She shook ink powder into the well and was stirring the mixture briskly with a bedraggled quill when something occurred belatedly to Grey.
“What did you mean, Mother, when you said, ‘It’s come to that already’? Because you didn’t know about the invasion, did you?”
She glanced up at him sharply, ceasing to stir. Then she took a deep breath, like one marshaling her mental forces, visibly made a decision, and put down the quill and ink.
“No,” she said, turning to him. “George had told me such a thing was being quietly discussed—but I left England with Olivia in September. War with Spain hadn’t yet been declared, though anyone could have seen that it was coming. No,” she repeated, and looked at him intently. “I meant the slave revolt.”
John stared at his mother for the space of thirty seconds or so, then slowly sank onto a wooden pew that ran along the side of the room. He closed his eyes briefly, shook his head, and opened them.
“Is there anything to drink in this establishment, Mother?”
* * *
—
Fed, washed, and fortified with Spanish brandy, Grey left Tom to see to the unpacking and made his way on foot back through the city to the harbor, where the fortress of La Punta—smaller than El Morro (what was a morro? he wondered), but still impressive—guarded the western shore.
A few people glanced at him but with no more interest than he might attract in London, and upon reaching La Punta, he was surprised at the ease with which he was not only admitted but escorted promptly to the oficina del Señor Stubbs. Granted, the Spaniards had their own notions of military readiness, but this seemed quite lax for an island at war.
The soldier accompanying him rapped on a door, said something in Spanish, and, with a brief nod, left him.
Footsteps, and the door opened.
Malcolm Stubbs looked twenty years older than he had last time Grey had seen him. He was still broad-shouldered and thick-bodied, but he seemed to have softened and fallen in on himself, like a slightly decayed melon.
“Grey!” he said, his tired face brightening. “Wherever did you spring from?”
“Zeus’s forehead, no doubt,” Grey said. “Where have you come from, for that matter?” The skirts of Stubbs’s coat were thick with red dust, and he smelled strongly of horse.
“Oh…here and there.” Malcolm beat the dust perfunctorily from his coat and subsided into his chair with a groan. “Oh, God. Stick your head out and call for a servant, will you? I need a drink and some food before I perish.”
Well, he did know the Spanish word for “beer”…Sticking his head out into the corridor as advised, he spotted two servant girls loitering by the window at the far end, evidently talking to someone in the courtyard below, their conversation accompanied by a good deal of giggling.
Interrupting this colloquy with a brief “Hoy!” he said, “Cerveza?” in a tone of polite inquiry, following this with scooping motions toward his mouth.
“Sí, señor!” one of the girls said, with a hasty bob, adding something else in a questioning voice.
“Certainly,” he said cordially. “Er…I mean, sí! Um…gracias,” he added, wondering what he had just agreed to. Both girls curtsied and vanished in a swirl of skirts, though, presumably to fetch something edible.
“What is pulpo?” he asked, returning to the office and sitting down opposite Malcolm.
“Octopus,” Malcolm replied, emerging from the folds of a linen towel with which he’d been wiping dirt from his face. “Why?”
“Just wondered. Putting aside the usual inquiries about your health—are you all right, by the way?” he interrupted himself, looking down at what used to be Malcolm’s right foot. The boot encircled a sort of cup or stirrup, made of stiff leather with wooden reinforcements on the sides. Both wood and leather were deeply stained from long use, but there was fresh bright blood on the stocking above.
“Oh, that.” Malcolm glanced down indifferently. “It’s all right. My horse broke down a few miles from the city, and I had to walk some way before I got another.” Bending down with a grunt, he unbuckled the appurtenance and took it off—an action that Grey found oddly more disconcerting than sight of the stump itself.
The flesh was deeply ridged from the boot, and when Malcolm peeled the ragged stocking off, Grey saw that a wide ring of skin about the calf had been flayed raw. Malcolm hissed a little and closed his eyes, gently rubbing the end of the stump, the flesh there showing the pale blue of fresh bruising.
“Did I ever thank you, by the way?” Malcolm asked, opening his eyes.
“For what?” Grey said blankly.
“Not letting me bleed to death on that field in Quebec,” Malcolm said dryly. “That slipped your mind, did it?”
Actually, it had. There had been a great many things happening on and off that field in Quebec, and the frantic moments of grappling to get his belt loose and jerked tight round Malcolm’s spurting leg were just fragments—though vivid ones—of a fractured space where neither time nor thought existed; he’d been actually conscious that day of nothing beyond a sense of constant thunder—of the guns, of his heart, of the hooves of the Indians’ horses, all one and pounding through his blood.
“You’re welcome,” he said politely. “As I say—putting the social courtesies to one side for the moment, I came to inform you that a rather large British fleet is on its way to invade and capture the island. Am I correct, by the way, in my assumption that the local commander does not yet realize that war has been declared?”
Malcolm blinked. He stopped massaging his leg, straightened up, and said, “Yes. When?” His face had changed in an instant, from exhaustion and pain to alertness.
“I think you may have as long as two weeks, but it might be less.” He gave Malcolm what details he had, as concisely as he could. Malcolm nodded, a line of concentration deepening between his brows.
“So I’ve come to remove you and your family,” Grey finished. “And my mother, of course.”
Malcolm glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.
“Me? You’ll take Olivia and the children, of course—I’m very much obliged to you and General Stanley. But I’m staying.”
“What? What the devil for?” John was conscious of a sudden surge of temper. “Besides a pending invasion, my mother tells me there’s a bloody slave revolt in progress!”
“Well, yes,” Malcolm said calmly. “That’s mine.”
Before Grey could sort out a coherent response to this statement, the door opened suddenly and a sweet-faced black girl with a yellow scarf round her head and an enormous battered tin tray in her hands sidled through it.