101

MONSTERS AND HEROES

The little boys were mad to see the whale, and tugged their reluctant mothers along like kites. I came along, keeping a somewhat more discreet distance from the towering carcass, leaving Jamie on the beach to recover. Roger took Duff aside for a bit of private conversation, while Peter subsided into somnolence in the bottom of the boat.

The carcass was newly washed up on the beach, though it must have been dead for some time before its landing; such an impressive state of decomposition must have taken days to develop. The stench notwithstanding, a number of the more intrepid visitors were standing on the carcass, waving cheerily to their companions on the beach below, and a gentleman armed with a hatchet was employed in hacking chunks of flesh from the side of the animal, dropping these into a pair of large buckets. I recognized him as the proprietor of an ordinary on Hawthorn Street, and made a mental note to strike that establishment from our list of potential eating-places.

Numbers of small crustaceans, not nearly so fastidious in their habits, swarmed merrily over the carcass, and I saw several people, also armed with buckets, picking the larger crabs and crayfish off like ripe fruit. Ten million sand fleas had joined the circus, too, and I retreated to a safe distance, rubbing my ankles.

I glanced back down the beach, seeing that Jamie had risen now and joined the conversation—Duff was looking increasingly restive, glancing back and forth from the whale to his boat. Clearly, he was anxious to return to business, before the attraction should disappear altogether.

At last he succeeded in escaping, and scampered away toward his piretta, looking hunted. Jamie and Roger came toward me, but the little boys were clearly not ready yet to leave the whale. Brianna nobly volunteered to watch them both, so that Marsali could climb the nearby lighthouse tower, to see whether there might be any sign of the Octopus.

“What have you been saying to poor Mr. Duff?” I asked Jamie. “He looked rather worried.”

“Aye? No need of worry,” he said, glancing toward the water, where Duff’s piretta was rapidly pulling back to the quay. “I’ve only put a wee bit of business in his way.”

“He knows where Lyon is,” Roger put in. He looked disturbed, but excited.

“And Mr. Lyon knows where Bonnet is—or if not where, precisely, at least how to get word to him. Let us go a bit higher, aye?” Jamie was still pale; he gestured toward the stair of the tower with his chin, wiping sweat from the side of his neck.

The air was fresher at the top of the tower, but I had little attention to spare for the view out over the ocean.

“And so …?” I said, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“So I have commissioned Duff to carry a message to Mr. Lyon. All being agreeable, we will meet with Mr. Bonnet at Wylie’s Landing, in a week’s time.”

I swallowed, feeling a wave of dizziness that had nothing to do with the height. I closed my eyes, clutching the wooden rail that surrounded the tiny platform we stood on. The wind was blowing hard, and the boards of the tower creaked and groaned, feeling frighteningly insubstantial.

I heard Jamie shift his weight, moving toward Roger.

“He is a man, ken?” he said quietly. “Not a monster.”

Was he? It was a monster, I thought, who haunted Brianna—and perhaps her father. Would killing him reduce him, make him no more than a man again?

“I know.” Roger’s voice was steady, but lacked conviction.

I opened my eyes, to see the ocean falling away before me into a bank of floating mist. It was vast and beautiful—and empty. One might well fall off the end of the world, I thought.

 

“Ye sailed wi’ our Stephen, aye? For what, two months, three?”

“Near on three,” Roger answered.

Our Stephen, was it? And what did Jamie mean by that homely usage, then?

Jamie nodded, not turning his head. He looked out over the rolling wash of the sea, the breeze whipping strands of hair loose from their binding to dance like flames, pale in daylight.

“Ye’ll have kent the man well enough, then.”

Roger leaned his weight against the rail. It was solid, but wet and sticky with half-dried spray, where spume from the rocks below had reached it.

“Well enough,” he echoed. “Aye. Well enough for what?”

Jamie turned then, to look him in the face. His eyes were narrowed against the wind, but straight and bright as razors.

“Well enough to ken he is a man—and no more.”

“What else would he be?” Roger felt the edge in his own voice.

Jamie turned back toward the sea, shading his eyes with his hand as he looked toward the sinking sun.

“A monster,” he said softly. “Something less than a man—or more.”

Roger opened his mouth to reply, but found he could not. For it was a monster that shadowed his own heart with fear.

“How did the sailors see him?” Claire’s voice came from Jamie’s other side; she leaned over the rail to look around him, and the wind seized her hair and shook it out in a flying cloud, stormy as the distant sky.

“On the Gloriana?” Roger took a deep breath, a whiff of dead whale mingling with the fecund scent of the salt marsh behind. “They … respected him. Some of them were afraid of him.” Like me. “He had the reputation of a hard captain, but a good one. Competent. Men were willing to ship with him, because he always came safe into port, his voyages were always profitable.”

“Was he cruel?” Claire asked. A faint line showed between her brows.

“All captains are cruel sometimes, Sassenach,” Jamie said, with a slight tinge of impatience. “They need to be.”

She glanced up at him, and Roger saw her expression change, memory softening her eyes, a wry thought tightening the corner of her mouth. She laid a hand on Jamie’s arm, and he saw her knuckles whiten as she squeezed.

“You’ve never done other than you had to,” she said, so quietly that Roger could scarcely hear her. No matter; the words were plainly not meant for him. She raised her voice then, slightly. “There’s a difference between cruelty and necessity.”

“Aye,” Jamie said, half under his breath. “And a thin line, maybe, between a monster and a hero.”