, the letters already fading away. Walsingham had prepared his spells in advance. What kind of magic did this man have? Whatever it was, it was more powerful than anything I could muster.
Jim’s crew gasped in unison, but no one uttered a word of protest, not even Tarpot Robbie, who’d sailed with Jim for as long as anyone could remember.
“I’m not here to play games.” Walsingham bent down low over me. “Give me the box, the halfbreed, and Philip, and I’ll spare your life.”
“No, you won’t.” With my mouth pressed against the deck and my head feeling as though it was being forced through the ship’s timbers, I could barely get the words out.
He sighed. “All right, I won’t spare your life. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, especially one who can overturn the order of Britain. You are a dangerous woman, Mrs. Tremayne. I’ve dedicated my life to finding the box before it could be used, and there have been others before me. Do you know what that kind of dedication does to a man? No family, no children. My mission is my wife, my little troop is my family, my apprentices my children.
“I was an apprentice once, myself, standing beside my master outside a house called Bullcrest. Ah, I see the name means something to you. You didn’t know I was there? Well, there’s no reason you should. I was the older of two apprentices. Geoffrey was the other one, Geoffrey Meadows—not his real name, but real to us. He saved my life that day by being directly between me and the blast your family caused. I got these scars.” He knelt and put his face close to mine. “You thought it was the smallpox? My face looked like ground meat. Geoffrey wasn’t so lucky, and neither was our master. I didn’t want a promotion to Walsingham. I was too young. I still had too much to learn. I believed your family all dead, and I celebrated even in the depths of my misery. I thought it was over. For more than two decades, I went about my business, overseeing the prevention of magical threats to the realm. Imagine my dismay when your brother came to my attention and I discovered there was another generation. It’s time to end it. Your family has been a threat to the Crown for too long.”
If I hadn’t been properly terrified before, that pronouncement sucked the courage out of me.
“I can’t spare you, Mrs. Tremayne. Even with the box gone, the Fae could use you as a catalyst. But please believe me, I’ll spare your ship and your crew if you give me the boy, the box, and your brother.”
“Go to Hell.” It was all I could manage to say.
He released the pressure and rolled me over. Cautiously I sat up, seeing Jim slumped either unconscious or dead, a spreading stain of blood beneath his head. I swallowed down rising sickness, not at the blood, but at the hollowness of a life thrown away. Jim and I had had our differences, but his last words had redeemed him in my eyes. I’d never loved him, but I had liked him.
Walsingham didn’t slap me down again. Glancing sideways to the rest of the crew, I saw they were all very busy minding their own business.
“You!” Walsingham pointed at Tarpot Robbie. “And you. Get rid of that.” He jerked his chin toward Jim. “Over the side.” He didn’t even watch them. I heard a splash, and the most fearsome pirate of his day was gone without ceremony. I’m not saying James Mayo didn’t deserve to die for any number of good reasons, but not like that, carelessly, swatted like a bug.
35
Fire Down Below
WALSINGHAM PACED THE DECK. As he turned away, Will’s ghost appeared, or at least his head popped up through the timbers. He looked at me and hummed a chantey. Will only sang when he was drunk, and even then he couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket, but I recognized what passed for his discordant version of Fire Down Below. He vanished before Walsingham turned and strode back toward me. What did Will mean? Fire down below was a common sailor’s term for the pox, unless . . . Did he mean it literally?
Walsingham stopped in front of me and took a small pouch from his pocket. He delved inside it and tossed a pinch of brownish powder into my face. I’d breathed some of it in before I realized what was happening, then he repeated the gesture and breathed in the powder himself. A spell of some kind, but I just didn’t know enough about his kind of magic.
“We’ll fetch them together,” he said. “I’m not much of a summoner, but you are.”
At first I didn’t take his meaning. I thought he meant fetch them literally, which would be foolish, even for someone as powerful as him. My lads wouldn’t stand by like Jim’s had. But then I realized that he intended to force me to use my power. The bullish pressure returned, monstrous, crushing, but this time, instead of squashing my body, it was inside my head, trying to burst out.
Walsingham invaded my thoughts, that very center of self, his touch more intimate than any lover’s.
“Get out!” I gasped.
“I think not.” He spoke between gritted teeth. All I could do was take comfort in the fact that, even with prepared spells, this wasn’t coming easy to Walsingham.
I tried to push him out of my head. Anything I could do to make this more difficult for him might give me some insight into how I could free myself. He flinched, but then he blew another pinch of the brown powder into my face and took another pinch himself.
He breathed deep. “That’s better. You’re stronger than I expected. I won’t make that mistake again.”
In less time than it took to blink, Walsingham’s magic stripped the whereabouts of the box from my thoughts. He took my summoning power and wore it like a hand puppet, causing me to do his bidding, making me focus on the box.
Come! I summoned it.
It slid across the chart table in my cabin. In my head—or maybe even through Walsingham’s eyes—I saw Corwen make a lunge for it, miss, and slam the door shut instead. I might be able to levitate the box, but I couldn’t move it through a closed door. Well done, Corwen.
I tried to fight Walsingham’s invasion, but his magic was powerful. This was a prepared spell that I couldn’t begin to comprehend. My heart raced, and I panted as though I’d run five miles. Walsingham’s power pounded through my head. I touched a trickle on my top lip and my hand came away bloody.
Again through Walsingham’s eyes, I saw Philip struggling to break free from Lazy Billy, Sim, and Nick Padder while they called for help and other sailors piled in to restrain him. He was struggling like one possessed.
Summon them! Walsingham’s voice was inside my head.
The box smashed itself against the closed window. The thick glass chipped, but it didn’t shatter. The box flew at the glass again and Corwen took another lunge, netting it in the Fae’s magical leather bag. He folded the flap closed and hugged it tight to him.
Walsingham turned against Corwen, using my summoning power as if it were his own. Corwen sank to his knees, pushing against the door even as he fell, making sure that his body trapped the door closed.
Corwen!
With a jolt I realized that my concern for Corwen had given Walsingham a hold over me. He began to force Corwen hard onto the floor. Through our link I could see it all, feel it all. It was as though it was me doing those things, building pressure inside Corwen’s head, waiting for the first precious blood vessel to pop.
No!
I couldn’t best Walsingham in a straight fight, so I did the only thing I could do. I flung a witchlight at his eyes.
Walsingham dodged and grimaced. “You won’t distract me so easily.”
Good!
I stopped trying to fight him, gave my power to him entirely, trusting that Corwen would keep the box safe a while longer and that no one would let Philip get away from them. I tried to wall off the terror of being used, and turned my attention to the witchlight now floating behind Walsingham. I sent it up, across, over, down the hatch, into the ship’s hold. Will moved to the head of the companionway, ducking his head to watch the light and bobbing back up guiding, pointing. I dropped the witchlight down to where he pointed, making it hot, hot, hotter still, nurturing a thin wisp of smoke, darker now, more dense. Finally, a tongue of flame. Though I couldn’t draw a whirlwind, I managed a light breeze, enough to fan the flames.
In our cabin, Corwen was now pressed flat to the floor, his lips almost blue. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. Hang on, Corwen.
A cry went up from somewhere aft. I was dimly aware of the sound of running and of bodies hurtling over rails and hitting water, but I was concentrating on creating a little breeze to push my flames toward where Will pointed—the ship’s powder magazine. I had to stop Walsingham somehow, even if it meant my own life.
Will’s ghost sprang up through the timbers. “Now, Ross!”
Walsingham turned his head and couldn’t fail to see the smoke billowing from the companionway. For an instant it distracted him, and, suddenly released, I scrambled forward and flung myself over the ship’s rail, scraping my ribs, not so much a clean dive as a desperate leap. The icy water took my breath away, but I surfaced, swimming for my life until common sense forced me to tread water to get my bearings. I was lucky: my instincts had taken me almost on a straight path toward the Heart, and I saw her boat already gliding out toward me, oars dipping together. But I was still way too close to the Black Hawk.
The Hawk gave a shudder. The deck bucked and splintered beneath Walsingham’s feet. Flames blossomed around his body. An immense roar; a scorching blast. The ship erupted into matchwood and fire. The explosion sucked the air right out of me. Something solid struck me a glancing blow on the side of the head. Something else hit my arm. Water closed above me.
“Ross?”
Ross!
Two voices calling me, one toward the day, the other toward a different kind of light. Corwen beckoning me to life, and Will to somewhere else entirely. I stood between life and death, between the love of my past and the love of my future. In my left hand, Corwen’s warm hand. In my right hand, Will’s cool, shadowy fingers.
Corwen; Will. Will; Corwen.
If at any time in the last three years I’d been offered an afterlife with Will I would have taken it without hesitation, but now, at last, I’d begun to give myself permission to be whole again, and I liked it.
Ross. Will’s warm breath kissed my neck. Together. Forever. He cupped my cheek with one hand. I leaned in toward him. Corwen’s grip tightened on my other hand in desperation, pulling me back.
It wasn’t only a choice between two lovers.
Life; death. Death; life.
Should I even hesitate about a choice like that?
Life!
“I’ll always love you, Will.” Slowly, oh so slowly, I let him go.
“Corwen?” He was in the water beside me.
“Ross? Oh, love, I thought I’d lost you.”
His lips moved, and I guessed the words from their shape, but I couldn’t hear anything for the roaring of the sea in my head. I let go of my spar and lay my head back on his chest, letting Corwen support me in the water. Willing hands lifted me up, and soon I was wrapped in a blanket, huddled in Corwen’s embrace.
I managed to put my hand on his arm. “I think Will’s gone.”
“He’s dead, Ross.” Again, I guessed the words from the shaping of his lips.
“No, I mean really gone.”
“Rest now.”
They lifted me onto the Heart by making a sling from my blanket. I tried not to cry out, but I don’t think I succeeded, if the number of times Corwen touched me was anything to go by. Finally, I remember the cabin and my little bed, and Corwen dripping some kind of bitter draft between my lips. After that I slept.
More crashing waves in my head. Dressings being changed. My arm, my head. Salve on my ribs. More pain. Another bitter draft, and another.
When I came to my senses, the Heart was moving steadily beneath me like a quiet mare afraid of throwing a nervous rider, the gentleness of her action at odds with the rushing wind and crashing waves inside my head.
“Hello,” Corwen said, his gray eyes bright with concern. “What do you need? What do you want?”
“Where are we?” I asked, raising my voice. “I have such a noise in my head I can hardly hear you.”
“Sailing for Bideford with all possible speed.”
“Why?”
“You’re injured. I’m taking you to the Lady of the Forests.” He kept his face turned toward me as he spoke so that I could see his lips move.
I would have protested, but just trying to raise my head told me he was right, though I wasn’t sure what the Lady could do.
“Philip?” I asked.
“Recovered. Says he remembers nothing.”
“Thank God he’s safe. Gentleman Jim?”
“We don’t know. The Rhodes turned and ran even though she was in no danger. She certainly picked up some survivors. We don’t know who.”
“He tried to help me. Walsingham had him heaved overboard. His crew stood by and did nothing.”
“Walsingham’s a scary bastard.”
“Was, not is. He can’t have survived the explosion. Please God, he hadn’t.” I put my hand up to my ear, but met with a thick bandage.
“Don’t mess with it.” Corwen pulled my hand away gently and kissed my fingertips. “I did the best I could, and Lazy Billy stitched your arm.”
“How did we get away? Even with the Hawk and the Rhodes gone, the other two ships had us cold.”
“Hookey asked for a parley with the captains. With Walsingham and Mayo gone they didn’t see any profit in taking the Heart for no reward and also buying a whole heap of trouble from Bacalao for breaking the treaty.”
I nodded and then wished I hadn’t as the roaring crescendoed.
“Rest now while you can.”
“Stay with me.”
“Of course.”
Tears flooded my eyes, and I squeezed them shut and turned to the wall.
We reached Bideford in two days. I slept most of the time away, helped by more of the bitter draft. I asked to see Philip, but when he came he was distant and quickly excused himself on the grounds that I wasn’t well enough for visitors. I tried to tell him that he wasn’t just a visitor, he was family, but I feared that ship had sailed a long time ago.
