Part Five

*****

Adam took a long drag on his cheroot, drawing the smoke into his lungs and holding it as he carefully laid the lighted cigar on the deep limestone ledge of the rooftop, alongside his half-empty bottle. The tobacco, the rum, was so soothing, like the soft night air that held a slight, welcome chill. The heat had lingered through September, but summer was all but gone. He let out his breath, releasing a cloud of white and watching it swirl upward and dissipate, drifting across the face of the full moon. 

He picked up the violin in his right hand, and before transferring it to the left, made a hard, tight fist, as had become his habit these past long weeks. The hand was perfectly healed. Not so much as a faint ache to return him to that day, and the last time he had seen her, running away from him, leaving him alone.

"Caught it in a door," was what he had told Mr. Conyngham when he had inquired after Adam's handkerchief wrapped hand. The house in St. Martin's Lane was being turned upside down when he had arrived there very late on that hot summer afternoon, with cases and trunks and portmanteaux piling up in the front hall and on the doorstep. Mr. Conyngham was removing from London to Norfolk immediately on the morrow, the housekeeper informed him.

"I have had news this morning," Conyngham said, looking up from where he stood behind his desk in the study, surrounded by loose papers and stacks of ledgers. "That the siege at Gibraltar is at an end*---or very nearly so. Pray God it's true! Three years Heathfield has held out against Frogs and Spaniards! Damned uplifting news, especially in a year like this, with America gone, and near all the West Indies and Minorca---" he picked up a random sheaf of papers and thrust them at Adam. "Lend a hand, will you, dear boy? You know better than I what's important. Pack what we need; I must go and call on Mrs. Threale."

He glanced sideways at Adam. "Good God, you're not bosky at this hour of the day, are you? That's whiskey on your breath, if I'm not mistaken."

Adam shook his head with a bit of a dismissive laugh, holding up the injured hand. "Just one---at the Crown on the way home from the theatre. Hurts like the devil. Bloody stupid thing to do. I shan't be playing the fiddle for a while!"

"Heh?" Conyngham said, a bit distractedly. "Well, I am sorry for that. But I shall be needing you at Lynn in any case. We are provisioning ships for the relief of the garrison out of the warehouses, and I mean to oversee the operation myself. I am taking the chaise; if you would be so good as to come with the trunks just as soon as you are able---Oh, come now, it won't be such a bore as all that! You may see your relations, and I am quite certain I may persuade Mrs. Threale to join us, and no doubt Daisy as well, so we shall be a lively party, you will see! And the seaside will be a welcome change from this heat, I daresay!"

Adam stared down at the desk, putting his hands out suddenly as he felt himself sway a little on his feet. He had drunk a lot, but not enough to make him sick, he hadn't thought.

Mr. Conyngham seemed not to notice, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Good lad. I'll leave you to it, then!" he said, before he hurried from the room.

***

Mr. Thom Conyngham's home in Lynn was on the Purfleet Quay, just opposite the Custom House, and conveniently near his three large warehouses. The Quay brought ships directly into the heart of the town via its entrance at the mouth of the river Great Ouse, to load and unload their cargo at the docks and warehouses that lined its sides. From the rooftop on this cool, moonlit night, Adam had a superior view of the waterway, bristling with a profusion of masts, the ship's lights winking, casting their dancing reflections on the dark water.

He tucked the violin under his chin, and with his thumb, began to pluck the strings, one by one, testing their tension and pitch. This instrument was the only legacy left him by his father and it, like himself, seemed to possess a remarkable memory. It held its tune beautifully, with little variation, and its song, he had always thought, was one that was especially sweet and true.

Satisfied with his tune, he reached for his bow, but paused as he raised it, listening as the sound of music came to him across the quiet water. Somewhere, someone was playing a wooden flute. It had to be on one of the ships in the Quay. The tune was old and familiar, one he had learned to play years ago, aboard the Princess Amelia. The seamen did love their sad little songs. And the flute made such a lonely sound, high and thin, insubstantial as the smoke he had breathed into the air. He imagined a sailor, all alone, aloft, playing, just as he often did, for no one but himself and the man in the moon.

Once he had played a song, he never forgot it. He raised the bow again and waited, counting silently. He closed his eyes, and the words of the song he heard inside his head:

The water is wide, I cannot get o'er
And neither have I wings to fly.
O go and get me some little boat,
To carry o'er my true love and I.

At the top of the next verse he joined in, and the sweet, soulful voice of his violin reached up, and out across the space of air and water to join it's invisible companion. Surely he can hear me, Adam thought, just as I hear him, and yet it seemed that the sailor in the rigging never hesitated, never faltered, as if it were no surprise to him at all to find himself suddenly playing a duet with an unseen partner.

Must I be bound, O and she go free!
Must I love one thing that does not love me!
Why should I act such a childish part,
And love a girl that will break my heart.

There is a ship sailing on the sea,
She's loaded deep as deep can be,
But not so deep as the love I'm in;
I care not if I sink or swim.

Adam smiled a little as he played on, and the words floated through his head, lyrics that did seem oddly appropriate to his disposition, and he fancied, for a moment, that it was only the ghost of his own spirit that played in the rigging, teasing him gently with it's melancholy song.

"I do love you," Fancy had written. "And I despair at how all was left between us. You went away so quickly, Adam, and without a word to me! It was my father who told me you had gone, and I have been grieving, my love, and despising myself and my foolish temper! You must know that I cannot bear for you to hate me; you are the one who knows me, who loves me. Please tell me that all will be the same as it was when you return, my dear, my only love."

But Adam knew, had known for some time that nothing could ever be the same, and yet the irony was that nothing had changed, not since the very beginning. He had turned his trouble over and over in his mind a thousand times, worrying it like a frayed bit of thread and the more he worried and pulled at the thing, the more hopelessly unraveled it became. He loved her as much as ever, more, if that was even possible, and to be apart from her was torment. And yet there was a part of him that welcomed the solace, the imposed inertia of the separation. Now, she loved him. Time waited, empty, expectant, yet dispassionate. She loved him, and while he stayed away, he could not move toward the end he somehow felt, had always felt, must inevitably come---the day when her love for him would all be gone.  He supposed he was a coward who could not bear to face his fate. Well, so it was, and he knew it, and while he ached for her desperately, he feared, just as desperately, to see her again.

O love is handsome and love is fine,
And love is charming when it is true;
As it grows older it groweth colder
And fades away like the morning dew.

Well, that didn't sound so very painful. Adam felt the corners of his mouth twist, whether with the beginnings of laughter, or of grief he could not tell. His chest felt swollen and a lump rose in his throat and before it could overcome him, he forced it out as a loud, "Ha!"

"Goodness! What's funny?"


Daisy. He started a little at the sound of her voice. She carried a little closed candle lamp, and she moved in front of him and over to the ledge, setting it down beside his bottle and the still glowing cigar.

"No, don't stop---that was lovely! Oh, listen--!" She leaned out slightly over the edge, straining to hear. Her hair was loose, flowing down her back, pale and silvery in the moonlight. She turned back to him, a charming smile on a pretty face that seemed never to have known a day's disappointment.

"Oh, now he's stopped too," she said lightly. "Was it someone on one of the ships?"

"Yes," he answered her, unable to help returning her smile, for all the blackness of his mood. "I didn't hear you come up."

"Well, you wouldn't, would you, lost in your transports as you were. Mama and Mr. C. are pretending to have a row. He's accused her of cheating at Beggar My Neighbor. We all know where that will end, I think, so I have absented myself discreetly, " she laughed. "You don't mind, do you? I do think you play so well. But I needn't tell you so, need I?"

"Far be it for me to disdain a compliment," Adam replied. "I thank you, ma'am. And no, of course I don't mind. But I believe I have finished."

The battered leather violin case lay open at his feet, and he stooped to lay the instrument carefully in it's bed of worn brown velvet, and the bow in it's own specially carved place just beside. When he stood again, she was leaning back against the ledge, looking at him, and when he caught her eye, she turned her head again, looking over her shoulder.

"How pretty---the lights on the water! And so many ships! I think they must be very big. Are they like the ship you sailed on, when you were in the Navy?"

He smiled, as much at himself as at her. He'd been a volunteer, a captain's boy, and although he'd worked and studied for six years along with the other young gentlemen, he'd never commanded a division of men, had never had so much as a close brush with battle. He may, at some time or another, have decided it did no harm to let Daisy Threale think otherwise. The thought embarrassed him now, but he likewise decided, again, that no purpose would be served by disabusing her of her fancies.

"Not as big as some of these. The Princess was a fourth-rate. Just forty-four guns."

"It does sound big to me," Daisy said.

"But there are much bigger. Ships three decks high with upwards of a hundred guns. The Spaniard, Trinidad, has a hundred-and-twenty!"

He went to stand beside her, placing his hands on the ledge and leaning on it, the candle, the half-empty bottle of rum and the burning cheroot between them.

"Do you want to smoke that thing?" she asked. "Please---you know I don't mind."

"No, it's all right." He picked up the cheroot, stubbed it out on the ledge and flicked it over the side, but gave her a grateful smile. He noted she did not invite him to take a drink of rum, but rather returned to the topic of conversation.

"And do you think you would have liked to sail on one of them---on one of those great ships with all of those guns?" Her eyes were on his, her lips slightly parted, as if intent upon his answer. He could not imagine that she could really be so interested, but part of Daisy's charm was her ability to make one think she was. She was utterly convincing, and so sweet that it was all but impossible to suspect her of art. She was the kind of girl who made men comfortable; her soft, ordinary prettiness welcomed them. He'd wondered, occasionally, what her future might be. He knew she was not poor, but living with a mother who more or less lived openly with her lover, and a father who had abandoned his family to live abroad with his own paramour, her marriage prospects would seem a little narrow, and in truth, with her rather forthcoming nature, Adam wondered if marriage would even suit Daisy. She seemed most likely to follow in the footsteps of her mother and become some well-off gentleman's cherished light 'o love.

"Oh, I don't know," he answered her question. "I think I always rather fancied the idea of sailing on a frigate. Like every other boy that goes to sea, I suppose."

"Oh, and why is that?"

"For the prizes, for the excitement. A frigate doesn't just stand in the line of battle. She's fast; she can take on the enemy on her own terms. She's a hunter. There's something romantic about it, I suppose, the idea of the lone adventurer."

"Mm," she nodded her head. "I can see the appeal of such a thing to a man. Romantic, as you say." 

She was wearing a dark colored shawl and a dress of some thin fabric printed with tiny blue flowers that, like nearly every gown Daisy owned, managed to be cut so low as to barely allow for decency. She drew the shawl more closely about her arms but although he noted the gooseflesh rising there, did nothing to cover her fine, white bosom. It occurred to Adam that Daisy often chose to display her charms in the very way that some would place an arrangement of perfect garden flowers---for all to see and admire, and all for their own sake. And yet there was always the sense that, if one was moved to pluck a rose from the vase, his trespass must surely be allowed---she the last to fault a mortal man for falling to temptation.

Adam wasn't feeling tempted, quite, but he did feel free to admire in the spirit of the offering.

"Well, I am glad you are here with all of us, and not on some frigate, or any great man o'war with a hundred and fifty guns, no matter how romantic it sounds!" she declared. "And thank goodness this awful war is all but over! What do you men find so wonderful about it? What is romantic about being cut in two by that---what do you call it---chain shot! Or blown to little bits by a cannon ball! Or to have to have your leg cut off with a saw and end up thumping about the rest of your life on a peg of wood!"

He had to laugh. "Where did you hear of such things?"

"From you!"

He laughed again. "Of course! But you forgot about the splinters---and the scurvy."

"I did not forget," she smiled. "Oh, don't look so amused! It really does sound an awful way to live, even without the war."

"Oh, it wasn't so bad." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the roof ledge. The gentle breeze was freshening a bit, and on the Quay the ships bobbed gently, their lights seeming to move and shift among the masts like wandering stars.

It was a little odd to be having this conversation, considering that he'd been thinking on his old life a little more than usual of late. Only the week before, paying his obligatory morning visit to the red brick house on King Street that was the home of his mother and her husband, he'd found in her sitting room---along with several of his pretty, curiously quiet little half-sisters whose names he could never keep straight---none other than his old Captain, his cousin Hazlitt.

It hadn't been so many years, but the man looked so much older, and somewhat thin and worn. He'd suffered from fevers in a two-year station in the West Indies, he'd said, but he was about to take a new command---a ship of the line, a seventy-four, lying now at Chatham, outfitting for the Channel fleet.

Adam remembered Captain Hazlitt warmly, and it had been an unexpected, but a genuine pleasure to see and speak with him again. Older, and less robust, he seemed to Adam also to be a bit more sentimental and fond than he recalled.

He'd kept Adam on his ship's books these past four years, he'd confided.

"I always did think you would make your way in the service," he said with a gentle smile. "Haven't forgotten your seamanship, have you? You might take your examination within six months, I dare say. I could see to it."

Adam had been touched and flattered by the old man's regard and had even taken the direction of his lodgings in Chatham when they were pressed upon him as he said his goodbyes.

When he thought of those days now, what he remembered most was their simplicity, and the sense of predictable order that had always prevailed, of having a set purpose for every hour of every day. Nothing and no one was superfluous aboard a ship.

"Maybe I'll go back," he said, glancing at Daisy, his eyebrow raised.

She cocked her head to one side, studying him. "Oh, don't joke," she said. "I could almost believe you're not. Such a look you've got on your face, Adam!"

"Have I a look?"

"Of course you do, and you have done for weeks. All forlorn. Like a little lost dog. I know what's wrong with you, Mr. Clayton, and I think it's awfully like a man to think he can simply run away from all his troubles!"

Curiously, although she was smiling, he thought he saw a brief spark of anger in her wide, soft blue eyes. He didn't think she could know what he thought about, or what troubled him. He'd never confided in her. She raised her chin a little, and he watched a single lock of blonde hair move against her round, white throat, lifted by the light wind off the water.

"It isn't a thing a young lady can do, is it?" she was saying. "To leave one's cares behind and go off to sail the Seven Seas."

Vaguely uncomfortable, he gave a little laugh. "And what cares have you, Daisy Threale?" he said, teasingly.

"Why, none at all, as well you know, " She turned her face down and to the side, and the little lock of hair twirled in the breeze, lifting and falling, drifting across her bosom and around her neck. He thought he would like to take it in his fingers and push it back, gently, behind her ear.

Their affair had been brief, sweet, silly---just a bit of madness born of close proximity and lusty youth. Really, he hadn't loved her at all, had never even tried to convince himself he had. Truthfully, he imagined he must already have been in love with Fancy, and simply not dared to hope...

But Daisy had offered herself, freely, affectionately, out of the same simple attraction and need as he.

Surely.

He reached out, and she turned her face up again as his hand slid around the back of her neck. Her eyes were wide, her pretty pink mouth softly parted as he moved closer, bending to kiss her. Because she was sweet. Simple and soothing.

Like tobacco, like rum.

But with downcast eyes and a little laugh, she turned and moved away.

"We did agree, Mr. Clayton!" she said with a convincing smile, with her eyes giving him a bit of an exaggerated, speaking look.  "And in a week's time, you know, we'll all be back in London."

He started to apologize, but just like Daisy, she suddenly took a skipping step towards him, and before he could say a word, bounced up and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

"Just how foolish a girl do you think I am?" she whispered, and skipped away again.


*Author's note: The Seige of Gibraltar didn't come to such an abrupt end, exactly.  Sometime between September 13th, 1782---when an all out allied French and Spanish assault made little or no impression on the fortress--- and the official cessation of hostilities between Britain, France and Spain in February, 1783, the Allied pressure had gradually slackened and died away. So I fudged a little, but I think it's quite likely that war and communications being what they were, rumors were flying all the time and even making it into the newspapers. Also, during this period, British reinforcements and supplies were finally able to reach Gibraltar after more than three years of siege.

Go to Part Six