Ethan narrowed his eyes, looking from Senhouse to Geoffrey. “Show me?”
“It would be easier that way,” Geoffrey told him. “I … I don’t want to speak of it here.”
Still Ethan hesitated.
“I assure you, Mister Kaille,” Senhouse said, “no harm will come to you. I give you my word as an officer in His Majesty’s navy.”
Ethan stood, eyeing both men again. “All right.” He indicated the door with an open hand. “After you.”
Geoffrey stepped out onto the landing, with Senhouse close behind. Ethan locked his door and followed them down the stairs.
“Tell me,” he said, thinking once more of the scene he had witnessed at Long Wharf. “Does this have anything to do with one of the ships in your fleet? A sloop-of-war perhaps?”
Geoffrey spun around so abruptly he came within a hairsbreadth of tumbling down the stairway. The lieutenant regarded him as well, though with more grace.
“How did you know that?” Geoffrey asked in a whisper.
“I didn’t know it for certain. I saw you at Long Wharf earlier today, Geoffrey. You were with several men who I assumed were also customs men. And then you rowed out toward the sloop.”
“What were you doing at the wharf?” the lieutenant asked.
“I had business there,” Ethan told him. “A matter that has nothing to do with the British fleet.”
“I see,” Senhouse said, though Ethan sensed that he wasn’t entirely satisfied with this answer.
“So, is this about the sloop?”
All the color had drained from Geoffrey’s cheeks, and a bead of sweat stood out on his upper lip. He nodded, his eyes wide, haunted. “Yes,” he said. “I won’t say more. Not here.”
“Fair enough,” Ethan said. “Lead on.”
They walked the short distance from the cooperage to Long Wharf in silence. The people they passed in the road stared hard at Senhouse, some appearing impressed, others regarding the man with open hostility, and still others looking frightened. It wasn’t every day that a British naval officer in full battle dress walked the streets of Boston, and with the royal fleet menacing the city’s shores, Senhouse’s presence seemed to draw even more notice than it might have under other circumstances.
Upon reaching the wharf, Geoffrey and the lieutenant escorted Ethan more than halfway out the length of the pier, past the warehouses to a small T-wharf that extended into the harbor. A pinnace waited for them there. Two regulars, clad in bright red coats and white breeches, stood on the wharf, and nine navy men-the cockswain and his oarsmen-waited in the boat. As Ethan and the others approached, the men in the boat stood, and all of the uniformed men saluted Senhouse. Several of them cast quick, wary looks Ethan’s way, but they said nothing.
Senhouse paused at the end of the T-wharf and gestured toward the boat. “In you go, Mister Kaille.”
Ethan stepped into the pinnace, taking care to keep his weight centered, and took a seat at the prow. Geoffrey joined him there; Senhouse and the two regulars took positions at the stern. The lieutenant spoke in low tones to the cockswain, who in turn barked a command at his men. Soon they were gliding away from the wharf. Ethan sat listening to the cockswain’s rhythmic calls and the splash of the oars as they cut through the water. He watched Geoffrey out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the other man to explain what it was they needed Ethan to do, but Brower steadfastly avoided looking Ethan’s way.
“Geoffrey-”
“Not yet,” Brower said in a harsh whisper. “When we reach the ship.” He glanced pointedly at the nearest of the navy men.
Ethan nodded once, and Geoffrey turned away again to stare out over the water. Ethan did the same.
As the pinnace skimmed past the Launceston, Ethan couldn’t help but admire the ship. It wasn’t as large as the Stirling Castle, the seventy-gun ship of the line on which Ethan had served during what was known to colonists as King George’s War, and to the rest of the world as the War of the Austrian Succession. But it nevertheless was an impressive vessel. He could see regulars on its decks; some marked the progress of the pinnace as it went by. And as he regarded the vessel, her cannons, the graceful curve of her hull, he couldn’t help but think back to the days of his service in the British navy.
It had been years since Ethan last put to sea, but for a time he had been as comfortable on the deck of a ship as on dry land. Some of his earliest memories were of sailing jaunts taken with his father, who had been an officer in the British navy. As a boy he worked the wharves in his native Bristol and later, when he was old enough, Ethan followed his father’s path into the navy.
His naval career didn’t last long. The Battle of Toulon went so poorly for the British that the fleet commander, Admiral Thomas Matthews, was court-martialed along with most of his captains, including the captain of the Stirling Castle. Thomas Cooper, the vessel’s captain, had done nothing wrong so far as Ethan was concerned. Ethan deeply resented the man’s court-martial. Cooper was soon reinstated, but Ethan wanted nothing more to do with the navy. With his father’s help Ethan was able to leave the service. He returned to Bristol and sailed for America aboard the first ship on which he could book passage. Once in Boston, he tried to make a living on land. But working the wharves was a poor substitute for sailing the seas. More to the point, within a month of his arrival in the New World, Ethan met and fell in love with Marielle Taylor, the daughter of one of Boston’s wealthiest shipbuilders. Soon they were betrothed and Ethan put to sea again, looking to make his fortune as second mate aboard a privateering vesseclass="underline" the Ruby Blade.
His decision to take the posting aboard the Blade turned out to be the most fateful of his life. The captain of the ship, Rayne Selker, and his first mate, Allen Foster, were at odds from the moment their voyage began. When the ship’s takings proved meager the mate began to challenge the captain’s commands. In private, Foster spoke of mutiny. By some stroke of ill luck-Ethan never learned how-the first mate had learned that Ethan was a conjurer. He convinced Ethan to use his powers on behalf of the mutineers and for a brief time they took control of the vessel.
Within just a day or two, Ethan came to regret the choice he had made. Foster was ill-suited to command; his treatment of the captain was brutal and cruel. When Selker’s supporters launched an assault on the mutineers, Ethan aided their efforts and so helped them regain control of the Blade.
Ethan’s involvement in the mutiny-and the spells he cast in support of the mutineers’ cause-earned him a court-martial. His willingness to help the captain retake the ship saved his neck. He sailed aboard the Silver Tassel, which carried him from Charleston, South Carolina, where the Blade landed after the mutineers had been defeated, to London, where Ethan and the others were tried and convicted. Another ship-Ethan never learned her name and never spent more than a few precious moments every third or fourth day above decks-carried him back across the Atlantic to Barbados, where he served his sentence laboring on a sugar plantation under the scorching tropical sun.
The next time he boarded a ship, fourteen years later, the vessel carried him from the Caribbean back to the mainland-Charleston again-this time as a free man. It might have been the happiest of all the many voyages he had taken over the course of his life.
Looking at the Launceston and her sister ships, it occurred to Ethan that but for any one of a host of events-Cooper’s court-martial, perhaps, or Ethan’s subsequent decision to leave the royal navy-he might now be an officer in this small fleet menacing the city. Elli had once urged him to reenlist and no doubt his father would have leaped at the chance to smooth the way for him.
He found it surprisingly easy to imagine a different life for himself-one in which he never set foot on the Blade, never allowed himself to be drawn into the mutineers’ scheming, never lost years of his life to prison; one in which he was a British naval officer posted in Boston and married to Elli; one in which both of his legs were whole. He could see this other life dispassionately, without regret or longing. It was like standing in front of a shopwindow and imagining himself in clothes he could no longer afford.