Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lord Ashcombe was a man experienced at reading others, and he knew at once that this would not be good news. He didn’t know this soldier, but it made no difference; the anxiety was painted clearly across his features. Quickly, he stood from the desk, where a map of the southern coast lay unfurled.

“What news?” said Lord Ashcombe, scrutinizing him. A sheaf of papers was clutched in his hand, edges crumpled by his too-firm grip.

“Nothing good, I’m afraid,” he said. “The Travail, along with at least six other vessels, has been reported as missing, presumed to be lost.”

At this, the soldier offered a list, on which was written a log of those ships that had made it to port within the nearest thirty miles. At the bottom was a list of the missing: Mermaid, destination Brighton, presumed lost; Lady Luck, destination Brighton, presumed lost; Emerald Beauty, destination Portsmouth, presumed lost; Phoenix, destination Dover, presumed lost; Explorer, destination Eastborne, presumed lost; Travail, destination Dover, presumed lost.

Travail, destination Dover, presumed lost.

The soldier was still speaking, but Lord Ashcombe had stopped listening.

“...Reports are still incomplete at this time, but this is the most current information we possess regarding the recent storms in the Channel-”

“Is there word yet of survivors?” Ashcombe interrupted.

“My lord?”

“Survivors,” He repeated. “From the wrecks.”

Travail, destination Dover, presumed lost.

“With the violence of the storm, General...The outlook does not seem favorable.”

“I wasn’t asking for probabilities,” he said shortly, shoving the papers into his coat.

“No survivors have been reported at this time, sir.”

“Keep me updated on any new developments, regardless of the ship. If some were able to survive, it’s likely others did as well.”

“As you command, my lord.” With this, the soldier saluted, then turned and left the room.

He turned back to the desk, leaning once more over the map. The Travail, carrying with it a disguised Christopher, Tom, and Sally, had departed from Calais four days ago. They were supposed to have arrived in Dover on the fourth of December before making their way north to Ashford, where Lord Ashcombe would meet them. He had waited for two days, growing rather impatient as the hours dragged on with no correspondence from them.

It was only after arriving in Dover that he’d heard the news of the storm, and that their ship had never arrived.

There were no details surrounding the storm, only that it had been fierce, springing up without warning. Most seemed to agree that it was blowing westwards, meaning that most vessels would’ve been carried further down the coast. If they hadn’t been torn to pieces by the winds, that is.

But how far west could they have been carried? The southern coast stretched some three hundred miles, most of it comprising rocky cliffs and remote villages. As soon as he’d heard of the storm, Lord Ashcombe had written to outposts in Hastings, Eastbourne, and Brighton, inquiring after the Travail and his missing grandson. As of yet, there’d been no reply; the snows had come early this year, and the roads between towns were treacherous and painfully slow.

“Where are you, Christopher Rowe?” He muttered to himself, before rolling up the map and stuffing it back within the dark confines of the desk.

* * * * *

“Get me Captain Tanner,” ordered Lord Ashcombe, watching as three of the King’s Men hastily went in search of the man. The wind lashed against them, bringing biting flurries of snow along with the chill. From where he was standing, he couldn’t see the sea, but he imagined that it was tossing restlessly.

It had been seven days since the storm, five since the news that the Travail had been lost. In that period, he had moved his command from Dover to Hastings, searching the coastline for signs of a wreck and scouring the towns for any word of survivors. So far, they’d found little, aside from a confirmation from the townsfolk that the storm had indeed been blowing westward.

Not finding anything for over a week, not even pieces of the ship, was not a good sign. But Lord Ashcombe was stubborn if nothing else, and the passing days had only served to increase his efforts.

“You asked for me, General?” Captain Tanner said, nodding respectfully towards him. Tanner was a tall man, stocky, skilled with both sword and halberd. His brow was creased slightly in concern, dark eyes serious beneath. He’d known the man since His Majesty’s return, and he’d served him well.

“I did. We’ve been in Hastings for two days, and since then have found nothing; no news of survivors, no evidence of a wreck, no new information of value. I’ve decided to move our command to Brighton, continuing the search along the way.”

“As you command, General,” replied Captain Tanner. He didn’t say anything more, but Ashcombe could see the doubt in his eyes. If they hadn’t found anything by now, it was not likely that they would find anything good. Probability was a fickle creature, and it dictated that Tom, Sally, and Christopher would not be found alive.

“Inform the men that we leave in an hour,” he said brusquely. “I wish to reach Brighton in two day’s time.”

“Yes, My lord.” With that, he departed, issuing the orders to prepare for departure.

* * * * *

Ashcombe had never been much of a man for sleep, that was for certain. His youth had been a near-endless string of glittering balls and late nights gambling, and sleep had soon been shunted to make room for his ever-filling schedule of sword training and riding and lessons in French.

Later, after the execution of Charles I, he had been too preoccupied in keeping the rightful heir alive and out of sight to have ever slept more than five or six hours in a single stretch. Over a decade on the run from Cromwell’s agents had instilled in him an appreciation for safety over rest, and coffee had quickly become one of his most trusted companions.

Yet it had been a long time since nightmares like these had plagued him.

They were never quite the same, but each welcomed him with a cold fury whenever he closed his eyes for more than a moment. Darkened alleys and silent forests and roiling, churning waves. Hands reaching, grasping, slick with dark blood. The tattered echoes of someone sobbing. Shrieks in the night, the flash of a blade, red mixing with the mud on the cobblestones. A thousand fragments of Christopher Rowe, overlaid atop one another only to break apart in an instant. The voice of a man, not one he’d ever heard before, screaming that it was his fault, his fault, his fault, as the ocean boiled with the blood of a boy he had sent to his doom and the night wept for the tragedy of it all.

Gasping, he would stagger from his bed, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle in an effort to steady himself. Guilt clung to him like a second skin these days, omnipresent and unshakable. Had Christopher died quickly, he wondered, pulled down by the clawing waters? Or had it been drawn out, clinging desperately to the battered remnants of the ship as the world raged around him?

He could only pray the end had been swift.

On those nights when he was still sober, when he hadn’t yet blacked out from drink and from exhaustion, Ashcombe returned to his desk, running over and over maps of the English and French coastlines.

Those nights were fewer and fewer. Drink had always been a weakness, a dulling of the sharpest points of exile and the trials of maintaining power.

Now it dulled his grief.

* * * * *

“Are you mad? I’m not telling him.”

“Oh, shove off, Zacky, there ain’t anyone else.”

“I said no, you dolt. Open your damn ears for once and listen.”

“Well, as long as it’s not me I don’t see an issue.”

“Is that so, Stevens? Perhaps should be you, then.”

“What? Now that’s not fair, I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Ashcombe had nearly strode into the adjacent room, hoping to see finalized plans for departure being made. The sound of conversation had made him pause, leaning against the doorway just out of sight. You truly see a man’s thoughts when he thinks you’re not listening, Walsingham had once told him. It had been invaluable advice.

“Straws, then, to make things fair. Short one has to tell him.”

There were grumbles of assent, and then a brief rustling as straws of varying lengths were produced. He was momentarily confused, the haze of liquor still lingering on his mind from the previous night, when it hit him in an instant. They were drawing straws to pick the unfortunate man to speak to him.

“Hah! Good luck spinning this one to the General, Raleigh, he won’t like it one bit.”

“Perhaps I should be the judge of that.” Ashcombe strode into the room, leather heels clicking on the floorboards. Four of the King’s Men snapped smartly to attention, still holding the straws feebly in their gloved hands.

“General,” one of them began — the one who had pulled the shortest straw, he noticed — “We meant no disrespect, sir, none of us knew-”

“It matters not what you did or did not know. We leave within the hour. Are preparations in order?”

There was a heavy pause.

“Er, well, not exactly-”

“And what is it,” Ashcombe growled, his single dark eye flashing, “that isn’t exactly in order?”

“It’s the men, sir,” The man to his left, the one called Raleigh stated bluntly. “They think it a poor idea to travel in such weather, especially given that we’ve not heard nor seen no sign of a wreck since we began. Best to wait out the storm, the men think, than to keep pushing forward and risk losing ourselves.”

He wasn’t wrong. It was risky, almost foolhardy, to move nearly forty men to Brighton. In weather such as this it would be more than a day’s journey; and, knowing Ashcombe as they did, the men were not enthused by the idea of traveling throughout the night as well as the day.

But what was the alternative? Try and wait out a storm that showed no sign of passing? If they’d managed to survive the wreck, Tom, Sally, and Christopher’s odds of being found sank even lower with each day that slipped by. No, onwards was the only option.

“Do I look,” He bit out, teeth grinding, “like I give a goddamn care about you not wanting to travel in poor weather?”

Another tense silence followed. “It ain’t just the weather, General,” another man spoke up. “You’ll pardon my saying so, but morale is low. Supplies are low, and with no progress been made, many aren’t sure what exactly our plan is.”

“As it has been from the beginning: to discover the fate of the Travail and locate her survivors.” He didn’t say the last part, which they all were no doubt thinking: if there are any survivors. “I don’t care if morale is low. Frankly, I don’t care if you’re all so cold that your fingers blacken and need to be cut off one by one, and I’ll be the one to do it myself if that’s what it fucking takes. We leave within the hour. Be ready, or be left behind.”

Ashcombe turned and stalked out of the room, heels echoing in the silence left behind.

* * * * *

The storms, it seemed, were endless. It was as if nature itself were grieving, taking her pain out in the lashing of the wind. Hail tore like pinpricks on Ashcombe’s face, the hood of his cloak doing little to shield him from the fury. Behind him by thirty or so feet was the first group of men, fifteen or so of them, all armed and mounted. The remaining thirty were spread out across the next few miles, combing the farmlands and the shoreline.

He had reached the outskirts of a farming village near Brighton when he saw a figure staggering through the hail. He trotted his horse forward, pulling up beside them along the muddy path. The figure paused, their clothes soaked to the bone with dripping water.

“Sir?” A young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty, peered up at him through the pounding hail. Her eyes widened and she took a step back when she saw the ruined half of his face.

“My name is Lord Ashcombe,” He said, voice raised to be heard above the howling of the wind. “I’m searching for survivors of a recent shipwreck in the channel. Have any washed up on shore?”

She stared up at him in stunned silence for another heartbeat before her mouth began to work.

“A…A few bodies turned up a week ago, me lord. Tossed in by the tide, though none here recognized them.”

A few bodies washed up on the shore. Those we’re searching for, or someone else?

“What did they look like?”

“Two men, me lord, and an old woman. She had long, grey hair, and a weathered face.”

“And the men?”

“Hard to say, me lord. They was so bloated from the seawater, none could really tell what they might’ve looked like afore they drowned.”

He wondered, then, whether he would even be able to recognize Christopher if he found him. Bodies so bloated from the seawater, unrecognizable…

He shook these thoughts away.

“How old were they, if you had to guess? And the ship? Any information about her?” His voice was sharp, insisting, trying to pry the useful information out like a seagull clawing at a clamshell.

“Oh, they was maybe forty five or so. I think the ship was a Dutch one, but I canna be sure. Me lord,” she added hastily onto the end.

In other words, no one that he was looking for. The hail had turned to rain, and was now steadily dripping through his coat and to the clothing beneath. The young woman turned away to go, evidently on her return to some cottage or another, and began to hurry through the rain.

“Wait.”

She turned back, not yet drawing closer again. Ashcombe pulled a guinea from deep within his pockets and, stepping his horse a few paces closer to her, handed her the coin.

“For your help.” He said, rough voice grating. She stared at him, goggle-eyed, and then hastily tucked the coin into her blouse before darting back through the rain and vanishing into the mist.

* * * * *

They reached Brighton by the second evening, the going made slower by the thorough picking of the country and the shoreline. Nothing was found, save the remnants of driftwood and kelp tossed up by the churning tides. Perhaps that was for the best. He didn’t know what he’d have done if he came across teenaged corpses.

There was a naval outpost in the city, as well as a barracks for soldiers, both of which he rapidly took over. The lieutenant in charge there had almost been on the verge of refusing him the space, but wisely chose to keep his mouth shut and let them pass. It was lucky that the majority of the sailors were away on a scouting mission along the Dutch coast, or else the quarters would be fit to burst with the additional fifty men.

His map, now rather crinkled and worn with the constant unfurling, was rolled out on his commandeered desk, edges held down by paperweights. Narrow handwriting filled in the margins, along with small Xs in the towns that they’d passed through, each one a failure. Now, there were close to a half dozen of them.

The question was to the strength of the storm, and where they’d been when it struck. If they had still been towards the French side of the channel, they could have been carried much farther west than anticipated.

Or it was that they’d simply drowned.

Ashcombe raised the whiskey bottle to his lips, taking a deep drink of the fiery liquid. It had been his preferred drink since he’d first gone into exile, and had needed something stronger to numb the pain. It burned down his throat, the smoldering warming him from within and steadying his hands. He took another pull, and then another, before getting a grip on himself and setting the bottle down. His vision swayed briefly before righting itself.

It must have been that they’d been carried further west. That was the only solution that made any sort of sense. By now, if they had been struck on the English part of the channel, something would have washed up by now, even if it were just pieces of a shattered mast. Yet there had been nothing, not even a fragment of sailcloth for ten days.

He stared at the map again, finger tracing the line of the southern coast. He would keep going, until he found definitive proof they were gone. Even if he had to search the entire coastline to do it.

* * * * *

The storms let up enough for him to press onwards the day after. The men were weary and exhausted, and low bickering could frequently be heard, but none had come to him to try and talk him out of it. Tanner, mounted atop his bay mare, could be seen twenty yards back with one of the supply wagons they’d retrieved in town. A few others were beside him, more out further in the countryside and a few on the shore.

He drank himself into a restless stupor on the nights when exhaustion demanded he rest. Offers to play cards or dice with the King’s Men were flatly rejected, and when he wasn’t taking stock of munitions or stalking the coastline, he was either with his maps or with his drink. Often both.

Charles had written a brief note expressing his continued hope for good news, and that he was entreating the Lord for Christopher’s safe recovery. At the end, near the bottom, he’d scrawled a few lines meant for Ashcombe’s eyes only. Take care of yourself, Richard, he wrote, and know that you are the bravest soul I know. Please be careful, and I trust you’ll return with our favorite apprentice safe and sound. Yours, as always and forever, Charles.

He slid it within his pocket and kept it close. Days followed days, which turned into a week, and still there was nothing. That was most infuriating of all. Any news, good or ill, and he could prepare himself for it. There was action that could be taken, arrangements made. It was the not knowing that threatened to drive him mad.

They reached Portsmouth, and then Bournesmouth, both small port cities that reeked of salt and decay. Another storm held them there for a day, and Ashcombe paced the halls of the small inn, glowering at anyone who passed too closely.

Two and a half weeks into this fruitless journey, and he was in Weymouth, which was, if possible, even more decrepit and dank than either of the previous two had been. There was no end to the rain, it seemed, which whipped the sea into a white froth and pounded against the town.

He’d driven his men nearly ninety miles in search. Ninety miles, and for what? The scattered ruins of driftwood? The haunting silence of the dead?

Ashcombe slumped in the chair by the fireplace of his room, staring into the flickering flames.

He remembered a boy, covered in flaking blood, sitting by the slashed body of his former master. How young Christopher had looked to him then, tear tracks still drying on his face. Skinny as a bird and as frail as one too. It was only a few days later that he’d watched him be tortured, his screams echoing off the stone walls of the mausoleum. No, Christopher Rowe was made of sterner stuff than he appeared.

He should’ve done more to protect him. God, what had he been thinking, sending three children to France alone? It was no wonder that they were dead. Three more bodies to add to the heap of those he’d led to their doom.

He stared into the flames, and wept.

* * * * *

“General?” Ashcombe turned, the dirt road beneath him having turned to mud. Tanner stood there, a pimple-faced youth awkwardly standing a few paces behind. “This lad here says he has a message for you.”

“A message? Of what sort?”

“Er, I’m not sure, me lord, but I reckon ‘tis a family matter.”“A family matter?” What in God’s name was this boy about?

“So said the lad who gave it to me. Said he was your grandson, or some such, me lord. From Seaton.”

Ashcombe stared at him uncomprehending for an instant, and then snatched the letter out of his hands.

Dearest Grandfather, it began, the letters neat and even. He didn’t know Christopher’s handwriting on sight, but from what he remembered, the resemblance was strong. He skimmed over the rest of the letter, eyes catching on the lines I’m very sick and please, please send help. And there, at the bottom, was his name. Your devoted Christopher.

“Tell the men to gather themselves and mount up,” he ordered Tanner. “We leave for Seaton immediately.”

Chapter Text

Unconscious in the snow, face down and bloody, lay Christopher Rowe. Against all odds, he was not dead after all, though at the moment he certainly looked it. The blood smeared against his clothing and too-pale skin only added to the corpse-like effect. Tom Bailey lay sprawled beside him, wide eyes staring up at Ashcombe in utter shock. A severed head rolled gently nearby, coming to a stop a few feet away from him as the sounds of battle began to fade.

“What…What are we going to do?” Tom murmured softly, gazing around at the scene of horror surrounding him. Bodies of fallen Berbers, dead or bleeding out, lay scattered among the snow.

“Can you walk?”

“I…I’m not sure.” Carefully, he rolled onto his hands and knees, attempting to push himself to a standing position. He staggered forward a few steps, hobbling on a single foot, before collapsing to his knee once again with a muffled cry.

“Here.” Ashcombe leaned down and stuck out his hand, pulling him to his feet, then motioned one of the King’s Men over. “Take him back to the Blue Boar Inn at Seaton. If the innkeep claims he can’t house a half dozen more men, some coin ought to smooth things over.” Here he tossed a leather purse to the man, which jingled softly as he caught it.

“And you, General?” the man — Stevens, Ashcombe believed his name was — asked.

“I’ll be right behind you. Find a surgeon, if you can. We’ve wounded to tend to.” Stevens offered Tom his hand, helping to hoist him into the saddle in front of him. The two of them galloped off into the night and back towards the town, Tom looking over his shoulder at the body of his fallen friend.

Ashcombe dismounted quickly and walked over to Christopher’s crumpled form, his boots crunching softly in the snow. Gently, he rolled him over, eyes searching for signs of injury. The blood was clearly coming from his shoulder, still flowing hot across his skin. In addition, his fingers were badly scraped and peeling, seeming almost blackened in the faint moonlight. Frostbite, perhaps, or something else? There wasn’t anything else he could see immediately; he’d have to examine his wounds closer back at the inn.

He reached down and picked him up, one arm beneath his legs with the other cradling his shoulders. Christopher had always seemed slight, but he seemed to weigh little more than a sack of flour despite being soaking wet. Lord Ashcombe suspected that were he wearing fewer layers he would be able to feel his ribs concerningly easily. Unconscious, he seemed surprisingly peaceful, pale face almost angelic in its calm. It was a strange turn to witness Christopher, usually so boundless in energy so utterly still and silent.

Walking back to his horse, he carefully remounted, holding the boy’s fragile form gently to his chest. Blood seeped hot from his shoulder into Ashcombe’s dark overcoat, and he wrapped one arm tightly around Christopher and pulled him close. The smell of blood lingered in his nostrils as he turned and galloped back to Seaton, the stars shimmering above them all.

* * * * *

“Is anyone here a surgeon?” Called Ashcombe as he stumbled hurriedly into the inn, Christopher still cradled in his arms. The boy was distressingly pale, skin almost ashen with blood loss. He didn’t respond to touch or sound, and his skin was freezing with chill to top it off. All in all, things did not look well.

The innkeep stared at him as he passed, mouth open, and then scurried out of the way of the following men tramping in through the doorway.

“Haven’t found no surgeon, General,” another man replied from the top of the stairway. “But I’ve been in enough battles to know how to tend a wounded soldier. Bring him up here, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Ashcombe did as he said, approaching a cozy and well-lit room with a large bed in the center. To the left was a fireplace, already crackling, as well as a small table with a stack of leather-bound books resting atop it. He layed Christopher down on the bed carefully, then began removing his clothes. He knew that the boy wouldn’t have liked anyone seeing him undressed, let alone the King’s Warden, but at the moment he had more pressing concerns than an adolescent’s modesty.

He stripped him bare, cutting away at his undershirt rather than trying to maneuver it over his wounded shoulder, shucking the damp and bloodstained garments to the floor. He inhaled sharply at seeing the wound exposed, for it was most certainly the work of a bullet. That would need immediate attention.

If he had seemed thin earlier, it was now apparent just how underfed the boy truly was. Ashcombe could see each rib as he breathed in, the pale skin stretched over the bones. Evidently the letter had understated just how ill Christopher had been.

Aside from his shoulder, his hands were indeed frostbitten as well, the skin around the fingers blackened and peeling. It looked painful, though not a cause for concern. Other than that, there weren’t any other major injuries that Ashcombe could see. The patch of melted flesh on his chest stood out in the glow of the firelight, the marks of the puritan’s torture. On his other shoulder was a larger gash, evidently where he’d been wounded in the confrontation with the plague doctors.

“What’s the situation, General?” Ashcombe was torn abruptly from his thoughts by the soldier’s voice.

“Bullet to the left shoulder. Seems to have only taken flesh, but it’s likely still lodged inside.”

“Aye. We’ll need to cauterize it first, afore we try and dig anything out.” He picked up a long metal poker resting by the fireplace, then nestled it deep within the glowing coals. It was hardly his first time watching this, but Lord Ashcombe couldn’t help but cringe internally when thinking about what would come next.

Stevens, the man from before, came and brought a heap of clean bandages to the room.

“There’s some poppy, too, that we brought along in case. Should I bring it up, sir?” he asked.

Ashcombe nodded. “Stay here a moment first, Stevens. We’ll need you to help hold him down.”

Gingerly, he lifted Christopher up and flipped him over, trying his best not to move his wound too much. A whimper escaped the boy’s lips as he did so, causing Ashcombe’s heart to twist in sympathy. Then he froze.

There were scars all across Christopher’s back. Long and pale, they crossed and intersected each other on the flesh, each one a narrow strip. The marks of a flogging, and not just once. A catalog of years of abuse, of repeated punishment, etched in fine white lines across his skin.

Ashcombe stared at them for a moment, transfixed by the sight. Who could have done this? Was it Blackthorn? He considered the thought. Christopher had clearly loved the man, though that didn’t necessarily rule him out. Still, it seemed unlikely. Who else could have, then?

“Been a while since I’ve seen marks like that on a lad.” murmured Stevens beside him. “You only get scars like that from someone who means it. His father must’ve been a piece o’ work.”

“He’s an orphan,” Ashcombe said softly, trying to recollect himself. “How old do you think those scars are, Stevens?”

“A few years, most likely. They’re pretty faded as they are.”

“And the cause?” He needed to hear someone else say it, confirm his suspicions.

“Beaten with a belt, or more likely a whip. Clear it was a common enough thing, based on what I’m seeing.” Stevens shook his head. “We best get on with it, General.”

The two of them braced Christopher, pinning him to the mattress. The soldier pulled the poker from the fire, the metal now glowing a deep red. They pushed him down hard against the bed as the poker was pressed firmly into the wound, his body reflexively arcing against the hands keeping him down.

Christopher shrieked loudly, an animal sound muffled little by the mattress. Abruptly, he went slack beneath Ashcombe’s hands, sinking suddenly into unconsciousness.

“What are you doing to him?” Tom cried suddenly from the doorway, eyes wide with horror. He was leaning against the doorframe, his ankle preventing him from standing straight. He must’ve come when he heard the scream.

“Has to be done, lad,” said Stevens, not unkindly. “Your friend has a bullet in his shoulder. Only way to prevent infection is through fire.”

“You…” Tom’s face, if possible, got even whiter when he saw the still-glowing poker in the soldier’s hand. “You burned him?”

“Would you rather he lost the arm?” snapped Ashcombe. Tom said nothing, his face a mixture of fear and anger. Ashcombe sighed. “You should leave, Tom. You won’t want to watch this next part.”

“What are you going to do?” he whispered.

“Dig it out.”

“I’m not leaving him. Not again.”

“For Christ’s sake, boy-”

“I’m not leaving him-”

“All right!” interjected Stevens suddenly. “Stay if you want to stay, lad, but don’t interfere with what we’re doing. Allen, get your knife out.” He directed this last bit towards the other man, who had set down the poker and drawn out a small, slender blade. It gleamed in the firelight as he pressed it into the burned flesh.

Tom flinched as he watched them work, cutting into the skin and pushing the knife further in. Christopher groaned softly, evidently not quite as unconscious as thought. More blood sluggishly dripped onto the woolen sheeting below as they continued to dig into the wound.

“Have you-”

“I’ve got it.” The soldier carefully prized his fingers into the tattered flesh and pulled from it a small, round lump. The bullet, covered in blood. Ashcombe leaned over and grabbed a bandage, beginning to wind it tightly around the shoulder. Christopher’s skin was ashen, a thin film of sweat on his features, and the cloth reddened alarmingly fast. Ashcombe pulled the bandage tighter, then rapidly placed another on top of the first. A sudden silence fell as they finished their task, the boy once again having slipped into oblivion.

“He won’t truly lose the arm, will he?” Tom’s voice was small in the quiet of the room. Ashcombe glanced at him then, too-wide eyes and a sickened expression on his face. He pulled the bedsheets gently over Christopher, remembering how cold he must still be.

“I don’t think so.” he said softly, looking down at the fragile body in front of him. Tom nodded, though it seemed little comfort to him. They both stood there, for a time, saying nothing. The two other men began to clean up the room, soon leaving it in favor of a warm drink downstairs.
“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“It should’ve been me who got shot, not him.”

“It doesn’t matter who should’ve or shouldn’t have. It happened. Now we deal with it.”

“He doesn’t deserve it.”

Ashcombe sighed. “Few people ever get what they deserve. It’s the cold truth of the world, and Christopher is no exception.”

“I know. It doesn’t change things. Not for me, at least.” They both fell silent, Tom’s last statement hanging in the air between them. Neither had moved from where they stood, Tom at the door and Ashcombe by the bed.

He struggled to form his next words, though he felt he must say them. “Christopher…he has scars. On his back.” Tom’s expression momentarily cracked, and he saw a deep sorrow in its place.

“He…yes, my lord.”

“Where did he get them?” It was a miracle of self control that Ashcombe managed to keep his voice even. He had the intense desire, then, to thrash whoever had beaten the boy hard enough to leave such wounds behind.

“From Cripplegate. The orphanage, I mean, where he grew up.” He had known Christopher was an orphan, but that was the extent of his knowledge of the boy’s past.

“They beat all their children like that?”

“Most of them, I think. He doesn’t really talk about it. I asked him once, when we were younger, what had happened to him there. He just said that it wasn’t a happy childhood. I tried to get more out of him, but he got all quiet on me and wouldn’t answer.”

“Small wonder why.” Lord Ashcombe pulled out a chair from the table and sat down, exhaustion from the last two weeks starting to wear on him. He pulled out a flask of brandy as Tom hobbled into the room, hopping awkwardly on one foot, and sat down across from him.

“My father, he beats me sometimes too, but never…never like that. I’ve known Christopher for almost four years, and he never brings up Cripplegate. Sometimes it’s like his life began at eleven, when his Master took him in.” That was the thing about scars. Oftentimes, they marked you even worse on the inside. Ashcombe took a long pull from his flask.

“Didn’t Blackthorn ever strike him?” He had never known the man in life, only the little he had gleaned from town gossip when the Cult of the Archangel had been hunting. The idea that Christopher could have killed him as retribution for the cruelties he had endured beneath his care had been both popular and likely.

Tom looked sharply at him. “He never laid a hand on him.”

Ashcombe blinked in surprise. “Are you certain?” Now that seemed highly unlikely, especially given Christopher’s proclivities for fire-based experimentation.

“I’m sure. Even when he probably deserved it, that man never touched him. It was funny, you know…I was always terrified of him. Mr. Blackthorn always seemed like the kind of person who would put you in your place when needed, but he was good to Christopher. Better than good, really.”

Ashcombe wondered, then, if Blackthorn had known the true extent of his apprentice’s life at Cripplegate, or if, like Ashcombe, was left solely to speculate on what he saw. He guessed the latter; if Christopher didn’t talk to Tom about it, then he almost certainly spoke to no one else about his abuse either.

Silence fell between them for a few moments as they both glanced towards the boy on the bed.

“He’s stronger than he looks.” Ashcombe spoke softly, more to himself than to Tom. He’d have to have been, to endure eleven years of cruelty.

“He is. He’s a good person, my lord. He's nothing but trouble sometimes, but beneath all that scheming, he’s the kindest person I know. I just wish that the rest of the world would see that, and stop hurting him needlessly.”

Ashcombe looked over at Tom then, at the sadness in his dark eyes. “He’s lucky to have you, Tom.” He gave a watery smile at Ashcombe, which faded as he looked back towards his friend.

“Thank you, my lord.” he whispered, then said no more.

* * * * *

The sun was just beginning to rise when Captain Tanner approached him. “The boy’s awake, General. Thought you’d want to know.” Ashcombe, who’d been in the process of commandeering as many rooms as possible to house fifty soldiers, snapped to attention. Tanner stood beside him, drinking a mixture of coffee and brandy and looking about ready to collapse on his feet.

“Since when?”

“About five minutes ago, I reckon. The other two are with him now.” Ashcombe hastily finished the remainder of his coffee in a single gulp, setting the mug down on his borrowed desk as he turned and left.

It had been nearly six hours since he had pried the bullet from his wounded shoulder, though he doubted Christopher would feel any better now than he had then. Most likely he’d be feeling much worse, given the glowing lance pressed into his flesh.

Ashcombe shook these thoughts away as he took the stairs two at a time, hearing the faint strains of voices as he nudged the door open.

Tom was sitting on the edge of the bed, his massive bulk obscuring any sight of the patient within. Sally Deschamps, her hand heavily bandaged, rested quietly in a nearby chair, the pigeon on her lap. Their conversation trailed off as they turned and saw him standing in the doorway.

“Lord Ashcombe is here,” Tom spoke softly to the boy lying in bed. Both he and Sally got to their feet rather unsteadily, the mood having darkened and soured like the curdling of milk. They met his gaze and walked quietly out of the room, closing the door with a click behind them.

Ashcombe walked forward, approaching the bed. Christopher was awake, propped gently on a stack of small pillows, exhausted eyes searching his face. Blessedly, he wasn’t quite as ashen as before, though he still looked barely a few steps away from needing coffin measurements. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and he couldn’t keep the pain off of his face.

“How are you feeling?” A stupid question, one he regretted the instant it was out of his mouth. The boy had just been shot, for Christ’s sake. Of course he would be feeling terrible.

“I’ve been better.” Christopher’s voice was soft, barely above a whisper, and the slightest bit hoarse. If he had to guess, it was from his screams last night. He shifted slightly, and then grimaced sharply.

“Have you had anything to numb the pain?”

“I’d take poppy, if you had it, my lord.” Even these few words seemed to tire him, his eyelids trying to drag themselves shut. There was water boiling on the fireplace, into which he scooped a generous handful of the seedpods. Christopher drank it greedily when he offered the cup.

“What in God’s name happened to you?”

“I got shot by a pirate, my lord.” Ashcombe couldn’t quite tell if he was being sarcastic or not. He let it slide.

“I meant before. After the shipwreck.” He’d gotten only the barest details from Tom, none of which made much sense. Something about conjurers and amnesia, though all was reportedly set to right now. He had hoped that he’d get a more cohesive story from Christopher, but perhaps he was putting too much pressure on him, so soon after his injury.

Christopher laid back in the pillows, closing his eyes. “I was sick for a long time. Two weeks. A farmer took me in and helped me, before Sally and Tom found me again.”

“What sort of sickness?” Two weeks was a long time to be ill, and he was clearly still grappling with the effects of it. His pale face looked hollow in the light of the dawn.

“I don’t know. It made me forget everything I knew, for a few days. Things have been coming back, though, so I think it’s alright.”

“You forgot everything?” Ashcombe repeated dubiously.

“Even my own name.” Christopher said softly. His voice was colored by something; was it sorrow? Ashcombe didn’t know, though he doubted he had ever seen the boy so vulnerable before. He looked so alone, just then.

“And what caused this affliction?” He certainly had never heard of such a thing happening before.

“Don’t know, my lord.” Christopher seemed to be fighting the drowsiness of the poppy, though rather unsuccessfully. With a great effort, he prized his eyes back open a bit further. “Master never taught me about anything like it.”

“But you’re all right now?” He stressed, eyes searching Christopher’s worn face.

“I think so.”

“And what of the missing children? What role did they play in this?”

“Baronet Darcy was selling them to the Berbers. For money. Julian was taking them to the cove, where they were kept.” He nearly spat at the mention of the man. Try as he might, Darcy had been a difficult man to forget, primarily because it had taken a Christlike mercy not to run him through the instant they first met.

“I’ll have them brought in chains before the magistrates.” Ashcombe snarled.

“Please don’t, my lord. Not Julian. Please.” he whispered, voice growing faint. Ashcombe paused.

“They’re criminals, Christopher. They must be brought before the King’s Justice.”

“I know,” he said. “I know. But he made Julian do it. He didn’t want to. It’s not his fault.”

“Made him do it?”

Christopher nodded, looking exhausted. Ashcombe knew, then, what he meant by that. He remembered those scars, pale white lines on his back. Floggings earned as a child, still carried to this day. He looked at him then, grief plain in his eyes. Christopher looked almost on the verge of tears, though not quite.

“I’ve tired you,” said Ashcombe. “I’m sorry. You should be resting.”
The conversation had clearly taxed him; a thin layer of sweat had broken over his waxen features, giving him a death-like glow. He stood to leave, hand on the doorknob, when Christopher stopped him.

“You can stay, my lord. If you want to.” Ashcombe turned around and looked at him.

“Do you want me to?” Christopher’s eyes were closed. His breathing was slowing, the pull of dreams dragging him down into oblivion. Ashcombe walked back to the bed, hesitating at its edge.

“I don’t want to be alone again,” the boy whispered, so softly that he almost didn’t hear him. Ashcombe pulled out the chair and sat beside the bed, watching his chest rise and fall.

Chapter Text

It was three hours before the King’s Men returned, their prisoners in tow. Ashcombe watched from the window as they dragged the two men off of their mounts, their hands bound and shoulders slumped. Both were rapidly carted off to the cellar below the inn, which Ashcombe had ordered to be converted into a temporary cell.

The innkeep hadn’t been pleased by this transformation, though another hefty purse of gold had been enough to silence his complaints.

A soft murmur rose from the bed behind him. The poppy had kept Christopher asleep for several hours, blessedly at peace. Ashcombe had sat beside him for a long time, watching as the boy slept. A part of him felt like an intruder, bearing witness to Christopher’s most vulnerable self, unable to put up his usual front of carefree charisma, but he pushed that aside. If the boy had wanted him gone, he would have said so. At any rate, it eased his conscience to be able to ensure his well being.

He seemed to be stirring, face pressing deeper into the pillows, a soft sigh escaping his lips. Ashcombe walked the few steps to the boy, trying to keep his tracks quiet. 

Christopher twitched, then groaned softly, a grimace painting his face. He shifted slightly beneath the blankets, exposing his bandaged shoulder, the cloth stained a rusted red again. His fingers twitched, and he sighed again, still heavy with the aftereffects of the poppy. Lashes slowly fluttered open, light brown eyes meeting his own.

“Master?” Christopher blinked up at him, gaze unfocused. The sense of intrusion suddenly redoubled back upon him. Ashcombe was not meant to be here; clearly, that space was reserved for someone better suited to the task.

“It’s me,” He stated simply, voice emotionless. Christopher blinked again, clarity starting to come back to his vision. With surprising swiftness, the quiet vulnerability vanished from his expression, morphing into a serious neutrality.

“Lord Ashcombe. Is…is something wrong?” The inclusion of the honorific was not lost on him. Formality was a shield, and Christopher used it with great practice.

“Why would there be?” The boy frowned back at him, confusion written across his features.

“You’re in my room.” Christopher said slowly. Because you asked me to be, and I didn’t have the heart to refuse , he almost replied. Perhaps it had been the delirium of the pain, and of the poppy, that had given voice to that request. A broken boy, reaching out for any source of comfort he could find. Ashcombe would always be a disappointment in that respect.

“Just checking in,” he grunted. “The Darcys have been taken, father and son both. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Oh.” His voice was quiet. How much he could hear in that single syllable; sorrow, anger, disappointment, fear. A thousand emotions, each refracting differently with every angle he turned it to.

“I’ll interrogate them both separately, to establish a clearer picture of what happened.” Christopher was silent for a long moment, not meeting his gaze. Ashcombe sighed. “You know it has to be done, Christopher. Justice must be served.”

“I know,” he murmured. “I know.” Do you? Ashcombe wanted to ask. He held his tongue.

“I’ll be lenient with Julian. He’s still a boy, after all.” 

This was a concession he could make; the nobility always enjoyed being the picture of clemency, and it would send fractures through the south if it came out that they put one so young to the sword.

“He was only following his father’s orders, I swear, my lord.”

“I can make no promises about Baronet Darcy. What he did was a grievous crime, both against his king and countrymen. Most likely he’ll face execution, and a public one at that.”

“Julian is all I ask for, my lord. He was duped, just like the rest of us.” There was an undertone of fervor in Christopher’s voice, of insistence.

“I’ll see what he has to say.” And that was that. They both fell silent, neither certain where to continue, or whether to continue at all. Christopher shifted, and then grimaced sharply, biting back a cry of pain. Ashcombe glanced at the wound, the dark red stains on the bandage.

“Can I check your shoulder?” Ashcombe asked, trying to keep his voice calm and patient. He knew he was likely to be unsuccessful at either, but it didn’t hurt to try.

Christopher winced again, then nodded. 

Gently, Lord Ashcombe sat on the edge of the bed, pulling the sheet down so that the wound was fully visible, and then helped the boy sit up fully. Practiced fingers unwrapped the bandages, moving slowly so as not to pull against the bloody flesh. Still, he could tell by the pain written across the boy’s features that his efforts did little.

He drew in a breath as he saw the wound. It was swollen, the flesh red and blistered where the lance had pierced him. Despite the soldier’s practiced hands, the slashes of the knife where he’d dug out the bullet were brutal and harsh. In a word, it looked purely agonizing.

Blessedly, it didn’t seem infected, though it was still too early to tell for certain.

“Not as bad as it could be,” Ashcombe said, trying for optimism and failing spectacularly. Christopher laughed, a broken and hollow chuckle.

“It feels like hell, my lord.”

“I know. It’ll feel worse, these next few days, before it seems better.” Ashcombe had been shot himself twice before. The first had been in France, nearly twenty-five years ago, and he’d been limping for half a year afterwards. The second had taken him in the arm, the blows of the puritan outside of a crumbling mausoleum. Neither had been experiences that he’d want to repeat.

“I’ll have to clean it before I bind it again, to stave off infection. If the wound festers, you’ll lose the limb.” In a way, Christopher was already lucky in where the bullet had struck him; closer to the far side of the joint, which meant that he hadn’t immediately needed an amputation.

Christopher nodded, then hesitated. “Is that…likely to happen, my lord?”

“I’ve seen enough gunshot wounds in my time. It won’t happen, not if I have any say in it.” The boy had lost enough without becoming a cripple. Ashcombe hadn’t come this far to leave with Christopher less than whole.

He took up a rag and doused it in brandy, then pressed it to the wound as carefully as he could. Christopher flinched, drawing a sharp breath at the pain. After it was clean, he covered it in honey, to prevent infection, and then bound it tightly in clean bandages.

Christopher’s silence spoke far louder than words. He made no complaint, nor sound of distress, save his occasional shudders as Ashcombe finished his work. It was clear it was taking everything in him not to cry out in agony.

It would appear, then, that cool formality was to replace any semblance of vulnerability between them.

Lord Ashcombe had never been a man good with words, but he knew that, in this instance, he must try, if not for his own peace of mind then for Christopher.

“Christopher…I know that…we have not always had an understanding between us-” God Almighty, but he was butchering this, “but I…if you ever needed someone to-”

A resounding knock sounded against the door, followed by a harried Captain Tanner barging into the room. Ashcombe tried not to dwell on how utterly relieved he was at the interruption.

“General,” he nodded, face red, “Forgive my barging in here, sir, but there’s a situation downstairs. Edmund Darcy’s resisting arrest, claiming he has the right to fair trial, demanding council with the magistrates, especially given the fact that he himself is one of them, and his son—”

Ashcombe rose to his feet and turned abruptly, already moving towards the door. “Let me speak with them,” he grunted, the door to Christopher’s room closing with a soft click and his feet pounding heavily against the ancient floorboards of the stairs.

* * * * *

The cellar where the two prisoners were kept was freezing cold. 

Lord Ashcombe’s breath plumed outwards in front of him as he descended the narrow stone steps, the light of Tanner’s swinging lantern casting strange shadows upon the walls. Icicles hung perilously from the ceiling, one of them breaking off as his shoulder caught it.

In the dim light of the flame, Ashcombe caught sight of two hunched figures on the opposite side of the room. Both men were sitting, one curled in upon itself on the flagstones, the other propped against the wall, head tilted back. As he and Tanner approached, they cringed simultaneously, though Ashcombe couldn’t tell whether that was the shock of the lantern light or of his presence.

It took him a moment to recognize Baronet Darcy. Five years had filled out the man’s face, giving a new pauch to his jowls, and his dark hair had significantly more gray than before. Yet he still had those darting, anxious eyes, the nervous twist to his face, that had made his presence so discomforting to be in those long years ago.

Ashcombe’s eyes turned to the figure on the ground. He seemed of above average height, but without the usual gangliness of youth, and he had the same dark complexion and rounded features as Darcy had. His eyes caught the glow of the flame, and fear chased across his face.

This must be Julian, then.

“My lord.” Ashcombe glanced at the Baronet, tracing the thick iron chains that bound his wrists and ankles. Darcy was watching him as the rabbit watched the hawk, trying to gauge when the first strike would come.  “Please, you must understand, my son and I are innocent, innocent of any and all crimes—”

“Quiet.” Lord Ashcombe muttered, his voice grating harshly through the frigid air. Darcy abruptly cut off, fresh terror coloring his face.

He motioned Tanner to the Baronet’s son, still lying quietly on the ground. “Take the boy.”

Captain Tanner set down his lantern, grabbing Julian by the collar and hauling him to his feet. The boy stumbled slightly, the irons on his legs making it difficult for him to regain his balance.

“My lord, wait! Wait, please! He doesn’t know anything, I swear, please, have mercy, mercy! Julian! My lord, please!” Darcy began, his voice high and keening in the stillness of the cellar.

Julian said nothing as Tanner shoved him forward up the steps, taking the only source of light with them.

The Baronet’s wails followed them up the stairs, cutting off with a crushing finality as the heavy cellar door was bolted back in place.

* * * * *

Back above, in the inn, Tanner pressed Julian Darcy into a chair facing a heavy oaken desk. Lord Ashcombe sat at the other end of it, a steaming mug resting in front of him. He nodded once to the Captain, who turned and closed the door behind him, the lock clicking behind him.

Julian’s dark eyes met his own, quiet and full of fear. To his credit, he didn’t beg as his father had, staring straight ahead in silence.

“You know who I am?” Ashcombe grunted, to which the boy nodded once. He pushed the mug in front of him across the desk. The boy stared at it, then looked back at Ashcombe, as though to assess whether or not this was some sort of test.

When he did not react, Darcy’s son carefully cradled the mug in his hands, the fingers of which were white with cold. The cider, mixed with hot brandy, was gulped down greedily. Ashcombe waited until he was finished before taking the seat opposite him.

“You know why you’re here, I assume.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“So tell me, then. Tell me why you’re here.” Lord Ashcombe’s voice was brittle, sharp as ice and brokering no argument.

Julian was silent for a few moments, staring at his frozen fingers, still curled around the ceramic cup.

“We betrayed the King,” he whispered at last, not meeting his gaze.

Ashcombe leaned forward, elbows on the oak of the desk.

“And how, exactly, did you do that?” This was an old tactic of his. Move further into the target’s space, keep them on guard, anticipating the next attack.

“We sold children to enemies of the crown. I–My father…I took them. From their homes. And brought them to the cove, where they were kept.”

“When did they approach you and your father?”

“Three weeks ago. After the great storm.” He recalled it well. That had been the fury that had nearly sunk Christopher in the English Channel.

“Did you know that you were selling innocent children into slavery? That most, if not all of them, would be dead before the coming of spring? Did you know this, when you called out to them from across the river, and told them to follow you to the shore?” Ashcombe’s voice grated harshly across the air. Julian shrank back from him, fingers clutching at the thick iron chains that bound his wrists.

“He told me we were saving them,” he murmured, voice barely audible.

Lord Ashcombe stood, chair scraping softly against the wood. He walked over to the window, the glass pane mostly fogged, and gazed out of it towards the sea. His soldiers had scoured the cove for any evidence, but there was little aside from ashes and cragged rocks. Charred timbers from Christopher’s timely maritime explosion had also begun washing up on shore, but they yielded no more value than the scuff marks in the sand had.

He turned back towards the boy. 

“Did your father ever beat you?”

Julian froze.

He slowly walked back towards him, boots thudding heavily against the floorboards. Julian sat utterly still in his seat, face curiously blank of any emotion.

“Well?”

“I don’t know what you mean, My Lord.” The boy’s voice was soft and light and utterly false. The layers behind those words were clearer than all else.

“You know precisely what I mean, boy.”

“What will happen to my father?” He blurted, dark eyes flashing suddenly to meet his own.

Ashcombe stared levelly back. “He will be executed for high treason.”

“And me?”

He couldn’t quite place the emotion behind those eyes. He had seen fear, saw it in the faces of the common folk he passed, in the eyes of his opponents when they knew the fatal blow was coming. This was different; this was fear, but also something else.

Passion? Despair? Perhaps, though it seemed against all odds — longing?

“I’ve yet to decide.”

* * * * *

Tanner brought Julian Darcy down once more into the cellar. The boy had not protested; in fact, he hadn’t so much as made a sound as he was hauled forward by the larger man, back down into the frigid gloom.

Ashcombe had watched him go, black eyes scrutinizing his form as he was dragged away.

He’d need to speak further with the boy, that was for certain. But perhaps a more delicate approach would yield better results.

He moved back upstairs towards Christopher’s room instinctually, before remembering the awkwardness and the uncertainty of their last interaction. He was standing there, debating whether or not walking in would do either of them any good, when the door abruptly swung forward and Sally Deschamps stepped through.

She stepped forward and then froze, her drawn face instantly flickering with a trace of fear.

“My Lord,” she stammered after a brief moment of silence. “I was just leaving.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh,” the young girl breathed out. “I–it’s no trouble, My lord. Christopher is asleep, but I can wake him if you were hoping to speak with him.”

“Let him rest. He needs it, at any rate.” He glanced down at her left hand, which was heavily bandaged and bound with gauze. “As do you, I’d imagine.”

She didn’t spare a glance for the wound. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’m certain of it. Still, don’t care for others so much that you forget to care for yourself. I know this better than most.”

She was silent for a long moment, and it took him a beat to realize that she was staring at his hand. His right hand, the one permanently covered by its dark leather glove.

“It isn’t so bad, you know.” Lord Ashcombe said, aiming for compassion but likely landing more on the side of bluntness. 

Sally’s expression cracked, tears filling her eyes.

“I can’t live like this. I can’t be like this.”

“You can.” He said. “You can, and you will. We have no other choice than to keep living.”

“I’m not like you,” she croaked, voice breaking. “I’m not strong, or powerful, or backed by the King himself. I was nobody before this. Now I’ll be less than even that.”

“You’ll only be nothing if you let the rest of the world tell you you’re so. But we are more than our scars, Sally. As a man made of them, trust me when I say that I know.”

She didn’t believe him. Ashcombe could see that much as she wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. But as she walked away from him down the hall, he saw her turn back once to look at him, face worn with the lines of grief and the starting foundations of resolve.

Chapter Text

A day passed, and then another, and Lord Ashcombe buried himself in his work. There certainly was no shortage of it, what with two prisoners, a dozen dead pirates, and twenty half-dead children, most of whom spoke no English. Oh, and the abused orphan currently asleep upstairs, but Ashcombe was trying not to think of him.

It wasn’t out of anger that he hadn’t seen the boy in two days. The lad needed space, that was all. He didn’t need the King’s Warden playing nursemaid, changing his bandages and tucking him in at night. The role fit like a six-fingered glove—painfully obvious there was something lacking.

But then Christopher had woken up too warm, fever painted across his face, and Ashcombe had felt something strangled beneath his skin.

(It was only a slight fever, Stevens had said, not something the General need concern himself with, but Ashcombe had sat at the bed’s edge through the night, guts twisting with visions of rot and gangrene.)

And of course it was fine. Everything was fine, and a little willow bark had brought his temperature back down, and Ashcombe locked himself in his office and spent the night at his desk.

He had work to do.

It was the sixth day since he’d found them on the cliff when Tom Bailey came knocking at his door. It was a timid knock, as though he was half-expecting to be shouted at for even touching the wood, but the boy stood up straighter as Lord Ashcombe looked him over.

“My…My Lord,” he stammered out, glancing at his feet and then back up again at the older man. “I-I…Well, I thought…he asked me—”

“What? Spit it out, boy.”

“Christopher.” He cleared his throat and looked him in the eye. “He’s asking to see you.”

* * *

He knocked gently on the door upstairs, not wanting to startle the patient within.

He wasn’t anxious—the King’s Warden, High General of His Majesty’s Military, was never anxious. Curious, perhaps, maybe even this side of concerned, but he was not a man to be made something so mundane as anxious by an orphaned adolescent with not a farthing to his name.

He was just feeling rather cautious was all.

“Come in,” he heard a soft voice say, and he turned the knob with a click. The room within was shadowed, the glow of the hearth’s red coals providing most of the illumination. The curtains had been drawn sharply closed, the barest sliver of sunlight peeking through.

Christopher, as usual, was in bed, his eyes closed. He opened them as the King’s Warden approached, heavy boots thumping against the floorboards. He didn’t try to sit up, and Ashcombe didn’t offer to help him.

(Everything was fine.)

“You wished to see me.” Best to keep it simple and straightforward, right to business.

“Yes, My Lord.”

“Do you need something?”

“I want to go outside.”

Lord Ashcombe blinked, caught off guard. Christopher was looking at him, expression neutral, unreadable. “What?”

“It’s sunny,” the boy said simply, as though that explained everything. “I want to go outside.”

“You want to go outside,” Ashcombe repeated back slowly, dubiously. “In the middle of winter. With a bullet hole clear through your flesh.” It sounded too harsh, said like that, and Ashcombe grimaced at himself. The apprentice was hardly stupid; he didn’t need to be spoken to like a slow child.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Why?” A bit of emotion, the first in this entire conversation, peaked through his words. Not anger, but—frustration? What on earth was this even about?

“You’re not well yet.” It wasn’t his warden’s voice that he used, the one that could clear a room with a single syllable, but it was firm nonetheless.

“I haven’t left this room in six days. I’ve scarcely left this bed. I want to go outside, My Lord. I want to feel the sun.” He propped himself up on one elbow, grimacing as he tried to sit up. Lord Ashcombe moved to help him, then stopped just before touching him, uncertain as to what his place was in this situation.

He stood there, refusal burning on the tip of his tongue, and looked down at the frail boy below him.

“Ten minutes,” he said, words clipped, and Christopher looked up at him, a hesitant surprise in his gaze. Their eyes met, and a glimmer of victory flashed in his look.

* * *

Despite his previous assertions about nursemaids, Lord Ashcombe insisted on changing his bandages, examining the wound closely for signs of rot. The swelling was starting to go down, at least, and parts of the wound were beginning to scab over. He no longer was actively bleeding, which was as good a sign as any. Still, Ashcombe had seen too much death to brush off any wound such as this.

(He saw those scars on his back as he worked, thin and silvered, paler than the skin around them, and he felt the intense desire to thrash whoever had dared to mark him like this, whoever had touched him with such violence again and again and again.)

(He was fine. Everything was fine.)

This task complete, he carefully helped Christopher into his clothes, his wounded arm in a cloth sling and held gently to his chest. Two coats, both too large for him, went on top of the entire ensemble, plus a fur hat and a pair of gloves. His frostbitten fingers were healing quickly, but the peeling flesh was still quite delicate. Christopher didn’t speak as he dressed, and he didn’t try for any conversation—what would he even say, after all?

The boy stood up and swayed dangerously, closing his eyes as he tried to steady himself. The King’s Warden placed a firm hand on his uninjured shoulder, gently pressing his weight against him to try and help ground the boy.

He chastised himself. He was clearly still unwell—the boy could barely stand unaided, and he was hauling him out into the chill of winter? What in God’s name had come over him?

Christopher Rowe did, another part of his mind supplied. One orphan boy comes tugging at your heartstrings, and suddenly the High General can’t wait to go catch snowflakes and drink hot cider by the fire.

He grunted, and Christopher opened his eyes, having overcome his vertigo.

“Ten minutes,” he repeated, as they slowly made their way to the door and down the stairs, Ashcombe’s hand tightly holding onto the boy’s upper arm. “You’re already lucky the fever hasn’t come back. Don’t push yourself, Christopher. I mean that.”

“Yes, My Lord,” was the obedient response, followed by a sharp wince as they crossed the landing.

It was slow going, but eventually they reached the common room, where a few off-duty King’s Men sat drinking ale and dicing with one another. Wisely, no one commented on the strange procession that passed them by, but they knew better than to question the actions of their General.

Lord Ashcombe shoved the door open with his shoulder, a blast of frigid air rushing forward to meet them. It had snowed again last night, putting another three inches on the preexisting two feet, but the sky today was a searing cloudless blue. The sun was white and distant, turning the world shimmering with diamonds.

Christopher shrank back from the piercing brightness, cringing closer to Ashcombe’s side. He realized that, having been in the gloom of his sickbed for nearly a week, even a cloudy day would have been harsh on his vision. With the snow reflecting the blazing sun, it was no wonder that his eyes were closed tightly against the light.

“Give it a moment,” he said, and shut the door behind them. They stood there together for a moment, the world blanketed in white and the sound of the sea churning on the wind. The King’s Warden realized, then, that he was still holding on to the boy’s thin arm, but Christopher didn’t seem to mind the touch, and Ashcombe was disinclined to see him face down in the snow once again.

Carefully, he pulled the lad towards a series of snow-dusted crates, upon which he slowly sat down and sighed. Lord Ashcombe took his own seat beside the apprentice, rubbing the stubs of his missing fingers through his glove. The cold had no mercy for wounds, old or new.

A minute passed, and then another. The wind blew and cut across their skin, skimming up glittering flecks of snow. The King’s Warden glanced at the boy, his face flushed bright red and turned towards the sun. Up close, he noticed the blue veins shining through the pale skin around his eyes, on his jaw.

(He was so thin these days.)

(He was fine. Everything was fine.)

He glanced down the icy street, watching a group of birds peck fruitlessly at the ground. They’d be hungry for a while; spring would not be coming anytime soon.

“Thank you for saving me.” Ashcombe blinked, turning back towards Christopher. His eyes were still shut, and the sun shone bright on his face. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you earlier, My Lord. But thank you.”

“Don’t.”

Christopher opened his eyes then, uncertainty flashing across his face. “I—My Lord?”

“You’ve nothing to thank me for. You put your life at risk for my king, then served him once again in flushing out the raiding pirates from the southern coast.”

“But—at the cliff, you didn’t have to come—”

“Of course I did.”

“But you didn’t.” Christopher stressed intently. “But you still did anyway. And I am grateful for it, My Lord.”

Grateful. What a strange word it was. How much it promised in just two syllables, and what a bitter taste it left in one’s mouth.

“I meant what I said then. We don’t forget our friends.”

Christopher looked at him, and he could tell that he didn’t believe him. He didn’t press it, not today. Richard Ashcombe was a soldier through and through, and he knew when to pick his battles and when to hold off until the timing was right. Pressure now wouldn’t accomplish anything.

A gust of wind cut across the street, its frigid bite digging into them like knives. Christopher shivered sharply, leaning almost imperceptibly against the King’s Warden. Another gale blew, and he nearly hauled the boy inside that instant, but he managed to stay his own hand.

Silence fell between them. The boy cast his eyes out towards the horizon, but Ashcombe couldn’t be certain what he was looking for.

“We’ll leave for London in a fortnight.” He said, trying to offer something concrete to the boy. Originally, they’d been planning as quick of a return as possible, but with Christopher’s shoulder and the Deschamps girl’s hand, waiting it out was the best course they could take. His good eye examined him out of its corner, trying to gauge a nonexistent reaction. “It’ll take us a week to travel, two if the weather doesn’t turn for the better. His Majesty prays for a speedy return, or so his last letter wrote.”

“His Majesty is very kind.” Blast, would the boy never drop this endless formality? Need he strike him over the head with the olive branch he was practically waving in the wind?

“Do you want to go back?” He had no patience for trying to tease out truths.

“I don’t know,” the boy said, and there, there at last was the honesty he had been seeking.

“Why not?”

“It’s not a place that I miss.”

“Then what?”

“My life,” was the whispered reply, and the boy’s eyes shone with unshed tears.

“How…I—what do you need?” Bluntness was not the best course here, and he knew it, but he didn’t know how else to ask it. If the guild was causing trouble, he’d have to act with greater force, but if something else was the problem…well, he was the High General of His Majesty’s army. He would take care of it.

Christopher drew in a shaky breath, digging his gloved fingertips into the snow-covered crate beneath him.

“Christopher.” The boy’s eyes were trained on the ground, too wide and glassy with their grief. “Christopher.” He put a gloved hand on his good shoulder and turned it toward him. “I can help you. Let me help you.”

A tear tracked gently down the side of his face, but the lad didn’t wipe it away.

“You can’t,” he whispered, voice breaking. “No one can.”

“That isn’t true. Just---just tell me what I can do.” Tell me what’s wrong, so I can fix it.

Ashcombe watched another tear fall, then another. His hand was still on the boy’s shoulder, delicate bones able to be felt through the coat.

(He was far too thin these days.)

Christopher inhaled wetly, trying to breathe in the frigid seaside air.

“You cannot change the past, My Lord. Not even you. Not even the King.” He forced himself to breathe in again, wiping the tears off his face with the back of one hand. “But I still miss it more than anything.”

The King’s Warden could guess what he was referring to. “Your master.”

It was a statement, not a question, for he felt he already knew the answer. Christopher nodded mutely, face reddened from cold and from grief.

“I---” his voice broke off, and the boy took a deep breath before trying again. “I feel like I’m lost, like I’ve…I’ve been lost since the day he died. And I…I don’t know how to find my way back, because there’s nothing to go back to. It’s just---” another deep breath in, forcing it past the tears, “---It’s just empty. I’m just empty.”

Christopher laughed then, and it was a broken sound. “I’m sorry.”

He stared at him for an instant. “For what?”

“For---” the apprentice gestured vaguely around them, at himself. “For everything.”

“One day,” he said after a long moment, “I hope you learn that not every ill thing in this world is your fault.” He glanced towards the sky, noting the movement of the sun. “Ten minutes. Time to get back.”

Christopher wiped his face again, still breathing a little heavily, then stood up to join him. Neither spoke as they carefully made their way back to the inn, the crunching of snow beneath their feet the only sound in the stillness of the day.

* * *

He left the boy alone that afternoon, mulling over his words as he organized a group of his men for a new series of tasks. The Darcy estate, foremost, needed to be investigated for any possible evidence of the Baronet’s crimes. The man, of course, had confessed to Ashcombe upon questioning, but some sort of documentation or paper trail would make it believable beyond any possible doubt.

The Darcys had been kept in the cellar beneath the inn under guard, but, upon the recommendation of some of his men, had been permitting them to walk around outside under guard so that they weren’t deprived of all light.

He hadn’t spoken to the younger Darcy since he’d first questioned him, and, in all truth, wasn’t certain what to do with him. Christopher had pled mercy; Tom had seemed less sure when he’d asked.

He says he didn’t know, but he should’ve, Tom had said. I trusted him once, and look where it got us.

Do you think he deserves to be executed? Ashcombe had asked in all seriousness. Slavery was a capital crime, as was aiding known fugitives of the Crown. Both were a hanging offence.

He’d hesitated, looking torn. I don’t think he should die, but…I don’t know. He can’t just walk away from this either. A look of anger flashed across his face. Christopher nearly didn’t.

In truth, he’d been putting it off for nearly a week now, but had justified it to himself by claiming reflection on the matter. Depending on what the men found, he’d need to determine his course of action sooner rather than later.

The afternoon was consumed with paperwork, for apparently there were consequences to the King’s right hand simply picking up and temporarily moving to Devonshire without telling anyone in advance. Just because Charles accepted it meant little in the grand scheme of politics and nobility and military that had been his life since he was twelve years old.

The sun was setting when the sound of striking metal dragged him from his reverie. He went outside, and was greeted by the sight of four of the King’s Men and none other than Tom Bailey, dulled practice sword in one hand. The men appeared to be demonstrating a series of basic sparring moves, which the taller boy was clumsily imitating with his own blade in hand.

It took a few moments for him to notice Lord Ashcombe standing off to the side, observing the scene before him. The Bailey boy’s mouth opened in surprise. He lowered his sword hastily, looking for all the world like a child caught with his fist in the jam jar. His men knew him well enough, however, to know he wasn’t upset, but merely an intrigued observer.

“Proceed,” he said flatly, waving a three fingered hand in their direction. The men picked back up their weapons, moving slowly to demonstrate to the boy a parry, which, after glancing back at Lord Ashcombe, he tried for himself.

The lesson continued for another twenty minutes or so before one of the men turned back to him. “Spar with us, General,” he called, the edges of his mouth quirking up in the beginnings of a smile.

Wordlessly, he strode forward, pulling his broadsword from the sheath at his side and tossing it from palm to palm. The old, familiar weight was a comfort to him, leather handle digging pleasantly into the calluses on his hands. He examined it a moment, turning it over, and then swung suddenly at the man closest to him.

They were veterans, the lot of them, and most had been with him for over half a decade. They knew his tricks better than anyone, and so the other soldier had his own blade out ready to meet his General’s in a parry. Their blades met, crossed, then were back again, flying towards each other as they circled.

Another man joined the fray, pulling his own blade against his General, and spun on one heel to meet his sword, striking against it and shoving him off balance. The three of them moved, back and forth, strike and counterstrike, riposte and parry, and then a fourth man entered the mix.

Lord Ashcombe grinned; ever since he was a boy, he’d loved the thrill of more than one opponent. To him, there was no purer test of skill at which to throw himself.

This is where you belong.

Back, forward, around, metal singing in the fading light of the afternoon. The wind blew and his heart pounded in his ears, and all he could think was how much he had needed this. No more politics, no more floundering in emotions he couldn’t begin to fathom. Just himself, sword in one hand and an enemy in front of him. How it was always meant to be.

Time faded and twisted around them, and soon enough, all of them were panting for breath as they stood in the tattered circle of snow. One of them chuckled, heartily clapping another on the back.

“Still always fall for that left side, Mason,” Ashcombe said to another, pushing his blade back into its sheath. “Better work on that. Else you’ll still be getting knocked on your backside in fifteen seconds while they rest of us fight.”

“Aye, sir,” Mason said, grinning at him with the flush of combat. “I’ll see to it.”

It was then that he realized that Tom Bailey was still standing there, staring as though they had each grown another head.

“I…” he started, amazed. “How did you do that? I—I mean,” he stammered, reality kicking back into him, “I didn’t mean—”

“Practice, boy,” laughed Mason, taking a pull from the flask at his belt. “Practice, until your arm nearly falls off. Then you’ll be getting somewhere.”

The sun had sunk below the horizon as they’d been sparring, and darkness was rapidly falling on the seaside town. The soldiers gathered their things, preparing to head back in for the night. Tom was still staring at him, as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. Ashcombe shook his head, bemused, heading back into the blessed warmth of the inn alongside his men.

* * *

The sparring had done him good; his head felt clearer, his thoughts sharper. He ate quickly and finished the rest of his correspondence that evening, sitting by the hearth in his makeshift office for a time. The innkeeper had managed to scrounge up a bottle of brandy that was halfway decent, and now he opened it and drank deeply, the heat of it warming him from the inside.

It was late, evening turning into true night, but Ashcombe went upstairs anyway, a slender book carefully tucked into one hand. The stairs squealed gently beneath his feet as he made his way up the narrow staircase, the floorboards weathered by a thousands of booted feet.

He made his way to the door, which was still open just a sliver, the glow of the fire spilling softly into the doorway.

Lord Ashcombe knocked quietly, then pushed the oaken door open. The fire blazed warmly in the hearth, filling the room with a much needed heat. A candle burned on the bedside, wax dripping perilously close to a stack of leatherbound books, while a large wooden tub sat in the center of the room, still filled with soapy water.

His eyes scanned the room, coming to rest on the pair of figures curled up in the bed. Tom Bailey was sprawled below the bedsheets, his feet nearly hanging off the edge of the bed and mouth half-open in sleep. One large arm was carefully wrapped around the much smaller figure of Christopher Rowe, who was nestled in closely against the larger boy’s side.

Christopher always looked angelic in his sleep, but looked even more delicate tucked against the bulk of Tom. His breathing was slow and even, and he looked not quite so deathlike as he usually did these days.

All in all, the two reminded the General of two overgrown puppies, sleeping in a heap of warmth and easy kinship. Moving carefully so as not to wake them, he snuffed out the candle on the bedside, resting the book on top of the small stack of others.

He reached out to touch him but hesitated, pulling back at the last minute. His three-fingered hand was horribly juxtaposed against Christopher’s smooth skin, and he stared at the old wounds. So many gnarled scars that pulled against his flesh, that tore into him and carved a new shape.

Below him, just inches from his touch, Christopher slept. His own innocence was wrapped like a cocoon around him, shielding him from the darkness of the world.

(He remembered those silvered scars on his back and wondered how someone so good could have survived something so horrific.)

(He’s stronger than he looks.)

(And yet he was so thin these days, so fragile, so endlessly delicate. A bird that had been thrown too soon from the nest.)

Ashcombe turned away and walked back towards the door, towards his office, towards his paperwork and his ledgers and his poorly-brewed brandy, the jug still half full on his desk.

(He had work to do.)

At the doorway he paused, turning back to look at the two boys sleeping. This is not your place, a voice within him insisted, but he couldn’t help but wonder if there was a world in which it might’ve been.

Christopher sighed in his sleep, and Ashcombe turned and closed the door behind him with a click.

Chapter Text

Another storm came, and then another, ice coating the slender branches of the trees and dangling in brittle sheets from the rooftops. For three days few left the inn, and those that did so only out of necessity. The innkeep may have been reluctant to house the King’s Men initially, but he made up for his previous misgivings by keeping the entire establishment comfortably warm and free of drafts. All in all, despite being effectively stranded on the southern coastline, things could have been considerably worse.

They had been, after all, when he’d been initially searching for those three missing children, presumed lost to the raging tides of the sea.

On the fourth day, the snows finally died down, and Lord Ashcombe left just before dawn for the Darcy estate. He hadn’t intended to investigate it personally, but after his initial questioning of the baronet’s son, he felt it prudent to examine the place directly before casting judgment on whether or not to hang Edmund Darcy. 

At the moment, he was rather inclined to set up a gallows and string him up himself, but he tried to practice restraint. Blind brutality would earn him nothing more than mistrust among the locals, and at the moment, he needed every ally he could get, peasant or no.

It took nearly three hours to reach the estate, the horses slogging through the fresh snow and sliding precariously on the frozen paths through the forest. At times, he and his men had to dismount, leading the geldings along on foot before they were able to ride another clearer stretch again.

It was freezing, and everyone was feeling rather miserable, and by the time they got there Lord Ashcombe was in a particularly foul mood. But then again, that was likely caused just as much by the weather as it was by the unfortunate company of one Edmund Darcy, his wrists bound tightly in front of him, ungloved hands white with chill.

He’d reluctantly hauled the man shivering from the cellar in the darkness of the early morning, offering him nothing more than brisk orders to shut up and keep moving. The baronet hadn’t spoken a word to anyone since they’d set out, though by now he doubtlessly could tell where it was they were headed. Whether he knew what would happen when they got there, Ashcombe couldn’t say.

The Darcy estate was an impressive holding for a mere baronet, particularly as he wasn’t even a member of the peerage; high stone walls, mounted gargoyles, a spindly tower in the distance. The snow concealed some of the rougher aspects of the place, though even at a cursory glance he could see a collapsed section of the outer wall that led directly into the main keep.

The baronet gazed at his former estate with a mixture of fear and sadness before being roughly shoved forward by one of the dismounted King’s Men. He stumbled and fell to his knees, bound hands making it difficult for him to rise once again.

Lord Ashcombe handed the reins of his warhorse to Tanner, striding towards the entrance of the castle-like structure. The door to the entrance hall, of course, was locked; Ashcombe cracked the iron bolt with one brutal kick and shouldered his way inside. 

He glanced over his shoulder disinterestedly. “Bring him too,” he growled, gesturing with a nod at Edmund. Stevens grabbed the man by a shoulder and pushed him forward after the King’s Warden, descending into the shadowed interior of the Darcy manor.

It took the rest of the morning to comb through the entirety of the estate, sifting through rooms crowded with books and tapestries and relics with chipped paint. Anything that was immediately useful to them—a few pistols, some weathered kitchen knives—was taken and hauled back to their saddlebags, alongside any gold or valuable jewelry. It wasn’t until they reached a cramped office on the topmost floor that they found it.

Proof, scrawled in ink across brittle parchment. Receipts for the discovery and cleansing of evil from the lands of England’s countryside, monetary compensation for the hunting of witches. Payment for the blood of young women who proved to be troublesome, who were easier to slaughter rather than be dealt with appropriately.

He scanned the pages, leafing through them quickly. Nearly twenty-five years of witch hunting, it seemed, God’s work done for a few dozen pounds. Ten here, twenty there, and over time Edmund Darcy was amassing a small fortune, enough to buy himself land and a title and entrance into the right places.

The baronet hadn’t been stupid enough to keep any sort of written record of his dealings with the Berbers, but this was enough to show a history of poor dealings, of selling out his countrymen for a quick return. In Walsingham’s expert hands, this would be a catastrophic fall, an instant public sensation, and oresiding above it all the endless wisdom and justice of The Crown.

He could already hear the cheering of the crowds at the hanging.

Carefully, Lord Ashcombe collected the papers and slipped them into a leather bound folder. 

“Is this all of them?” He grunted towards Edmund. The man flinched at the sound of his voice, which grated even more than usual in the frigid air. He leaned closer to him, one black eye darkening further. The baronet cringed and drew his bound hands upward, as though to ward off the blow that was coming.

He nodded hastily, eyes downcast. At least he had the sense to look guilty; if he hadn’t, Ashcombe likely would’ve knocked half his teeth out. Perhaps he still would—the day was young, and it would be hours before they returned to the warmth of the inn.

He met Tanner in the hallway, having finished clearing out the rest of the upstairs rooms. 

“Seems we’ve cleared everything of importance, General, and I’ve loaded up everything useful outside.”

“Good.” The marquess looked around the hall once more, ensuring that all of the rooms had been checked. Darcy, upon provocation, had sworn up and down that he wasn’t hiding any secret drawers or rooms within the estate, and for the moment he believed him. The man was a coward before he was a traitor, after all.

“It’s past noon already. Gather the men, Tanner, and prepare to leave.”

“Aye, General.” Tanner saluted once, crisp as ever, then turned and began calling orders to move out.

*       *       * 

With the breaking of the storm came a spot of clear weather, the sun shining its brilliant rays upon the endless white of the coastline. The effect was rather blinding but not wholly unwelcome, the snow beginning to soften to slush beneath the warm air and tramping hooves.

It was still light when they finally reached the inn, though the sun was sinking rather quickly towards the western horizon. Lord Ashcombe dismounted alongside his men, leading his warhorse by the reins to the stables. He waved aside Stevens, who had approached to take the reins, and instead tied his mount to the post and began to untack.

It was simple work, far below his rank, but he’d had a fondness for horses since he was a boy in Chillingham. His father had required him to care for his own mounts when he began to ride, thinking it would teach his son humility as well as horsemanship. Later, in exile, he’d always been the one grooming and tacking and mucking the stalls, carefully oiling the leather saddles until they shone and mending the bridles with a stiff white thread.

The quiet of the stables gave him a space to think, to reflect on the day’s events and the people within it. The past half decade had spared him little enough time to sleep, let alone to spend on such mundane tasks as these, but Ashcombe had often longed for the simplicity of it all.

Even now, he often felt that the title of Marquess would never fit him quite right.

His warhorse snorted and stamped his hoof, pulling him from his thoughts. He finished brushing out his coat, turning him out into his stall before beginning to work on caring for the leather tack. It was all in good condition still, not needing any repairs, and so he made his way towards the entrance of the building in the hopes of a hot meal and a warm fire.

He was greeted with the expected rush of heated air and the smell of stew wafting across from the sitting room nearby, as well as the sounds of soft voices in conversation. Curious, Lord Ashcombe followed them, pushing open the door with his three fingered hand.

Six children sat around the low table, empty bowls in front of them. They were giggling at something in hushed voices, talking over each other in a flurry of words, and it wasn’t until he raised his eyes that he realized Christopher Rowe was at the head of the table. 

None of them had noticed the open door, so he carefully leaned against the frame and observed the bizarre tableau in front of him.

“Deze soep,” Christopher said slowly, gesturing at his still-full bowl with a spoon, “ is erg lekker. ” A girl next to him—five, six years old at the most—grinned broadly at him.

“Ik vind het ook leuk,” she said happily back at him. “Het smaakt net als de soep van mijn moeder.”  

Christopher furrowed his brow. “ Smaakt?” He raised a spoonful of stew to his mouth and mimed eating it. The girl nodded enthusiastically.

It took Lord Ashcombe a moment to realize that they were speaking entirely in Dutch. He blinked and shifted, surprised. The door frame creaked loudly, all of the children suddenly snapping up and looking in his direction.

Christopher’s eyes widened as he stared at him, no doubt wondering what he was doing there. He set his still-full spoon down back in his bowl, looking for all the world like a frightened rabbit after hearing the snap of a twig.

“ Ik wist niet dat je Nederlands sprak,” He said to Christopher, trying to put him at ease. I didn’t know you could speak Dutch.

The boy watched him a moment cautiously, no doubt still caught off guard by the man’s sudden reappearance.

“Ja,” He replied slowly, the words sounding strange against his tongue. “Ik ben…” he struggled for a moment, as though searching for the right word. “Lerne?”

“Leren,” The older man corrected him. “Ik ben aan het leren.” Yes. I am learning. The room around him had fallen silent, the half dozen children looking towards him in apprehension.

Sometimes, he hated the effect his presence had on people. Uncertainty, nervousness. Anger at times, righteousness at others. But always fear running beneath it all, moving quietly below the surface.

Christopher cleared his throat. “Do you…need anything, My Lord?”

He shrugged. “Where did you learn Dutch? Your master?”

That was the only likely possibility, though he couldn’t fathom why an apothecary of all things would need to know Dutch.

The boy shifted in his seat. “I, er…Not really, My Lord. I just sort of…have been learning it here.” He said it awkwardly, as though he himself was not yet certain of the words.

“I see.” 

The conversation, brief as it was, died between them once again. Christopher began to rise, no doubt to make some excuse to leave the situation, but Ashcombe waved him back down.

“I was just leaving,” he said shortly, more gruff than he’d intended. “Stay. There’s no need to rush anywhere. You should be taking it easy anyway, with that shoulder.”

The boy nodded mutely, then turned and looked away. Ashcombe sighed and left the room.

*      *      *

Exhausted from a day of riding, none of his men were feeling particularly eager to spar with him in the cold, so he focused mainly on drills. First the left hand, then the right, strikes and parries and blocks, deft footwork made harder by the snow, by the aching of his ruinous scars. He spun and cut high, imagining the sparks flying off of an enemy’s blade, then spun again and darted low and fast.

He paused for air, breathing hard, and realized that he had an unintended audience. Tom Bailey was watching from the sidelines with his mouth open, an expression of unguarded awe across his face.

“How did you do that last bit there? I swear, I barely even saw you move—” he broke off suddenly, remembering just who he was talking to. “I—what I meant, My Lord, is that—”

“No need to explain.” He turned and stuck his sword into the snow point first, then looked back at Tom. “You spent time with Sir William Leech, did you not?”

“Yes, My Lord. On the way to Paris.”

“Then doubtless some of what you saw was familiar, yes?” Nearly forty years of swordsmanship, and he hadn’t deviated from the drills he’d learned as a youth from the man. His teachings had been harsh, but invaluable.

“Er…some of it, My Lord. To an extent.” The boy seemed rather nervous, as though he expected a scolding for daring to speak to him.

“Sir William wasn’t too brutal with you, I hope?”

“No, My Lord,” Tom replied emphatically. “I loved my training with him. It—it was an honor.” 

Charles would have laughed at the statement, had he been here. But Lord Ashcombe had spent nearly a decade training beneath the man. He had come to love the excellence of the sword, the exhaustion and satisfaction of a good day’s labors, the purity of evenly-matched combat. The way in which a single nod of approval filled him with more pride than a torrent of praise from any of his other tutors.

“You have an interest in continuing with the sword, then?” He turned and pulled his own worn blade from the snow, brushing a few stray pieces off with a gloved hand.

Tom’s face was blank with surprise. His mouth worked futilely for a few moments.

“I—do you mean that I could, I mean, if it’s possible that you…My Lord, I don’t want to impose, but if it’s a possibility—”

He cut him off before the boy could stumble onward any longer. “You can spar with the men, if they permit it. The way the weather’s been going, it seems we’ll all be trapped here another few weeks.” 

He hoped that wouldn’t be the case, but at the very least Christopher and the Deschamps girl needed at least another fortnight before they would be going anywhere. Preferably longer to truly convalesce, but that would likely have to wait until they were all back in London.

Lord Ashcombe glanced at the boy, then turned and walked to the stables, where the extra weapons were currently being kept. He plucked a relatively dull sword from among them and brought it out, offering it hilt first to him.

“Take it.” Tom stared at him, uncomprehending. “Show me what you’ve learned so far.”

Hesitating, he took the rough leather hilt in hand, turning it and testing its weight. He ran the boy through the most basic drills first—footwork, stance, grip and balance—before moving onto lunges and strikes.

“Stance low and wide,” He corrected, and Tom instantly shifted his feet in the snow. “Move your weight more towards the back, and lean your chest forward.”

Slowly, the boy stepped and lunged, sword in front of him, and then turned and swung carefully left in a basic undercut pattern. Lord Ashcombe walked around him in a circle, studying his movements from each angle. He brought the blade up and then swiped sharply down in a slashing motion, then pulled back and turned in a wide arc.

“Not too jagged,” Lord Ashcombe cautioned. “You want strength, yes, but not at the expense of accuracy. You’re just as likely to get the blade ripped out of your hand than you are to cut down your enemy.”

He stepped forward and adjusted the boy’s grip on the hilt. “Firm, but not tight. Able to shift with the course of the battle.”

Tom nodded, brow furrowed. He moved diligently through the drills, although the snow proved a significant challenge to his footwork. Still, for only two weeks of training, he wasn’t half bad at it.

Then again, knowing Sir William as he did, those two weeks must have been rather hellish on the boy.

Having finished the exercises, Tom glanced up at him hesitantly. 

“Er—normally, when I finished, My Lord, Sir William would…well, he’d instruct me with his own blade.” Ashcombe raised a brow. 

“Do you want me to beat you until you can scarcely rise?” The young man flushed, fear coloring his face.

“I-I didn’t mean…well, I meant, My Lord, that if…” He trailed off, shrinking back into himself. Ashcombe considered him for a moment, then drew his own blade.

“Stay on your feet as long as you can,” he said, just before lunging forward. The Bailey boy met his steel with his own, hurriedly stepping backward before turning out of his range. They circled each other before Ashcombe struck again, this time cutting low towards his knees before changing direction sharply and moving high.

Tom stumbled in the snow, struggling to maintain his footing and wield the weapon at the same time. He kept his strikes basic, focusing more intently on the foundational elements he still needed to master and the gaps within. He drew it out for a few minutes, striking him each time a new weakness was exposed, until at last he spun and knocked him off balance into the snow.

The boy lay there a moment, breathing hard, before picking his blade back up and rising once again. Ashcombe gazed down at him, then sheathed his own sword at his waist.

“Not bad, for two weeks,” he grunted, and Tom flushed bright red. “You need to work on your weight placement, however. I could’ve knocked you down a half dozen times before you even lifted your blade.”

“Yes, My Lord,” was the eager response.

“And watch that left shoulder. You throw it forward when you draw back to strike, and it leaves half your torso exposed. The enemy slashes you then and your entrails are hanging to your knees.”

“Yes, My Lord,” Tom murmured, now sounding rather terrified once again. Well, he couldn’t win them all.

Ashcombe leaned down and offered the boy a hand up. He hesitated, staring at it for a beat, then tentatively grasped it and levered himself up from the snow. The sun had set since they’d been sparring, the snow-covered land now sinking into twilight. His scars were aching like the devil from the cold, particularly his ruined eye, which felt as though the blood was freezing within it.

He needed brandy, and a fire, and a respite from all of this blasted correspondence.

The older man turned and began walking back towards the inn, then called back over his shoulder.

“I’ll get Tanner to show you what I mean tomorrow. If you’re still up for it, that is.”

He didn’t wait to hear the boy’s reply.

*       *      *

As much as he’d hoped otherwise, sorting and annotating the papers taken from the Darcy estate took much of the evening. He may have been a coward, and a cheat, and nothing short of despicable, but Edmund Darcy kept his paperwork in order. He had detailed receipts dating back from 1636, when he first started gaining credibility as a witchfinder, all the way until 1658, when his last payment had been nearly forty pounds “for ridding the town of Truro from evil.”

After that, he’d turned his eye towards bigger things. Buying his way into the aristocracy, for one of them.

He took careful notes on all of them, marking places, names, and the sums he had acquired, before beginning to sketch out copies of each of the papers. It was one of the things that Walsingham always insisted be done first, lest anything happen to taint or destroy the evidence before it could reach him. Besides, all of this would be essential once he returned to London.

He just couldn’t wait until it was someone else’s task to handle.

Having finished for the evening, the King’s Warden poured himself a drink, and then another, sitting close to the dying flames of the hearth. He had known Darcy was a fraud the moment he met him, half a decade ago and in another life, one so much more fragile and uncertain. Play nice, Charles had chided him, all you have to do is sit and grunt meaningfully, and we’ll be five thousand pounds richer than when we awoke this morning.

We’re just going to let every upjumped commoner into our ranks, are we? He'd complained, mostly because he hated the fact that they needed to do this in the first place. But The Crown was practically bankrupt, and here was a way to get the ready gold they so desperately needed.

Oh, won’t you be quiet already about it? It’s one luncheon, then a brief ceremony, and then you’ll never have to see him again. Walsingham thinks it’s a brilliant idea.

Of course he does, he’d said sarcastically. He’s the one who bloody well thought of it.

And look how well that all turned out for them.

He swallowed the last of his brandy and stood, leaving the glass resting on the edge of his desk. He was halfway up the darkened staircase when he nearly ran into a shadowed figure moving down it.

At first, he thought it was one of the serving girls, come to change the linens or some such. But none of them would be out at this hour, and none of them moved with such caution and hesitation.

In fact, it almost looked just like—“Christopher?” He asked, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

The boy, evidently not having seen his approach, cringed backwards sharply. Ashcombe moved forward to reach out to him, then pulled back.

This is not your place.

“My Lord,” the boy said, voice still startled. “I—I was hoping we could speak.”

*      *      *

At the Warden’s insistence, the two of them trudged back up the stairs towards Christopher’s room. The space was well-lit by the crackling fire and a handful of tapers, most half-burned. Evidently he hadn’t gone to bed yet either, despite the late hour.

“You wanted to talk?” Ashcombe prompted, though it came out sounding like a growl.

Christopher moved towards the bed, slowly sinking his way onto the edge of it. He winced as he sat up straighter, then swallowed and turned towards Ashcombe.

“I did. I wanted to ask a favor, My Lord. If it wouldn’t be too presumptuous.” Presumptuous. He was on his guard tonight, it seemed.

“Which is?”

“I want to talk to Julian. Julian Darcy, that is.” The apprentice glanced up at him then, eyes hesitant and anxious, as though expecting to be in trouble for merely asking.

“You want to talk to Julian,” he repeated back slowly, carefully. “To what end?”

He’d already questioned the boy a second time, this time more intently than before, and the young man had been truthful about what had happened. Mostly truthful, at any rate.

“I…” Christopher sighed, “it’s…difficult to explain, My Lord.”

It took a great deal of willpower not to groan in frustration. You need to learn some goddamned patience, he heard Sir William say to him, or you’ll never get anywhere you truly want. He took a deep breath.

“Try me.”

“I—” Christopher cut himself off and shut his eyes. “I don’t blame him for what happened. And I…I feel guilty, My Lord. And I want to apologize.”

“You’ve nothing to apologize for,” he replied firmly. “Not about this.”

“I just—” the boy swallowed, then turned his gaze toward the fire. “I know what it’s like to be…unhappy. I know Julian was—” he broke off, trying to find the words. “I know he wasn’t happy there either. What happened with us…It’s hard, when you feel like it’s all you’ve got, My Lord. I want him to know that I don’t blame him, even though Tom does, even though I probably should.”

It was quite possibly the most he’d ever heard Christopher speak at once.

I know what it’s like to be unhappy. Silver scars on a too-thin frame, shivering and flinching when he came too close. Bowls of food left half-eaten, the endless use of formality and distance and silence.

I know what it’s like to be unhappy.

“My Lord?”

He blinked at the fire, smoldering to coals, then back at the boy. He was staring at Ashcombe, that same uncertainty he always saw painted across his face.

“Five minutes,” he answered after a moment’s contemplation. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll take you myself.”

“Er…I was hoping maybe…I could speak to him alone.” Christopher was pushing it now, and he knew it, but it was a sign of just how deeply he felt that he was broaching the subject in the first place.

But alone? With the boy who would have slit his throat not two weeks gone, would likely still do so if given the chance?

“Christopher—” he began, trying to temper the exasperation that was no doubt clear in his voice, “that isn’t going to happen. I cannot allow it, not in good conscience.”

“If you kept him bound,” the boy began, trying to barter, “and if you were just outside, and I stayed only for five minutes—”

“No.”

“I—”

“It won’t happen, Christopher. This is not your decision to make.”

Christopher shut his mouth immediately. Ashcombe could almost hear his teeth click against each other as he did so, for how sudden the movement was.

God Almighty, but this was not how he saw his evening going.

He watched as the boy shifted, turning more towards the warmth of the fire, and then grimaced sharply in pain. 

“Are you well?”

“Just the shoulder,” Christopher murmured, voice tight. “It’s nothing, My Lord.” Ashcombe frowned.

“Have you had something for the pain?” He glanced about the room, eyes finding the jar of poppy seeds still resting on a side table. “Poppy?”

“I’ve stopped taking it.”

“Since when?”

“A few days now. It’s not wise to take it for so long. Cravings, you know.” He winced again.

“You should have a drink, then.” He found the bottle nestled among the other refuse in the room and uncorked it, pouring some into a crystal glass. Christopher glanced at it, then drank it down in a few gulps.

“Has anyone checked the wound recently?”

“Tom’s been doing it,” the apprentice said softly, “and he said it seemed better.” Better to a baker’s son was likely different to that of a soldier. 

“Can I…?” He trailed off.

Christopher glanced up at him, then nodded in acquiescence. Slowly, carefully, he pulled off his coat, followed by his undershirt, leaving nothing but flesh and bandages exposed.

Stepping slowly, Lord Ashcombe approached the bed, moving to stand carefully behind the boy’s thin frame. Dexterous fingers unwound the bandages from the wound, stained with the dried crimson of blood. He tried to do it slowly, pulling as little as possible, but as he worked he felt Christopher grow taut with pain beneath him.

He grazed the flesh, torn and burnt, with the tip of one finger, scrutinizing the injury for the infection he so desperately feared. Blistered flesh and bloody slashes, a horrible scar on top of so many others. It was clearly still raw, only partially closed, but the searing agony of cauterization had done its work.

The King’s Warden turned him more closely to the light, just to be certain, and Christopher flinched sharply under his hands. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“It’s nothing,” the boy gritted out between clenched teeth. “I’m used to it, My Lord.” He needed to ask, needed to know, needed to confirm that awful suspicion eating away at him when the world was too still.

“From where?” He asked as casually as he could, dousing a boiled rag with brandy. “Blackthorn?”

“No,” Christopher winced sharply as he pressed against the wound. “Before. At Cripplegate.” 

“They beat you there?” 

“They beat all their children there. I’m hardly an exception.” He finished with the wound, satisfied that it wouldn’t fester, and picked up a clean bandage from the pile on the table nearby.

“And this is just…allowed, then? A common practice?” It was difficult to contain the swell of anger building within him. He wrapped the bandages around the wound with expert precision, the kind only born out of years of experience. Christopher was silent for a long moment.

“Only when we misbehave,” he whispered. His voice sounded so small in the darkness of the room.

I know what it’s like to be unhappy. 

“And did you often misbehave?” Ashcombe asked, but they both knew that wasn’t what they were talking about anymore. The room was silent as he tied the dressing tight, the candles guttering in the shadows of the room.

“Yes, My Lord,” he murmured so softly, and then said no more.

Chapter Text

He couldn’t sleep that night, not for many hours. The room, which often carried a pleasing warmth, felt hot and oppressive. His attempts at rest were thwarted by his own churning mind, circling around and around and tangling into terrible knots.

What to do with this revelation? With this knowledge that radically reshaped nearly everything he knew of Christopher Rowe?

You should have seen this, his mind whispered in the dark. You knew, deep down, but you refused to see.

Had he known? Certainly, he had suspected for the past fortnight that there was far more beneath the surface. Tom himself had shared his own thoughts. Yet there was a difference between quietly wondering something and having it outright confirmed.

You knew. You always knew.

He tossed and turned. The room was too hot, he was boiling alive, his muscles roasting beneath flesh. Exhaustion tugged at him feebly, pulling like a child at their parent’s hand.

I know what it’s like to be unhappy.

I’m used to it, My Lord.

Used to it. That was what was itching at him most of all. The knowledge itself was horrific, but the concept that Christopher was used to it , that he had become so acquainted with abuse as to find it unremarkable — that was far, far worse.

But what to do? It wasn’t as if beating a child was illegal, or even particularly uncommon in the world; by law, they were the property of their parents. Nobles, of course, rarely raised a hand to their offspring directly, but tutors and other instructors were given leniency to do as they saw fit. Nothing about this situation gave him room to act.

Ashcombe considered if Walsingham might know what to do, but he discarded the idea quickly. Bringing him into things would likely just complicate matters, not to mention the fact that the spymaster would insist on questioning the boy. 

What would he even say to the man when he asked why he suddenly cared about the plight of the poor? That he felt some sort of misplaced guilt about the entire situation involving Christopher? That he felt the old driving ache to protect, to avenge, that he had his entire life?

What it was to be one of the most powerful men in England, and yet to find his hands utterly bound when it mattered.

Eventually, he surrendered to the night and sat up, moving sluggishly to the chair by the dying fire. The bottle of brandy was still sitting by the edge of the table.

He held it in one hand, running a thumb over the cool, warped glass. The liquid sloshed against its translucent walls, sliding and pooling endlessly like the churning of the tides.

And did you often misbehave?

He tugged the stopper from it and took a long drink. The old familiar burn coursed through him, searing like blue flame. He took another pull, and then another, until the edges of the room began to seem blurred and his head on the pillow not quite so heavy as before.

*       *      *

Lord Ashcombe woke some time later, though he wasn’t quite certain when; dim light filtered through the overcast sky, but the room was silent and still. His head pounded when he pushed himself up with his elbows.

He grunted, closing his ruined eye against the harshness of the day. What time was it? Eight? Nine, maybe?

It was another ten minutes before he had washed and dressed himself, donning his customary black furs to stave off the cold. The innkeeper barely even glanced at him as he made his way out of doors, an icy wind cutting through him as he stepped outside.

Contrary to the interior of the inn, the snow-filled courtyard was alive with sound. The clashing of metal, the crunching of snow, orders yelled, whoops and jeers echoing off of the walls. 

It was a veritable cacophony of life, and God Almighty, it was a welcome one.

His men were carrying out their usual bout of morning training, several groups running through drills or exercises while a few pairs sparred to the side. Among them, gilded sword strapped to his back, a blunted one in hand, was Thomas Bailey. 

The boy was practicing the slow, swinging arcs that demonstrated the fundamental movements of swordplay: a gash to the thigh, a slash at the shoulder, a sharp, direct thrust at the torso, no hesitation. Captain Tanner was eyeing him carefully, making quick adjustments to the boy’s stance or grip.

Slash, cut, pierce. Downstrike, then up. Avoid the ribs, aim for the chest. Quick on your feet, quick as you can, quicker than that. Fast before they get you first. Down, up, out, in, cut to the side, run to the back. Harder, stronger.

He was an eager student, that much could be said. He followed instructions with surprising diligence, matching his feet to the other men. And his own strength was an asset on its own.

It wasn’t surprising that he would take to fighting in this way, but it wasn’t something that Ashcombe had anticipated. He wondered if, when they got back to London, Thomas would wish to continue his training.

He could offer him a place in the army immediately, should he want it. A junior officer, a low-ranking lieutenant, a pathway towards mobility and greater status. It could never be so simple as simply that, he knew; the boy had family, an apprenticeship, and was set to inherit his family business. And yet, a position of respectability, and one that came with an excellent stipend, was not something to be scoffed at.

Whether Tom would accept the offer, he did not know. He wouldn’t force it on the boy; The King’s Warden, of all people, knew what it was to have your entire life chosen for you. But it was certainly worth consideration.

Putting aside these thoughts, he refocused on the ongoing training, walking amongst his men and inspecting their form. Each of them nodded their respect, deference clear in their gaze. Those that were sparring hesitated just briefly to glance at him before resuming their combat.

After the passage of a few minutes, Tanner separated from the group and walked over to the edge where Ashcombe stood. They stood together, side by side, and watched as the drills became more advanced, the soldiers moving more quickly to keep pace.

“He’s not half bad, you know.” Ashcombe turned slightly at the captain’s voice. “For a lad, I mean."

Lord Ashcombe shifted his gaze to where Tanner was focused. Tom had begun to spar with another soldier, their movements made careful by the slickness of the snow.

“The boy shows promise,” he agreed, voice even.

“Do you intend to act on it, General?”

“Would you recommend it?” Tanner paused, considering for an instant.

“I would, My Lord. Skill like that, he could be put to good use.”

“I’m considering offering him a position in the army upon our return to London,” The older man said, words rough against his throat. Charles, of course, was always delighted to bring gifts to those he favored, and this sort of opportunity would benefit everyone. The boy would get a significant rise in station, the king would earn another ever-loyal subject, and Ashcombe’s guilt might start easing up.

All in all, things could start turning around.

“With respect, General,” Tanner began, tone careful, “Why stop there?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he continued, still treading with caution, “that a position with the King’s Men might suit him better.”

The two men were silent for a long moment after that. Beyond, in the snow-filled clearing, swords clashed and spun, metal glinting in the morning sun like white flames. Two of the soldiers slipped and fell down, eliciting laughter from the rest of the group.

“I’ll think on it, Captain,” he said at last. “He’s still young, after all.” So were you, his mind supplied. And yet you were warden before you were eighteen.

He switched off that line of thinking. No good would come of dwelling on the past.

Captain Tanner cleared his throat. “There’s another matter, General, that I’ve been meaning to speak with you about.”

“Which is?”

“Some of the men were in one of the taverns in town last night. They heard tell that two, maybe three ships will be leaving port soon, if the good weather holds. We could be on one of them, heading for Southampton by Friday’s tide.”

Friday. Barely even two days from now.

“I’d normally want more time for the children to recover,” the King’s Warden said slowly, “but this could be the best chance that we’ll have, especially given the weather of late. We could be back at court in less than a fortnight, if all things go well.”

London. The promise of it was a balm against his weatherbeaten will. The safety of Whitehall, with its iron-locked doors and labyrinthine passages. Physicians trained at the Royal College, who could mend bullet wounds and torn flesh. An army to protect them.

His family. Walsingham. 

Charles.

In the end, it was no choice at all.

It would be the best chance they had to leave this god-forsaken shire before spring came. Their original plan had crumbled in the face of such unpredictable storms, which came and went with a fury rarely seen. If they didn’t leave now, he knew they never would.

Tanner was speaking again, and he refocused to catch the rest of what he was saying.

“—possibility of transport for the other children, with some encouragement, of course, but they would likely reach Rotterdam in only a few days. With luck, the wind will hold that long, and this whole business can be resolved.”

Ashcombe nearly asked who he was referring to before the pieces clicked together. Arranging transport for the Dutch children was, of course, just as necessary as their own.

“Is this man a merchant, then? Heading back to the Netherlands for the winter?”

“Er–” Tanner hesitated, “he’s a privateer, I believe.”

“In Seaton?”

“Trapped by the weather, much like us all, and has been forced to take refuge here for the last few weeks. Some bloke named Haddock.”

It wasn’t an ideal situation, but Ashcombe always worked with the cards he was dealt.

“You can arrange a meeting?”

“Consider it done, General. I’ll fetch him myself after the men finish up here.”

“Good.” The King’s Warden swallowed, then rubbed at the scar running down his face. The cold turned the rent flesh aching and raw, and his ruined eye throbbed beneath the cloth patch.

Wounds that would never heal. Time turned mountains into canyons, but the skin would never wear down into smoothness again. 

The two men turned back towards the sparring, which was drawing to a close as the remaining pairs began to break apart. With a final nod of respect, Tanner strode towards his men and began barking orders.

As he was about to leave, his gaze caught on Tom Bailey, who was resheathing his practice sword into the scabbard at his waist. The boy glanced up and met his eye, startled, then flashed him a smile. It was small and hesitant, but it was real.

Lord Ashcombe nodded in acknowledgement, and Tom’s quiet expression broadened to a sudden grin. With an ease of step he hadn’t seen in weeks, the boy began to walk towards the armory, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the King’s Men.

*       *       *

Despite his oversleeping, there was little for him to accomplish before the morning turned to afternoon. The little business of the King’s that he could attend to had already been completed, and the whole affair with the Darcy’s was coming to a rather tidy conclusion.

The baronet would, of course, face execution in London upon their return. The nobility and common folk loved bloodsport, and the slaughter of an enemy of the King was always a delight to them.

Privately, Ashcombe delighted in the notion that Edmund Darcy would face a public and humiliating end to his existence. Since he wasn’t a true member of the peerage, he thought it likely that Charles would agree to mount his head in the square as a warning that no mercy would come to traitors. Even if he didn’t, the man would still be dead.

Right now that was good enough for him.

Julian was a trickier matter to handle. By his own confession, as well as the confirmation of all three of the children, he had aided and abetted his father’s plan to sell local children into slavery and accept bribery from enemies of The Crown. Christopher pleaded for mercy, claiming that he had been manipulated and forced by the Baronet. Tom and Sally both had considerably less lenient views of the matter.

In the end, he had found a solution that he suspected Charles would prefer. The boy would serve seven years in the army in service to the King, and if he worked diligently, protecting the kingdom and its inhabitants, then the charges would be dropped and he would be free to start anew. If he abandoned his post, endangered others in reckless action or committed any other crimes, he would face expulsion and execution.

It was, in his opinion, a generous settlement. One that could keep his conscience clean and turn an enemy into an ally. And one that would appease Christopher’s desire for forgiveness while bolstering Charles’s image of equanimity.

How far you’ve come, he could almost hear Walsingham say to him. I almost didn’t believe it, but there’s some politician in you after all.

Shut up, he growled in his head. Even when he wasn’t there, the spymaster was right far too often.

A knock sounded at the door to his makeshift office. 

“Enter,” Ashcombe grunted, still bent over his desk. Heavy footsteps crossed the threshold, booted feet resounding against the solid wood paneling. He glanced up at Tanner, who was still dressed in his thick woolen overclothes and a fur wrap.

“Haddock’s downstairs,” the man said softly.

“Bring him here.”

“Aye, General.”

The captain’s heavy feet retreated back down the stairs and were soon joined by another set. Through the rather thin walls, the Marquess could hear Tanner’s insistent words saying something; most likely a combination of threats and warnings.

“Don’t think that…General…fucking better remember yourself…won’t be any…fucking understand…” His muffled voice filtered through, only every few words distinguishable through the plaster. 

Shortly after this brief tirade, Captain Haddock sauntered through the door, clothing tattered and reeking of rum. He sat in the empty seat in front of him without asking, rolling his shoulders back with a clicking sound.

“You must be Haddock,” the older man grunted. “You own a boat, or so I’ve heard.”

“Oh, do I ever, my good sir,” the privateer drawled, the stench of the booze even stronger up close. “And is she a true beauty to behold.”

“You’re in service to our King as a privateer, are you not?”

“None better this side of the channel, may God bless our great and noble king.” The words were just on the brink of a lashing offense, toeing the line of respect and mockery. Lord Ashcombe took a careful breath through his mouth, trying to avoid the smell.

“You work for me now. I need you to go to Rotterdam, and I need it quickly. Plan to sail in two days.”

This roused Haddock from his half-drunken stupor.

“Rotterdam? I steal from the Dutch, not trade with those bastards. It ain’t what I do.”

“What you do,” Ashcombe said slowly, leaning forward on the desk, “is what I tell you. Let me make this clear: you will go to Rotterdam. You will bring twelve children with you, and they will be taken from you there. After this is complete, you will be free to do as you wish, but until that moment comes, you will follow my every fucking word like your life depends on it, because it fucking well does. Am I being clear enough, or do you need this whipped into you as well?”

There was a long silence as the men stared at each other, Ashcombe’s one dark eye boring into Haddock’s two. Then a smile slowly stretched across the privateer’s face.

“Aye, sir,” he said slowly, enunciating carefully. “I understand ye perfectly.”

*       *      *

Arrangements were made to depart, and quickly. The dwindling supplies brought by the King’s Men were organized and boxed neatly, their surplus of weaponry removed from the armory and kept close by. As they had brought little and used much, it only took a few hours to have nearly everything prepared.

The innkeep, once ingratiating, was now wheedling against the clamor of it all.

“It’s disrupting the business, good sir, putting everyone on edge with all this banging and bustling, surely you could–”

But he was paid no heed.

Ashcombe had made a brief visit to the docks to inspect the vessel that would carry them on Friday’s tide. The captain, for a rather generous lump sum, would be more than pleased to carry the Warden and another dozen passengers to Southampton. The vessel, called Pearl’s Luck , was small but tidy, her decks polished and her sails well mended. The journey would likely take no more than a day, especially if the winds blew as strongly as they had of late.

The sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon when he returned to the inn, the hooves of his stallion crunching against the crisp snow. Upon seeing his approach, Tanner met him halfway, walking alongside him as he brought his mount to the ramshackle stables.

“A few small things aside, we should be ready to leave at first light day after next.” Lord Ashcombe nodded his approval.

“Have the children been told of our leaving?”

“Which ones?” The other man replied with a chuckle. “The Dutch or the English?” 

“Both.”

Tanner hummed. “Can’t speak much Dutch, so the young ones don’t know, but Bailey’s been helping us pack for the last hour, so he knows we’re getting out as quick as we can. Oh, and the girl—Sally, is it?—she knows too.”

“Christopher?”

“Haven’t seen him today, but I haven’t been looking either.” The captain turned and called over his shoulder, where Tom was busy hauling two large saddles toward the storage pile. “Have you told him?” he called across the snow.

Tom paused, then called back. “No, but he should be around. I think he’s out a ways back.” Carefully, he gestured one-handedly in the opposite direction.

Ashcombe turned and began walking away.

“I’ll tell him myself.”

*      *      *

Fifty paces away from the inn, the world was still. The late afternoon sun threw orange rays across the snow-covered ground, casting shadows of molten gold. It was freezing, as it always was these days, but even the wind had subsided for this final hour of radiant dusk.

He could see Christopher kneeling in the snow, back turned toward him. Ashcombe wondered, as his feet crunched across the ground towards the boy, what it was that he was doing out there, and if it was wise of him to disturb his solitude.

Perhaps he had sought this isolation for a purpose, he considered. Perhaps he wanted space away from it all. And who was Ashcombe to deny that to him?

He hesitated, fifteen feet away from his kneeling form. A part of him urged him to leave the boy alone. Let him come back to the inn on his own, the quieter part of his mind said. Let someone else tell him. 

Haven’t you wounded him enough of late?

His will wavered briefly before he steeled himself against his own cowardice. He had just taken another step when a trilling whistle sounded across the clearing, followed by the flapping of feathered wings.

A bird—a pigeon, he realized after a beat—took a series of artful loops and spins in the sky, before turning and gliding down directly towards Christopher. Ashcombe nearly started forward as the bird dropped down close, wondering if the creature was hungry, trying to get food from the boy, before reality struck him hard across the face.

The pigeon. Christopher’s pet.

Of course.

The pigeon fluttered its wings in a cloud of grey feathers as it came back down to the ground, and a sound Ashcombe had never heard rang out. It took him an instant to realize what it was, for how out of place it seemed.

Laughter. Still turned away from him, Christopher Rowe was laughing, delighted, free-flowing notes that bubbled like a woodland stream.

“I told you she could do it,” the boy called back to him. “You didn’t believe me, but I knew it’d take but an afternoon to teach her. And did you see that spin?” He laughed again, gentler now, more soft around the edges. “She’s showing off, I guarantee.”

Remaining seated, Christopher turned back towards him with a grin, then froze. The bird, gently cradled within his hands, nuzzled at his gloved fingertips.

“I—Lord Ashcombe,” he started after a pause, “I’m sorry, I—I thought you were Tom.”

“Of course.” The King’s Warden waved his apologies aside. “He’s with the rest of the men.”

Ashcombe moved closer, heavy boots sinking into the snow. The boy didn’t rise as he approached, holding the pigeon close to his chest like a child might with a doll.

“We’re leaving day after next on the morning’s tide. With luck, we’ll reach Southampton before the night is over, and onto London by carriage. Thought you should know.”

“London?” Christopher repeated, the golden gleam of the fading sun in his eyes. “We’re going home?”

Ashcombe ignored how his chest seemed to twist at the word home .

“And leave this whole hexed shire behind us.” He glanced down at the boy. “Will the bird be coming with us? She seems rather taken with the sky here.”

Christopher pressed the bird close to his heart, not meeting his gaze. “Bridget always goes where I go,” he said softly. “Even if she likes it here too.”

“She comes when you call her?”

“I taught her that,” the boy noted with a hint of pride. “Tom didn’t think I could do it.”

“A clever creature,” Ashcombe hummed, “but one unsuited to the cold.” He held out his three-fingered hand to Christopher, wrapped as it was in a thick leather glove. “We should get inside.”

Christopher, that frail, thin child, wounded and too-pale and in need of protection, looked at him for a long moment, eyes searching his scarred face. Ashcombe nearly let his hand fall, but the boy carefully grasped it with his own frostbitten fingers and let himself be pulled to his feet.

Together, they turned back toward the inn, the orange sunset now at their backs. And if the Warden’s hand lingered for a beat on the boy’s good shoulder, well, it was just to keep him from falling on the ice. 

And if the boy leaned gently into the touch, well, no one had to know about it either.

*       *       *

For the first time in ages, Ashcombe fell asleep almost as soon as dinner was over. The day hadn’t been particularly tiring, though he had ended up sparring a few times with the men after dinner, for there was little else to do. As soon as he lay down upon the straw bed, darkness overtook his senses in a dreamless quiet.

He had never been one to sleep long, however. It was one of the things that had irritated Charles to no end during their long exile abroad. You’re always tired during the day, the King would say, so why can’t you bloody well sleep?

Back then, it was vigilance that kept him awake. He had failed one king; he would not fail another by dozing while some assassin crept up on them in the night. 

Now, even when the danger had long since passed, the King’s Warden could never get used to more than five hours of rest at a time. 

So it was not long after midnight that Lord Ashcombe found himself inexplicably awake once more, the fire in the hearth burned down to glowing embers. Fog still muddling his mind, he considered attempting to sink back into unconsciousness, but a far wiser part of him knew it was futile.

In those early days immediately after Charles’s return, he often found himself unable to sleep at all, spending night after night running a whetstone over his sword and counting the creaking of the floorboards.

The King, just barely past his own coronation, would often find him seated alone by the light of the fire, mind running wild circles of all the ways everything could crumble around them. He would sit beside him, just the two of them, and still his restless hands with his own.

It won’t happen again, Richard, Charles would say. We’re safe here. You and me, as we always have been.

Ashcombe never could find a response to that. Ten years in exile, a decade running and hiding and forever living in mistrust had shattered any belief in the notion of safety. But he could pretend when he had to. For Charles, for the man who was his reason for existence, he could pretend.

But this wasn’t London, and there was no Charles to trace gentle fingers over the backs of his scarred hands. He was alone, and the brandy bottle in the room was empty, but perhaps a drink was just what he needed to lull himself back into darkness.

He was making his way back up the rickety stairs with a fresh bottle in hand when he froze, caught off guard. From behind the half-closed door to the sitting room was the glow of a freshly-stoked fire, which backlit a thin silhouette sitting in front of it. 

Too surprised to do anything, Lord Ashcombe stood still in the hallway, slow-moving thoughts trying to churn back to life in his head. The ancient floorboards creaked beneath his weight, and the dark figure jumped slightly, turning around at the sudden noise.

Ashcombe blinked. “Sally?”

The lighting was poor, but he could guess that she was staring back at him with equal surprise.

“Lord Ashcombe? Are you alright?”

Why wouldn’t I be? He nearly replied, then glanced back down at himself: dark nightclothes, bare feet, long hair unbound and loose about his face. Not to mention the bottle still held in one hand.

He probably looked like a madman to her, roaming the hallways in the dead of night. Either that, or a drunk. There was nothing to do about it now, however.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said instead, trying to regain his footing in the conversation. “Can’t sleep?”

“Er…Well, not really. I tried to, for a time, but my mind couldn’t stop moving.”

“That makes two of us.”

Still turned around in her seat, Sally looked at him intently, seeming to weigh something behind her eyes.

“Do you…” she started, hesitant. “Do you want to sit, My Lord?”

A dozen responses rested on the tip of his tongue. No thank you, I didn’t mean to be a bother, I’m just going back to my room, I just needed a drink, I just needed something to take the edge off, to take the edge off this blinding panic I feel at the edge of my conscious mind and every day it gets closer and closer—

“Why not?” came out instead with a shrug, surprising himself. “Drink?” He proffered the bottle towards her, and she nodded again, more sure of herself this time. He carefully poured two glasses of the stuff and sat in the seat opposite, the heat of the fire warming his face.

They were silent for a long time, both of them messy and unkempt, shadows of their usually tamed selves; tousle-haired and in rumpled clothing, drinking liquor in the early hours of morning.

“How is your hand?” Ashcombe ventured at last, breaking the stillness of the dark.

She looked down at the thick bandages concealing gruesome flesh and touched it with a careful finger.

“It’s a wound, My Lord. It’ll heal.”

They both knew that wasn’t true. All wounds, even those as minor as a cut, were never as they once were before. The flesh always remembered, even when the mind did not.

“We’re leaving for London on Friday.”

“So I heard.”

The King’s Warden paused, trying to determine how to frame his next question. Politeness wasn’t one of his strengths even when he was well-rested; in the middle of the night, stranded on a deserted coastline, it took a much more concerted effort to order his thoughts correctly.

“Will you be alright, when we get back?” He asked, trying his best to be gentle. The girl was quiet a long moment.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, green eyes glassy with unshed sorrow. “I don’t know.”

“The Baroness will take you back on. She had some affection for you, I believe. And there are other nobles, other baronesses, if the position is no longer available.” 

Work could be found, he was certain of it. Other members of the peerage were always eager to please, and the addition of another maid was a small price for the Warden’s goodwill. 

“She won’t. I can’t work, My Lord. Not with this hand. Not anymore.” Her breath hitched slightly and she blinked back tears.

The agony of it was that she was right. There was no room for cripples or orphans or broken things, not in their world. Either you were lucky, or you weren’t.

“The Crown does not forget,” he said steadily, carefully, “all that you have sacrificed for us. You will be taken care of. This I promise you.” His single dark eye locked onto her green two, the firelight casting them into swirls of amber. “You can stay with me, be a part of my household, if you have nowhere else to go. My door is never locked to you.”

She stared at him a moment, and then began to sob. Lord Ashcombe froze, uncertain, before realizing that she wasn’t sobbing, but laughing. Anxious, sorrow-filled laughter, caught between disbelief and anguish, with a few stray tears finally beginning to fall.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, finally beginning to gather herself under control. “It’s just—before, when I was at Cripplegate, I used to think that the same thing would happen to me. That some rich noble or friend of my father’s would find me, and it would all turn out to have been just a great mistake, that I was meant to be far away from that place. And now—” she gestured between the two of them with her working hand, “Now you say that I—”

Sally broke off and wiped at her eyes, at her tear-stained cheeks. She breathed in slowly, shakily, shutting her eyes before opening them again. “Thank you, My Lord. I am grateful.”

He didn’t know quite how to respond. What did one say to such an admission?

“I’m sorry that you were there,” he settled on, though the words felt woefully inadequate. “That you waited for someone who never came.”

I’m sorry that I didn’t know, he wanted to say. I’m sorry that they hurt you. I’m sorry that you were alone.

“It was better than what others got. I could’ve been on the streets, starving, forced to steal. Forced to do worse.”

In the daytime, he wouldn’t have pressed, wouldn’t have kept picking at wounds that hadn’t healed quite right. But it was the middle of the night, with liquor warming his stomach and exhaustion wearing at his edges, and he was so, so tired of unspoken words.

“Do you and Christopher…do you ever talk about it?”

“About Cripplegate?” Sally’s tone was surprised, caught off guard. “Sometimes. During the plague, when I stayed with him, we talked about it a lot. It’s…no one else really understands it, I suppose.”

“Not even Tom?” The boy was Christopher’s closest friend, practically family at this point.

“Tom is a good person,” she said, “but he’s never been hungry a day in his life. He’s never been afraid, truly afraid, of what might happen to him, or whether he’ll have a roof over his head at night. But Christopher…he knows these things. Knows them better than anyone else.”

Ashcombe’s chest felt tight with anger, with that sudden blinding rage to kill anyone who ever touched these children. Protect, protect, protect, his heart pounded, blood coursing through his ears.

He took another gulp of drink, draining his glass in a swallow. 

“Did you know each other there?” He asked out of curiosity as he poured himself another drink, a few drops of dark amber spilling onto the side table.

Sally took a small sip of her own glass, barely halfway done with it. “I wasn’t there long,” she said, grimacing at the strength of the liquor. “Three years. I got sick though, when I was ten. Christopher took care of me. That’s how we met.”

“Of course he did.” It was so utterly Christopher that it almost hurt. “He’s a good person.”

The girl hummed in agreement. “Better than most. Better than he should be.” Better than you, his mind whispered. The poor orphan is a saint, whereas the marquess is a monster.

Quiet settled upon them for another few moments, the two of them sitting opposite each other, warmed by the heat of the flames. There was no pressure to speak, to lay out the truth by each painstaking word. That agony belonged to the day. In the night, at last, there was peace in pure honesty.

“Christopher wants to speak to Julian,” he spoke suddenly, the words coming as a surprise even to himself. “Do you think I should let him?”

The orphan girl seemed baffled. He could almost read the thoughts painted across her face: Why would he be asking her of all people what he should do?

Because she was the only person who might understand this situation, who could realize the history that ringed around both boys like heavy cloaks. 

Because she knew what it was like to be in their place.

“I don’t know Julian’s story,” she began. “Not all of it, at least. But I know enough about fear to know why he did the things he did.” She touched her wounded hand again, fingers feather-light. “Let them speak, My Lord. Maybe then we can all find some peace.”

It was not the response he had wanted to hear, but he had needed to nonetheless. Christopher, of all people, deserved closure, to shut this chapter of his life and leave it without any questions, without any what-ifs circling his consciousness like vultures.

They would speak on the morrow, should the boy still want it. Ashcombe would do it, even if his rational instincts screamed not to leave him alone with someone who had hurt him.

“I realize I never thanked you, My Lord,” Sally said at last.

“For what?”

“For coming back. For saving us.” Her words were earnest, a deeper emotion curled up inside them.

“Of course.” Always. I would always have come back. And that was the truth of it. He would’ve gone to the edge of the earth if it had meant finding them alive, would’ve driven himself to starvation and madness if it meant their protection.

He didn’t know quite how it had happened, when three London children found some tattered scrap of heart buried deep within his chest and struck embers onto it. It was that old fire, that burning of protection, that drove him to ensure that nothing ever touched them again. Why them, why now—he could not explain it, couldn’t begin to search the constellations of his mind for the reasons behind his own actions.

His cup was empty again. He began to raise it again, to fill another glass, but then stopped himself.

It would not do to drink himself into a stupor for the second night in a row, not when they were leaving almost-tomorrow, not when an orphan girl was sitting beside him and sharing so much of her soul.

“It’s late,” he said at last. “We should get some rest.”

Having finished at last her share of the brandy, Sally stood once more, smoothing out her nightdress with her one good hand. She turned and began to leave the room, then hesitated at the half closed door.

“You’re a better man than you think you are, Lord Ashcombe,” she murmured softly, fingers resting on the door handle. “I wish you knew that.”

Ask the heads on London Bridge, he wanted to say. Ask the widows and the children with no fathers. Ask the poor who I taxed to the hilt, and the soldiers I slew on the battlefield.

He did not say these things, not that night in that fragile darkness. He merely nodded and said goodnight, merely drew the grate over the fire and shuffled back slowly to his own room. 

He thought for a long time at the unfairness of the world, at the ways in which kindness is broken down and cruelty rewarded. He thought of cold stones and loneliness and the endless waiting for a person who never comes.

He thought of Christopher, and his wounded heart burned.

Chapter Text

The office door was sturdy and made of weathered oak, and for once Lord Ashcombe resented such fine craftsmanship. There were no embellishments, no banding of iron or decorative metalwork. Just wood, solid and sturdy and three inches thick. It was all that was needed, after all; out here, no one cared that the furnishings were bare.

Functionality prized over fashionability. Ashcombe understood, but there were certain situations where he wished it were otherwise.

He forced himself to remain seated, to not rise and pace the halls like a cornered animal. A half dozen schoolmasters chided him in his head, can’t you sit still for once, Richard, for God’s sake, and he picked at his nails to distract himself.

Christopher was on the other side of that wall. Christopher, and the other one.

Julian.

He’d kept his word. That morning, just as dawn was breaking, he’d sent Tanner to fetch the Darcy boy and bring him back to the inn. They’d bound his hands and feet with rope, though Ashcombe doubted that he’d try to run. 

The boy had surprised him; he had not begged for release, nor tried to lie to protect himself. He’d answered the questions asked of him, and then he remained silent. 

Never running, never speaking. Something moving shadowed behind his implacable eyes.

And now here Ashcombe was, sitting on the other side of that great oaken beast of a door, waiting for any sign that Christopher gave him.

Ten minutes, he’d told Christopher. Ten minutes to settle all that had passed, to cut away all these questions at last and let himself have peace. It would not be enough time, he knew, not for all of it. But it was all he could bring himself to give.

Six minutes. They were alone in that cramped office, Christopher and Julian. There was no point trying to place someone else in there, not even Tom. That was the whole point of it, and what was driving him up the wall with pure tension.

Seven minutes. He would not knock on the door, of course. That would be patently absurd, and Lord Ashcombe was not that kind of man. Charles had enough absurdity for the both of them. Someone had to be the sensible one, the one who made the right decisions, who acted as one should act.

But what if he hurts him? 

That was the critical fear at the root of it all. If Christopher were hurt—if Ashcombe put him in a situation where he could be overpowered, where he could be taken advantage of—it would be unforgivable. He would kill Julian then, of course. But it would be too late.

Eight minutes. Surely it had to have been eight minutes by now.

No one was going to kill anybody, at least not today. At least not right now. This much he could do. This much was certain.

What he needed was to get a goddamn grip. Everything was fine. They would be leaving tomorrow, sailing away into the horizon where London awaited them. Lord Ashcombe intended to put as many miles in between them and this whole hexed shire as he possibly could, the snows be damned.

London could not fix everything, this he knew. But surely, surely it would help with some of their problems, and that was as good as he dared to hope for.

Two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds. Easy as sherry pie, as lemon cake, as a country dance. Charles had a thousand phrases like that, so many he couldn’t begin to remember them all. Everything’s easy, if you just think about it right , the young king had once told him. He wasn’t sure if it was true.

Everything was easy for a king, and doubly so for Charles, a man blessed with wit and courage and love. Many things, such as patience, had been a hard-won lesson for Ashcombe. Once it had infuriated him, particularly when set against Walsingham, who made moving mountains seem effortless; by now, nearing fifty, he had learned to accept his lot.

He couldn’t deny that he was deeply curious to know what was being said in the room across. It was not his place, and he knew it, yet that didn’t stop him from wondering. Anger? Apologies? Did either ask forgiveness? Could either ever accept it?

Would Christopher speak first, or would Julian? He did not know, and almost certainly never would. There were things that Ashcombe could never ask, and the contents of this conversation was one of them.

No sound filtered through the wood. Perhaps there was just silence on the other side.

Perhaps that was enough for them.

He remained seated for a moment, fur-lined gloves off, tracing the scars of his ruined hand. Pale flesh turned red and twisted, once-graceful fingers turned to haphazard stumps. Such was the way it always was. 

One hundred and twenty. 

The door opened, and Ashcombe glanced up. That all-too-familiar silhouette greeted him, backlit by a rare winter’s sun. Christopher, thin shoulders and slight frame, eyes that saw far too deeply, though his face was cast in shadow.

He didn’t speak, merely gave him the smallest nod. Ashcombe stood and strode towards the door, to the other boy that awaited him within.

Julian Darcy met his eyes, his face as unreadable as stone.

*       *      *

The inn was a whirl of activity. Galvanized by the possibility of finally leaving this damned place, the men were all about, carting boxes, loading supplies, leading skittish horses through knee-high snows. The sky was a frozen blue, pale and distant, the white orb of the sun turning everything blinding.

Two dozen men, and thus four dozen hands, did not necessarily make light work.

Ashcombe let himself be absorbed in it. Back in London, or anywhere, really, it was rare to find the nobility engaging in any sort of physical labor. For sport, a gentleman would of course play the part, and in those rare moments when it was necessary to look gallant or handsome or true. But levering boxes and leading horses was for servants, not for nobles, and certainly not for the King’s right hand.

Yet he had always found something soothing in the repetition, in the simple satisfaction of a task completed. No tricks or slights, no cutting words to spend hours parsing. Just himself and the work, and the thoughts that for once had gone silent.

In Chillingham, he always took on more of the physical labor, both from necessity and desire. His father had told him that all men, regardless of birth, needed to know the feeling of hard work, and he had been certain that it was a lesson his son learned well. Up until he was twelve he had saddled every horse he’d ridden, cleaned each bridle and carried his own trunks.

Perhaps this made him appear simple. Perhaps this inclination to the physical rather than the mental showed his backwardness, how the country bumpkin could never be beaten out of him. In his youth, the other boys had laughed at the dirt on his hands, at the act of bridling his own mount.

Finally found someone to talk to, Ashcombe? Pity the horse has a finer face than yours.

We’ll call him Asscombe, the way he resembles a donkey.

What an oaf! So ignorant he’s practically savage. Go back to your hovel, and leave the civilized folk in peace.

Once he would have been bothered, but no longer. He was long past caring what others thought of him.

Night fell early, and it was not long before they all began to make their way back towards the inn. Haddock, no doubt, would spend the night getting deliriously drunk, and the rest of the seamen as well. Lord Ashcombe would’ve been tempted to do the same, though he refused to risk jeopardizing their return.

It was getting late, then, when he finally managed to drag himself towards his closet of a room. Tiny and cramped and drafty, to be sure, but tonight he would find no complaints. It would be the last time he ever laid his head to rest there.

Lord Ashcombe had just passed the landing when a sliver of golden light caught his eye. Christopher, then, the telltale glow of candlelight bleeding out from behind the door. It wasn’t quite closed, either; the flickering of the fire could just be seen through a gap between the door and the frame.

He nearly pushed it open, but hesitated when he heard voices. Christopher’s, of course, though his soft words were difficult to hear over the crackling of the hearth. 

“—upset you?” Another voice, steady and deeper. Tom, then, ever-present at his friend’s bedside.

Lord Ashcombe shifted his position, boots sliding carefully over the hardwood floor to prevent it from creaking. 

They were on the bed, the both of them, Christopher carefully resting with his bad shoulder propped against a cushion. His head was pressed against the other boy’s chest, near his heart, arms and legs pressed up against each other. The bulky frame of Thomas Bailey was curled around him, a shield against the rest of the world.

“Not—not upset, just…” Christopher struggled for words. “Just sad. I thought he understood, I was sure of it, and then…”

“It wasn’t what you thought?”

Christopher hummed. “No. It wasn’t.”

The room was silent for a moment before he spoke once again.

“I try not to think about it,” Christopher said. “No one wants to think about it, you know. One part of you says it’s normal, but the rest of you knows it isn’t, so you’re always fighting with yourself. And I know…I know he’s felt that too.”

Christopher shifted carefully on the bed, nestling himself closer to his friend. He spoke again, voice but a whisper, and Ashcombe couldn’t quite hear what it was. Eavesdropping was an invasion of privacy, and this was clearly a private conversation, but a piece of him couldn’t tear himself away.

Lord Ashcombe could tell himself it was a desire to protect the boy, but he knew that protectiveness could easily turn into controlling. More and more, however, he found it difficult to draw the line, to pull back for both of their sakes.

It wouldn’t do to get attached, now, would it? Walsingham murmured in his head. His advice would do no good, though, for Lord Ashcombe was in too deep. 

“It’s not your fault, either of you,” he heard Tom say, voice a rumble in the quiet of the night. “All of it, the things that happened—you're not the one to blame. Others are, yes, but you deserve to find peace.”

“It’s so hard to,” the smaller boy whispered, and his voice was so broken that it cut deep within him. “I try to forget, I’ve tried so hard , and they just keep coming back. It’s like…” he paused, searching for the right words. “It’s like there’s this chain around my neck. Every now and then I forget it’s even there, but then sometimes…sometimes it pulls so tight that I can’t breathe, and it’s all I can do just to get by.”

Tom said nothing, did not try to touch him or to pull him close. Ashcombe did not understand it, but then it suddenly clicked into place in his mind.

Touch. This was the first time he had seen Christopher not just tolerate being touched, but actively seek a physical form of comfort from anyone. He had seen the two boys share a bed, of course, but that was different; unconsciousness allowed for so many things never done in the daylight. This was him asking for comfort, and being able to tolerate receiving it.

He realized, then, just how careful Tom must have been in order to get to this point. He did not rush, did not press him for answers or information. He offered solace, and let his friend take as much as he wanted. 

Three years spent building trust. Ashcombe had not considered Bailey to be so patient; how wrong his assessment had been.

Christopher raised his head slightly, eyes meeting those of his friend, before letting his head drop back to his chest.

“You’re holding back on me,” he murmured, nudging Tom ever so slightly. “I can always tell.”

“Will you tell him? About…about Paris?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should. I think it could help.”

Christopher sighed, seeming exhausted. “Where would I even start?”

“Anywhere. It doesn’t have to be everything. It could be something, anything, just…enough.”

“Maybe,” he said at last, though his tone was doubtful. “I’ll think about it.”

Tom didn’t press any further, and the conversation died between them. The hearth crackled and spat, flames sinking down into glowing coals.

Alone, silent and ashamed, Lord Ashcombe walked the darkened corridor back to his rooms.

*     *     *

Leaving. It was difficult to believe that after weeks spent stranded, they would finally be leaving this whole hexed shire. Two hundred miles to Oxford—surely just a jaunt, after all the hardships they had faced. Another week cramped in a carriage, and the warmth of the King would welcome them back.

All that lay between them was the whole south of England. Oh, and a veritable mountain of paperwork to finish, as apparently each step he took required another signature to authorize the movement of goods.

Most of it was straightforward—drafting receipts, authorizing payments, tracking movements, updating correspondence—but the sheer volume meant another late night of writing before their early departure. A light sleeper he might have been, but even Ashcombe felt weary from it all.

Perhaps they could go to Chillingham, he and the children, once all of this was over. It was a hopeless fantasy, he knew, some half-cooked dream where they were all safe and unharmed. That world would never exist, but a part of him couldn’t help but imagine.

Oxford, at the very least, would work wonders for them all. Charles, with all his light and laughter and endless kindness; Walsingham with his wit and cunning and ruthless efficiency. Someone else to share the burden of grief, hands unscarred by the darkness of men. They were everything he lacked, everything that he sorely needed more and more.

Lord Ashcombe was pulled from his reverie by a knock at the door, hesitant and soft. 

“Enter,” he said, voice grating from several hours of disuse. He set down his quill as Christopher tentatively stepped inside, the candlelight softening his silhouette into gold.

The boy did not say anything, simply stood in the doorway and looked at him. He was still in his nightclothes, Ashcombe realized, the white linen slightly too big for him, cotton bandages showing through underneath. Both of his feet were bare against the wood floor.

“I need to tell you a story,” he said at last, the words hanging heavy in the air. Ashcombe nodded once, then beckoned him to the chair opposite his own at the desk. He sat, heels dangling ever so slightly above the floor, and picked at his nails.

“I need to tell you a story,” Christopher repeated, two pale eyes meeting Ashcombe’s one. “About Paris. About what happened there.”

He waited silently, giving the boy space to compose his thoughts. If he knew anything about Christopher Rowe, it was that trust did not come easily to him. Now, being offered it so suddenly, Ashcombe would do anything not to turn him away again.

“You know about—” he started, then broke off, struggling to find the right words. “You’ve heard most of it. Finding the clues, the game of poisons waged by the French King’s traitors. But there was…something else. Someone behind them, pulling the strings.” 

He was still looking at the King’s Warden, his face such a child’s that it nearly wounded him again. A gnawing dread clawed at his stomach as he waited to hear his next words.

“He calls himself the Raven,” Christopher whispered, and pulled a folded letter from within his pocket.

It did not take long to read. The handwriting was simple, unadorned, yet the violence within was chilling. I am going to make you suffer. I will do this by taking away the things you love, one by one, until there is only you and me. 

And then, once I have stripped your life bare, you will understand.

The boy was still watching him, waiting for his response. Carefully, he set the letter beside him on the desk, next to the one he had been writing to Charles. Terror and love and duty. Forever and always duty.

“What do you know of him?” He asked. “Did you ever meet, or only work through intermediaries?”

“He had…agents, I suppose. The ones I told you about before, Marie-Louise and the tall man from the party. But I never saw his face—at least, I don’t think I saw his real one.”

“And his dealings with Marin Chastellain? A greater tie to his death, perhaps?”

“Maybe,” Christopher admitted slowly. “But it fits just as he said. Marin’s death was a warning of what he could do to everyone else. And the Raven…I think he was one of the other servants, a man called Remi. Perhaps he was waiting in disguise, and our arrival made him act.” Or perhaps he was planning this all along, and you were simply a wrench in his plans, Ashcombe thought to himself.

“A strong theory. But what does a mid-ranking Frenchman have against your master?”

“I don’t know,” the apprentice murmured, and Lord Ashcombe checked his tone. This wasn’t the boy’s fault; he shouldn’t grill him for information he clearly didn’t have.

“He never mentioned a specific grievance? A matter of honor, settled long ago?”

“He left a feather behind for us. A pigeon feather, I think. We always used to keep them, Master Benedict and I, on the rooftop of Blackthorn. It might be a sign that he knew him, once.”

A sign, perhaps, but more likely a threat.

He picked up the letter again, tracing the curving shapes with his gaze. And then, once I have stripped your life bare, you will understand. He needed Walsingham on this, as quickly as he could get him. There was no one else who could get into the mind of such a madman as the spymaster, no one else who could pin him down like an insect to glass.

He would send a letter immediately, then, to London. If he was lucky, it could get there a few days ahead of them, and Walsingham would already have a list of suspects drawn up. He would need to make a copy of the Raven’s note first, plus a list of everything the boy had told him.

“We will find him,” Lord Ashcombe promised, voice rough in the quiet of the night. “This man, whoever he is, will not get far. You have my word that I will protect you, all of you, until he can be strung up in front of the Tower. You are a friend of the Crown, and the Crown finds justice in blood.”

The time for clemency had long since gone. In the darkness of winter, stranded on a forgotten shoreline, there was precious little mercy to be found.

“What if you can’t, My Lord?” Christopher whispered, real fear in his voice. “What if it is too late, and I’ve already doomed us all?”

“Then I will find him, and send him to Hell. He can burn with the Devil for the next eternity.” And regret the day he ever touched Christopher Rowe.

The boy still looked at him, eyes wide with fear and sorrow, and Ashcombe could tell he was unconvinced.

“This man,” he said, the letter still held between two fingers, “this… coward hides behind masks and allies, taunting you endlessly from afar. He promises bloodshed, to tear your life apart, but he does not know the allies that you have. The Crown backs you, Christopher. The spymaster and the King’s Men back you. And even if they are gone—even if the Raven takes them too— I will back you, to the edge of the world itself. Whatever this monster thinks, he will soon come to understand that.”

The boy blinked at him, mouth slightly agape at his outburst. He had never outright expressed such emotion before, at least not in front of him, but it had needed to be said. If this man was as he thought, they would need all the help they could get.

At last, Christopher swallowed, then nodded once. “Thank you, My Lord,” he said, that ever-present, familiar response.

The King’s Warden grunted. “You should try to get some sleep, if you can. We’ll leave on the morning tide, just after dawn.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“Will you,” he paused, struggling to find the words. “Will you be alright tomorrow? On the ship?”

Perhaps it was unnecessary, but it merited asking. Ashcombe had never been thrown off a ship into a seething winter sea, but if he had, he would hardly be lining up for the next voyage out.

“I think so.”

“It’ll be quick. A full day, likely less, then on the road to Oxford.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

The boy stood slowly, then, bare feet moving towards the door. As his fingers grazed the handle he turned around, face shadowed in the evening dark.

“It isn’t that I don’t trust you, My Lord,” he said, “it’s that I think it won’t be enough.”

“Not even with the Crown behind you? Not even behind the iron walls of Whitehall?”

“Not even then, My Lord. Not even with you.”

I came so far for you, he wants to say, longs to wrap his arm around his shoulders and pull him close. I won’t lose you now to some madman on the warpath.

“Perhaps it won’t be. But when we fall, we’ll fall with steel in our hands and blood at our feet, and know that there was nothing more we could have done. We’re soldiers, Christopher, you and me both. We fight and we bleed, until the very end of it all.”

There was nothing else he was more certain of than this. Death was a part of life; if God decreed him to fall at the sword of the wicked, then fall he would, but not before trying his damndest to strike back.

Christopher stood there, hand at the door, impossible sorrow in his eyes.

“Goodnight, My Lord,” he said softly at last, before slipping like a shade into the silence of a winter’s night.

Chapter Text

The world was dark and still when he awoke. He almost thought it was night, and was prepared to try and settle back into sleep, when he saw the torches moving outside. Tanner, most certainly, and a handful of the other men, orange lights bobbing in the predawn.

Time to get up, then. Death waited for no man, not even the hand of the king.

Lord Ashcombe pulled on his furs and laced his boots, three fingers moving with equal dexterity to the other five. He did his best to move quietly as he passed by Christopher’s door—Tom knew of his actions, of course, and Sally likely suspected, but he wanted to keep it away from the boy as long as he could.

A few hours of ignorance, at least. Christopher would know soon enough.

They moved in silence, the six of them, the only sound their breathing and the crunching of snow. At last, they came to the cell in the makeshift jail, saw the wretched form huddling within.

“Get up,” Ashcombe growled, opening the door with a clang. When Sir Edmund didn’t rise, two of his men pulled him to his feet, nails digging into each of his shoulders. The man quaked in their grip, babbling about mercy, about justice, about his son. Ashcombe couldn’t find it within himself to care.

Torches raised high, they made their way to the town square, Lord Ashcombe at the head of the group. Faces peered out of doorways as they passed, women staring as they gathered snow in buckets, young men lingering in the mouths of alleyways. No one stopped to ask where they were going.

They had seen the carpenters hard at work, after all.

When at last the gallows came in sight, the sky was just beginning to lighten into dawn. Sir Edmund thrashed against the King’s Men, struggling against the chains binding his wrists.

“No,” he begged, voice thick. “No, no, no, please, My Lord, please, you don’t understand—I had to do it, they would have taken the town, please, I had no choice, we would have been destroyed—please, mercy, My Lord, have mercy—”

Tanner cracked him hard across the jaw, knocking him to the snow. The shock of the blow quieted him somewhat, and the baronet was hauled to his feet once again.

A crowd had gathered in front of the wooden construction, maybe forty people in total, ranging from young children to the elderly and infirm. All of them waited in silence, the frigid wind blowing through them, pressing them closer together. 

He didn’t recognize any of the faces among them. Ashcombe had informed Tom of his plans two days ago, offering to let him watch the proceedings. The boy had hesitated, then merely shook his head.

It’ll bring me no peace, he said softly. As much as I know he should burn, I haven’t the heart to see it.

He hadn’t told Julian, though he likely guessed it was coming. Even if Christopher was right, and the man had been abusing him, Ashcombe knew there were some things that no one should witness. The death of one’s father ranked high on that list. 

He would know, after all.

It was Ashcombe who took the stage first, dark boots stepping up to the platform’s edge.

“All of you know this man,” he called out, voice loud enough to carry across the square. “Sir Edmund Darcy, baronet of Exeter. Your lord, by all the laws of this land. And yet—” he paused, one dark eye sweeping over the crowd, “he has forsaken you all, and the sovereignty of the Crown.”

The King’s Men dragged Baronet Darcy up the short stairs, hauling him towards the center of the stage.

“He has robbed you,” Ashcombe growled, voice filled with venom. “Stolen your children, sold them for more gold to line his pockets. He has aimed to make innocent Englishmen slaves. And he claims it was for the good of you people, the town of Seaton.”

The crowd was stirring now, shouts of anguish rising up from the masses.

“Liar!”

“Slaver!”

“But this is not his only crime. Years ago, in Exeter and the surrounding villages, this man—” here he shoved him, hard, so that his knees hit the wooden stage, “made a sham out of our holy court. He falsified examinations in exchange for bribes, and a dozen innocent girls lost their lives as a result. For coin, bathed in blood.”

“Cheat!”

“Kill the Baronet!”

“Run him through, My Lord!”

“And when confronted with the reality of his actions,” he shouted above the din of the crowd, “did he repent and beg forgiveness?”

“No!”

“Liar!”

“Fraud!”

“No,” Ashcombe echoed, fingers tightening on the hilt of his sword. “No, he used his son to cover up his actions, and tried to kill innocent children, including my grandson .”

This admission, false though it was, brought the crowd into a frenzy. They expected few people to care for their own children, but the notion that the baronet would threaten the Warden’s own grandson was staggering.

“Burn him!”

“Liar!”

“Treason!”

“For his crimes,” he shouted, hearing the creaking of timber in the wind, “Edmund Darcy will forfeit all rights to his wealth and estate, and none from his bloodline shall hold any inheritance from it. And for treason to the Crown, and the people of Seaton,” he turned back once behind him, gazing at the man cowering in chains, “he shall be hanged in this very square, and his body left to rot for a week.”

The crowd screamed, surging forward, and the baronet tried to flee. With his hands bound in chains, and his own body turned sour with gout, he didn’t get further than a few feet before he was hauled back to center stage.

Lord Ashcombe strode forward, boots tracking heavily against the freshly sawed wood. He’d had to pay the carpenters double in order to get it finished in time. A shoddily built gibbet, however, still broke necks all the same.

Hands held the man steady as he pulled the noose around his neck, expert fingers drawing the rope tight. Edmund was quaking like a leaf, babbling utter nonsense, pleading for a mercy that would never come. Up close, he reeked of pus and urine; Lord Ashcombe wouldn’t have been surprised if the man had soiled himself in terror.

The Crown finds justice in blood, he had told Christopher. Traitors only learned when it was their heads that rolled.

“Your son will live,” he grunted, securing the hempen rope against flesh. “He never deserved such a wretch of a father.”

Lord Ashcombe turned back towards the crowd, which was now humming in eager anticipation. A dozen children stolen under this man’s careful gaze. It was no wonder they would have given anything to see him put to the torch.

“For the Crown,” he shouted, raising his right arm high. “And for the glory of all England.” He brought his arm back down to his side.

The trapdoor fell, dragging Edmund Darcy with it.

It wasn’t a clean break, though that had been intentional. Sir Edmund had not deserved the luxury of an easy death. Instead, when he fell, the rope jerked him upwards sharply, straining the tendons of his neck and cutting off his airway without breaking the vertebrae.

His legs spasmed. Dark eyes bulged in a purpling face, and his mouth frothed white at the edges. The villagers screamed, seizing with ecstasy, as Edmund Darcy writhed like a fish on a hook.

Finally, after several long moments, his neck broke with an echoing crack, and the twitching corpse went still.

“Long live the King,” Ashcombe murmured, as the people of Seaton moved to tear the body apart.

***

Dawn broke into a dim grey sky as they returned to the inn, the rest of the men shuttling crates back and forth to the harbor. The innkeeper stood in the doorway, peering out at the proceedings with equal parts suspicion and fear. Soon enough, he would have his property back, free of wanton trespassers, yet equally free of a steady stream of gold. Greed was a powerful force indeed.

“This the last of it?” he asked, gesturing with a hand to the boxes being hauled.

“Aye, General,” called out one of the younger men, weighed down with extra weapons. “The ships are waiting for your command, with captains aboard them.”

“And the children?”

“At the waterfront, Dutch and English both.”

“Then let’s get off this sorry coast once and for all,” Ashcombe grunted, casting one final look back at the Blue Boar Inn. There was no need to go back inside; everything of value had been packed by his men into several trunks, no doubt now stowed aboard the vessel in the harbor.

The innkeeper watched him from the doorway. The King’s Warden scowled at him, then stalked forward.

“For your convenience,” he grated out, “and the generous accommodations.” He thrust forward a simple leather pouch, filled to the brim with coins. Most of them were pennies and shillings, though there were a few gold pieces mixed in as well.

The innkeeper clasped it gratefully, quickly tucking it into the folds of his coat.

“Godspeed on your journey, My Lord,” he called after them as they trekked down to the harbor. “This whole shoreline has gone to shit.”

***

They were all waiting on the piers, just as he had been told. They stood together in a mix of bodies, all of them clad in oversized coats and hats, most of them sporting some sort of fur.

Sally, Tom, and Christopher all stood pressed together, huddled against the frigid wind. The gangplank to their ship had already been laid out, the ancient wood leading up to the deck.

The storm having passed, at least for now, the four of them would be taking an English navy vessel back to Southampton while the Dutch children traveled separately with Captain Haddock and his crew. Julian, too, would be coming with them, and would continue on their journey to London. Ashcombe would confer with Charles and Walsingham, and they would need a formalized letter of confession from the boy, but it was his hope to get him shipped off to Gravesend as soon as possible.

Military life was not easy, but he hoped it would do the boy some good. Clear structure, orders to follow, a sense of purpose. Some idealized version of king and crown to bleed for. Serve His Majesty well, and the life always dreamed of could be realized; Julian was not foolish enough to pass up such a chance.

The boy was not undeserving of his mercy. He had done terrible things at the behest of his father, that was certain. And yet growing up under such a tyrant, could he truly be blamed for not knowing how to question right and wrong?

Charles would agree with him, he knew. And even if he had uncertainties, Ashcombe would quiet them. In London, everything could be put to right.

Their ship was the Enterprise, built of a decent size with two masts and a spacious deck below. It was not meant for passengers, but Ashcombe pulled superiority of rank, and managed to get them the Captain’s quarters for the return journey home. They were not spacious, but at least there was a bed to share and a window to see the sun.

All of this did little to quell the anxiety apparent among them. Sally was a stark white, her eyes flitting over the ship restlessly; Christopher looked rather green at the prospect of climbing aboard. The Dutch children chattered among themselves, whispering about a sea that would swallow them whole.

“Er is niets om bang voor te zijn,” he said calmly, the King’s Men arriving with the last of their belongings. “There is nothing to be afraid of. Rotterdam is close, only five days by sail. I’m sure your families miss you very much.”

Most of the children were, naturally, from Rotterdam, and the small towns that ringed the coast. A handful of missing children likely hadn’t sounded any alarms; the young, especially the poor, went missing all the time. Although he had sent a letter in advance to the local authorities, he expected that their arrival would cause quite a stir, particularly being headed by an English privateer.

There was little to be done for it now, however.

Captain Haddock staggered down the plank, nearly slipping off of the edge and into the brackish water below. He laughed, righting himself, and then came to stand in front of Ashcombe.

“Well, My Lord,” the privateer said, straightening his overcoat. “Seems this is the start of a very successful venture between us.”

“You’re sober enough to get to Rotterdam?” Ashcombe asked dubiously. Either he had drunk heavily the night before, or he had continued well into the morning, based on the smell of him.

The man chortled loudly. “I could sneak between the Dutch’s legs blind, an’ I have many a time. Hauling a cartload of brats is nothing.”

“See to it that you don’t rob any vessels along the way. That’s an order, Haddock.”

“Oh, I’ll bring them safe and sound back home, never fear. But after these whelps get off my ship—” he said, casting an eye over the children, “anything’s fair game.”

“Reasonable enough. Don’t get caught, and don’t be foolish. We have enough to worry about in this war without you.”

“Never been caught, and always been a fool, My Lord.”

“Get yourself gone,” Ashcombe dismissed with a wave of his hand. “And pray we never meet again.”

The man marched back up the gangplank, shouting orders to his crew. Lord Ashcombe turned back towards the children, taking in their drawn features.

“All shall be well,” he said in Dutch, though his voice grated in the icy air. “The ship will bring you home. Soon you will be back with your families.”

Katrijn, one of the youngest at barely five, burst into tears. She clutched at Tom’s leg, as though if she held on tight enough, she would be permitted to stay after all. Ashcombe hadn’t the heart to pull them apart.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” he could hear Tom whisper to her, stroking her hair. “You have to go home now. But I’ll still watch over you, I promise.”

“Nee, nee,” she cried through her sobs, “Dat wil ik niet.” No. I don’t want to.

The other children, hearing her anguish, began to grow restless. One of them sniffled; silent tears streamed down the face of another. Kidnapped and abused they might have been, but even returning home seemed to terrify them.

“I know,” Tom said gently. “I know. It’s hard to leave. But I have to go back to my family now, and you have to go to yours. I’m sure they miss you very much.”

“Ik wil bij je blijven,” she wept, inconsolable. I want to stay with you.

Christopher turned and looked to him. The furs wrapped from his head to his feet made him look rather absurd, but his face was serious.

“Will you translate something for me, My Lord?” he asked. “I haven’t the language for it.” Ashcombe nodded.

The boy surveyed the children briefly, eyes alighting on each of them in turn. “You’ve been through something terrible,” he began, voice carrying across the pier, “something few others have. There is no language for the things you have seen, nor any excuse.” 

He paused, allowing for Ashcombe to repeat his words in Dutch, then continued. “But even so…even when it might seem impossible, you are still the same person inside, even stronger than you were before. I’ll never forget you, any of you, until the day I die.”

The murmurings of the children fell silent as they looked at him, then at each other. Katrijn, so terribly young and helpless, sniffled as Tom wiped at her tearstained cheeks.

“Ik hou van jou,” Tom whispered as he held her, the one piece of Dutch he had managed to pick up. I love you .

The girl nodded at last, wrapping her thin arms around him one final time. “Ik hou van jou,” she repeated. “Ik hou van jou.”

*****

The Dutch children, at last, boarded the other ship, small booted feet clattering up the gangplank. They had almost no cargo, besides some food and a handful of toys, and so the four of them watched as the ship pulled away from the shore. Tom waved to Katrijn until they vanished into the horizon, another point in a sea of gray.

It was high time for them to get going, then.

None of them were looking forward to the journey, Ashcombe included; two weeks scouring the windswept shoreline had given him a new appreciation for the treachery of the Channel. As for the three children, the memory of their shipwreck still burned fresh in their minds, and the darkening clouds made everyone anxious.

In the end, it was Tom who took Christopher’s hand in his own, pulling him towards the waiting ship.

“Come on,” he said encouragingly. “It can’t be far to Southampton. We’ll be off before we know it, I’m sure.”

The apothecary’s apprentice was white as a sheet, but he let himself be tugged up the gangplank, only the slightest tremors wracking his frame. Sally Deschamps looked rather green, but she followed the other two with her wounded hand pressed to her chest.

The King’s Warden stood alone on the dock, the frigid wind blowing against him. He would never see this landscape again, he knew. He blinked, committing the scene to memory, the hanging icicles, the windswept hovels, the inn and the forest beyond.

He turned his back and made his way up the gangplank, leaving this whole hexed shire behind him.

*****

The journey did not go well.

Southampton was not far from Seaton, around a hundred miles by land. It had taken ten days of hard riding for Lord Ashcombe and the King’s Men to make the journey, and even then, they’d had the force of the elements against them. At sea in calm waters, it should have taken a full day, perhaps a few hours more.

The break in the weather was not quite as long as the captain had believed, however. Twenty expected hours became thirty, then forty, as the ship bobbed like a cork in the sea. The wind raged at them from all directions, buffeting the sails without filling them, so that they were forced to roll with the swell of the waves instead of cutting through them. Water spilled over the deck, finding its way below, where the boots of sailors struggled to find purchase.

Pulling rank, Lord Ashcombe had taken the captain’s quarters for himself and the three children, hoping that the roomy cabin below would preserve the illusion of safety. Instead, they huddled on the floor as the boat rocked back and forth, the wood creaking with the weight of the tides.

The quarters consisted of two rooms, one for sleeping and socializing, the other for dining and paperwork. Sally, overcome with seasickness, had taken the first, leaving Christopher and Tom in the second.

Lord Ashcombe found her heaving over a bucket, gripping the edge with white knuckles. She glanced up at him as he entered the bedchamber, then coughed again, spitting out a stream of bile.

“We should make landfall in half a day,” he told her, echoing the captain’s words from above. “The storm has slowed us down, but we should break through it soon enough.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and her fingers gripped even whiter.

“Maybe this is when we sink at last,” she said, eyes still closed tight to the world.

“Knowing your luck, we’d manage to make it to shore somehow. I wouldn’t like to try in this wind, however.”

She laughed bitterly. “Thank you for your optimism, My Lord.” She gagged, then swallowed, managing to avoid another round of retching.

“How are the other two?”

“Bad. Christopher…well, he remembers being tossed about in the sea. Tom remembers watching him.”

Ashcombe had suspected as much, but they had never spoken about it. In such a storm as this, it wasn’t hard to imagine why.

“And you?”

The ship groaned around them, and Sally squeezed her eyes shut, breathing hard. It was a long moment before she responded, the ship slowly rocking back to the other side, the sound of water sloshing over the deck.

“This is where they died, you know.”

“Who?”

“My parents.” The wood creaked, and the girl shuddered again. “Right here, in the Channel. Wrecked on the journey home.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, My Lord. It was a long time ago.”

A long time ago. What was it truly, then—three years? Four? Barely a turn of the earth, and so much had changed for her.

He had already offered her his household if she couldn’t find work. Now, however, Lord Ashcombe wondered if there was not more that could be done. Charles had such a soft spot for children and the disadvantaged, those who grew up without homes as he did. Surely, once they returned back to London, he could raise the possibility of taking her on as a ward.

It was not commonly done, but there were cases of it, especially among the upper nobility and abroad. Certainly, there would be talk, and Walsingham would have a field day managing the fallout of such an impulse, but at least she would have a life. Companionship, security, clothes on her back and food at her table. The best option in a sea of bad choices.

Besides, Charles would adore the girl.

Lord Ashcombe rose, knees bowing with the rocking of the deck. He pulled his flask from his hip and handed it to her, three-fingered hand ungloved. The scars shone a dark red against tattered flesh, but she did not flinch as their hands brushed.

“Here. It’ll steady your nerves, if you can get it down.”

“Thank you, My Lord,” murmured Sally, grimacing with a swallow. “I’ll give it back, if we ever manage to make landfall.”

*****

At the end of it all, dawn broke against the pale sky of Southampton. The wind, having exhausted itself the night before, brushed gently against the coastline, washing away the heavy tang of salt. It was a small city, perhaps ten thousand souls, yet it carried the promise of better days ahead. London, Lord Ashcombe heard as his boots struck the cobblestones. London, at long last, London.

After nearly two days of sailing, their ship had managed to drop anchor at last. Green with seasickness and terror, they had staggered down the gangplank in the darkness, relying on touch and a few guttering candles. The King’s Men nearly battered down the door of the closest inn, but a pouch of gold had gotten them the nicest rooms in town.

The city was quiet in the early hours of morning. Sally and Tom had collapsed in their beds upon arrival; the King’s Men, except those put on watch, had followed suit. Yet even now, Lord Ashcombe walked the streets and alleys, his spirit too restless to stay indoors.

He found him near the harbor, perched like a sparrow upon a stone. The boy turned as the snow crunched beneath Ashcombe’s boots, face flushed with the cold.

“May I join you?” asked the King’s Warden, gesturing to the stone. Christopher nodded, then turned back towards the water. Above, the sky was turning from orange to gold, the sun a burning brilliance against the grey of sea and cloud. They sat there together, watching as the dawn bloomed into light.

“It’s beautiful here,” the boy said at last, breaking the silence between them.

“Tired of the grey of Seaton?”

“Perhaps a little,” Christopher admitted, his mouth the slightest hint of a smile. “It’s good to be gone from that place. Even if this isn’t home.”

“Some places are better left untouched. Devonshire, it seems, is one of them.”

The boy was quiet for a moment, eyes still on the sunrise, before pale eyes met his own.

“So,” he asked tentatively, “what happens now?”

“We will stay a few days, gather our strength, and wait out any storms that come. A week, perhaps a bit more.”

“And then?”

“Then we go home.” His voice, turned forever harsh, still held a tone of longing.

“Home,” Christopher agreed, the morning’s sun upon his face. “Will Tom keep training with you, then? Before we return?”

“If he wishes to. You as well, if your shoulder allows it.”

“I’m not really one for swordplay,” the boy said, grimacing. “But perhaps there’s a library somewhere in town.”

“I’ll teach you to ride,” he offered, “and to shoot, if you’d want it.”

“With those, My Lord?” the boy asked, gesturing to his pearl-handled pistols at his belt.

He grunted, then sighed. “If it teaches you something of safety, then I’ll permit it. Pistols can be tricky, though. Less reliable than a blade.”

“But twice as fascinating.”

“You’ll blow yourself sky high someday.”

“You sound like Master Benedict, My Lord.” His tone was light, but his eyes still shone with grief. “I promise I’ll be careful.”

“What of the girl? Would she like to learn the blade as well?”

“You’d teach a girl to fight?”

Lord Ashcombe shrugged. “I’d teach anyone willing, as long as they would use the knowledge for good. Besides, there is plenty to learn one-handed.”

The boy made a face. “You could ask her, but Sally’s never been a fighter, My Lord. But she loves music, more than anything else.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Perhaps there was a musician in town, someone who could teach her the harpsichord, or help her adapt her hand to the lute. It would be difficult, one hand gone lame, but the Deschamps girl was determined if nothing else.

They sat there as dawn became day, gold and pink and blue becoming one, the waves beating relentlessly on the sand.

Christopher looked back at him, then cleared his throat. “Thank you for saving me,” he said softly. “I’ve said it before, I know, but still. You’ve done so much for us all, My Lord. And I want to say thank you.”

“Whatever happens in the future, if the Raven decides to challenge you, I can promise you this: you won’t face it alone. Not if there is still breath in my body.” And even then, I’d find a way from beyond death itself. He will not take you now, not after everything.

Not after watching the shoreline for weeks upon end, scouring the coast for a hope that didn’t exist. Not after weeks trapped in Seaton, and nights spent at Christopher’s bedside. If the coward wanted to kill Christopher Rowe, he’d have to break through the might of the Crown first.

The boy blinked, then smiled tentatively. “I can’t wait to go home, My Lord. But perhaps I wouldn’t mind staying a little longer here.” His grin turned mischievous. “Especially if there’s pistol lessons involved.”

“I never should have agreed to that.”

“It was your idea, My Lord. Personal safety and all that.”

“You’ll be the death of us all someday.” And I’ll be forever grateful to have you safe at last.