False Colors (34 page)

John smiled and touched the back of his hand, affectionately. Alfie slipped his hand inside the placket of the breeches and grasped John’s member through his shirt. The heat of it felt as though it could burn his palm, as John shivered all over with a sound half chuckle, half protest. “Cold hands!”

Alfie’s own yard ached at the touch. His heaving breaths filled his lungs with frost and his stomach roiled with a kind of nausea. Where was that gratitude he had promised himself? Why was John still not acting like a guilty man being given something he did not deserve? Leaning forward he pressed John down, licked beneath his ear, bit his neck and, with something very like contempt, watched him writhe. Perhaps it was the ghost of Farrant, making one last parting shot. Perhaps he had merely bequeathed Alfie some of his cynicism. As he nuzzled his nose into the warm, cologne-smelling thickness of John’s dark hair, as John arched up, wanton under him, he whispered in John’s ear, “And where are your fine principles now?”

Albion
rolled slowly to larboard. From forward, muffled by the cabin walls, came the snatch of a reel on a well-played fiddle. The uncapped ink bottle lay by John’s splayed right hand on the desk. Spilled ink trickled down his little finger to the floor.

Alfie found himself listening for the uproar of condemnation he deserved. Surely the whole ship must have heard what he’d said? Surely the whole world had heard it? He was so appalled the hard shove in his chest didn’t register at first as a blow. John— rumpled, debauched, and white in the face with fury—had to draw back his hand and slam the open palm into Alfie’s ear before Alfie reeled away. A marlin-spike of pain sliced through his skull, leaving pressure and darkness, a ringing noise. He shook his head, speechless.

“Get.
Out.”
John tidied himself with swift, precise movements, then splayed his ink-stained hand on Alfie’s chest and pushed him towards the door. “You did this to
put me to shame?
To prove a point? You piss-drinking cunt! If you knew…if you had
any idea
how far I’d come. For
you!
And you…”

“What?” Shame snapped aback into defensive anger. Alfie got his hands around John’s shoulders, shoved him, hard as he could, sending the lighter man crashing into the cot. The jolt and clatter—John’s little grunt at the impact—made up for so many things, so many separate moments of anguish. If he couldn’t have sex, bloody hell, taking John apart with his bare hands would probably scratch the itch just as well. “What
have
you done? Given me insults! False promises. Acting like I
owe
you something. Letting me down at every fucking turn! I should—”

“What? You should
what,
Alfie? Strike a superior officer? Get yourself hanged? You seem to have quite the talent for it.” John, back to the wall, bristled like a cat. Though Alfie’s fists ached to lash out, to blacken John’s eye, he couldn’t. He needed to strike— to purge this raging confusion, the disappointment, the misery, to get past it all and clean for a new start—but he couldn’t, because damn the bastard, John was right.

If Alfie hit a senior officer he would lose this berth. His last chance. He would be dragged back to prison, and stand in front of the disdainful scrutiny of another court martial.
No, God no, not that!
He would hang for mutiny, his tarred body strung up to provide an example to the fleet.

Worse than that, though, John—a gentleman through and through—would never, ever forgive a man who struck him. Angry as he was, Alfie could not bring himself, even now, to do something John would not forgive.

Instead he wrenched the door open, forced himself through it as though walking through a hurricane, and leaned against the jamb, biting his lips and breathing hard until he could stalk stiffly away.

Once the
Albion
made landfall—the week before Christmas—Alfie found a room above O’Flaherty’s shebeen and retired there to lick his wounds. An unlicensed pub run by an indentured servant who had worked off his contract ten years ago and decided not to go home, the sheebeen made a strange haven. Its normal clientele were rough working men only a notch above slaves. But if O’Flaherty liked the cachet of having a gentleman in residence, Alfie liked the freedom to come down stairs when he couldn’t sleep, sit in the corner of the one dark room, unshaved, unwigged, his shirt collar open, and listen to the music, where no one had the faintest idea who he was.

Half way through the first evening he went upstairs, returned with his flute and played Sainte-Colombe’s
Tombeau les Regrets
for the packed crowd of hard drinking men. In the hush afterwards O’Flaherty handed him a mug of porter. “D’you know this one, then?” said a sandy-haired youngster with a set of pipes, and before he knew it, he was installed as a resident musician. The relief of being able to have one too many, end the evening slumped against a cool, mudbrick wall grumbling, “thinks he’s better than me…” or, “not going to apologize, he can come to me,” in an environment where such outpourings were greeted without suspicion was soothing as ointment over a burn.

Orange rushlights burned smokily in the dark. Fiddle and pipes interlaced a yearning melody through the babble of voices. They spoke in Irish, most of them, but he could communicate easily enough in music. On particularly bad nights, when the music and his despair struck the same chords, he would sometimes find a free drink left quietly by his elbow, look up to a sympathetic nod. They were, most of them, a thousand miles from their own homes, and knew well what it was like to be unwillingly parted from friends and brothers and sons.

Spending Christmas Day with a raging hangover and half a chop he discovered under the bed, however, brought it home to him that even he had to eat. So when the market re-opened on the twenty-seventh, he shaved, brushed his coat, powdered his wig, levered up the floorboard under which he had nailed his purse, and walked into Kingston to buy food.

As he stood on the curb of North Parade with a bag of bread and a jar of cold Jamaican sorrel in his arms, a coach and four burst from an oncoming dustcloud in a rattle of wheels and hooves. Leather squeaked, and the four matched horses snorted, sitting back on their haunches as it drew up to a sudden halt in front of him. A woman’s voice from inside the closed carriage called, “That’s him! That’s the man! Tell him to get in.”

Alfie groaned. Had there been no scandals since his, to occupy the imaginations of the town? He had already received a hundred more sidelong glances than he could well tolerate, let alone the conspiratorial, “amusing” jokes. He could find no appeal in the thought of brazening it out one more time here.

A footman, in somber black livery more appropriate for a priest, hopped down from his high seat. The chestnut mare in the right rear trace snuffed at Alfie’s bag of apples. Warm horse breath huffed over his knuckles as the ever-present Jamaican wind blew the coach’s raised dust in a gritty fog against Alfie’s side, leaving pale streaks along the creases of his coat. “Lieutenant Donwell? Her ladyship wishes to speak to you.”

“You can inform your lady,” Alfie held on to his hat, “that I am not a public curiosity. I do not wish to relate my recent unfortunate experience with His Majesty’s justice at any of her dinner parties, and I would be obliged if she would drive on.”

A white hand in a black ruffled sleeve unlatched the door and pushed it open. As the footman folded out the steps, sunlight caught the dull black side of the coach and revealed the outline of a coat of arms, painted over. Alfie stepped back as if shoved, then he put down his packages and traced the barely raised ducal crown on the lion’s shaggy head, with reverent, gentle fingertips. Tears prickled at the back of his eyes. He gasped “oh!” and looked up just as a woman’s head in a heavy black veil leaned out. “Please get in, Lieutenant Donwell. Just for a moment.”

Outside, the crowded cobbled streets and even the wind had seemed full of disapproving eyes. But as he grasped the edge of the wooden doorway and felt the carriage sway beneath his weight as he hauled himself aboard, the inner world lurked more terrifying yet. He sat, green leather seat creaking beneath him, as the footman shut him in. Gold lacquered walls curved around him like the shell of an egg. Embroidered cushions bore the same crest as the door—red, blue and gold, a lion rampant, a spotted stag.

Taking off his dusty hat, he placed it on the seat beside him. The woman lifted her veil, smoothing it over her hair, away from her face. Alfie’s gaze slid from the cushions to the floor. He struggled to raise his eyes from the hem of Lady Lisburn’s dress and the two small feet, in black satin slippers, poking out beneath it.

“How old are you?” she asked, after a long silence. “You look about the age of my eldest son.
Our
son. Farrant’s and mine.”
Pulse roaring in his ears Alfie glanced up sharply, his shame not quite enough to allow him to bear scorn. Her slate blue eyes widened, an artful blonde ringlet trembling beside the angle of her jaw as she too braced herself against the urge to recoil. Almost as surprised, as appalled as he.
My lover’s wife!
“You’re not what I was expecting,” she said, just as he was thinking the same. Strongly made and wide mouthed, she had a masculine, roguish look. It occurred to Alfie that, in her beanpole slender youth, she must have looked like a midshipman, poised on the cusp of manhood’s strength. If she could have stopped time, found some way never to ripen, to stay bony and boyish for all time, would Farrant have been able to love her then?
Alfie pressed a knuckle to his lips, pushing down nausea and terrible, unwelcome sympathy. “I don’t know what to say.”
She laughed, a little tremor of tears shaking the sound, and tapped at the ceiling. The coach rolled forward at a gentle walk, the interior swaying slightly on its springs. “No more do I.”
They drove slowly through the midst of a group of maroons, who scattered to each side. A woman in a brightly colored headscarf called out something scornful in her own language, as the covered pot on her head emitted a smell of goat curry.
Lady Lisburn rummaged deep in one of her pockets and brought out a scrap of paper which she passed to Alfie. “You sent me this.”
His own writing confronted him—shaky with emotion, in watery-brown prison ink, on coarse-laid prison paper.
Please allow me to take this opportunity to tell you there was no one in your husband’s heart but yourself. There never was any rival in his affections for you. All his thoughts and deeds were motivated by your welfare, and to my knowledge, a more faithful husband never breathed.
“Was it some form of mockery?” she asked sharply. “I’ve puzzled at it ever since. Can a man, going to his death, have so little opinion of his immortal fate as to make fun? I cannot make it out.”
He could not force his first attempt at speech through the obstruction in his throat. The hot, bright cell in which they travelled filled up with the scent of Lady Lisburn’s jasmine perfume, manure on Alfie’s shoe adding its own blend of horse and straw. The hollow between Alfie’s brows ached with frowning, and he felt his chin crumple as he pressed lips and eyes firmly together, resisting the urge to weep. “It…it was no lie. I meant every word.”
A moment spent looking out at the road down to the harbor, the sea bisected by the long causeway that lead to what remained of Port Royal, helped him gather himself to carry on more strongly. “Your husband regarded what he did as a vice; like playing for high stakes at cards, like whoring. It meant no more to him than whoring—the slaking of a physical thirst. You were his reality. You…there was no one he loved but for you.”
“A cold love,” she observed.
“Perhaps.” Alfie bared his teeth—it was as close as he could come to a smile. “But, Christ, at times I could have died for envying you.”
Lady Lisburn sobbed with laughter, brought out a lace-edged handkerchief, and bent her face into it, her shoulders shaking. They rolled on a little while before she composed herself, wiped her face, sniffed and wiped again. Pressing the handkerchief to her nose, her blue eyes still shining with unshed tears, she said, “Does it help to know I too would gladly have exchanged places?”
The absurdity of it took him by surprise. He sniggered, tried to repress it behind his hand, looking up apologetically as he did so. But her mouth twitched at the edge as well, drawn up in jerks against her will. His snigger turned into a chuckle at the sight, and then she tittered too, and before long they both were laughing in great guffaws, sides heaving, bent over the mirth as if it was a stomach pain.
When that too passed, Alfie bit his cheek to sober himself up again. “Will you be well? If there’s anything I can do…?”
She tucked the handkerchief away inside her skirts, locked her hands together in her lap, and gave a more genuine smile. “Between you and your friend Lt. Cavendish, I am inundated with offers of help from handsome young men. But no, with Farrant gone, my exile no longer serves a purpose. I will sell the plantation, take my children home to England, and live modestly on the proceeds. I am ashamed to say it is a kind of liberation.”
She turned to smile out the window, her speech less for his benefit than for her own. Which was just as well, because Alfie, arrested by the name, had not listened further. “Forgive me, Lady. You spoke to Cavendish?”
“He didn’t tell you?” To her left, the sea stretched out to the ends of the world, and its light beat on her cheek, washing out all the flaws. By contrast, the other half of her face lay in shadow, barely to be seen.
He registered only the lift of one skeptical eyebrow, but it was enough. An oppression he had not been aware of eased its grip on his heart. Hope reeled over him like the dizziness from one too many pints of rum.
“The lieutenant came to speak to Bentley. To urge him to withdraw his accusation. I believe he arranged for the departure of that odious catamite too. I cannot see any other reason why Bert Driver should flee when Bentley was paying him to remain. Truly, you had no idea?”
Shutting his mouth—how long it had hung open, Alfie had no idea—he reached out and brushed the dust from his hat with jerky movements. Anything to conceal the way the world had stopped with a sickening lurch then started up again a completely different shape.
“Yet I suppose it is very much the part of a friend to do such a thing in secret….” Lady Lisburn went on, filling the silence with nervous speech. “To avoid giving rise to any burdensome obligation. And he did say you were his very good friend.”
“I didn’t give him a chance to speak of it.” Alfie’s turn now to fill the rocking, confessional box of the coach with his own private thoughts.
I expected the worst. I assumed the worst. Yet all that time he was working to save my life.
Gillingham’s invitation to join the
Albion
’s crew took on a new significance: John had not been at the court martial because he already knew the outcome. Because he was too busy arranging a berth for Alfie, making sure he would not be tried and condemned by public opinion, even when exonerated by the law.