HMS Nightingale (Alexis Carew Book 4)

by J. A. Sutherland

  Suddenly, she was no longer eighteen and a ship’s commander, she was fifteen, too long from home, and witness to far too much.

  Throwing any thought of decorum to the winds, she dashed from the shadow of the boat toward the crowd, threw her arms around the figure at its fore, and buried her face in her grandfather’s chest.

  “Lexi-girl.”

  The next moments were a blur. A babble of voices surrounded her and she could never say afterward what words were spoken. More embraces and greetings — Julia, her grandfather’s housekeeper, Brandon, the foreman, old friends from the village and seemingly every worker on the lands who’d had a hand in raising her.

  When the whirl subsided a bit and she had a moment to think, she turned back to Nightingale’s boat, ashamed at having forgotten her crew in the joy of seeing everyone here again. The boat crew, though, was well in hand. Villar caught her look and nodded, indicating the men grouped at the bottom of the ramp — some stacking the few packages of belongings Marie and Ferrau had accumulated since Giron. Marie herself, babe in her arms, waited patiently midway between the boat and the crowd.

  Alexis gestured for her to join them. Marie walked over, a tentative look on her face for the first time since Alexis had known her. It couldn’t be an easy thing for her. She’d lost her home and family on Giron when the Hanoverese retook the planet. Since then, though, there had been mad rushes from place to place aboard ship, then weeks in what poor housing was available to the refugees once they arrived in New London space, then back aboard ship with Alexis for the trip to Dalthus. What must she think to be at the journey’s end, so far from home and among strangers, knowing that Alexis, her one friend, would be here only a short time before setting off again?

  “Grandfather, this is Marie Autin and Ferrau — I wrote you about them.”

  Her grandfather held out his hand and Marie shifted Ferrau to the other arm to take it.

  “Denholm Carew,” he said. “You’re welcome here — you and the babe.”

  “Merci, Monsieur Carew — I hope to …”

  Marie trailed off uncertainly, as though searching for the correct words.

  “La! Come along, girl,” Julia said, stepping forward and wrapping an arm around Marie. “You’ve seen too much and come too far to have need of these crowds.”

  With a nod to Alexis and Denholm, Julia ushered the now wide-eyed girl off through the parting crowd to the farmhouse.

  Denholm put a hand on her shoulder.

  “She’ll see the girl settled, don’t you worry,” he said, then nodded in toward the other side of the crowd. “Much as she did your other lost lambs.”

  Alexis looked that way and found a small group set apart from the rest of the crowd. Mostly women and small children, a few older, there were perhaps two dozen all told in the group. She frowned for a moment, then realization struck.

  “Hermiones,” she whispered. “You said some had come, but not so many.”

  She looked back to Denholm, suddenly flushing at what she’d asked him to take on. The farmstead wasn’t poor, far from it, as the Carews were one of the five or so wealthiest landholders on Dalthus, but that was the wealth of land and property, not hard coin, and even with the influx of additional wealth from the gallenium, the transport and support costs for so many were an ill-afforded expense. And now she’d added Marie and Ferrau to that, without even asking — simply sent a message that she was coming and there’d be two more mouths to feed.

  “I’m sorry,” Alexis said. “I didn’t mean for —”

  “Shush, Lexi-girl. You said you had a debt to them — lord knows you’ve your grandmother’s sense of obligation to your clan …” He eyed the group, then the still visible Marie making her way to the farmhouse with Julia, then the cluster of spacers around the boat’s ramp and smiled. “Eclectic as that clan may be.”

  “Thank you.”

  Alexis made her way to the other group, wondering why they hadn’t joined the others from the village in greeting her, though she supposed it made a bit of sense for them to be reserved. The villagers and farmhands she’d known all her life, while these she’d never met.

  After the mutiny on Hermione, most of those she was closest to, her division, had held back from participating and become captives of the Hanoverese with her and the ship’s officers. The rest of the crew, the mutineers who’d had to flee from New London space for fear of being taken up and hanged as mutineers, despite the revelations of how brutal and deranged that ship’s captain had been, Alexis had known only a little.

  One face, though, stood out in the group. A tall, broad shouldered lad, perhaps in his twenties — though, Alexis didn’t think his father was so old for that. Perhaps it was only his size that suggested it — as he was as broad-shouldered as he was tall. The lad’s face was so like his father’s that Alexis had to steel herself as she approached.

  “Mistress Nabb,” Alexis said to the woman next to the lad with a hand on his shoulder, then looked up — far up, as the lad had to be close to two meters tall and Alexis’ bare meter and a half didn’t quite match up. “Thomas.”

  The pair nodded to her. This was no joyous homecoming. The Nabbs, and the other families of the Hermiones, were only on Dalthus because they had nowhere else to go — because their old homes had cast them out or shunned them after word of the mutiny arrived.

  Wallis Nabb had been the only man of Alexis’ division to join the mutineers, and he’d not done so for any desire on his part. Instead, he’d done it because she’d asked her division to keep clear of revolt. When Captain Neals, of that ill-fated ship, ordered her flogged, she’d been unconscious as the mutiny occurred and some of her lads had thought to join — mostly so they’d have a say in the outcome and could protect Alexis, no matter the fate of the other officers.

  Nabb convinced them to hold back, not join, that he’d do so himself and report back, calling them to step forward if their voices were needed.

  He’d saved them, the rest of her lads who were left free to return to New London and their families with Alexis, but Nabb himself was forced to flee with the other mutineers. Alexis had told him that if the repercussions for his family were too great, they should make their way to Dalthus and her grandfather’s lands where they’d be given a place — then expanded that, telling him to pass the offer on to the other mutineers as well. If they could never come home, it was little enough she could do to give them the knowledge that their families were safe and cared for after all they’d endured aboard Hermione.

  “Your father was a brave man,” she said, taking the lad’s hand in hers. “He helped a great many men be able to come home again.”

  It might be small comfort for him given that his own father had sacrificed that right, but Alexis was heartened that he squared his shoulders and nodded.

  “Aye, miss.”

  “Do you hear from him at all?” Alexis asked the woman.

  “A’times,” she said, nodding. “Short and rare, but a’times … hard to respond, knowing the messages’ll be traced and he’s had to move on.” She shrugged. “Last I heard he’s off in Hissie space.” She laid a hand on Alexis’ arm. “Sends his regards to you, miss, every letter, though — and his thanks for our place here.”

  Alexis smiled.

  “Send my own well-wishes in return, if you will.”

  Though if Wallis Nabb was off in Hso-His, far past Hanover, the French Republic, and even Deutschsterne, then it would be months, if ever, before a message caught up with him.

  And if he’s any sense, he’ll have moved on even farther before then. Perhaps even far around the Core worlds to the other side.

  Hso-Hsi might be far away, but the New London Navy traveled far in its task to protect the Kingdom’s shipping and merchant interests. Any of the Hermiones found were liable to be hanged outright.

  As though Alexis’ words with the Nabbs showed her as more accessible, the other Hermione families pressed closer, each wanting a word. Alexis didn’t recognize any o
thers, but once they’d said a name she found that she did remember the man from the ship and was able to speak to those memories.

  “Rockwell? Yes, he was a dab hand at the guns — my division had a chore trying to outshoot him … Grays? Topman, wasn’t he? A fine hand … Aye, Hepburn — set for master’s mate before the … troubles. I hope he’s doing as well aboard a new ship somewhere safe …”

  Twenty

  31 October, Carew Farmstead, Dalthus System

  Though the space around Dalthus was much changed, and Port Arthur, and even her home’s village, with its new bridge and buildings, those changes stopped at the farmhouse door.

  The kitchen held the same sights and scents as when Alexis was last in it. The same varrenwood table and cabinets, the same neat order to the canisters and baskets on Julia’s counters, the same odd, cycling rattle from the refrigeration unit that Julia wouldn’t let her grandfather replace, saying it would make do quite well and there was always something someone in the village might need more.

  From the smell, Alexis could tell there was a chicken or two set to roasting for their dinner, and baked yams — something she’d always loved, though her grandfather refused to eat the yams for some reason she never quite understood.

  It was new to have a crib of varrenwood bars in the kitchen’s corner, Ferrau standing in it, little fists clutching at the cream-colored wood shot through with purple streaks, but the crib itself was the one she remembered from her own childhood, and had been first built for her father, she knew. Any doubts she might have had that her family would make Marie feel welcome were put to rest at that sight.

  Marie herself was seated at the table, Julia to her right. Tea and a platter of small cakes in front of them. As Alexis and Denholm entered, the girl looked up, smiling.

  “Ah, Alexis,” she said, “Madame Julia is telling me there is a place here in the house, if I wish it.”

  “For a time,” Julia said, “until you’re settled and decide what it is you’d like to do more.”

  She rose and crossed to the oven to check on the cooking food, then returned with more tea and replenished the platter of cakes.

  Alexis settled into a seat at the table, suddenly feeling as though she’d never left home. Talk drifted from topic to topic — settling Marie and Ferrau in place, news of the farm and village which Denholm hadn’t yet sent on to Alexis in a message, Alexis’ astonishment at the growth and changes in system and in Port Arthur, as she felt her grandfather’s descriptions hadn’t done them justice, especially the amount of traffic and construction in orbit and beyond.

  “And it’s not as though I have my own personal ship to go gallivanting about in,” he said with a grin.

  “I do not gallivant,” Alexis answered with a grin of her own.

  “You’re likely missing some of the point to having a ship of your own then.”

  Alexis laughed and hugged him again. It had been too long since she’d had the good-natured teasing she’d grown up with.

  “Will you be staying long?” Julia asked.

  “No.” Alexis noted the disappointment in everyone’s eyes, even Marie, who must be dreading being left alone in a new place amongst strangers, no matter how welcome they might make her. “I’ve one day here, then more visiting other holders — showing the flag, so to speak, as Dalthus has no central government for me to visit — and finally back to Port Arthur before Nightingale must move on to the next system …”

  She paused as she saw her grandfather looking at her oddly.

  “What?”

  “Only that you’ve grown so damned much.”

  Alexis frowned. “I’d not think so — I still fit the uniforms from when I first joined.”

  Denholm shook his head. “Not what I meant, Lexi-girl.”

  Alexis flushed and Denholm cleared his throat.

  “More personal matters, though,” he said, “and something your visits to the other holders might help with, as they’ll see how much you’ve changed — this damned vote.”

  Alexis nodded. Since she’d left Dalthus her grandfather had been working to convince the first settlers, those who owned shares in the Dalthus Colonization Company, which owned all of the system, to change the colony’s charter back to its original form. In that, unlike the current laws, a holder’s eldest child, not the eldest son, inherited the lands. It was that law, which prohibited her from inheriting her grandfather’s lands, that had triggered her flight into the Navy.

  “There’re enough shares in favor to get it onto the agenda for the next Conclave,” Denholm said. “There may not be the votes to pass, though, and that’s what concerns me. It’s a simple majority to make the ballot, but two-thirds to pass.”

  Alexis sighed. “Could we not just wait until a Crown magistrate’s requested and deal with it then? Surely the other holders wouldn’t wish to hold up closer relations with the Crown over this? Or risk having it declared void? And with the gallenium mining and stations being built, it must be time for closer ties to the Kingdom at large.”

  The colony’s law, as Alexis understood it, was invalid under New London’s laws. Only the long-standing policy of leaving colonies to their own devices and letting them run their systems as they saw fit until they specifically requested more services and closer ties to the Kingdom allowed it to stand.

  Denholm shook his head.

  “No, we were cleverer than that when we set up the Charter.” He pursed his lips. “Cleverer by far. The lands, all of them, are really still held by the Company — it’s my shares which allow me to do with them as I see fit. So it’s not the lands themselves to be inherited, but the shares — and those are what have the restriction on them. There’s little say the Crown has in how the shares of a private company are traded or transferred — we can thank Marchant and the like for that.”

  Alexis hurriedly swallowed the cake she was eating and washed it down with a bit of tea.

  “How so?” she asked, not seeing what the giant shipper had to do with Dalthus. “Marchant has little to do with Dalthus, doesn’t it?”

  Denholm shook his head. “No, little more than shipping, but they like their secrecy more than profit at times. As a private company themselves, they’ve lobbied the Crown and Parliament for ages to leave all such alone. How a private company runs itself is as a man runs his home, they’ve said, and made it so by law. A private company could vote to have its shares held only by purple marmots in the future, and there’s nothing the Crown could do about it.”

  He took a sip of tea.

  “Come to that, if the Crown did object to the Dalthus Company’s Charter, then we’d likely find Marchant involved to stop them. Wouldn’t want the precedent set for any intervention in a company’s private affairs.” He pursed his lips. “Mind you I do think that’s best, in general. We, all of us first settlers, formed the company charter freely and agreed to be bound by its terms. No one was forced. I only never saw how this change would affect you.”

  “Well, I wasn’t even born yet, was I?”

  “No, but there were others it hurt at the time. I should have fought it harder — should have fought it at all.”

  Alexis laid a hand on his arm.

  “Still, there’s hope,” he said. “We have until thirty days before the Conclave to place it on the agenda. The main opposition’s Edmon Coalson and his group — they and a few others hold enough shares to keep the measure from the two-thirds needed to alter the Charter.”

  “Of course it would be the Coalsons,” Alexis said.

  “When Daviel was taken down by your ship in the belt I thought things might go differently — that Edmon was a prat, but he never seemed as insane as his father and Rashae before him. Little changed — though this last half a year or more he’s seemed more easy-going. Less angry than his family’s wont to be.”

  This was a direction Alexis didn’t want the conversation steered. The less said about the Coalsons, the better, in her opinion. Her grandfather had no knowledge of the role that
family had played in the deaths of her grandmother and parents, and she didn’t think he could bear it.

  “Alexis,” Marie said, “when you return to Port Arthur for this party, I may come with you, oui?”

  “Party?” Denholm asked.

  Alexis grimaced. This was one of the things she hadn’t wanted to speak to her grandfather about.

  “The … Edmon Coalson spoke to me at the chandlery, grandfather. He’s hosting some sort of dinner and invited me — in my capacity as Nightingale’s commander.”

  Denholm frowned. “The boy might be less angry than his forebears, but I’d still not trust him.”

  “Trust isn’t in it, believe me, but I can’t ignore his invitation, much as I might like to.” Alexis had more reason to despise the Coalsons than her grandfather did, knowing far more about what that family had done to hers. “It would be seen as the Navy snubbing a major colonist, wouldn’t it? Or more evidence that I’m petty and troublesome, as the rumors were before I left, and therefore more fuel for those against changing the inheritance laws.”

  “Rumors started by the Coalsons, remember,” Denholm said, “and an opposition led by Edmon still.”

  Alexis sighed. “I know, grandfather, but this is my work now. I must deal with him.”

  “I should not have spoke?” Marie asked, looking from Denholm to Alexis.

  “You did nothing wrong, Marie — I’m simply not looking forward to the event myself.” Alexis pursed her lips. “I doubt any of those attending will be the sort I’d prefer to sit down to a meal with. You may find it quite tedious.”

  “Ah.” Marie flushed and glanced at the door. “But Aspirant Villar will attend with you?”

  Alexis’ lips twitched.

  “You’ve not given up on him then?”

  Marie flushed more, then took a deep breath. “Perhaps I should.” She pouted. “He has the interest — I can tell this thing, but then pft!” She waved her fingers. “He — how do you say — goes away?”