Falconer's Quest (10 page)
“Did she indeed.” Harkness pushed his dessert plate to one side and rested his elbows upon the linen tablecloth. “What else did you learn?”
Matt finished chewing his bite, then said, “They were missionaries to a tribe south of a desert they called something like the Great Burn. The tribe worshiped all manner of things. The Earth, the sky, the sun, the clouds, certain trees. Reverend Henning and Mrs. Henning told this tribe about the true God. About His son Jesus Christ.”
Falconer watched in new amazement at his son’s confidence, poise, and insight. He knew Ada had spent many hours reading with Matt, which practice Falconer had carried on when possible. But this maturity went far beyond those books and discussion of ideas.
Harkness did not respond immediately but settled his chin upon his fists, mashing his lower face into a massive scowl of concentration. “How long were they there?” he asked finally.
“Five years, sir. I believe she said Kitty was four when they arrived in Africa. Then the good reverend caught a fever. After he died, Mrs. Henning decided to stay on and continue her husband’s work.”
“So this makes the daughter about nine now. What more can you tell us?”
Matt put down his fork and folded his hands on the table. His hair was burnished by the candlelight. His cheeks and forehead were chafed in places by the sea and sun. His eyes were clear and as somber as his tone. “To the north and west was another tribe. They were Muslims and herders. They coveted the wells of the tribe where the Hennings made their home. One day they swept in at sunrise. They overran the tribe’s defenses and carried them away. They all marched across the desert for seventeen days. The elderly and the weak did not survive.”
Harkness cast a single glance at Falconer. The captain’s query was clear. Falconer resisted his first impulse, which was to tell the boy he should stop speaking of such terrible events. He said softly, “They sold them to slavers.”
“Yes, Father John. In the port where the pirate captain lives.”
Falconer looked at the upturned face for a moment. “I would rather the lady had not spoken to you about such things.”
Matt’s gaze was steady. “It made her feel better to speak the words aloud, sir. She told me so. Afterward we prayed for her daughter. I prayed for her peace. I said God had reached into my heart and offered peace. Even when I miss Mama the most, I know God is with me. I know this. She said that offered her more hope than anything she had known in all the weeks since Kitty was taken.”
Several of the men around the table found it necessary to clear their throats. Falconer among them. Harkness said gruffly, “And what a good lad you were to try and comfort her.”
Falconer felt his own heart swell with love. “You’re a long way from Salem town, my boy.”
Matt must have understood what Falconer meant. “All my life, I heard Papa Brune and other elders speak about the evils of the outside world. And how we are to be a people set apart for God. But the world comes in anyway, Father John. We help slaves to freedom. The elders, they worry about what the Carolina government will do about us and our way of life. They think the children don’t understand what they say, but we do.”
One of the officers scraped his chair, pushing back from the table. The lantern squeaked softly as it rolled with the sea. A beam creaked. Overhead the ship’s bell clanged the hour. Otherwise the cabin was utterly silent. Behind Matt, the steward and a crewman acting as his second had stepped through the open doorway to listen.
Matt went on, “The world enters in, Father John. And so does evil. Being inside Salem did not keep me from losing my father and my mother.”
Falconer said softly, “You have given this much thought.”
“I want to be a man of God, just like you, Father John. But I don’t know if I want to be that man back in Salem town.”
“It is your home, lad.”
“It was Mama’s home,” Matt corrected. The unspoken sadness almost made him chant the words. “I don’t know where my home is yet. I pray to God for guidance. I pray that He will be with me each day, wherever my home is.”
“Oh, yes indeed, well said.” Harkness lifted his chin so that he could use one fist to lightly thump the table. “What a wise and brave lad you are.”
“I have a boy of three,” Lieutenant Bivens said. “I can only hope and pray he grows into a person with your share of wisdom and faith.”
Falconer waited until the burning in his chest and eyes faded a trifle, then said, “I feel certain our God will answer your prayers.”
Lieutenant Bivens took to practicing swordplay with the midshipmen to restore his injured arm. He held a heavier cutlass in his weakened left hand, and the middies used smaller rapiers, their blades so thin they whipped like springs. Even so, Bivens grimaced as their blows landed upon his own blade. Falconer heard the clash of steel upon steel ring like a call of former days. Matt watched the middies and the sweating lieutenant, but did not join in. When not involved in his lessons of seamanship, he continued to remain near Mrs. Henning, reading to her from the lady’s book of psalms and singing the occasional hymn.
During their journey south along the coast of Portugal, Reginald Langston spent a good deal of time in his cabin, working through a box of papers he had collected from his London offices, reading from the Good Book, or resting in his bunk. He confessed to Falconer that the journey was a healing balm, as he gradually set aside the tensions and cares that had been building over recent months. He shared this news almost diffidently with Falconer. The journey had forced Reginald to accept how little control he had over events and timing. He was learning to release his tomorrows to God, and in so doing was sleeping better than he had in half a year.
The wind remained favorable, and squalls were few. On the sixth morning they came in sight of the cliffs that marked southernmost Portugal and the end of the Iberian Peninsula. The captain ordered the men aloft and turned the ship eastward on a heading for the Strait of Gibraltar.
Captain Harkness had assigned Matt duty with the middle watch, treating the lad as just another middy in every manner save pistolry and swordsmanship with Bivens. In these the captain silently accepted Falconer’s lead and allowed the boy to chart his own course. That particular day, as the ship swooped through the course change, the wind shifted with them.
Bivens noticed it as well. He lowered the musket he was priming and called over the cluster of midshipmen up to the quarterdeck. “Wind has gone ten degrees to the north, Captain!”
“Bosun, pipe the watch aloft!”
Falconer did not say a word as Matt scrambled up the ropes with the other two middies of that watch. But his heart constricted as he looked aloft. He knew full well that the higher up the masts they went, the more every motion of the ship was magnified. On numerous occasions Matt had been as far as the maintop, a platform and staging area where the lower mast was joined to the upper. The upper one was a single seasoned tree trunk, usually pine. The lower masts were formed by several trunks bound together with iron bands. This time Matt gripped the main shrouds and clambered higher. These shrouds were heavily tarred, which added strength to the ropes and also granted the seamen a better grip. In many cases the boys clung to the shrouds by their knees while using both hands to manage the sails.
The two middies and Matt, however, were stationed where guide ropes, known as ratlines, connected to the mast. A second circular station was set there for the watchmen. The middies were supposedly sent aloft to direct the topmen, but these sailors knew far more about setting sails than any young midshipman. In truth, the middies were there to learn the ship—bow chaser to stern anchor and every rigging in between.
A voice spoke softly to Falconer’s left, “It appears a terrifying height from here.”
Falconer nodded in a brief salute to Amelia Henning, then returned his attention to the small figure above. “It is far more frightening up there.”
“Does your son know fear?”
He glanced down once more. “Ma’am?”
“Oh, it is a silly question. But he is so remarkably calm. I know he is just a lad, yet I feel able to talk with him of nearly anything that comes to heart and mind.” Her focus followed Falconer’s to where Matt clung to a ratline, standing upon a perch that looked smaller than a halfpenny. “How will he get down?”
“That is part of the test. If he still has strength in his limbs, he will go out the crosstie and come down the outer sheet.”
“Test?”
“It’s part of a midshipman’s training, ma’am. Learning to maintain one’s strength and courage where there is both risk and danger.”
“Oh, there they go.” Her voice raised an octave. “He looks so awfully small.”
Indeed he did, a blond-headed waif perched impossibly high, two full sails above the deck, upon a tossing sea. Matt followed one of the topmen out along the wooden boom, another middy behind him. They were all barefoot. The topman was an experienced mate. Falconer could see the sailor smile reassuringly as he talked the middies out to the crosstie’s narrow end. There the topman clambered onto the rope ladder, scarcely as wide as Falconer’s thigh. He climbed up higher, so that the middies moved onto the ladder with him holding the upper ratline and keeping it stable. As stable as any rope ladder could be, high above a wave-tossed deck, with three bodies moving slowly earthward.
Falconer resisted the urge to race over and steady the ladder. He had been tested in the very same manner, and knew the lad had to make it on his own. But Falconer remained so tightly poised to spring if the lad’s grip slipped that he could not breathe.
His chest did not unlock until Matt’s feet touched the deck. Harkness had obviously felt the strain as well, for when the second middy stepped from the ladder the skipper’s voice cracked slightly as he called down, “Well done, the pair of you! Ye’ll be old salts before you know it.”
Falconer pressed a fist to his chest, forcing his lungs to drink in a breath. His heart thudded as loud as a hammer on teak.
Mrs. Henning sighed audibly. “I admire your calm, sir.”
“On the contrary, ma’am.” Falconer found it necessary to lean against the railing. “I was merely frozen solid with fear.”
Matt did not skip across the deck, though he might as well have. “I was high as a mountaintop, Father John!”
“Indeed you were.” Once more Falconer resisted his urge to wrap his arms around the boy. “Yes, indeed,” he said again. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”
Matt took hold of Falconer’s hand, and Falconer could feel the gummy tar upon the lad’s fingers. Matt craned up and traced the line he had just taken. “I was so afraid, Father John. I prayed ever so hard.”
“Courage comes from acting in the face of fear, lad.”
Matt kept his gaze upon the rigging overhead. “I have been very afraid for so long, Father John.”
“Of what?”
Matt shrugged. “I did not even know—didn’t know it was fear until just now. Is that strange?”
This time, Falconer gave in to his impulse. He squatted down beside the boy. “I will tell you the honest truth that resides in my heart. I have no experience with lads. None. But I think you are remarkable, both in what you think and in your deeds. So I shall answer you as I would a man. Which, I think, you are.”
Matt dropped his gaze to Falconer’s. He had his mother’s eyes, clear as smoke from a holy fire.
Falconer went on, “You are more alone than any lad ever deserved to be. You have lost both mother and father. Yet you remain a good lad, not giving in to rage or useless grief. You pray, you sing, you care for others. Your fear is natural. Your pain is what makes you human just now. But I am certain…”
Falconer’s throat clenched tight. He used his free hand to brush at the boy’s hair where it fell across his forehead. When he could speak again, he continued, “I am certain that you are well on your way to wholeness—body, soul, and spirit. And that neither your fear nor your loss will conquer you.”
Falconer had forgotten the woman was nearby until he heard movement. He glanced over and saw how her shoulders were bowed, her head supported by her uplifted arms resting on the railing. He knew he should go to her, but not before he was finished with the business at hand.
He took Matt’s shoulders in both his hands. “I am very proud of you, my son.”
Late that afternoon, as they passed Cape Trafalgar, a British frigate appeared on the horizon and greeted them with a round of cannon fire.
“Captain Clovis sends his compliments, sir,” Bivens said as he read the signal flags through his telescope. “He asks our business and our destination.”
Captain Harkness bristled at the challenge. “Respond that our destination is obviously the Mediterranean. Our business is our own.”
Falconer spoke loud enough to cause the lieutenant to hesitate as he sorted through their own chest of signal flags. “I beg you to reconsider, Captain.”
Harkness jabbed a finger at the warship as it hove to a half dozen leagues away. “No popinjay frigate flying British colors has the right to demand anything of an American merchant vessel.”