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Everyone assumes he is rife with success, rich and resplendent with its spoils. Even though his prizes have ended in failure rather than payment, he has a reputation for luck and courage and quick thinking and, as such, is thought to be a winner in all hands, of all wagers.
Instead, he sees loss in ways that no one else does. Where they see promotion and privilege, he sees failure and fire ships. Advantage and the taking of it where solid work and skill would be on any other man. He stares out the glass, watching the grey waves crest at the top of hills of black, the storm hitting the ship with a certain bravado, daring them to think of victory when she could so easily bring death and defeat.
More defeat. More death.
He sinks back into the dark corner, hearing the approaching of feet and not wanting company. That is not quite true, he has to admit. There is much company he would ask for, some of it even proper for him to do so, but the onus of companionship and revelry in the wake of a dubious triumph seems too much burden to bear, so he merely hides himself in shadows and surrenders to his thoughts.
He has succeeded, since his talk with the Captain, in not thinking of much of Muzillac. It was doomed to failure from the start, the ending mapped out as clearly as if there were a cartographer plotting the course. He watches Archie without a word as the other man sinks down at the table, his habitual smile icy around the edges, dangerous in ways that Horatio recognizes but cannot name.
He leans forward and sniffs, alerting Archie to his presence. He can see Archie’s smile change, and wonders at the hours and days spent on Drury Lane. Archie is a keen actor when he wishes to be, all the melancholy and derision no longer gracing his countenance. “There you are, Horatio.” Archie’s voice was as bright as his smile, determined and toothy. “I’ve been sent with a present.”
Horatio doesn’t bother to answer, though he does ease himself from his corner and approach the table. He wonders if he is so needy to seek out Archie’s comfort when it is clear the other man has little to spare, but things weigh heavy on his mind and push aside other conventions of distance such as shame and embarrassment and, if truth be told, decency.
Archie taps the bottle with a flourish that indicates better than the raised eyebrow and slightly haughty grandeur that he adopts that the wine is likely far better than anything Horatio has ever tasted. He pours two glasses and pushes one in front of Horatio. “From My Lord Major Edrington. For duty well done.”
“My Lord is quite a comedian.” Horatio ignores the drink though he watches Archie touch the rim of the glass, his finger gentle as it traces the small circle. “No doubt he told the Captain fanciful tales of glory.”
“I would imagine that he told the Captain nothing that the Captain did not already know.” Archie looks up at Horatio. “How did your conversation with him go?”
“Disappointment.” Horatio doesn’t expand or elaborate, unwilling to say the words and admit the truth that he thinks that most of the Captain’s disappointment is settled firmly on Horatio’s own shoulders, that the man expected more of him that Horatio was able to give.
“It was doomed,” Archie tells him, and there’s something flat in his usually easily-read voice. “Taking men who had fled their country under fear of death and thinking they could walk in and reclaim it from the people who chased them away is madness, even more than the usual insanity that passes for military thinking.”
“Surely it was our job to try.” He does not think of trying. He does not think of dinner parties and madness, of hot anger burning beneath his stock, of kisses brought on by duty and honor and obligation and need, burning need that was nothing to do with the heat that stirred in his groin as she pressed her lips to his.
“Our job, Horatio, was to blow the bridge. And we did.”
Horatio takes a drink of the wine and makes a face, ignoring Archie’s burst of laughter. It is at his expense, which he has grown used to from his friend, but it still rankles slightly. He has no airs in this regard, no taste for the finer things, and he knows that Archie’s own experiences are as limited. Archie has simply acquired a taste for the rich and decadent that Horatio has never found comfortable.
“To France. May she stay at our backs.” Archie takes another sip of the wine and looks toward the glass Horatio had been caught staring through. “May we leave it all behind.”
“Including honor?”
“Honor.” Archie sighs. “What about honor? Our honor is in doing our duty, Horatio. Men died. Men die in war.”
“Not just men died, Archie.”
He can see the change in Archie’s face and knows he’s said too much. There is much unspoken between the two of them, both in El Ferrol when all there was for them was time to talk and now, but this is a new wound, one held open fresh by his own picking at it, grown infected by Archie’s silence. “You were trying to help her.”
He can read the words Archie doesn’t say. Foolish. Unthinking. Stupid. Blind. They shout from Archie’s poise, from his face. They are in those blue eyes that hold so many secrets, too strong to keep from surfacing. “She had no choice but to let me. An untenable position, Archie, to tell an enemy the truth to save him.”
“A truth she did not have to tell, Horatio.” There is more that he doesn’t say, that he bites off. Horatio can see it, but refuses to press, unsure he wants to hear them should he coerce them from Archie’s firmly closed mouth. “She was a casualty of war. Like other women, like other men, like your own men.”
The words hurt and there is a flash of remembrance, a flash of muzzle and the searing heat in his shoulder. There is Clayton, blood red against the snow, and Archie himself, rambling and nearly completely lost, thought dead and returned from the carefully tended grave of Horatio’s memory. He looks away at the glass and then at the candles flickering behind the lantern glass. “I made a promise to her. A promise that I would keep her safe.”
“You can’t save everyone, Horatio.”
“I was responsible for her.” He snaps the words, anger curling his lip and tightening his hand around the glass. “As responsible for her as our men who died.”
“Why is it, Mr. Hornblower, that you’re never willing to take credit for your successes, but willing to take blame for others’ failures?” Archie’s face is suddenly without artifice, sad and aged beyond his years, everything he’s endured and seen etched on his skin. “I would thank you to allow me to keep the blame as my own.”
“Archie.” Whatever animosity he had harbored against his friend dissipates as if it had never existed and he shakes his head. “No.”
Archie shakes his head, his smile almost back to normal. “Let us speak of other things then, Horatio. We’ve had enough death for the night.”
“For our lives.” Horatio looks at the bottle, examining the label as if there are answers in the curled, faded script. “This is quite old.”
“It is. My Lord has granted us quite an exceptional gift.” Archie runs his finger along the rim of the glass once more and then taps the nail against it, letting the high, sweet note linger in the air like the taste of the wine on Horatio’s tongue. “Not a bad man for all his swagger.”
“He’s an excellent soldier.” Horatio can see the way Edrington’s men looked up to him, followed him. They were disciplined and a regiment in the truest form of the word.
“So it seemed.” Archie takes a sip of the wine and then watches as Horatio continues moving the bottle this way and that, finally setting it precisely in the center of the table. “Unlike many you find who have bought their way to service. He seems an actual soldier, and not a boy playacting at it.”
“He sets an example,” Horatio agrees. “Did you notice how well-disciplined his men are?”
Archie scowls for an instant and then it is gone, replaced with joviality that is almost real, almost reaches his eyes. “To My Lord Major. An example to us all, so long as he remains free with the contents of his cellar.”
“He was good under fire at the end.” Horatio finishes his wine and sets the glass down, aligning it carefully with the bottle. He realizes at the moment the words have left his lips that there stands a good chance of Archie taking them wrong, taking them as criticism. There is something in Archie’s posture that changes, some hint that the barb has hit a home Horatio had not intended for it. He stares at his glass, watching Archie’s rough swallows from the corner of his eye before speaking again, doing his best to appear unaware of the maelstrom he’s just caused. “I’ve been remiss, Mr. Kennedy.”
“Have you, Mr. Hornblower? How so?”
“I believe I’ve yet to thank you for saving my life.”
“You know, Mr. Hornblower, I believe you are quite right.” Archie manages the hint of a smile, the corner of his mouth tilted up just enough to lend it the air of a smirk, but Horatio knows that this is no small thing, and no small thank you.
“Then let me remedy that most speedily.” Horatio pours more wine in both their glasses and holds his out to Archie. “Thank you, Mr. Kennedy, for risking your own life for mine. Especially knowing so well as you do that you cannot save everyone.”
“I could not well let my commanding officer die at my own hand, Mr. Hornblower. I’m almost certain that would guarantee that I not pass the lieutenant’s exam.” He smiles more honestly and taps his glass lightly against Horatio’s. “You are most welcome, Mr. Hornblower.”
He watches Archie finish his wine, knowing that another drink will put them both too much in their cups, and things will be said that should remain unspoken and the lies that even friends tell one another will spill out like the last drops of the fine vintage. It tastes like most every other wine he’s had, and he knows that’s another strike against him in a series of dark marks kept somewhere like the days etched into the stone of El Ferrol.
“She saved my life, you know. Helped me escape.” He toys with the edge of the table, his thumb running over the polished edge. “Perhaps the only one to make it to safety, and the only one who truly never belonged there.”
“All the better that we’re gone then.” Archie’s mood is growing blacker, brackish as the tide-soaked shores. Horatio knows the signs, has learned them well in the time they’ve spent together. Their moods are like the shore as the water laps at it, water eroding sand and sand soaking up the salt wave until there is less of both left behind. “We’ll not make history, Horatio, if that is what you fear. Another battle lost and won and meaningless in the end. We were sent on a fool’s errand, and were lucky we got away with what we did.”
“History might not remember, Archie, but people will. The villagers will. The survivors will.”
“History is the survivors, Horatio.” A shadow crosses Archie’s face – perhaps the flicker of the lamp in the wind and storm, perhaps a memory, perhaps something more. He lifts his glass and toasts Horatio with a vicious grin. “Vive le Roi!.”
Horatio can do little but stare as Archie downs a great swallow of wine, nearly choking on it as he returns Horatio’s gaze and starts to laugh. There is no hint of Moncoutant’s madness in the laughter, just the sudden and sincere acceptance of the absurdity of it all. Horatio has felt the same laughter tickle at the base of his throat a few times, nervous and hungry for air.
“We’re both tired.” Horatio is surprised at the softness in his voice, at the desire to touch Archie’s hand and offer something like calm, though he has no certainty that calm is what he is offering. “I shall see you tomorrow, Mr. Kennedy.”
Archie nods his goodbye at Horatio, still chuckling under his breath and into his wine. Horatio carefully closes the door behind him and makes his way to his room, the soft echo of Vive le Roi in his ears, drowned out by other distant cries for freedom, for liberty, for life. He sits carefully on his cot and sighs, rubbing his eyes tiredly and wishing that, though it is not his typical practice to drink, that he’d remembered to bring along the bottle of wine.