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They arrive on his doorstep, delivered by unknown hands. It is, he believes, part of the agreement, a panacea for the wounds left behind by the price he paid. He tells himself not to look, not to read each edition from front to back, searching for news like some lonely sailor’s wife, hoping for a happy return.
The first notice he has was pressed into his hand by Pellew. Only he had the power to bend the will of King and country, perhaps God himself. Retribution sailed with her new captain at the helm, leaving behind an unmarked and empty grave.
He is sure that Horatio never once looked back.
**
He finds the next and loses his breath. The words swim and dance before his eyes, set to distant music he can’t quite hear. He walks across the floor of the cottage and rereads the words slowly, determined at some point to make sense of them.
Captain of His Majesty’s Sloop, Hotspur. 20 guns. blurs, the words bend through the heated salt that sings his eyes. Leaving behind his new wife, Maria Hornblower (nee Mason)
Wife.
For the first time in a year, he doesn’t feel the steady pain in his stomach, feels nothing but the hard, solid ache in his chest.
**
Other papers come, tidbits of family and friends. Bush and Pellew and more. Names with vague meanings and even vaguer faces, all standing out against a blurred background of memory. He runs his fingers over them, trying to recall details, but only two faces stand out in his mind anymore. Sawyer, who taunts him softly from beyond the grave, and Horatio, who does not even know he lives.
He considers writing a letter – surely no one would care any longer. Time has passed and there has been enough death and despair that a lowly lieutenant’s confessed transgressions should not matter. But he knows that, should it even receive Horatio, it would do no good.
He is married, the latest reports inform him. A father.
Kennedy glances around the lonely cottage and wonders if it’s worth it, this life. Wonders, at times, why he keeps on living.
**
He follows the war through the pages, closes his eyes and remembers the smell of gunpowder, the burning scorch of metal. He stands and tilts his head back and feels the sway of the sea. When the wind blows just right, he can smell the salt and, if he feels strong enough, he can make his way carefully to the fence and stare down the cliffs to the waves crashing below.
Atropos. Sloop 22 guns.
He can see Hornblower on the deck, command in his posture, in his voice. Command is born in Horatio, come so easily to his stoic expression and stern countenance. He wonders if Horatio has someone to make him laugh, make him remember that he is alive, that he is a man.
Led the funeral procession for Lord Admiral Nelson
Prestige, he thinks, blinking back emotion lest it blind him. “Well done, Mr. Hornblower,” he whispers. “Well done, indeed.” He tries to think of the man Horatio must now be, so different and yet the same from the boy he knew. They were still boys, up until Kingston.
Death made them men.
He and wife, Maria, are soon expecting their second child
His stomach no longer pains him. He is stronger now, healed, though he is not the man he once was, if he ever had been that man. The pain is gone, but the hurt, he thinks as he feels the length of his scar, that never leaves.
**
The carriage sits outside the cemetery, the horse puffing heated breath into the cold air, dancing against the chill. He stares out the small window, unable to see anything other than the dark shift of trees in the wind.
“Here, sir?”
…private service shall be held today at…
“Here. Yes.” He wraps his hand around the door handle, his knuckles white against even his skin faded to pale.
“Do you need help out, sir?”
He shakes his head as he sees movement. Tall and stately and thin against the slate grey sky, a soft, bare touch on a woman’s shoulder, her bonnet obscuring the sharp cut of his face. “No. No.”
…the loss of their two children. Captain Hornblower and his wife…
“Drive on.”
**
There is always chatter in the house as the girls sweep in and out, cleaning and cooking and following their orders. He occasionally hears them whisper as they pass his rooms, lurking for moments in open doorways. He feels their eyes and their smiles, wonders what they think of him. He sees the appreciative glances, but feels nothing as their eyes offer and promise and wonder.
The girl sets the paper on his desk and leaves with a curtsy. He leans against the wood and strokes the printed sheets with the tips of his fingers. There have been more problems south of America, insurrections and plays for power. There is much that is not reported, but he reads between the lines easily, knowing very well the things that are not said.
He is one of the things not said.
Captain Horatio Hornblower appointed Captain of His Majesty’s Frigate, Lydia, 36 guns….
He nods. A fine choice with his knowledge of Spanish and French. His demeanor well suited for authority figures puffed up on false pride. He thinks of the warm seas of his last voyage, of Archie Kennedy’s last voyage, and smiles, wishing Horatio warm seas to fuel his bath.
**
The papers are swollen with his name on his return, bracketed by other names he knows – William Bush – and knows of – Lady Barbara Wellesley – and he reads them carefully. There is much not said in the official reports, which brings a smile, as Horatio had long ago perfected the art of saying everything exactly as the Admiralty would wish it, which often had very little to do with the truth of the matter at hand.
He reads of her marriage, reads of lives he’s touched by proxy, in print. He reads of parties thrown and orders given. He reads of war and resignation and death. He tells himself to stop, to let it go. He wonders, briefly, if this is an exercise in cruelty. See him move on with his life, without you. Your death meant nothing. Nothing to him, save a way to escape the noose around his own neck.
He tries to believe it and move on, but there’s no where left to go.
**
He leaves them unread for months. They pile on his desk, neglected, as he buries himself in books and music and everything that is nothing like a life at sea. He takes his slow, short walks away from the cliffs now, smelling heather and clover and nothing that tastes of salt or wind.
It would count as a victory if it didn’t ache so much, the hard throb of pain that feels much like the metal ball that lay heavy in chest for so long. He forces himself to bed each night, staring out the window. He cannot close his eyes, lest he dream. Nightmares of the noose would be more welcome than the poignant, hungry reminder of everything he no longer has.
Dark hair curled and tangled by wind, sun-warmed skin that tasted of salt and wool. Sharp planes and corded muscle, rough hair and velvet skin. He turns his head and fights the emotions that threaten to overwhelm him, driving himself from bed to the stack that waits him, tumbling them all to the floor in his haste.
He sinks to his knees and forces them into order, night sliding into day as the events unfold.
…Sutherland, 74 guns…
…battle off Rosas bay…
…surrendered…
He sits back and feels the gasp building in his chest, presses his hand to the ridged scar. It hurts like a living thing in his breast, the living thing he no longer is. Breathing roughly, he leans back in, pawing through the last few for more mention, for any word.
…Captain Horatio Hornblower reported killed…
“No.” He presses a hand to his mouth and shakes his head. “No.” He closes his eyes and balls his hand to his fist, refusing to drown in the well of emotion. “No.”
He gets to his feet and glances at the graying dawn that comes in through his window. He steps over the fanned pile of papers and strips off his night clothes, ringing the bell for his maid as he makes his way to his closet.
It is past time, he thinks, the date of the last paper and of today firmly in his mind, to pay his respects.
**
An older woman answers the door, her face hard and worn. “What do you want?”
“I am here to see…Mrs. Hornblower.”
“She’s not receiving visitors.”
“I…” He breaks off, uncertain if it’s worth it – to him, to her, to anyone. “I sailed with her husband, long ago. I would like to…pay my respects.”
“Mother?” A hand touches the woman’s shoulder. The fingers are short and worn from hard work, though still delicate as due a lady. He can almost imagine the pressure it exerts as the older woman gives way to the one behind her. She is shorter than he imagined, nothing at all what he expected of a Captain’s wife, of Horatio’s wife. “You knew my husband?”
“I did. Long ago.”
“He does not speak of it…of long ago.” She looks him over, her eyes rimmed red, her lips chapped and dry. “What is your name?”
“Archie, ma’am.” It is strange to say, and sounds wrong on his tongue. “Archie Kennedy.”
Her hand curves around her stomach and she nods, turning to allow him to see the hard swell of pregnancy. “Come in, Mr. Kennedy.” She leads the way, pausing only long enough for him to close the door behind them. “Wrong I suppose, to invite you. I do everything wrong, you know. Did. Did everything wrong.” She sits on the sofa, waving him toward the chair. “It is perhaps telling, do you think, that I feel more comfortable, safer with a man my husband never mentioned than with all the names that I have heard in our marriage?”
“Mrs. Hornblower…”
“Maria.”
“M…” he pauses to clear his throat. “Maria. I am so sorry to have heard of Captain Hornblower’s…”
“He is not dead.”
She wears black and looks lost. “Ma’am?”
“I can see it in your eyes that you understand, Mr. K...Kennedy, was it?” She shakes her head and strokes her stomach. “Horatio is far to stubborn to die. He would find a way to cheat even death, I believe.”
“He wa…is very clever, ma’am.”
“He escapes everything, they tell me. The devil’s own luck.” Tears fall unbidden down her cheeks. “I hear whispers, Mr. Kennedy. They think I cannot hear or understand what they say, but I am no fool. He is, after all,” she smiles and Archie can taste the bitterness as well as if it fell from his own lips, “my husband. Legally bound to me, even if he does not love me.”
“Horatio is an easy man to love, Mrs. Hornblower. Maria. He does not love so easily in return.”
“He is not dead, Mr. Kennedy.”
He nods and stands, taking her hand and kissing it softly. “The dead, Maria, so rarely often are, anymore.”
**
There seems no more point in reading, but he does all the same. He no longer knows the names of those triumphed and scandalized on the sheets as they pass over his desk. It is almost like a life now, and he wonders if this is how Horatio felt, freed from everything by Archie’s death.
“Special delivery, sir.”
He glances up from his book and frowns, brow furrowed as the maid sets the paper on his desk, and curtsies, hurrying from his room. He gets to his feet and approaches it with a mixture of fear and trepidation. It is folded back, open to a page, and his eyes scan the printing for what it is he’s searching for. He finds it, and it is nothing that he wished to hear.
…the death in childbed, on the seventh of this month, of Mrs. Maria Hornblower…
He traces her name with his finger and closes his eyes, offering up a soft prayer to a God he’s no longer sure he believes in. Sometimes, he whispers, the dead very much are.
**
He does not need the papers to hear the news. The streets of the village are alive with it, as though Bonaparte himself had fallen. Instead, it is something more and something less. He stands against the rock fence and watches the women and men walking, listens to their words and lets them fall over him like warm rain.
Horatio.
He mouths his name every time he hears someone speak of him, how he outsmarted Boney – No surprises there, he laughs – how he survived, how the Admiralty acquitted him with honors, how his child was taken in by Lady Barbara Wellesley, how they are to be wed.
A fitting wife, he thinks, moreso than the last. Just as Bush slipped into Archie’s place, so Lady Barbara will fill Maria’s. So easily replaced in Horatio’s life, in his affections. Archie does not allow himself to wonder if Horatio will remember Maria any better than he does Archie. He does not think he wants to know.
**
He glances through them now, leafing through the pages until the name catches his eye. He reads them and moves on, trying to find a life for himself. He allows the maids and matrons to invite women around for tea and he talks to them of the theater and books, he eats biscuits and laughs, smiling until they lean in and touch his arm, make small advances.
They always leave content and satisfied, sure that they’ve made an inroad into his life. He does not tell them that they are like sand, all the trails and campaigns they wage against him washed away by the tide.
…Commodore Hornblower…flagship, His Majesty’s ship, Nonsuch, Ship of the Line, 74 guns…
…Russian blockade as Bonaparte…
He sits at the table in the sun, drinking his afternoon tea. Twelve years have passed, twelve years he’s passed in this prison. He thinks of El Ferrol and smiles, sips from his cup. As prisons go, it is far better than anything the Dons provided and his parole does him no good, no one yet measuring up to the high standard that taunts him on the pages that continue to come.
**
…Baron, Lord Hornblower of Smallbridge…
He is impressed, and amused at the proximity. Fate, he thinks, is a cruel mistress to some, everything they wish for just out of reach. To others though, she is kind, everything strived and worked for attained. It is unfair, he supposes, to think the losses don’t weigh on him, but pain is much easier to bear in the bed of happiness.
…France, where Bonaparte supporters still linger in factions determined to impede…
…the death of Captain William Bush of Chichester. Killed in action at Caudebec…
His fingers trace the puckered edges of his scar, and closes his eyes, Bush’s face in sharp relief in his mind. The hooded eyes, the piercing gaze, the gruff voice. He reads the report slowly, memorizing every line. Bush served Horatio well, though the words read that he served the King. Archie knows better and he goes to the cabinet, pouring a measure of the finest brandy and offering a toast – not to his replacement, but to his friend.
**
He stops reading after Bonaparte falls for good, exiled to Saint Helena. He knows there are further words to read, further adventures taking Horatio to distant seas and different shores, but it is all beyond him now. Any war that Britain wages is no longer his war, and he wonders what it will be like not to fight any longer.
Sawyer is dead and buried and bones by now, and he wonders if, like all prisoners of war, he’ll be set free, or if his crimes are such that freedom isn’t an option.
**
The last paper comes with a letter, the script in dark ink, his name etched carefully on the parchment. He opens it carefully, breaking the seal and unfolding the letter.
Your presence is requested and required at the funeral of Vice-Admiral Edward Pellew. A carriage will be sent for you on…
He drops the letter to the desk and closes his eyes. He has known all along, or suspected at least, that Pellew was behind his accommodations, behind the papers. A benefactor of sorts, a jailor of others. He wishes that he’d been given the option of life or death, of this or something else.
Not that this knowledge makes the choice any easier.
**
He stands on the fringes of the large crowd. Women and men of all ranks and ranges mill around outside the grand church, murmuring softly of love and loss. Archie moves slowly, unwilling to draw attention to himself, uncertain of how to interact with the mass of people. He mutters soft excuses and apologies as he works his way toward the chapel.
The sudden stop causes a few behind him to grumble, and the heat of bodies pressing against him is almost overwhelming, the pain in his chest, in his scar alive and pulsing with blood.
He would know him anywhere.
The long elegant fingers as they curve around his wife’s arm, the too-long legs that could cover the deck in so few strides, the dark eyes that seemed to see and say so much more than anything that came from those slowly curved lips. He has changed, Archie would be a fool to think or believe otherwise, but in that instant, in that moment, he is the same man that sat on the edge of Archie’s bed and tried to ease away the last moments of pain.
Don’t ever let them say it hurts
“Oh, God,” he whispers softly, blinking back the onslaught of tears. He is, as Maria was, out of his league in this crowd, out of step with the dance of polite society and genteel conversation. He shakes his head and backs away, horrified as he looks up and sees that dark, penetrating gaze fall in his direction. He swallows hard and turns on his heel, glad of the swarming crowd as he hurries painfully and breathlessly to his carriage, to his prison.
To the welcoming rocks at the base of the cliffs, to the death he should have surrendered to long, long before.