The Pursuit Of… Page 6

  “Ha.”

  “You’ve been incredibly patient with me,” Latham said. “I’m a horrible fumbler.”

  “Is that why you’ve agreed to accompany me? I’m nothing but a lesson to you. I suppose I’d be a valuable one at that. I’m black. I’m a former slave. If you wanted an object on whom to practice your equality, you could hardly do better.”

  Latham turned his head. “John.”

  The single syllable of his name echoed in the courtyard.

  “I prefer to be addressed as Hunter.”

  Latham shifted toward him on the bench. “I am with you because you looked into my eyes on the battlefield and saw not an enemy but a man. You gave me your coat. I wasn’t the only one who committed something like treason that night. You trusted me with your life when you could easily have taken mine.”

  “Idiocy,” John muttered. “Utter idiocy.”

  “Empathy,” Latham said. “I hold these truths to be self-evident, John. That all men are created equal. And yes, you’re right. It is about my feelings. I desperately want to believe that I have the capacity, the right, to have everything that I’ve never dreamed possible. That even I—strange, odd, treasonous me, the Henry who can never focus on one thought long enough to finish a conversation—deserve happiness.”

  John didn’t answer.

  “Maybe that is selfishness,” Latham said. “But then, maybe an ideal is nothing more than selfishness writ large. Caring for someone else with the hope that if you do, someone will in turn care for you. Maybe my ideals only feel so intense because my hope is so desperate.”

  “Ha,” John said. “What do you know of desperation?”

  “I don’t. I don’t know. But right now, I have blankets and you are freezing. If you are going to sit outside fretting, I can do something about that. Come here.”

  John looked over at the other man.

  “I have no nicety of principle,” Latham said. “I was in the infantry for years. I don’t mind sharing body heat.” His voice dropped. “In point of fact… I rather like it.”

  Strange. Odd. Treasonous. They were confusing words to come from a man who exhibited all the trappings of wealth. Not so confusing, perhaps, if that man had listened to churchgoers talk about men who liked men, the way John had not.

  “Come here.” Latham gestured. “Stop freezing.”

  John let out a breath. So. Latham had wondered what if, too.

  It didn’t change anything. John refused to think of the other man that way. He wasn’t going to let the contact, thigh on thigh, mean anything when Latham shifted six inches over. He was going to ignore everything when Henry—Latham, he meant—put his arm around him, arranging the blankets over the two of them like a little tent.

  “Your fingers are ice.” It sounded like Latham was scolding.

  “Sorry, I’ll keep them to myself.”

  “Nonsense.” Latham’s hands pressed around his, swallowing him in warmth. “What would be the point of that when I’ve warmth enough for two? You have to take care of yourself.” The man was scolding. “You’ve several hundred some odd miles to travel still, and here you are, freezing yourself in the middle of the night and not sleeping. Sleep is necessary to recover from injury. How are you supposed to manage your distance tomorrow, and the day after, if you keep on like this?”

  John didn’t answer. Latham shifted again, pressing their thighs more firmly together.

  What if John were to kiss him?

  Latham, he was sure, would manage to talk through it, somehow.

  His lips would be warm and his skin would be rough, but God, he’d know how to use his tongue.

  Good thing there was never going to be a what-if between them.

  “If you’re going to fret,” Latham said, “for God’s sake, man, do it in a way that doesn’t hurt yourself.”

  Latham’s arm crept around his waist, a warm bar.

  “You’re a regular furnace,” John heard himself say.

  “Nonsense. We burn at the same temperature, didn’t you know? I learned that from the camp doctor. It’s not so surprising, after all. We have the same flesh, with the same ability to conduct heat and cold. I’m not naturally warm. I just wasn’t outside as long as you, that’s all.”

  “Mmm.” It was hard to hate a man who shared his blankets. Harder still when his hand on John’s waist—steady, not importuning at all—gave John ideas that he really ought not have, not about a man he was apparently going to be traveling with for quite a while.

  Equality was well and good, but…

  Strange, odd, treasonous me.

  But the miles went by more pleasantly when Latham was around. His chatter was amusing, John had to admit. God knew John needed to be distracted from his thoughts of the future. He served a purpose.

  And for all his chatter, Latham listened when John spoke. He never puffed up and demanded to know why John was questioning his character. He listened to John.

  What if…

  Slowly, John turned his head. Leaned in, so that his nose brushed the other man’s shoulder. Deliberately, he set his hand—still cold, if not as frozen as it had been—against the other man’s thigh. Even through the fabric of Latham’s trousers, he felt his muscles tense.

  He could feel the warm exhalation of Latham’s breath against his cheek, a shuddering waft of air.

  Yes, he thought. I’m here. I’m like you.

  Latham did not move. Not for moments. Not until his free hand came up and gently—ever so gently—rested on top of John’s hand on his thigh. He didn’t move John’s hand away. Instead, he acknowledged its presence. The inappropriateness of it. The implications—what it meant for both of them—and what his acceptance meant.

  They sat in silence, on the well.

  Just this much, John told himself. Just this much held no meaning. It was nothing more than an acknowledgement of something they both knew. John’s own inclinations had to have been obvious as well, if Latham had come out here, sat like this with him.

  It meant absolutely nothing.

  “You’re the one who needs sleep,” John finally said. “We’d best go back to…” He paused. Not bed; that had its hidden implications, ones he didn’t want to think through at the moment. “We’d best go back to the barn, Latham.”

  “It’s Henry. I prefer that you call me Henry.”

  “Henry.” John sighed and gave in. “But it’s still Mr. Hunter to you.”

  * * *

  It was a lovely afternoon for walking, the second they had encountered in a row. The trees were mostly bare by now, which meant that despite the cold air, bright sun touched John’s face, unfiltered by anything except a few branches reaching to the sky.

  He’d left the sling behind several days ago. As he walked, he moved his arm, subtly, in its socket, testing the range—just enough to twinge, a good kind of pain, before backing off.

  Henry was talking.

  That, John realized, would be surprising to nobody in the universe who knew the man at all.

  Henry was amusing, thoughtful, a complete chatterbox, and—incidentally—also an inveterate liar. Percentage-wise he probably didn’t lie much more than the average man. But given the sheer volume of words that proceeded from his mouth, he uttered approximately a hundred times more lies than John. And he had a tendency to deliver them all at once.

  “So at any rate,” Henry was saying, “when I was taking articles—”

  “One moment.” John held up a hand. “When you were taking articles? Isn’t that what one does when one wants to be a barrister?”

  Henry wrinkled his nose. “Ah. Yes. Well, so it is.”

  “Didn’t you tell me once you were a potter’s son?” Or maybe it had been a tailor. There had been as many professions as there had been days.

  “Ah, ha ha. Well. Yes, I did, and there are potters’ sons who…still, possibly that might have been a bit of a…um, how do I say this? A bit of an exaggeration.” Henry gave him a brilliant smile. “My father…did own a pot
tery works? It wasn’t entirely a lie.”

  More than two weeks of walking. Two weeks of Henry talking; several days of thinking of him as Henry rather than Latham, a transition that had occurred all too swiftly. That much time, John had spent listening to the other man’s exaggerations. He was used to it by now.

  “So your father owned a pottery works. You were planning to be a barrister. How did you wind up in the infantry?”

  “Did you know that people want barristers who are capable of talking about the same thing for more than two minutes at a time?” Henry shot back brightly. “I did know that, but my father had to be convinced that it was the case.”

  “Your father the potter?”

  “Uh. Yes. Him.” Henry simply waved a hand. “It does all make sense, and I’ll explain as soon as I…um, take care of some business over by that copse of trees. If you know what I mean.”

  John did know what he meant, and he wasn’t referring to Henry’s need to piss. Henry avoided all questions about his father, except to roundly decry him as terrible. The only thing John was sure of was that he wasn’t a potter. He was likely not even a pottery works owner. Henry was hiding something.

  It would be offensive, except he was so inept at hiding it hardly counted. It was like draping a blanket over a statue and pinning a sign to it that said NO STATUE UNDER HERE, HA HA, WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT?

  Henry’s family was obviously wealthy—enough so that Henry, with his talk of equality and such, felt it an embarrassment.

  But one could not hide the tracks left by wealth. John could hear it in his voice. He could hear it in his surprised exclamations.

  “Who knew squirrel could be so delicious?” he’d remarked the first night they’d made stew of the hapless creatures who’d made the mistake of chattering excitedly at them from the road.

  An officer in the infantry, and he’d never eaten squirrel? John knew that officers tended to use their own funds to purchase provisions, and that wealthy officers tended to eat well, but…

  Never eaten squirrel?

  He didn’t complain about hard biscuit either. He acted as if it were a special treat.

  “Goodness,” Henry had said. “I’d always wondered what it was like, and now I know!”

  He’d wondered. He had wondered, as if it were a line in a story and not the desperate reality for thousands of men.

  Henry had just continued on the road, eating squirrels and hard biscuits with the absolutely terrible cheese that he tried every meal.

  He may have been born wealthy, but his clumsy attempt to pretend otherwise was endearing. Or—at least—John corrected himself, it would have been, if John had been the sort to allow himself to be endeared. Henry hadn’t even sighed wistfully five minutes ago when they’d passed a cottage. The wind had carried with it the scent of cooking food—savory meat and the yeasty smell of baking bread. Even John had glanced longingly in that direction before moving on.

  It had been days since their last warm meal.

  The wind shifted and John caught the scent of that bread again. He hoped Henry hurried his business up—story about his father or no, John hated wanting things he couldn’t have, and bread was something of a personal weakness.

  Crusty bread. Brown bread. Steaming bread, hot from the oven. Damn it.

  John’s stomach grumbled. At that moment, leaves crackled, presaging someone’s arrival. He turned. Two men had come out of the trees. They were white, and they looked at John with narrowed eyes.

  “Told you so,” one said to the other.

  “Walking about on the road, just like that.”

  God. The last thing John needed now was to be accosted by the locals. This, this was the sort of thing that might have happened to his mother in Newport. One day at the market, they might have—

  He clamped down on that train of thought before it spread into panic.

  “I’ll be moving on,” he assured them. “I’ve no desire to stay.”

  The two men exchanged glances. The one who spoke next had sandy-brown hair and a gap in his teeth. “But who knows what you’ve taken? That’s what I say.”

  The other man—ruddy skin contrasting with dark, curly hair—nodded. “In fact,” he said, “I think we should search your pack just to be sure you haven’t stolen anything. We’ll hold on to anything suspicious we find, just in case the real owners turn up.”

  So it was to be a kind of shakedown. He didn’t have enough that he could afford to lose anything. John stepped in front of his pack. He was going to have to hold firm.

  “Hand it over,” said Gap Tooth.

  John grimaced. “I would really rather not.”

  Curly Hair just shook his head. “It will be a real shame to have to report you to the constable. We live just down the road. He knows us.” He pointed in the direction of the cottage. “We’re good, God-fearing folk. Who knows you?”

  “Oh dear Lord.” The words came from behind them as Henry materialized from between the trees. “You mean you don’t know him?”

  They turned as one. They caught sight of Henry. He paused, as if on instinct, to let them look him over. There was no sign that he’d been doing his business. There was no sign that he’d been on the road for weeks. Every morning, he wielded his razor like an expert. His cheeks were close-shaven; his clothing was almost new. His boots were dark, the leather not cracked by time.

  Henry held his own pack over his shoulder as if it were a light jacket instead of a bag containing all his worldly belongings. He posed, arm cocked at his hip, eyes bright and wide. He looked like he belonged anywhere—his glossy not-quite-blond hair, his too-jaunty hat, his coat that spoke of riches. He wasn’t trying to look like a potter’s son now.

  The men frowned, then exchanged glances with each other. Those glances said that they had no idea what Henry was talking about.

  John had been feeling that way for the last fortnight.

  “You’ve truly never heard of him?” Henry asked. “That’s Corporal John Hunter. Corporal. Jonathan. Lewis. Hunter. Does that jog your memory?”

  John didn’t have a middle name, but Henry said it so sincerely that he almost doubted his own memory.

  Gap Tooth shook his head. “Not…really?”

  Henry continued on. “Corporal Hunter, Scourge of the Rhode Island Regiment?” He waited expectantly. Curly Hair shrugged.

  “John Hunter, Bane of the British? Ruin of the redcoats? Enemy of the English?”

  The two men just squinted at Henry.

  “Surely you have heard of the Lacerator of the Loyalists? The Curse of the Crown? That John Hunter?”

  “Um.” Gap Tooth looked as befuddled as John felt. “No?”

  “For God’s sake. I knew the British had suppressed news of our American heroes, but I didn’t know they had been so successful. This is a travesty. An utter travesty.”

  Curly Hair’s eyebrows scrunched down in confusion.

  John had no idea what the other man was doing, but… Damn, this would not turn out well.

  “Latham,” John said through gritted teeth. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  “Humble, too,” Henry said, waving off the warning tone in John’s voice. “Why, at the Battle of Germantown, he saved Washington himself from a detachment of British soldiers. They had snuck into the encampment before him. Had you not heard this story of attempted assassination?”

  “No!” Despite themselves, the two men crept closer to Latham.

  “Yes!” Latham was clearly warming to his story. “Major General the Lord Cornwallis, God rot his soul, had the most dastardly plan. He intended to kill Washington by subterfuge, thus depriving the Continental Army of its most powerful leader.”

  Curly Hair gasped. “Of course he did, that worm.”

  “Cornwallis had his men slay seven Continental soldiers—good men, including my comrade Duncan—but that’s a story for another day.” Henry paused, looking upward, as if to commemorate the passing of a lost soul.

  Curly Hair tilted his
head.

  “The threat to Washington? How’d that turn out?”

  John found himself mildly curious about what he was supposed to have done, too.

  “Ah.” Henry seemed to return to the present. “That evil man dressed his most trusted, most stealthy soldiers in Continental blue. He sent them into the encampment where Washington was quartered. Washington had sent scouts out to survey the land. His aide-de-camp, the, uh…” Henry faltered. “The esteemed, uh—”

  “Hamilton,” John put in. “His name is Alexander Hamilton.”

  Henry waved a hand in his direction. “Don’t interrupt me, Hunter. As I was saying. The esteemed Hamilton had gone to oversee the front. Never believe that Washington was left unprotected, of course; he was no fool. But those cowardly, cravenly men in American uniform strode into camp as if they owned the place. They walked through the encampment, and before anyone knew what was happening, they slew Washington’s inner guard. Washington cried for help—but only one man had the eagle ears to hear it.”

  “Who was that?” John asked.

  Henry gave him an annoyed look, quickly masked by a sweet smile. “I am so glad you asked. It was Jonathan Lewis Hunter, that was who. Just as the spying, lying British soldiers surrounded Washington, Hunter here” —Henry clapped John on the back—“entered his tent.”

  John glared at Henry; Henry looked at his hand and yanked his arm away with a sheepish smile.

  “Gah,” said Gap Tooth. “One man, against so many?”

  “Precisely. John was just one man. He hadn’t any warning. He had naught on him but…a stick.” Henry looked off into the distance. “A stick and a single carving knife that he had been using to whittle it into a ship.”

  John raised an eyebrow.

  “How was he to defend his commander with such an item?” Henry posed this hypothetical.

  “General,” John interjected. “Washington is a general.”

  “General,” Henry conceded. He didn’t look at John, just smiled at the other two men. “I used the word ‘commander’ to describe what he did—commanded. In other words, I used it generally. To encompass generals. But back to the matter at hand. Corporal Jonathan Lewis Hunter had only those sparse weapons, to compare with the muskets and the wicked swords of his seven enemies. But he had one thing they did not.”