Empire

Three: Frenzy (pt 1)

The morning tide arrived before the sun, grey and bone-chilling. Luke stood on the timber edge of the harbor pier with the heavy silver coin pressed flat inside his clenched fist. Two hundred yards out, Captain Vane’s vessel was already unmooring, its massive canvas sails snapping in the sharp sea wind.

​The captain stood near the gangplank, watching Luke with a slow, knowing smirk.

​"Changed your mind, Yellowsmith?" Vane called out above the creaking wood and calling gulls. "Or did your father’s fear catch up to you?"

​Luke swallowed down the burning lump in his throat. He looked at the ship, at the open water beyond the harbor wall, and then at the dark silhouette of Thornbury sleeping behind him. He thought of his father and the promise he had given Edmund.

​Then he stepped forward and tossed the silver coin onto the pier deck at the captain's feet.

​"I promised I'd stay," Luke said, his voice raw. "Take your coin."

​Captain Vane didn't look angry. He simply looked amused. He bent down, scooped up the silver, and slid it into his coat. "A boy who gives away his horizon for a quiet life in a cloth shop," Vane said softly, leaning over the rail. "I'll be back in three months, lad. Let's see if that promise is still keeping you warm then."

​The gangplank was pulled. The ship glided out onto the grey water, clearing the harbor wall and disappearing into the mist.

​Luke stood alone on the wet wood until his feet went numb, feeling as though the best part of him had just sailed away.

​By midmorning, the Thornbury market was a roaring sea of bodies and shouting vendors.

​Luke pushed his way through the crowd, trying to drown out the memory of the harbor. One hand rested on his father's folded list inside his coat, the other kept a tight grip on a small coin purse. Fishmongers called out the morning's catch, a cart of autumn apples drew a crowd, and a fiddler played for coins with more enthusiasm than skill.

​"Two bolts of the plain wool, and thread to match, if the color's true," Luke said to Mr. Cobb, the cloth merchant, consulting his father's list. "And don't try me on the price, Mr. Cobb. I watched you charge Mrs. Harlow three shillings for the same last week, and she paid it only because she hadn't the patience to argue."

​Cobb grinned despite himself. "Sharp tongue on you this morning, young Yellowsmith."

​"Sharp enough to walk to the Whitmore stall instead, if the price doesn't suit me."

​"Two and six, then, and not a farthing less."

​Luke was still counting coins into Cobb's palm when a familiar voice called out behind him. "You'll bankrupt the poor man before noon."

​He turned to find Alice picking her way toward him between a basket-seller and a knot of gossiping women. A shawl was pulled loosely over her shoulders against the morning chill.

​"Alice." Luke’s surprise was genuine. "I didn't know you'd be here."

"I wasn't planning to be, until this morning." She fell into step beside him as he moved toward the next stall. "Thought I'd see how married life suits me, three days in, by finding out whether I still remember how to haggle for eggs." She said smiling.

"And does it?"

"Ask me again in a month." Luke smiled. "Eggs first, or thread?"

"Eggs. Mrs. Pruitt will cheat you blind if she thinks you're in a hurry." Alice was already steering him toward the poultry stall, where a stout woman in an apron eyed them both like potential victims. "Six eggs, Mrs. Pruitt," Alice called, "and don't give us the cracked ones from the back like you tried with Mother last week." Mrs. Pruitt sniffed, entirely unbothered. "Your mother didn't complain."

"My mother's too polite. I'm not." Alice counted the coins into the woman's palm while Luke tried not to laugh. "There. Was that so hard?" They moved on, passing a stall selling ribbons in every color Thornbury's dyers could produce.

"Slept well?" she asked. "Well enough." Luke replied. "And Father—was he himself this morning? Before you left?"

"Same as always." Luke glanced sideways at her. There was something in the question he couldn't quite place. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason. Simply asking."

They passed old Mrs. Fenwick's stall a moment later, the elderly woman lighting up at the sight of them both. "Alice Yellowsmith! Or should I say Alice Hargrove now? Married three days and already back haggling in my market as though nothing's changed."

"Everything's changed, Mrs. Fenwick, I assure you," Alice said warmly, leaning in to kiss the old woman's cheek. "I simply hide it well."

"And young Luke—still as tall as your father, I see, and still that same restless look about the eyes." Mrs. Fenwick winked, entirely unaware of how close her teasing came to the truth.

"Off with you both, then, before you block my whole stall from paying customers." They moved on, going to another stall. "Did you speak with Edmund again? After last night, I mean." Luke slowed. "How did you know Edmund and I spoke at all?"

"I didn't. I only assumed." But her eyes didn't quite meet his as she said it, and Luke felt the small, careful shape of the conversation shift beneath his feet.

"Alice."

"Mm?"

"You didn't come to the market to buy something, did you?" She glanced at him, caught, and had the good grace to look at least somewhat sheepish. "I did buy eggs."

"Alice."

She paused. Then with a small sigh, she set down the basket she had been holding and turned to face him properly.

"Mother talked to you, didn't she?" Luke said, before she could find a gentler way into it herself. "She's worried, Luke. More than she let on." She hesitated, then added, "She came to me this morning, practically before I'd finished my tea."

"Ugh." Luke exhaled slowly.

"She's worried about what, exactly?" he asked, though he already knew well enough not to need the answer. "About you, obviously. What else would she be worried about, if not her son sitting quiet as a stone, staring at the harbor like it owed him something?" Alice folded her arms, though her tone remained gentle, and more concerned than accusing.

"She told me what you asked Father. About the docks. About whether he'd ever thought of leaving."

"It was one question."

"That's what Edmund said too, apparently, right before he went up to your room and made it quite clear it had better be the last one." Alice raised her eyebrows slightly.

Luke said nothing, but his jaw tightened at the memory of Edmund's voice in his room the night before.

"He frightened you," she said quietly. "Didn't he?"

"He didn't frighten me."

"Luke."

​"He made his point," Luke admitted quietly, looking toward the distant masts in the bay. "I know what happens to a man in this family who admits to wanting more than he's been given."

Alice was quiet for a moment. "You know I don't think you're wrong to want it. Whatever it is you're wanting." She hesitated. "But I also know what it will do to mother if you disappear one morning without a word to any of us."

"I am not leaving." Luke said it quietly but firmly, as though saying it plainly enough might make it true. Alice studied him for a moment. There was nothing in her face that suggested she believed him.

"All right," she said simply.

"You don't believe me."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to." Luke turned his face away. "I can see it on your face, same as I can see everything else on it. You've never once been able to hide what you think, Alice. At least, not from me."

"Perhaps I just think you believe what you're saying." Alice's tone stayed gentle and careful.

"But that doesn't mean it's true. Not yet, anyway. Sometimes a person can say something with their whole chest and still be wrong about it."

Luke didn't answer right away, and Alice let the silence sit for a moment before speaking again. "I only want you to know that if that ever changes, don't let it happen in secret." She paused, looking away at the distance, then back at him. "Don't do to Mother what I fear you might, without even meaning to. She deserves better than waking one morning to an empty room and a note, Luke." Her eyes held his. "Whatever else you decide, be honest with her. With all of us."

​Three days passed. True to his word, Luke made a desperate effort to bury the hunger that clawed at him. He kept his eyes from wandering toward the harbor. He told himself a man could simply choose to want less if he tried hard enough.

​It was working—until Martins found him outside Cobb's stall on a grey, blustery morning.

"My father's short a hand," Martins said, hands shoved deep in his coat pockets. "Old Fenner's laid up with his back again, and we're already late setting out. Come along, would you? It's only for the day."

Luke hesitated. "I've errands."

"Errands can wait an afternoon." Martins grinned, already sensing the c***k in his refusal. "Unless you'd rather spend your day counting bolts of wool instead of seeing what the water's like past the harbor wall."

Luke should have said no. He'd meant to say no, but there was something in past the harbor wall that caught Luke's chest, pulling at every swallowed impulse of the last three days. He had turned down Captain Vane. He had promised Edmund---and now his sister. But this wasn't running away, he told himself—he was only going to fish, and only for a single day.

“I'll fetch my coat," Luke said.

Down at the pier, the harbor was unusually quiet beneath a sky the color of old iron. Martins led him toward a modest fishing boat where two other young men were already loading gear aboard— Tom Hardy, a freckled boy named Pete, and Cole, the town’s charmer.

""Four of us, plus you," Martins said, clapping Luke on the shoulder as he climbed aboard.

"I thought you said your father needed help." Luke looked between them. "So where, then, is your father?"

"Father's laid up today. So it's ours for the taking." Martins waved a hand, already checking the nets. "Five hands makes light work—you'll earn your keep before the day's out, Yellowsmith, mark me." Luke rolled his eyes, but climbed aboard anyway.

​

As they untied the mooring ropes, an old, weathered fisherman called out to them from the dock. "You lot aren't thinking of taking her out today?"

​"That we are," Martins called back.

​"Then you're bigger fools than you look." The old man pointed toward the horizon, where the grey clouds had thickened, low and heavy. "Sky's been saying storm since dawn. We're all coming in early. You'd do well to do the same."

​Cole laughed, waving the warning off with contempt. "Old men seeing storms in a bit of cloud! We'll be back before it's worth worrying over."

​The old man shook his head and walked away. Luke looked out at the gathering blackness on the horizon as a sudden, cold prickle of fear touching his spine.

​"He might have a point," Luke muttered.

​"You in or not, Yellowsmith?" Martins asked, holding the line. "Last chance to run back to your account books."

​Luke looked at the clouds, then at the open water, but curiosity and restless pride won.

​"I'm in," Luke said, and stepped onto the deck.

​The boat rocked gently beneath his feet as they cleared the harbor wall. For one unguarded moment, Luke felt something in his chest loosen—unaware, as none of them were, of how dearly that loosening was about to cost them.