Chapter Text
Lord Ashcombe was a man experienced at reading others, and he knew at once that this would not be good news. He didn’t know this soldier, but it made no difference; the anxiety was painted clearly across his features. Quickly, he stood from the desk, where a map of the southern coast lay unfurled.
“What news?” said Lord Ashcombe, scrutinizing him. A sheaf of papers was clutched in his hand, edges crumpled by his too-firm grip.
“Nothing good, I’m afraid,” he said. “The Travail, along with at least six other vessels, has been reported as missing, presumed to be lost.”
At this, the soldier offered a list, on which was written a log of those ships that had made it to port within the nearest thirty miles. At the bottom was a list of the missing: Mermaid, destination Brighton, presumed lost; Lady Luck, destination Brighton, presumed lost; Emerald Beauty, destination Portsmouth, presumed lost; Phoenix, destination Dover, presumed lost; Explorer, destination Eastborne, presumed lost; Travail, destination Dover, presumed lost.
Travail, destination Dover, presumed lost.
The soldier was still speaking, but Lord Ashcombe had stopped listening.
“...Reports are still incomplete at this time, but this is the most current information we possess regarding the recent storms in the Channel-”
“Is there word yet of survivors?” Ashcombe interrupted.
“My lord?”
“Survivors,” He repeated. “From the wrecks.”
Travail, destination Dover, presumed lost.
“With the violence of the storm, General...The outlook does not seem favorable.”
“I wasn’t asking for probabilities,” he said shortly, shoving the papers into his coat.
“No survivors have been reported at this time, sir.”
“Keep me updated on any new developments, regardless of the ship. If some were able to survive, it’s likely others did as well.”
“As you command, my lord.” With this, the soldier saluted, then turned and left the room.
He turned back to the desk, leaning once more over the map. The Travail, carrying with it a disguised Christopher, Tom, and Sally, had departed from Calais four days ago. They were supposed to have arrived in Dover on the fourth of December before making their way north to Ashford, where Lord Ashcombe would meet them. He had waited for two days, growing rather impatient as the hours dragged on with no correspondence from them.
It was only after arriving in Dover that he’d heard the news of the storm, and that their ship had never arrived.
There were no details surrounding the storm, only that it had been fierce, springing up without warning. Most seemed to agree that it was blowing westwards, meaning that most vessels would’ve been carried further down the coast. If they hadn’t been torn to pieces by the winds, that is.
But how far west could they have been carried? The southern coast stretched some three hundred miles, most of it comprising rocky cliffs and remote villages. As soon as he’d heard of the storm, Lord Ashcombe had written to outposts in Hastings, Eastbourne, and Brighton, inquiring after the Travail and his missing grandson. As of yet, there’d been no reply; the snows had come early this year, and the roads between towns were treacherous and painfully slow.
“Where are you, Christopher Rowe?” He muttered to himself, before rolling up the map and stuffing it back within the dark confines of the desk.
* * * * *
“Get me Captain Tanner,” ordered Lord Ashcombe, watching as three of the King’s Men hastily went in search of the man. The wind lashed against them, bringing biting flurries of snow along with the chill. From where he was standing, he couldn’t see the sea, but he imagined that it was tossing restlessly.
It had been seven days since the storm, five since the news that the Travail had been lost. In that period, he had moved his command from Dover to Hastings, searching the coastline for signs of a wreck and scouring the towns for any word of survivors. So far, they’d found little, aside from a confirmation from the townsfolk that the storm had indeed been blowing westward.
Not finding anything for over a week, not even pieces of the ship, was not a good sign. But Lord Ashcombe was stubborn if nothing else, and the passing days had only served to increase his efforts.
“You asked for me, General?” Captain Tanner said, nodding respectfully towards him. Tanner was a tall man, stocky, skilled with both sword and halberd. His brow was creased slightly in concern, dark eyes serious beneath. He’d known the man since His Majesty’s return, and he’d served him well.
“I did. We’ve been in Hastings for two days, and since then have found nothing; no news of survivors, no evidence of a wreck, no new information of value. I’ve decided to move our command to Brighton, continuing the search along the way.”
“As you command, General,” replied Captain Tanner. He didn’t say anything more, but Ashcombe could see the doubt in his eyes. If they hadn’t found anything by now, it was not likely that they would find anything good. Probability was a fickle creature, and it dictated that Tom, Sally, and Christopher would not be found alive.
“Inform the men that we leave in an hour,” he said brusquely. “I wish to reach Brighton in two day’s time.”
“Yes, My lord.” With that, he departed, issuing the orders to prepare for departure.
* * * * *
Ashcombe had never been much of a man for sleep, that was for certain. His youth had been a near-endless string of glittering balls and late nights gambling, and sleep had soon been shunted to make room for his ever-filling schedule of sword training and riding and lessons in French.
Later, after the execution of Charles I, he had been too preoccupied in keeping the rightful heir alive and out of sight to have ever slept more than five or six hours in a single stretch. Over a decade on the run from Cromwell’s agents had instilled in him an appreciation for safety over rest, and coffee had quickly become one of his most trusted companions.
Yet it had been a long time since nightmares like these had plagued him.
They were never quite the same, but each welcomed him with a cold fury whenever he closed his eyes for more than a moment. Darkened alleys and silent forests and roiling, churning waves. Hands reaching, grasping, slick with dark blood. The tattered echoes of someone sobbing. Shrieks in the night, the flash of a blade, red mixing with the mud on the cobblestones. A thousand fragments of Christopher Rowe, overlaid atop one another only to break apart in an instant. The voice of a man, not one he’d ever heard before, screaming that it was his fault, his fault, his fault, as the ocean boiled with the blood of a boy he had sent to his doom and the night wept for the tragedy of it all.
Gasping, he would stagger from his bed, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle in an effort to steady himself. Guilt clung to him like a second skin these days, omnipresent and unshakable. Had Christopher died quickly, he wondered, pulled down by the clawing waters? Or had it been drawn out, clinging desperately to the battered remnants of the ship as the world raged around him?
He could only pray the end had been swift.
On those nights when he was still sober, when he hadn’t yet blacked out from drink and from exhaustion, Ashcombe returned to his desk, running over and over maps of the English and French coastlines.
Those nights were fewer and fewer. Drink had always been a weakness, a dulling of the sharpest points of exile and the trials of maintaining power.
Now it dulled his grief.
* * * * *
“Are you mad? I’m not telling him.”
“Oh, shove off, Zacky, there ain’t anyone else.”
“I said no, you dolt. Open your damn ears for once and listen.”
“Well, as long as it’s not me I don’t see an issue.”
“Is that so, Stevens? Perhaps should be you, then.”
“What? Now that’s not fair, I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Ashcombe had nearly strode into the adjacent room, hoping to see finalized plans for departure being made. The sound of conversation had made him pause, leaning against the doorway just out of sight. You truly see a man’s thoughts when he thinks you’re not listening, Walsingham had once told him. It had been invaluable advice.
“Straws, then, to make things fair. Short one has to tell him.”
There were grumbles of assent, and then a brief rustling as straws of varying lengths were produced. He was momentarily confused, the haze of liquor still lingering on his mind from the previous night, when it hit him in an instant. They were drawing straws to pick the unfortunate man to speak to him.
“Hah! Good luck spinning this one to the General, Raleigh, he won’t like it one bit.”
“Perhaps I should be the judge of that.” Ashcombe strode into the room, leather heels clicking on the floorboards. Four of the King’s Men snapped smartly to attention, still holding the straws feebly in their gloved hands.
“General,” one of them began — the one who had pulled the shortest straw, he noticed — “We meant no disrespect, sir, none of us knew-”
“It matters not what you did or did not know. We leave within the hour. Are preparations in order?”
There was a heavy pause.
“Er, well, not exactly-”
“And what is it,” Ashcombe growled, his single dark eye flashing, “that isn’t exactly in order?”
“It’s the men, sir,” The man to his left, the one called Raleigh stated bluntly. “They think it a poor idea to travel in such weather, especially given that we’ve not heard nor seen no sign of a wreck since we began. Best to wait out the storm, the men think, than to keep pushing forward and risk losing ourselves.”
He wasn’t wrong. It was risky, almost foolhardy, to move nearly forty men to Brighton. In weather such as this it would be more than a day’s journey; and, knowing Ashcombe as they did, the men were not enthused by the idea of traveling throughout the night as well as the day.
But what was the alternative? Try and wait out a storm that showed no sign of passing? If they’d managed to survive the wreck, Tom, Sally, and Christopher’s odds of being found sank even lower with each day that slipped by. No, onwards was the only option.
“Do I look,” He bit out, teeth grinding, “like I give a goddamn care about you not wanting to travel in poor weather?”
Another tense silence followed. “It ain’t just the weather, General,” another man spoke up. “You’ll pardon my saying so, but morale is low. Supplies are low, and with no progress been made, many aren’t sure what exactly our plan is.”
“As it has been from the beginning: to discover the fate of the Travail and locate her survivors.” He didn’t say the last part, which they all were no doubt thinking: if there are any survivors. “I don’t care if morale is low. Frankly, I don’t care if you’re all so cold that your fingers blacken and need to be cut off one by one, and I’ll be the one to do it myself if that’s what it fucking takes. We leave within the hour. Be ready, or be left behind.”
Ashcombe turned and stalked out of the room, heels echoing in the silence left behind.
* * * * *
The storms, it seemed, were endless. It was as if nature itself were grieving, taking her pain out in the lashing of the wind. Hail tore like pinpricks on Ashcombe’s face, the hood of his cloak doing little to shield him from the fury. Behind him by thirty or so feet was the first group of men, fifteen or so of them, all armed and mounted. The remaining thirty were spread out across the next few miles, combing the farmlands and the shoreline.
He had reached the outskirts of a farming village near Brighton when he saw a figure staggering through the hail. He trotted his horse forward, pulling up beside them along the muddy path. The figure paused, their clothes soaked to the bone with dripping water.
“Sir?” A young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty, peered up at him through the pounding hail. Her eyes widened and she took a step back when she saw the ruined half of his face.
“My name is Lord Ashcombe,” He said, voice raised to be heard above the howling of the wind. “I’m searching for survivors of a recent shipwreck in the channel. Have any washed up on shore?”
She stared up at him in stunned silence for another heartbeat before her mouth began to work.
“A…A few bodies turned up a week ago, me lord. Tossed in by the tide, though none here recognized them.”
A few bodies washed up on the shore. Those we’re searching for, or someone else?
“What did they look like?”
“Two men, me lord, and an old woman. She had long, grey hair, and a weathered face.”
“And the men?”
“Hard to say, me lord. They was so bloated from the seawater, none could really tell what they might’ve looked like afore they drowned.”
He wondered, then, whether he would even be able to recognize Christopher if he found him. Bodies so bloated from the seawater, unrecognizable…
He shook these thoughts away.
“How old were they, if you had to guess? And the ship? Any information about her?” His voice was sharp, insisting, trying to pry the useful information out like a seagull clawing at a clamshell.
“Oh, they was maybe forty five or so. I think the ship was a Dutch one, but I canna be sure. Me lord,” she added hastily onto the end.
In other words, no one that he was looking for. The hail had turned to rain, and was now steadily dripping through his coat and to the clothing beneath. The young woman turned away to go, evidently on her return to some cottage or another, and began to hurry through the rain.
“Wait.”
She turned back, not yet drawing closer again. Ashcombe pulled a guinea from deep within his pockets and, stepping his horse a few paces closer to her, handed her the coin.
“For your help.” He said, rough voice grating. She stared at him, goggle-eyed, and then hastily tucked the coin into her blouse before darting back through the rain and vanishing into the mist.
* * * * *
They reached Brighton by the second evening, the going made slower by the thorough picking of the country and the shoreline. Nothing was found, save the remnants of driftwood and kelp tossed up by the churning tides. Perhaps that was for the best. He didn’t know what he’d have done if he came across teenaged corpses.
There was a naval outpost in the city, as well as a barracks for soldiers, both of which he rapidly took over. The lieutenant in charge there had almost been on the verge of refusing him the space, but wisely chose to keep his mouth shut and let them pass. It was lucky that the majority of the sailors were away on a scouting mission along the Dutch coast, or else the quarters would be fit to burst with the additional fifty men.
His map, now rather crinkled and worn with the constant unfurling, was rolled out on his commandeered desk, edges held down by paperweights. Narrow handwriting filled in the margins, along with small Xs in the towns that they’d passed through, each one a failure. Now, there were close to a half dozen of them.
The question was to the strength of the storm, and where they’d been when it struck. If they had still been towards the French side of the channel, they could have been carried much farther west than anticipated.
Or it was that they’d simply drowned.
Ashcombe raised the whiskey bottle to his lips, taking a deep drink of the fiery liquid. It had been his preferred drink since he’d first gone into exile, and had needed something stronger to numb the pain. It burned down his throat, the smoldering warming him from within and steadying his hands. He took another pull, and then another, before getting a grip on himself and setting the bottle down. His vision swayed briefly before righting itself.
It must have been that they’d been carried further west. That was the only solution that made any sort of sense. By now, if they had been struck on the English part of the channel, something would have washed up by now, even if it were just pieces of a shattered mast. Yet there had been nothing, not even a fragment of sailcloth for ten days.
He stared at the map again, finger tracing the line of the southern coast. He would keep going, until he found definitive proof they were gone. Even if he had to search the entire coastline to do it.
* * * * *
The storms let up enough for him to press onwards the day after. The men were weary and exhausted, and low bickering could frequently be heard, but none had come to him to try and talk him out of it. Tanner, mounted atop his bay mare, could be seen twenty yards back with one of the supply wagons they’d retrieved in town. A few others were beside him, more out further in the countryside and a few on the shore.
He drank himself into a restless stupor on the nights when exhaustion demanded he rest. Offers to play cards or dice with the King’s Men were flatly rejected, and when he wasn’t taking stock of munitions or stalking the coastline, he was either with his maps or with his drink. Often both.
Charles had written a brief note expressing his continued hope for good news, and that he was entreating the Lord for Christopher’s safe recovery. At the end, near the bottom, he’d scrawled a few lines meant for Ashcombe’s eyes only. Take care of yourself, Richard, he wrote, and know that you are the bravest soul I know. Please be careful, and I trust you’ll return with our favorite apprentice safe and sound. Yours, as always and forever, Charles.
He slid it within his pocket and kept it close. Days followed days, which turned into a week, and still there was nothing. That was most infuriating of all. Any news, good or ill, and he could prepare himself for it. There was action that could be taken, arrangements made. It was the not knowing that threatened to drive him mad.
They reached Portsmouth, and then Bournesmouth, both small port cities that reeked of salt and decay. Another storm held them there for a day, and Ashcombe paced the halls of the small inn, glowering at anyone who passed too closely.
Two and a half weeks into this fruitless journey, and he was in Weymouth, which was, if possible, even more decrepit and dank than either of the previous two had been. There was no end to the rain, it seemed, which whipped the sea into a white froth and pounded against the town.
He’d driven his men nearly ninety miles in search. Ninety miles, and for what? The scattered ruins of driftwood? The haunting silence of the dead?
Ashcombe slumped in the chair by the fireplace of his room, staring into the flickering flames.
He remembered a boy, covered in flaking blood, sitting by the slashed body of his former master. How young Christopher had looked to him then, tear tracks still drying on his face. Skinny as a bird and as frail as one too. It was only a few days later that he’d watched him be tortured, his screams echoing off the stone walls of the mausoleum. No, Christopher Rowe was made of sterner stuff than he appeared.
He should’ve done more to protect him. God, what had he been thinking, sending three children to France alone? It was no wonder that they were dead. Three more bodies to add to the heap of those he’d led to their doom.
He stared into the flames, and wept.
* * * * *
“General?” Ashcombe turned, the dirt road beneath him having turned to mud. Tanner stood there, a pimple-faced youth awkwardly standing a few paces behind. “This lad here says he has a message for you.”
“A message? Of what sort?”
“Er, I’m not sure, me lord, but I reckon ‘tis a family matter.”“A family matter?” What in God’s name was this boy about?
“So said the lad who gave it to me. Said he was your grandson, or some such, me lord. From Seaton.”
Ashcombe stared at him uncomprehending for an instant, and then snatched the letter out of his hands.
Dearest Grandfather, it began, the letters neat and even. He didn’t know Christopher’s handwriting on sight, but from what he remembered, the resemblance was strong. He skimmed over the rest of the letter, eyes catching on the lines I’m very sick and please, please send help. And there, at the bottom, was his name. Your devoted Christopher.
“Tell the men to gather themselves and mount up,” he ordered Tanner. “We leave for Seaton immediately.”