Dawn on a Distant Shore by Sara Donati

Hawkeye watched Giselle’s face and saw there what Stoker would never understand about her: she had a mind ten times sharper than his own, and she would always calculate her own gain first, and that down to a tin penny.

  “That is none of my concern,” she said. “I made arrangements with Captain Stoker for passage to France. I have no intention of going to Scotland.”

  She spoke directly to Hawkeye, staring him in the eye like a man who wants a fight. The last time they had had words of any kind he had been a reluctant guest at her table. Party games and sugared fruit, and now she wore a knife on her belt.

  He looked away, but he answered her. “France, is it? A bloody place these days for the wellborn. And there’s the blockade, I suppose you ain’t forgot that.”

  All around them the sailors jumped to Stoker’s commands, but Giselle took no note of any of this; she was still studying Hawkeye, one corner of her mouth turning down while the opposite brow went up. “Still trying to interfere in my affairs, I see.”

  Hawkeye laughed. “You’re a fine one to talk, missy. Or are you going to tell me that you ain’t had a part in Moncrieff’s scheme, right from the start?”

  A plain woman is always well served by a smile, but when Giselle bared her teeth there was nothing pretty about it.

  “Of course I had a part in it,” she said. “Did you think he could have managed it on his own? It was time to see old debts settled. Moncrieff made sure you three went off to see the captain of the Providence, and then I saw to it that the governor knew where to find Elizabeth while you were gone. The only question was whether he would take her to the château to question her, but luck was with us.”

  “You’re right proud of yourself,” Hawkeye said dryly. “But tell me this, what would those old debts be?”

  “That is between your son and myself,” Giselle snapped.

  Robbie swayed as if he would lose his footing.

  “Ye canna mean that ye had a hand in this, lass. Wad ye take babes from their mither, tae suit your hurt pride?”

  Giselle drew herself up. “If you are looking for some remorse or soft feelings, then you will strain your eyesight to no good end, sir.”

  Robbie’s face fell as if she had spat at him. “I wadna ha’ thoucht it.”

  “Come now,” said Giselle, creasing her brow in irritation. “You have seen what Pink George is capable of, after all. Why should you expect anything else from his daughter?”

  “Because,” said Robbie hoarsely, his whole body shaking. “Because I ken yer mither, too. And it’s a shame and a pity that ye’re no’ mair like her.”

  Hawkeye wondered if he had heard right. Robbie MacLachlan had not been off the North American continent for some fifty years—how could he know a Frenchwoman who had never been farther south than Montréal? But he saw by the man’s expression that he had spoken a truth so long held secret that letting it go had torn a hole in him. Robbie was breathing as though he had just fought a battle and lost.

  Giselle had not moved. There was nothing in her expression to show that she had even understood except a tremor at the corner of her mouth.

  “You’re lying.” Her voice was steady. “You cannot know my mother.”

  Robbie ran a hand over his face. “If that’s what ye want tae believe, lass, then it’s just as well. I should ha’ held ma tongue.”

  Granny Stoker let out a cry of alarm louder than any war whistle.

  “Jack Twist, ye reeky kack-handed gudgeon, you’ll bleed for that!” Stoker roared.

  “Oh, Christ,” muttered Robbie. “He’s broke the turnbuckle.”

  Hawkeye didn’t know what a turnbuckle was, but he could see well enough that the line that hoisted the sail had given way. The jib slid down the forestay, snapping wildly and spilling wind. All the aft sails were suffering for it and their speed was falling off fast. From her sling on the middle mast Granny Stoker keened as if noise might fill the faltering sails.

  Giselle was pulling on Hawkeye’s sleeve. “If you think such sorry lies will change my mind about France, you are wrong. You can swim to Scotland for all I care, Mr. Bonner.”

  “I wouldn’t count on France right now if I was you.” Hawkeye had to raise his voice to be heard over Connor’s alarm rattle. He turned to Robbie: “What’s to be done?”

  “They’ll take doon the jib tae try and fix the turnbuckle. I’ll see if I can help.” And he ran off without another glance at Giselle.

  She reached out and grabbed Hawkeye’s lower arm before he could follow Robbie.

  He shrugged his arm out of her grasp. “Christ, woman! Can’t you see we’re in trouble here?”

  “Tell me what he meant. You owe me that much!”

  Her expression made him pause. “Old debts again, is it?” Hawkeye studied her pretty face, the fine lines around her mouth and eyes that deepened in anger and something else, something that smelled of fear that lives deep in the gut. “Sometime you’ll have to explain to me exactly what it is you think you’re owed.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know what he meant.”

  “You’re lying!” Her voice cracked and wavered.

  “Is that so? And what could you do about it if I was?”

  The ship rolled hard, and Giselle was thrown up against him. Hawkeye put both hands on her shoulders and pushed her away, feeling the heat of her through the thin shirt, feeling too much, his gut lurching like the deck underfoot.

  “Mac’s not watching, little girl,” he said harshly. “Rubbing up against me won’t get you what you want from him.”

  She curled a hand into the fabric of his shirt, her knuckles pressing against his chest. “Did you think I wanted something from Mac Stoker?” She laughed. “Your famous eyesight is failing you.”

  Hawkeye pushed her away again, feeling his temper flash and slide, ready to break its bounds. “I don’t know anything about your mother. But if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. I ain’t a boy to let himself be sucked dry and cast off.”

  All around them the ship was in a dead rage as the Tory frigate gained on them, Stoker ranting, Granny screeching, the whole crew shouting as they struggled with the jibsail. But Giselle stood there pure deaf to it all. The blood left her face, and Hawkeye saw that he had struck too hard, hard enough to put her back against the wall.

  “Daniel Bonner.” Her mouth worked silently for a moment. “All these years I’ve had something of your son’s, and none of you ever knew it.” Her voice had dropped, but he could hear every word, more clearly than he wanted to.

  Here it is, now. Finally. The first shot in the battle, or the last?

  “And what would that be?”

  Her mouth worked again, trying to spit out what lay so long and heavy on her tongue. “Your firstborn grandson. He turned sixteen the same week that bluestocking of an Englishwoman gave birth.”

  He kept his peace; anything he could say would serve her purpose better than his own.

  “It is true. I see you do not believe me, but it is true.”

  Hawkeye braced one arm against the longboat and stared at the deck. Giselle might be lying; it came to her easy enough. He shook his head to clear it.

  “You’re on your way to find this boy of yours, is that right?”

  She pushed out a sigh. “Yes. He was taken from me when he was born and sent to my mother.”

  “In France.”

  She nodded impatiently. “My mother is in France. Yes.”

  Hawkeye considered his own hands. Skin like overworked leather, but the tattoos around his wrists were still the same deep indigo they had been when they were new, in those days when he hadn’t yet learned to think of himself as white.

  Giselle was watching him warily, things moving behind pale eyes that were beyond his understanding. She had borne Nathaniel a son, and kept the boy away from him all these years. One part of him wanted to laugh in her face; the other did not dare.

  “Does he have a name?”

  The muscles in her throat worked. “Luc,” she s
aid. “The woman who attended me baptized him Luc.”

  Baptized. Some small connection flickered far away, and Hawkeye reached for it. A midwife, a Catholic.

  “That would have been Iona,” Hawkeye said.

  “You know her?”

  He had made her uneasy. Iona is Robbie’s good friend, he might have said. But he kept it to himself. A grandson who had never set his foot on Hidden Wolf, who knew nothing of his forefathers. Hawkeye said, “Does the boy look like Nathaniel?”

  She frowned, her suspicion digging a furrow between her brows. “He had my coloring when he was born, but he was long of bone.”

  “Fair and light eyed, about eighteen.” He spoke these words out loud, and each of them seemed to draw her closer, until her raised face was no more than a few inches from his own. But Hawkeye was far away, remembering the night of the fire at the garrison gaol in Montréal, and the boy who had led them to the river. Luke, Robbie had called him. Iona’s grandson, he had called himself. Hawkeye closed his eyes and tried to draw a picture of the boy in his mind.

  “Well grown. Big boned, but he moves cleverly. Like Nathaniel at that age.”

  Giselle’s mouth contorted. “What are you talking about? Who are you talking about?”

  “I ain’t sure,” Hawkeye said. “But it looks to me as if Rab MacLachlan has some explaining to do.”

  She pointed to the men working so frantically on the jibsail. “There he is. Call him over.”

  “You, Bonner!” screamed Granny Stoker, waving her cane at him. Hawkeye didn’t know how long she had been calling his name.

  “Are you deef, man! Come here!”

  It displeased Giselle, and maybe that’s why he did it, simply walked away from one angry woman to another one, and was whacked twice with her cane for his trouble.

  “Wake up, man.” She jabbed toward the stern with her chin. “Look!”

  The Tory frigate was closing fast, no more than fifty yards off now and bearing slightly away to come up broadside. Overhead the Jackdaw’s sails still fluttered and snapped, snatching at the wind but getting no purchase.

  She thumped Hawkeye’s shoulder. “Lift me up so I can see!”

  Hawkeye did as he was asked, lifting the lumpy bundle of fidgeting woman out of the sling, taking in her smells: the dry rot of oldest age, sour tobacco, sweat. Her baubles slid and slithered around her chest; her legs flopped like sticks.

  “Capting!” Behind them Jemmy was shouting shrill as a whistle above all the confusion. “Hulls down the horizon!”

  Granny pushed on Hawkeye’s shoulder to bring him around, even as she raised her long glass. Her hand trembled, the skin blotched with the sun and yellowish.

  “Jaysus Mary and Joseph,” the old woman breathed.

  A forest of masts had appeared to the northeast, a world of sails. A hundred ships or more, maybe five miles off: no distance at all in good winds. Hawkeye felt the skin on the back of his neck rise in a slow shimmer.

  “Micah!” Stoker grabbed the young sailor and shoved him hard. “Up the mast, lad, and see what you can see. Be quick about it! Connor, raise that jib now.”

  “I can’t pull a friggin’ turnbuckle out of thin air!” the first mate bellowed, his whole body jerking as he rounded on his captain. Then his expression shifted, anger slipping away suddenly to be replaced by surprise. He raised an arm to point. “The frigate’s rolling her guns out!”

  Hawkeye swung around without any prodding from Granny.

  The frigate was no more than thirty yards off, her broad black side looming with all gunports open. Three officers stood on the quarterdeck, their hands crossed casually at their backs: hunters sure of their prey, and in no hurry.

  Giselle pushed in front of Hawkeye, her jaw set like a child’s who will not be ignored, but Granny reached out and grabbed her by the shirt before she could say a word.

  “To the guns!” Granny shouted. “Don’t stand there with your gob hanging open, girl! To the guns!”

  Giselle shook the old woman off, all her concentration on Hawkeye, and so the volley took her by surprise, threw her off her feet as the twenty-pounder plowed into the forward mast where young Micah perched, still counting ships on the horizon.

  Oak cracked like bad bone and the mast came down, rope and sail shrieking, and through it all the boy screamed. He hit the rail and his back snapped in two; the look of surprise on his face was the last thing Hawkeye saw before the deck filled with smoke and the terrible clatter and fizzle of grapeshot.

  Granny slung her arms tighter around Hawkeye’s neck, shouting hoarsely in his ear. The ship rocked hard as Giselle grabbed his legs to haul herself upright, but a twelve-pounder hit the mast directly overhead and they went down in a tangle, the three of them, Hawkeye bent over the women as a hailstorm of shattered rigging began to fall. It went on for minutes, and then in the sudden silence Giselle coughed.

  “Have they sunk us?” Her voice calm, even cold.

  Granny croaked a kind of laugh and pushed at Hawkeye to move him off her. “You’d be treadin’ water already if that’s what they had in mind, the bloody bastards.”

  “What do they want?” That same tone, as if she were discussing the price of a new bonnet.

  Hawkeye pulled himself to his feet, feeling the bruises rising already on his back and a cut on his shoulder. He said, “They must be after fresh crew. They’ll be boarding us next.”

  Granny’s eye blinked, as bright as a crow’s. “Aye, and you’ll arm yourself right quick, girl, or those marines will be mountin’ more than the poor old Jackdaw.”

  Connor’s voice came to them from the quarterdeck where he stood looking not at the frigate, which could end them with one more volley, but in the opposite direction. “Blow me if that ain’t the whole Atlantic fleet. And they’ve got two sloops-of-war headed this way.”

  Stoker lifted himself off the deck, fought free of a mass of shredded sail, and picked his way across the rubble.

  Beside Hawkeye, Giselle let out a half-sigh, but Granny Stoker grinned.

  “There ye are, boyo. Prime me musket double quick. Anne Bonney won’t go down without a fight.”

  “It’s a gey lot o’ trouble they’re goin’ tae for a handfu’ o’ sailors,” Robbie said darkly as they watched the Leopard’s longboat row toward them. “It makes no sense.”

  “They look healthy enough,” Hawkeye agreed. If disease had reduced the crew to the point where they were desperate for replacements, there was no telling that by the brawny marines who manned the longboat.

  There was only one officer among them. He raised his speaking trumpet so that the brass bell caught the light.

  “Jackdaw! I am Captain Fane of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. You will put down your arms and allow us to board or my gunners will sink you.” With his other hand he raised his short sword and in response the Leopard fired a shot across the Jackdaw’s bow.

  The sailors were muttering among themselves, but Granny Stoker was not intimidated.

  “Poxy sons of ha’penny whores!” she shouted, leaning out of Hawkeye’s arms as if she would fling herself overboard and take on the Royal Marines bare-fisted.

  “Captain?” Connor stood beside Mac Stoker, shifting from foot to foot.

  Stoker kept his gaze on the Leopard, the rows of cannons and gunners. He had a look about him that came to a man when he knew himself to be outmaneu-vered, and no longer able to protect his own: just enough anger to keep a stranglehold on the shame.

  He gave the order, and the Jackdaw prepared to be boarded.

  • • •

  The captain of the Leopard kept Stoker with him while the marines searched the ship, took weapons, and herded the sullen crew to the quarterdeck.

  “Bloody Tory arse-wipers! You can kiss me blind cheeks, fookin’ cowards, the lot of youse!” Granny had lost her musket and her knife to a marine three times her size, but her mouth was her own.

  She perched on a water cask now, as there was no intact mast left on which to hang her
sling. “Give me back me musket. Do you bloody hear me, boyo? I want me musket so I can stick it up your captain’s arse! At least he’ll die with a smile on his ugly phiz!”

  Hawkeye heard Giselle draw in a breath, in disgust or distraction he couldn’t tell. It was true that the captain of the Leopard was young, but Hawkeye wasn’t so quick as Granny to discount a man with so much firepower at his back.

  The wind was high and there was no hope of catching anything of the conversation, at least not while Granny kept up her steady stream of curses, spattering the circle of marines with her spittle.

  “Godforsook shite-brained maw-dickers!”

  Giselle grabbed the old lady by the shoulder. “Annie,” she said sternly. “Enough. We cannot hear when you carry on so.”

  Granny Stoker peered at Giselle anxiously, one hand clawing at her arm. “Ah, there you be, sweetings.”

  Robbie stiffened in surprise, but the crew covered their mouths with tarry hands, trying to hold back their uneasy smiles.

  “Christ,” Connor muttered, wiping his sweaty brow with his cap. “She’s off again.”

  The old lady grinned sweetly as if she had not heard this. “You’ll fetch me musket, won’t you, Mary, me love?”

  “Later,” said Giselle evenly. “When the time is right.”

  The old lady slumped down in Robbie’s arms. She hung there, staring glumly at the marines and at the crew gathered around, all of them nervous enough to jump ship and swim for France, if that would keep them off the Leopard. At least the cutters had been signaled back to the fleet, which seemed to take no more interest in them, now that the gunplay was over. The Royal Navy was bound for France; and so might this crew be, by nightfall.

  “Cowards,” Granny muttered thickly. “Not a real man in the lot of youse.”

  The captain of the Leopard turned and pointed in their direction.

  “Here we are then, mates,” said Jemmy with a sigh. “Tories or sharks.”

  He was a man of no more than average height but with a keen look about him, battle scarred and burned deeply by the sun. His gaze slid over the crew, hesitated at Giselle, and moved on to Hawkeye and Robbie. When he came to Granny she reared up and grinned at him.