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“Problem with the flagpole, lad?”
“My pole’s just fine. It’s my mind that drags down.”
“Happens sometimes.”
They worked silently on their respective tasks. It was a cold, sunny day. Gulls wheeled overhead andsun shone on the back of his neck as he sanded the decking he’d replaced. Ford hadn’t boarded a ship in six months. He’d missed the water . . . and he’d feared it.
“Why’d you never marry, Griff?”
His friend tied a bowline knot. “Never met the woman who could tie the Griffster down, though many have tried. Had a sweetheart once, a feisty little brunette in Bristol with the roundest, bounciest bum you ever did see.”
“What happened to her?”
“Married my best friend while I was at sea.”
“Oof.” Ford bent back to his task of sanding the splinters from the deck. The monotonous chore used the strength of his arms but left his mind free to worry over events from his past.
“What’d they die for, Griff? Young Sal. Bent-nose Billy. Pretty Tom. I can still hear Tom singing ‘The Foggy, Foggy Dew’sometimes.”
“You heard them read the vice admiral’s letter. ‘They died in the service of their country, and in the cause of suffering humanity.’ There you have it. King and country. Bloody honor and glory.”
He’d seen their coffins, perforated with holes and filled with bags of wet sand to make them sink, laid into the water covered by the Union Jack.
He’d watched the sea swallow them.
Their man-of-war had limped from Greece to Malta, no longer proud and gallant, but battered and torn with shot. He’d patched her as best he could with lead and pieces of plank.
Once Ford had been as gallant as that man-of-war, filled with a righteous sense of destiny, butafter that brutal, bloody battle there’d been a hole shot through his heart for every one of the friends he’d lost.
He felt the weight of their deaths as bags of sand tied to his soul until the balance shifted, dragged him down, until his soul was sodden with death, consumed by it.
“The action in Greece was bad. I’m not saying you’re not right to think about it,” said Griff. “I’m only saying there’s no use dwelling on it—that only leads to the madhouse. You’re still young, and now you’re moving up in the ranks. Likely the last time I’ll have you on my boat, eh? Once you’re an officer you won’t have time for the likes of me. You’ll turn up your nose and look the other way.”
“That’ll never happen and you know it.”
“You’re a bloody war hero, Ford. You saved lives.”
“I can’t even remember it.”
It was all a blur when he looked back. The booming of cannons. Smell of scorched flesh.
Screams of his friends.
Staunching the leaks. Staunching the blood.
“Well, I remember it.” Griff finished another knot. “You damn well saved my tough old hide.”
Ford ducked his head back to his work. He should be proud of what he’d done, but all he felt was emptiness, a sense of being lost at sea, adrift without an anchor.
For some reason he thought about Lady Beatrice crooning to her beloved books, telling them she’d patch the roof and give them a nice safe home. He’d been serious about helping her battle his grandfather and keep the bookshop. But it was for the bestthat she’d turned him down. His dreams had been filled with her again last night.
She’d been expanding his vocabulary, and he’d been instructing her in the pleasures of—
“Look lively, mate,” Griff said, shading his eyes with his hand. “There’s a lady here to see you.”
“A laddie?”
“Alady. She’s got one of ’em big shiny carriages waiting, and she’s wearing one of ’em big showy bonnets with ribbons and feathers flying in the breeze. She’s waving at me.”
