Burning Bright (13 page)

Elinor heard it all as if from a distance, her distant self consuming everything it touched and filling her small human body with a power that made her bones hum. The first sail to burn, the topgallant—and where had
that
piece of knowledge come from?—began to disintegrate, shedding large swaths of burning fabric onto the deck below. She felt herself falling with it, and staggered, gripping the rail more tightly. Hands took her by the elbows and steadied her. “Be careful,” Ramsay said in her ear. “Don’t overextend yourself. Talent has limits.”

She shook her head. She didn’t feel overextended; she felt alive, invigorated, as if she could go on burning the sails and the masts and the ship until they were nothing but ash.
Athena
was close enough now that Elinor could see the enemy sailors scurrying about, some even climbing the burning ropes with buckets in a futile attempt to save their ship. Some of the rigging collapsed, and two men fell to the deck, their screams like the distant whine of gnats. The sound woke Elinor from her fantasy, and she pulled away from Ramsay’s grip and breathed deeply, smelling faintly the grimy smoke from the burning canvas. “What should I do?” she said, not certain if she meant to ask Ramsay for direction or to question her own motives.

Ramsay responded to her surface meaning. “Can you melt the cannons?”

Elinor shook her head. “I think that is beyond my capacity, Captain.”

“Well, then, if you could avoid burning the masts, that will make it easier for us when we take her.”

Elinor found where the flames were battering at the mainmast and extinguished them, shaped the fire to flow around the other two masts to the sails. “Will not the loss of the sails make her difficult to maneuver?”

“We can make up for that loss. I would prefer not to replace their mast.”

Beaumont came to join them. “Looks like
Joyeux
, Captain. Amirault’s probably pissing his trousers right now. I mean—I beg your pardon, Captain.”

“I agree with the sentiment, if not the language,” Ramsay said.

Athena
continued to approach the other ship, which had stopped moving entirely. Elinor could see men clustering around the guns at the enemy’s bow. Ramsay strode down
Athena
’s deck, calling out commands, and sailors gathered around
Athena’s
cannons as well, the ones near the bow of the ship, whatever that part of the deck was called, smaller and lighter than the twenty-six enormous beasts below.

More men scrambled through the rigging, hanging on despite the wind that had picked up and made her fire stream away from the damaged ship like a deadly golden pennant.
Athena
was going to pass perpendicular to the other ship, which Elinor didn’t understand; surely it would make more sense to pass parallel, exposing more of the enemy to their guns. But she was just the Scorcher, not the captain, who at that moment returned to her side. “Can you extinguish the fire now?”

The way he phrased his request angered her. She turned her back on the enemy and folded her arms across her chest. “
Can
I, Captain?” she said, and extinguished the fire without a gesture, without a word.

Ramsay stared at her for a moment, then laughed. “I apologize, Miss Pembroke,” he said, “for implying I doubted your ability. I meant, ‘will you.’ You might—”

A thump shattered the air, and Ramsay put his arm across her shoulders and shoved her down to the deck. A ripping sound followed, and then a splash somewhere to
Athena
’s starboard side, the one not facing the enemy. Another distant thump, this one missing
Athena
entirely, and then a rippling roar from
Athena
’s own guns as cannon after cannon let fly at the enemy. Elinor tried to stand, to see the effects
Athena’s
attack had on the French ship, but Ramsay continued to restrain her.

“We’re not close enough,” he shouted, and ran toward the bow, leaving Elinor to pull herself up from the deck. She was not certain how they could not be close enough, given that the enemy’s cannonball had gone through one of
Athena
’s sails—at least, that was what she guessed the tearing sound to be—but
she
was certainly close enough, and with only a brief thought for what Ramsay might think of her acting on her own again, she remembered the first fireball arcing toward her, made one of her own, and sent it hurtling toward the enemy’s deck.

It struck the ship’s starboard bow and kept going, crossing the deck diagonally to exit on the larboard side near the stern. Men scattered, which made her laugh; none of them were injured, though what rigging was left had caught fire. She threw two more in rapid succession, paralleling the cannonballs fired from
Athena’s
stern guns, delighting in the phantom sense of flying with the fire. Was this how Ramsay felt, when he Flew? Or was it the power of the fire, its joy in being set free, that made her feel so exhilarated?

“That’s enough,” Ramsay said, once again at her elbow, and she startled. Across the waves, the French flag had disappeared. Had it come down with the rigging? “What does it mean?” she asked.

“It means they surrender.” Ramsay was smiling broadly. One of his front teeth was crooked.
I wonder if that’s why he smiles so tightly all the time.
“Pass the word below, Mr. Livingston. Do you feel well?”

It took Elinor a moment to realize he was addressing her. “I feel very well, Captain,” she said. Her back ached a little for no reason she could imagine, but she felt invigorated, as if liquid fire ran in her veins.

“You should be careful. Overusing talent has a price. Though I think we haven’t seen the limits of yours yet.”

“They fired only twice.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said, smiling again, “that they did. I think you won’t have any more problems with the crew, Miss Pembroke.”

She looked around. There weren’t many men on the deck by comparison to during the punishment, and most of them were still preoccupied with the guns, but those men handling the rigging cast covert glances at her, and she thought they were looks of either admiration or fear. “I suppose not,” she said. Then she remembered, and asked, “What of the… the punishment?”

Ramsay’s smile disappeared. “He’ll take the rest of his lashes tomorrow, but I’ll let Mr. Hays have a look at him in the meantime. More to the point, I’m afraid there will be a number of other men following him to the grating. That ship should not have been able to surprise us, and the men on watch who let it happen will also have to be flogged, and the lieutenant of that watch punished.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“It was my talent alone that alerted you to the attack, Captain. How much damage would that ship have done to us if they had come close enough to use all their guns? Those negligent watchmen would have been responsible for the injury and deaths of so many men. I understand little of your methods of discipline in the Navy, but surely such a dereliction of duty must warrant a severe punishment.”

Ramsay nodded. “And they will understand that as well. Bring us about for a boarding party, Mr. Wynn, and Hardison, signal to them to send their captain across. Mr. Beaumont, will you join me? You’ll be taking the
Joyeux
in to Gibraltar.”

Elinor turned in time to see Livingston’s reaction to this; he looked first surprised, then angry, and opened his mouth as if to say something. Ramsay met his anger with a cool gaze, one eyebrow raised as if inviting Livingston to say whatever damning thing might come out of his mouth. Livingston closed his mouth into a tight line.

“Miss Pembroke, you should go below now, before you are fully visible to our friends,” Ramsay continued. “And…thank you.”

“Certainly, Captain.” Reflexively she bobbed a curtsey as if he’d asked her to dance, then blushed, and Ramsay gave her one of those little smiles. Livingston, by contrast, turned his tight-lipped glare on her as she passed. So he blamed her for whatever it was the captain had done in giving Beaumont, not him, command of the
Joyeux
. It seemed Captain Ramsay had found a punishment for him, after all.

In hindsight, she might have guessed Captain Amirault would have to be confined aboard
Athena
; he might be an honorable man, but even the most honorable man might be tempted to break his parole and attempt to retake his ship if he were allowed to remain on it. Reasonable it might be, but Elinor resented being trapped in her bedchamber nearly every hour of the two days it took
Athena
and her prize to reach Gibraltar. The young midshipman who brought her meals, St. Maur, could barely meet her eyes, let alone converse with her. She was forced to sit or lie on her bed, reading and re-reading the few books she’d thought to bring with her into her bedchamber exile, or staring at the ceiling while Amirault paced the great cabin outside her door.

In the evenings, she eavesdropped on the conversation at the captain’s table and discovered that yes, her presence had been a damper, because at least eight people sat down to dinner each night and drank and ate with gusto, calling out toasts and roaring with laughter over jokes Elinor rarely understood. She fumed, and picked at her food, and determined she would have words with Ramsay about inventing some reason for her to be aboard that would allow her to roam free without raising Amirault’s suspicions. Even a French captain would know a well-bred Englishwoman would not be without a female companion, and if in his captivity he were to spread the word of her presence there… It was astonishing that she could ever have considered her restriction to the quarterdeck and the captain’s rooms an imposition.

On the morning of the third day, she woke to realize the ship’s movement had changed from a pervasive swaying to a gentle rocking, barely perceptible after so many days on the open sea. She dressed quickly and sat on the edge of her bed, tapping her feet rhythmically and wondering if she dared venture out. Twice she stood and put her hand on the doorknob, twice she withdrew it and returned to the bed. Finally, the door opened, and St. Maur looked in on her. “There’s food laid on the table, miss,” he said, still not looking at her. “Captain’s gone ashore with Captain Amirault.”

Elinor pushed past him and went to look out the window, careful not to stand where she might be seen. The blue expanse of the harbor was dotted here and there with ships, including
Joyeux
, which lay at anchor nearby. Golden sunlight struck the waves, which reflected the light in flashes that made Elinor blink and her eyes water. She had to look away, and instead watched the other ships. One of them must have just come into harbor, because its white sails were being furled; they looked like albatross wings, but, she presumed, conveying good luck rather than bad.

Beyond the water, far in the distance, a grey and green stone promontory rose high in the air, one side a sheer cliff descending to the shore, the other a gentler but still intimidating rise to the summit. It looked as if God Himself had dropped creation’s largest boulder on the shore and let it lie there gathering moss for a thousand lifetimes. Heedless of who might see her, Elinor stepped forward and pressed her palm against the glass. At this distance, her hand exactly covered the Rock of Gibraltar and made the blue sky seem bluer against her fair skin. Impossible that it was the same sky that covered her father’s house in Hertfordshire.

“Captain said to tell you, don’t go up on deck, and…he said, exactly, ‘don’t argue with St. Maur, it’s not his fault you’re trapped,’ “ St. Maur said, his face crimson.

Elinor sighed, exasperated with Ramsay and impatient with the timid midshipman. “Mr. St. Maur, I do not intend to argue with you, but I do not need an audience at my breakfast,” she said, and St. Maur was out the door almost before she’d finished saying it. She sat down and tucked into hot eggs, kidneys, toast, and coffee, along with fresh peaches Midshipman Hervey, the ship’s Bounder, must have brought that morning. Elinor recognized an apology when she saw it. Hervey had also brought
The Times
along with the mail, and Elinor felt almost civilized as she read and ate. Ramsay set an excellent table.

The door opened again, and Dolph, the captain’s steward, entered. Elinor wasn’t certain what that was, exactly; he cooked the captain’s food and tidied the captain’s chambers and washed the captain’s laundry, but he wasn’t a dogsbody, and he wasn’t a valet either. Dolph laid down a plate of sausages with his usual clatter and grunted at her. Elinor smiled at him, which made him frown harder and leave without saying anything.

She speared a sausage and bit into it with more force than necessary. She’d stopped trying to befriend Dolph after only two days’ voyaging, but she wished he weren’t so actively antagonistic toward her. She had the impression he resented her, though she was not sure if this was because she was a woman, because she was taking up even a small amount of the captain’s attention, or if he just didn’t like cooking for two.

“Good morning,” Ramsay said, entering the room and seating himself across from her. “Captain Amirault is safely in custody ashore, and I regret it didn’t occur to me to come up with an explanation that would give you the freedom of the ship while he was here.”