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One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother . . .
--Rudyard Kipling
Channel Fleet, 1793
The reek of vinegar hung in the air, almost overpowering in the small, confined space that was sick berth. Archie breathed through his mouth, looking around to make sure Hepplewhite was nowhere in sight. Irrational though it might be, he neither liked nor trusted the Justinian's surgeon--habitually drunk, bad-tempered and brusque, with a heavy touch better suited to a butcher than a doctor.
Venturing further into the room, he bit back an exclamation of dismay at the sight before him.
The patient lay unmoving on the narrow bunk, his eyes closed, his face covered in livid bruises, already darkening from red to black. A damp compress--the source of the vinegar smell--lay spread across his forehead.
Guilt rose, thick and choking, in Archie's throat. He swallowed, forced the words out. "H-Horatio. Are--are you awake?"
The dark head stirred in feeble recognition. Encouraged, Archie stole closer to the bunk.
"I've brought something for you," he began, then darted a quick look around. But the one he feared was nowhere in sight, though Archie wouldn't have put it past him to slip into sick berth just for the pleasure of gloating over his handiwork. "Don't try to talk," he added, wincing in sympathy as Hornblower's battered mouth attempted to shape a response. "Here."
Without further explanation, he pressed what he carried into his shipmate's palm, closed his fingers over it.
Hornblower's eyes slitted open in recognition, his swollen lips parting. "Archie . . . how . . .?'
"He dropped it. It never meant tuppence to him, save as a means to torment you. I was able to pick it up while he was--distracted." Beating you within an inch of your life, rather--while I stood by and did nothing.
Again he felt that rush of guilt, that scalding shame at his own cowardice. Even knowing that there'd been nothing to gain from standing against Simpson, and that doing so would likely have resulted into two beaten--or worse than beaten--midshipmen, did nothing to alleviate that shame.
This, then, was all the comfort he could offer--to Horatio and his own conscience. "Don't ever let him see you with it again. Hide it somewhere. You--you could give it to Clayton or me to keep, at least for a while."
Hornblower's hand closed almost convulsively over the pendant, a refusal more eloquent than words.
Archie swallowed again, fought an unmanly urge to weep. "All right. But if you should reconsider, just--let me know." He stepped back from the bunk, wanting only to be gone. "I'll leave you to your rest now."
He had nearly reached the doorway, when he heard Hornblower's faint whisper. "Archie . . . thank you."
Oh, God. Archie closed his eyes for a moment. "It was nothing. Get some sleep, Horatio."
Spain, 1795
"Now drink."
For a moment Horatio thought Archie would resist--the closed eyes and compressed mouth, along with the stubborn headshake, seemed to promise as much. But when he brought the cup to his friend's lips again, he drank. Not one swallow, but several--almost angrily, as if his body resented the necessity but was powerless to deny it.
Horatio instantly slipped a supporting hand behind Archie's head to prevent him from choking, tilted the cup upright again when his friend sank back, gasping, against the pillows. A drop of spilled water glistened within the hollow of his throat.
Relief swept through Horatio but he forced himself to conceal it. This was but one small victory--that could so easily be turned into defeat. Behind those closed lids, his friend's mind was alive and fighting--whether for his life or against any efforts to preserve it Horatio could not be certain, but he very much feared the latter.
Outside the infirmary, the wind moaned, low and querulous. Within, all was silent, save for the crackling of flames on the hearth and the sick man's ragged breathing.
Hovering over Archie, Horatio remembered again the long hours it had taken to bring his former shipmate even to this point. Were it not for the Duchess charming water, broth, and spirits out of Don Massaredo's men and then staying to nurse the invalid over the next several hours, Archie might have slipped away entirely. He might yet--unless Horatio could win the battle for his mind as well as his body.
"He's got to be made to want to live, Mr. H.," her Grace had said, as they carefully spooned liquids down Archie's unresisting throat. "Or all tonight's good work will go for naught."
Later, on hearing Archie's sad history from his capture to his failed escape attempts, she had sighed and shaken her head. "Despair's a reet cruel thing. Especially when you've been alone as long as he has."
"He's not alone now," Horatio had insisted stubbornly.
"But he was--and 'tis a difficult thing to forget. Alone, adrift, in enemy hands, with no one to care for him, force him to stay strong . . ."
Her words had cut Horatio to the quick. "But surely I can make him forget," he had protested. "Or at least, put it far enough behind him so he can--"
"You can't command his sorrows to just disappear. Go gently, Mr. H., gently . . . or you may end up doing him--and yourself--a deal of harm."
Do no harm--the first rule of all physicians. A dictum Horatio's own father had tried to live by, which Horatio must now find a way to carry out himself.
Biting his lip, he studied Archie's shuttered face: his friend's eyes were closed but only a simpleton would mistake that braced and wary quiet for true sleep.
"Tomorrow they'll bring broth," Horatio began, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness. "And you will eat."
Archie's chest rose and fell in an angry exhalation. "Damn you, Horatio."
"Damn me all you like. Hate me, if you choose." He stifled a quick pang at the thought of how painful it would be to have his sometime friend hate him. "But you're going to live, Archie."
The words rose to his lips: I could not bear it if you died, if you were lost to me, again. He swallowed them back hastily--for all their truth, they were perhaps too much for him to admit, or for Archie to hear at this moment. "I meant what I said," he added gently. "You're one of us, an Indefatigable. They'll all be glad of your return."
To his astonishment and dismay, Archie froze, the color draining from his face. Lips gone white as wax shaped a single, barely audible word. "All?"
For a moment, Horatio stared at him, uncomprehending. Then a flash of insight as rare as it was blinding seemed to sear his very soul.
That word, that hated name that had startled Archie out of sleep. Dear God, how could he have forgotten? How could he have been so--not blind but deaf this time, and so stupidly oblivious? How--
Another insight abruptly cut off Horatio's litany of self-reproach. However much he'd failed his friend in the past, this, at least, lay within his power to mend.
You can't command his sorrows to just disappear, the Duchess had warned him earlier.
Perhaps not. But one sorrow he could disperse right now, right away.
"Archie," he began gently. "You should know--Simpson is dead. He's been dead nearly two years now."
Archie's breath caught and his eyes flew open, staring blindly within their bruised sockets. For a moment, he looked as if he might go off into a fit and Horatio braced himself to catch him if he should.
Instead he swallowed strenuously, licked his lips. "How?"
"In a duel, believe it or not. Captain Pellew shot him."
Archie blinked, looking directly at Horatio for the first time that night. "S-Simpson was fighting Captain Pellew?"
"No. Myself." Horatio paused, choosing his next words with care. "On the Papillon mission . . . he was the one who set you adrift in the jollyboat."
"Oh, God." It was little more than a whisper. "I wondered. I--I thought I should go mad sometimes, with wondering . . ."
"You weren't mad," Horatio assured him. "He meant to kill us both that night, and he almost succeeded." He suppressed a shiver at the memory of his own plunge from the spar after Simpson had shot him. Were it not for Finch, he would have drowned in the dark and no one the wiser for it. "When his attempt on my life failed, he lured me into another duel. He fired before time and wounded me, but not fatally." The scar beneath Horatio's left arm had long since faded but he had to resist the urge to touch it all the same. "He had to stand, and let me return fire."
Archie stared at him, barely breathing. "And then?"
"He--he whined, Archie." Remembered disbelief warred with disgust in Horatio's voice. "Showed as yellow as a dog. He got down on his knees and begged for his life." Even now, two years on, he could scarcely believe it: his tormentor, the bully who had terrorized an entire berth of midshipmen, crouched sniveling on the shale before him. At any other time, he might have relished the sight, but his left arm had been ablaze with pain, his thoughts a churning sea of rage and grief for his lost friends.
"I thought of Clayton," he continued somberly, "and you, of the harm he'd done us all. I thought of pulling the trigger and how satisfying it would feel to scatter his brains across the beach. And then I looked at him, and I knew the worst punishment would be to let him live, knowing that everyone had seen him for what he was--a whining, cringing cur."
He took a breath and made himself go on. "I fired into the air. Then I told him he wasn't worth the powder and walked away. He grabbed a knife and went for me while my back was turned. And that's when Captain Pellew shot him. He was dead within seconds."
Dropping gracelessly onto his haunches, pale eyes widening in disbelief at the lifeblood welling through his fingers. And still brandishing that knife, trying even in his last moments to intimidate his former victim.
"He wasn't even buried at sea. The captain refused to take his body on board. I think Dr. Heppelwhite arranged for the disposition of his remains ashore." Horatio cleared his throat and spoke with all the authority he could muster. "In any case, Simpson is dead, Archie. Dead and rotten--he'll never trouble anyone else again."
Archie drew a shuddering breath and closed his eyes, a series of emotions flickering across his face so rapidly Horatio could not begin to identify them all. Relief--surely, anger--almost certainly, fear--perhaps . . . shame? Horatio fervently hoped not, though he had burned with shame himself every time he submitted to Simpson's tyrannies. And for Archie, who'd served far longer with him, the sense of humiliation must be stronger yet.
Far longer . . . the realization struck Horatio like an icy wave crashing over the bow. Horrified, he stared down at his friend--and wondered numbly why he had never guessed until now who Simpson's preferred victim must have been before he himself had come aboard the Justinian.
The beating he gave you--that was nothing, Clayton had said. You don't know half of what he's capable of.
Archie knew. Of that Horatio was suddenly, bitterly certain--just as he was certain that his friend would never tell him exactly what he'd endured at Simpson's hands. All he could do was hope that, for Archie, relief would ultimately triumph over fear and shame.
His friend's eyes opened at last, vivid blue against his pallor. "Horatio." Archie swallowed audibly. "Horatio . . . I should like another drink."
Horatio all but sagged with relief at the words. "More water?" he asked foolishly, fumbling for the ladle to refill the cup.
An attempt at a smile, no more than the faintest turning up of the lips. "No rum. No brandy. No fine Spanish sherry. So--water it must be."
A jest as feeble as the smile, but Horatio's spirits lifted at the sound of it. Holding the cup to his friend's lips again, he dared to hope that the battle for Archie's mind--and heart--might yet be won.
Because no other outcome was acceptable.
Spain, 1795
There was no possibility of Hornblower going out to walk the next day. Released from the oubliette, he lay in an awkward sprawl on the cot that had formerly been Archie's, where they had assisted him on his return. Within minutes, he had drifted into an uneasy slumber, his face turned away even from the wan light filtering into their cell, and not roused once throughout the long night or the morning that followed.
Archie watched him sleep, his own thoughts a welter of pity, concern, and anger. Anger, most understandably, at Massaredo for employing this form of punishment again and at Hunter whose stupidity had precipitated the whole thing, and less understandably at Horatio for being so stubbornly loyal to his shipmates when they least deserved it.
And yet, without that loyalty, that determined assumption of responsibility, where would Archie himself be now? And how deserving had he been, when Horatio first arrived? Sick in body and mind, wallowing in his own misery . . . a less likely prospect for reclamation could scarce be imagined.
Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping?
For Horatio's sake, Archie had curbed his tongue and his temper when dealing with Hunter. The man's guilt and dumb misery had made his task slightly easier, but he had kept their conversational exchanges to a minimum all the same. And now that Horatio was free . . .
A moan, followed by a sharp gasp, recalled him to the present. Hornblower was awake, eyes still squeezed shut against the light, but his face contorted with pain as he struggled to sit up, hands reaching towards his left leg.
"Horatio!" Archie flew to his friend's side, felt the bunched stiffness of his calf muscles, like a block of stone. Cramps, of course--he'd suffered from them himself during his own imprisonment in the oubliette. "You'll be all right," he said gently, kneading away at the knotted muscle. "Stretch out your legs--that might help."
"Archie." Horatio relaxed visibly at the sound of his voice. "Thank God. I dreamed . . ."
"I know." One more experience he and Horatio now shared. Long after he'd been extricated from that hole in the earth, he'd dreamed he was back there. Worse, in a way, than dreaming he was out only to find himself still there; at least in his dreams he'd been truly free. Forcing back the memory, he maneuvered Horatio's left leg to lie flat upon the cot. "Any better?"
Horatio nodded. "A little." His eyes slitted open just slightly. "Mr. Hunter?"
"In the courtyard, exercising his leg." Archie had insisted that he go, saying he would stay with Hornblower. Perhaps it was uncharitable to feel this way, but he was glad to be free of the older midshipman's hangdog presence, if only temporarily.
"Good." No disguising the relief in Horatio's voice either. Perhaps he too was secretly glad of Hunter's absence, as it freed him from the need to conceal his own discomfort.
"There's water--and food, if you want it." Archie had eaten his portion, made Hunter do the same, but reserved the larger share and most of the water for Horatio.
His friend's cracked lips parted in a sigh. "Just water."
Fetching the cup, Archie held it to Horatio's mouth as he drank. He could hardly ignore the irony: that he was doing for Horatio what his friend had done for him so recently.
Horatio swallowed the last of the water, licked the moisture from his lips with a murmured thanks. Archie set the cup aside. "Anything else?"
Horatio shook his head, lay back against the cot. For a moment, he was silent, then, unexpectedly, as if the words forced themselves out of him, "Archie--you were in there a month. How ever did you bear it?"
Archie stared at him. Had Horatio forgotten the weeping, witless wreck he had found in prison? He felt his mouth twist in something that was not quite a smile. "Very badly, Horatio. As you saw for yourself."
"But you survived." Horatio's eyes, more fully open now, met his with all the solemn intensity he remembered from their first days of serving together. "I was in there no more than a week. I think--long before a month was up, I'd have dashed my brains out against the nearest wall."
The stark admission startled Archie into silence. Throughout all the long, dragging days of his punishment, the gnawing hunger and parching thirst, the agony of being unable to stand up or lie down, suicide had never once crossed his mind. Looking back, he could not have said why. It would have been pitifully easy--he could have ignored the rations lowered down to him, stripped off his clothes and let the Spanish sun or the seasonal rains do their worst, or as Horatio had suggested, bashed his own head in.
He glanced at his friend, remembering the gangling midshipman so desperate to escape Simpson's persecution that he'd deliberately provoked a duel, not caring which of them died so long as he might be free one way or another. There was no Simpson here, thank God--Hunter at his worst could not match their tormentor from the Justinian--but this reminder of his friend's darker, more despairing side was sobering indeed.
Hornblower's lips quirked. "You never thought of it, did you?"
"Not then," Archie admitted at last. Only later. After Horatio and Hunter had come, and the pain of the past had combined with his present anguish to make life seem truly unendurable. He tried for a lighter tone. "Perhaps I hadn't sufficient imagination to consider it."
"Perhaps you had more courage than you knew."
Courage? Stunned, Archie looked more closely at his friend, but Horatio seemed completely in earnest. "Obstinacy, more likely."
Horatio sighed. "Obstinacy can be a form of courage, Archie. But whatever you choose to call it, I am glad that it kept you alive long enough for us to find you again."
And for the first time since his jollyboat had drifted into enemy hands, Archie thought he might be glad too.
Plymouth, 1795
Relieved of his watch by First Lieutenant Bracegirdle, Horatio lingered on deck, reveling in the brisk sea air and the gentle rocking of the ship at anchor. Back aboard the Indefatigable, where he belonged and where he had thought never to be again. A free man and a newly-commissioned lieutenant . . . despite his innate tendency towards pessimism, Horatio had to admit that life could hardly offer more than this at the present moment.
A flash of blue out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and he turned to see Archie Kennedy making rapidly for the lee rail, where he stood gazing out at the sea, his expression one of deep abstraction.
Curious, Horatio hurried to his shipmate's side. "Archie, is everything all right?" he asked in a low voice.
His friend gave a distracted nod. "I've just come from the captain's cabin."
"You're not in any sort of trouble, are you?"
"I don't--think so." Archie's brow furrowed. "Horatio, you know Captain Pellew put me down in the books as an Acting Lieutenant before we returned to Spain?"
"Indeed." Archie might disagree with him but to Horatio, it seemed only just that his friend's years as a prisoner of war should be reckoned as part of his service, especially since he had done his duty as an officer by attempting escape so many times. "What of it?"
"I thought," Archie moistened his lips, "I thought it a mere act of kindness at the time. As far as any of us knew, the captain was sending us back to years in captivity. A promotion might have conferred upon me the same privileges you were permitted--to give my parole and have brief excursions outside of prison."
And so it had, Horatio remembered with satisfaction. And those excursions had done Archie some good, though not nearly as much as their release from Spain a few weeks later.
"I thought, when we rejoined the Indy, the captain would send me back to the midshipmen's berth," Archie continued. "I was half-expecting it and, under the circumstances, I'd not have resented it."
"And has he?" Horatio inquired, stifling a twinge of indignation on his friend's behalf. Archie had come so far since Spain--he hated to see him set back in any way.
Archie shook his head. "On the contrary, he means me to keep the rank. And to take the examination for Lieutenant within the year."
Horatio blinked at the note of panic in Kennedy's voice. "But--that's good news, isn't it?"
"No! I mean, yes! I mean . . ." Archie bit his lip. "I feel the veriest fraud, Horatio. Promoted, without having done anything to deserve it. Over Hether and Cleveland, who were here when I was not."
And not half as quick to learn or adapt, to Horatio's way of thinking, but it would be unkind to say as much. "You are hardly to blame for your absence, Archie. Moreover," he added, "I do not think Captain Pellew was wholly motivated by kindness when he promoted you. He is known as a shrewd judge of men. If he means for you to retain your new rank, he must believe you fit for it--and for whatever comes after."
His friend grimaced. "Does that include mathematics, Horatio?"
"If you're concerned about your progress there, I would be glad to tutor you," Horatio offered at once. "And as for other aspects of your studies, you went to sea at twelve, Archie--long before I did. Don't tell me you've forgotten all you learned in those years, prison or not."
Kennedy appeared much struck by this; his expression lightened noticeably. "I suppose I should have to be a dunce ten times over to have forgotten everything," he conceded.
"And even if you have forgotten some things, I am sure you will recollect them soon enough once you resume your studies. I also think Mr. Bowles and Mr. Bracegirdle would be more than willing to assist you in this matter." Horatio paused, studying his friend and shipmate intently. For all the trials Kennedy had undergone, there was strength--and resilience--beneath his seeming fragility. How else could he have survived so much? "You are worthy of this, Archie--and you will be ready when the time comes. My word on it."
The coast of Brittany, 1795
Horatio hated heights. Archie had known as much since their days aboard the Justinian, when the very prospect of climbing the rigging had leached every vestige of color from Hornblower's face.
He also knew that his friend would endure the torments of the damned before letting down a shipmate or failing in what he perceived to be his duty.
It was knowledge Archie was prepared to exploit quite ruthlessly at this moment. Just a hint of hesitation, of diffidence, when he'd mentioned Captain Pellew's order that the rigging on the foretopmast be checked, and Horatio had volunteered his assistance and determinedly begun his climb aloft. Archie had followed with every appearance of meekness, hiding his amusement. But then, after more than two years' separation, could he really expect Horatio to remember he'd never had a problem with heights himself?
Not all ulterior motives need be nefarious, Archie reasoned. The specter of Muzillac had haunted Horatio for days--the failure of the Royalist cause, the loss of so many lives, English and French. Including that slip of a girl who'd died in Horatio's arms, for whose demise Horatio had yet to forgive himself and likely never would.
It was useless to remind Horatio that the girl had made her own choice in attempting to flee with him. And cruel to point out that her fate in Muzillac would have been no kinder, once it was known she'd given information to a British officer. All Archie could do was offer sympathy, support--and distraction. Climbing to the foretopmast must surely count as the latter. At any rate, it required one's complete concentration: Horatio could hardly continue to brood and berate himself when all his attention was focused on the task at hand and on avoiding a deadly plunge to the deck more than twenty feet below.
Don't look down. That was the first trick to it, which Horatio had clearly learned. Impressed, Archie paused in his own climb to watch his friend's steady ascent. Horatio's aversion to heights might persist, but his skill was plain to see. How unflaggingly he must have driven himself to achieve it, along with all the other skills so necessary to an officer in His Majesty's Navy.
Little wonder, then, that Captain Pellew--and so many others--saw such promise in him. Once, embittered by his long captivity and repeated failures to escape, Archie had resented his former shipmate's prowess, the advancement he'd attained while Archie himself languished in prison, forgotten and unmourned. Resentment had vanished in the face of Horatio's obvious concern for him, the devoted care that had recalled him to life and health. Now, he could no more hate Horatio for his brilliance than he could the sun for shining. And it troubled him to see his friend in such distress of mind.
Resuming his climb, he soon drew level with Horatio on the lines. His shipmate blinked at him in some surprise and Archie sent him a guileless smile designed to allay any suspicions before continuing on. His own spirits began to rise as he neared the foretop. After his release from prison, he's spent as much time as possible on deck or perched in the crosstrees, breathing in the crisp, salty air and reveling in every motion of the ship--because it meant freedom. Perhaps, just perhaps, coaxing Horatio up here, beneath the open sky, might banish the shadows, at least temporarily.
Overhead, the sky's gentle blue was laced with scudding, fleecy clouds; a vigorous breeze filled the sails, lifted Horatio's hair into wild curls. Attaining the topmost spar a second ahead of his friend, Archie balanced easily upon its narrow breadth and watched as Horatio pulled himself aloft and straightened to his full height. Breathing in deeply, he finally took in the prospect before them: the unbounded expanse of the sea, sparkling blue in the midday sun.
Horatio glanced over at him then, a rare smile spreading across his solemn features, his brown eyes kindling with wonder and delight. Satisfied, Archie leaned forward, one arm resting on his knee, to admire the view as well.
The cure might not be complete--for Horatio or himself--but assuredly, it had begun. And for now, they stood together, poised between sea and sky, gazing upon a world in which all things seemed possible.
He could not think of any place where he would rather be.
END