Captain's Surrender

by Alex Beecroft

  “Peter,” he said, for there couldn’t be two men with hair so fine and dark. “Oh, Peter, thank God!” and he clung and wept like an infant, in some hinterland of the spirit well beyond pain and dignity. Closing his burning eyes again he set his mouth to Peter’s neck, in something between a kiss and a baby’s instinctive need for its mother’s skin, then drew back, puzzled and afraid. The smell was wrong. Peter smelled of pomade, wig powder, ink and steel, a smell he thought the best thing in the world, but this man smelled of leather and other scents, unknown and disturbing.

  He opened his eyes again, drew back and met the surprised look of a young man the color of baked terracotta, with dark, dark eyes as beautiful as his hair. “Mother of God,” Josh whispered.

  The young man gave a broad grin that did not suit his sullen good looks and carried Josh over a short scramble to his camp, setting him down gently on a mattress of spruce branches, covered with furs. Trying to work out what this meant—that he was not dead, that he was not captured by the French, that he was, perhaps, captured by some tribe of Indians who wanted him for God knows what, Josh fell asleep again.

  “Come, you should eat.” Shaken awake, he found the sky had been blocked out by a tent of leather, and his captor? savior? host? stood before him with a bowl in his hand. Behind his shoulder, a young woman sat, babe at her breast, composedly stirring the pot over the fire and looking on with interest.

  “You speak English,” Josh said stupidly, while trying to work out a way of sitting up which did not result in him fainting from the pain. After watching this struggle for a while, the man put his bowl down, sat on the edge of the bed and lifted Josh into his arms once more. Josh managed to get a grip on the bowl, but could not get his sore, swollen fingers to close on the spoon.

  “I am not feeding you,” said the young man, a smile in his voice. “If you are baby enough to need it, I’m sure Opichi will do it, when she is finished with our other child.”

  Josh laughed, coughed, tasting the smoke in his lungs, and sipped from the bowl. It was a stew of rice and fish, flavored with some yellow meal he did not recognize, and the taste seemed to pour new life into him, waking body and spirit together.

  “Thank you,” he said, and—exhausted by the effort—lay limply against the man behind him, who put the uneaten food on the ground and ran his fingers through Josh’s hair, startling him into sitting upright again.

  It was Josh’s turn now to look at his host with wide, inquiring eyes. The man chuckled, put his hand on his heart. “Giniw.”

  It was at once so commonplace a thing to do—to make introductions—and yet so intimate that Josh’s anxiety could not compete with it. “Giniw?” he leaned back again, letting his hands rest on the arms that carefully tightened around him. It was so nice to be held, to be kept safe and supported by someone else’s strength, and this was innocent enough, wasn’t it? With the man’s wife looking on, there could be nothing more to it than the joy of simple human comfort. “I’m Joshua.”

  At first, Opichi would dress his burns, but soon she passed the task to Giniw and began a long, arduous business of tanning a whole deer hide. Watching her work, the baby on her back, or tucked beside her in a cradle, where she could snatch moments to amuse it before turning back to the hard labor, he began to feel like something of a cuckoo in the nest. Giniw took to the task of looking after him with enthusiasm, and Josh in turn grew to rely on that hour when Giniw’s large, cool hands would smooth the ointment over his face and neck, shoulders and chest, as the best hour in the day. Though he did not have enough generosity in him to put a stop to it, he felt as guilty as any wife could desire.

  In the third week, Giniw declared that he was going hunting and disappeared into the woods, leaving Josh and Opichi alone. It took only an hour, during which he watched her feed and change the baby, chop wood, fetch water, attempt three times to return to her tanning project, only to be interrupted by the child crying, take out a birch box of rice, spill it on the floor and burst into tears of sheer exhaustion to make him drag his splinted legs out of bed and—gingerly, haltingly—fumble his way through putting a pan of swamp tea on the fire. When he had gathered himself from that exertion, panting as though he had run a mile, he picked up the crying child—watching for permission—and amused her as well as he could with his shiny silver pocket watch on the end of its chain.

  Opichi burst into a further fit of tears at the sight, then, when the flashing, twirling bauble had kept her daughter silent for five minutes, she laughed, braided back her hair and poured the tea.

  “You didn’t need to be burdened with an extra child,” he said, thrown back with shocking familiarity to his own childhood, to remembered scenes of his mother—apron over her head—rocking in silent tears in the center of the brawl of children and need. His mother had not let him help her. Woe betide the thought of his father coming home and finding him doing women’s work. But he recognized the symptoms and wondered what it meant that she would show it to him, when she had remained so stoic and so capable while Giniw was present.

  “Giniw is a great hunter,” she said after they had drunk. “And a trader of furs to the British forts in Hudson Bay. Before I met him, I too worked with the British there. I was lady’s maid to the wife of the factor Mr. Neele. That is where we both learned to speak your language.

  “When we found you washed to shore like driftwood among the clams”—she shook her head at the memory—“we recognized your uniform. Giniw knew that the colonists were fighting the British because your Great Father had said the white man could take no more of our land. He knew the French were on the colonists’ side—against us—even though the French had once been the friends of our people. And so, Giniw said, we should do what we could to help you because your cause is our cause.”

  She looked at Josh sideways, with a twist of mischievous smile that even Josh could see was dazzling. “But I think his heart spoke louder than his head, even then.”

  The baby was now soothing her teething pains by chewing on Josh’s finger, so he covered the guilty start by looking down on her fuzzy head and telling her about it, in a bout of baby talk that left the child unmoved but the mother in stitches.

  Sadly the distraction did not work for longer than it took Opichi to get her breath back. “You cannot tell me you have not noticed he desires you. Nor have you been exactly discouraging towards him.”

  Josh was not sure he had ever been more embarrassed in his entire life. “I’m sorry,” he said, conscious of how wretched he was, how unwashed, crippled and pathetic. “I don’t mean anything by it. I was just born this way—wrong inside. You can’t know—when I thought I was going to die, it was wonderful. I thought I’d finally got beyond it. I thought that would be the last of it. And then I get given a second life, and I still can’t stop. I’m sorry. I didn’t have the strength to hide it. But I will. I will now.”

  Opichi drank her tea and looked away, frowning. Then she came and sat down close to him, laying a careful hand on his wrist where the burns were beginning to fade into his normal pallor. “Joshua, why do you say that you are wrong? You are what the Creator made you to be, and he made all things good.”

  This observation stopped Josh’s guilt and self-hatred in its tracks, for didn’t the Bible say the same thing? He touched the thought gingerly; it almost hurt to contemplate the possibility that God had made him this way because it was a good way to be.

  “Among our people”—Opichi smiled at his stunned look—“the agokwa are honored. We say they have the spirit of both men and women in themselves, and so they see clearer. They see all the way around. Many of our healers and our holy men are like you.”

  She laughed. “Giniw thought you were an agokwa when you wept on his neck like a woman, but in all the time I was with them, I had never heard that the British had agokwa, so I said you could not be. But I think after all that I was wrong. I do not know if a man would have known, as you did, what was in my heart this morning. Besides, you want Giniw. T
hat, I am not mistaken about.”

  In turmoil, Josh did not know which part of this to answer first. Even in the middle of his slowly stirring joy he had time for a stab of anger at being told that he was not a man. Being something different—something so foreign that English did not have a word for it—could not but feel like a rebuke, no matter how she softened it.

  “You are not appalled?”

  She laughed again and gave him a swift, light hug that left him bemused but smiling. “Of course you want him. He is beautiful. You are beautiful too, in a strange way—it is only natural he should want you. And I have been asking him, ever since I felt heavy with child, to take another wife. Someone with whom I could share the work, because I am so very tired.”

  Putting her head to one side, she examined him carefully, her gaze lingering on the hand still cradling her daughter’s head, where the baby had finally fallen asleep in his lap. “We are thinking it would be a good idea for him to marry you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Sir,” said Emily quietly, glancing up from the letter to see her father’s face looking old and stricken, “may I tell this to Mr. Robinson?” She saw the denial—the bitterness of a man who thinks his grief is being taken advantage of—and hurried to explain. “He has just returned from a voyage to these very shores. He has a ship and acquaintance in those parts. He could…we could offer to pay a ransom for Captain Kenyon. I will not conceal from you, Father, that the captain is not particularly dear to me, but I know he is dear to you.”

  “I had hoped you were finally becoming sensible of his merits.” Her father took off his reading glasses and put them carefully down on the writing shelf of his bureau. Trying not to resent this lack of confidence in her steadfastness, Emily took his distance glasses from her reticule and handed them to him.

  “I see his merits, sir,” she said with restraint, “but they are not the kind of merits which recommend themselves to me. I prefer Mr. Robinson’s cheer and his humanity to Captain Kenyon’s reserve and his…I beg your indulgence, but his apparent assumption that the whole world finds him praiseworthy. It is a kind of arrogance I could not bring myself to live with.”

  “But Mr. Robinson is so…so slight a man. So unfailingly pleasant. How can you be sure, my dear, he is no idle flatterer? I would be sad to see you married to a man without strength or depth—an empty cask that makes a pleasant rattling. You would soon begin to despise such a one yourself. Peter has not a particularly polished surface, I admit, but he has depth. Of Mr. Robinson’s inner worth I remain unconvinced.”

  She took the letter from his hands and read it again, wondering how he could possibly conceive of anyone being passionately in love with such a cold fish as this. “But, sir, suppose Mr. Robinson did agree to this, in order to bring back the man he believes is his rival for my affections. While Captain Kenyon is gone, he might justly be hoping to amass a little wealth and ask for me himself, unopposed. Would it not sufficiently prove his moral superiority if he was to—apparently—put himself out of the race, merely because it was the right thing to do?”

  Summersgill laughed at that, took his wig from its stand and put it on, disappearing into his powdering room so that his valet could properly cover it in shining white powder. “You are fond of the young man, aren’t you? Very well, my dear, we will put him to this test, and if he passes it I will confess myself convinced.”

  “And we may marry?” Emily knew it was not decorous but leaped to her feet in joy.

  “If he returns with the captain, and if he can satisfy me as to his financial situation, then you may marry. But I will convey the request to him. If you tell him it is a test, it will be no test at all.”

  “My wife will have a thing or two to say to me,” said Ward with a wry smile, “but I don’t see why it’s any less patriotic to exchange your man for money than for some prisoner who’s already proved he’s not capable of winning a fight.” He reopened the small chest in which Adam had brought the ransom and fingered the bank notes, the two small bags of sovereigns and the rope of pearls which had been Emily’s contribution.

  Peter Kenyon was led into the room by a brightly liveried black boy, and Adam was shocked at the change in him. Physically he seemed quite well, but he had always walked as though the world belonged to him; his eyes had been clear as water, unburdened by self-doubt or introspection of any kind. There had been a magnificence in that, as there is in the unreflective eyes of any predator, but that magnificence was gone. The man before him seemed both softer and smaller, and he thought with a stab of sudden jealousy that Emily would find the change greatly to her liking.

  Kenyon gave Adam a small, wounded smile, holding out his hand. “Sir, I cannot tell you how obliged I am to you for this rescue. If there is anything I can do for you in return…?”

  Adam shook the well-kept hand, and his mind conjured up by itself the moment on the Nimrod’s deck where this situation had played out in reverse. Unwillingly, he found himself smiling back. “Captain Kenyon, you came to my aid when the privateers attacked me—I am merely returning the favor. And not only yours.”

  “No?”

  “Your friend, Captain Andrews, put me in the way of my present prosperity and asked me to remember you kindly.” Adam had mixed feelings about the man he had saved from one fire, only to plunge himself into another. A generous man, but not, perhaps, entirely stable. “So you see I am paying back a debt, rather than owed one myself.”

  Peter’s head lifted and the worn look became sharp, full of pain. “Joshua and you?” Then the smile returned, and he ducked his head as if to throw the shadow of a tricorn over the anguish in his eyes. “I would gladly hear more about that. I…miss him.”

  Damn, thought Adam, not wanting to have to pity or show compassion to his rival—a rival for whom Emily was clearly fond enough to sacrifice her favorite pearls. He wondered in what light Andrews’ help for him might appear to Kenyon. How bitter it would be to learn that the last act of your best friend was to work to ruin your prospects of marriage.

  But to act without pity for Kenyon at the moment would have been, to Adam’s soft heart, like kicking the wounded. If resentment and revenge were required they could wait until later. Until Kenyon was once more a worthy opponent who could withstand an attack without provoking guilt. The fact that by that time he might already be married to the woman Adam loved was just another of the many ironies of the situation.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The tree above him rustled its papery leaves, and sun slanted down onto Josh’s bent head as he twined the willow stems together with the deftness he had learned when splicing rope. His hands were still tender, and he knew he could do better work later, when they had toughened enough, but for now it was idyllic to sit and think and work at something useful, while he tried to soak up the thought that he was not broken at all. Perhaps he never had been broken; perhaps the world in which he had grown up was merely wrong. It was taking him much longer to accept than it had taken him to learn to make baskets, but then rearranging his thinking was more intricate and more painful.

  But he was making some progress, and he was so absorbed in thought and craft that he did not notice Giniw’s return until the light was blocked off and his hands stilled by force. Surprised, he looked up to find Giniw watching him with that cocky grin of his, that was so like and yet so unlike Peter’s unconscious arrogance—the assumption that he was master of the world—which had always made his spirit sing.

  “You’re back.” Josh chided himself for once more being a specialist in the obvious.

  “Yes.” Giniw turned Josh’s hand over and dropped into it a necklace of bone beads, each one individually carved. “I made this for you.”

  And once more, Josh was blindsided by something so totally unlike anything he would have expected. He stirred the little ivory-colored beads with his fingers, afraid to look up lest Giniw should despise him for being on the edge of tears. To be brought gifts like a sweetheart. Plain and open and unafrai
d. Permitted! He didn’t know what to do. It was so…odd, when in all his life before, Peter had been the only one to treat him as though he was a friend as well as a potential fuck.

  “I spoke to Opichi.” Giniw had indeed a groomed and satisfied look about him that indicated he had gone to see her first and had perhaps done more than just talk. At the thought, a very unworthy stab of jealousy added itself to Josh’s confusion. He didn’t want to take second place any more. He didn’t want to take the leftovers and be grateful to have them. If he was indeed not made wrong, why was he not entitled to as much as everyone else?

  But Giniw had not followed this thought. He lifted the necklace from Josh’s hand and slid it about his neck, tying it there, his hands lingering in Josh’s hair, stroking his nape with strong, work-roughened fingers. Josh’s thoughts stopped, his head instinctively tilting back, eyes drifting closed as he remembered that this too was allowed, even here in the open where people might see. And at that thought, he brought his own hands up, dragged Giniw’s face to his and kissed him mindlessly.

  The heat of Giniw’s mouth on his, the taste, made him arch up towards the other man. He freed a hand to pull at Giniw’s leather shirt, frustrated by its lack of buttons and then distracted by the warm, soft, suppleness of it. He concentrated instead on getting the gown-like thing he had been wearing off his shoulders so that he could press his oversensitive, newly healed nipples against the leather and feel it drag over them as Giniw pushed him down.

  What happened then was half lazy exploration—on Giniw’s part—and half screaming frustration on Josh’s. He wasn’t accustomed to the niceties of courtship, he was used to getting it over with quickly before he could be caught, and Giniw’s attempts to slow the pace had him cursing and trying to get the other man to move faster by force. There were points when it seemed more wrestling than sex, except that that, too—being held down, fighting back, struggling against the unyielding hardness of Giniw’s body—was almost more erotic than he could bear. In the end he wasn’t sure whether it was the contest itself or his final surrender that did the trick, but when he was finally permitted to come, pinned, wrists bruisingly held above his head, Giniw was not far after.