Free Under Enemy Colors by Sean Thomas Russell, Sean Russell, S. Thomas Russell Page B

injured, Giles?” the young nobleman asked.
    The boy shook his head, unable to quite catch his breath. “No, sir,” he whispered. “Begging your pardon. I’ll be all right in a moment, sir.”
    Hayden crossed the deck and realized the lad, who still trembled, was a good half a foot taller than he, and much broader across the shoulders and chest. “Giles? Is that your name?” Hayden asked.
    “Aye, sir,” the lad answered. His face had turned pale as a fish belly.
    “Sit down on the deck and put your head between your knees. Someone bring the boy some water.”
    Giles slid down the bulwark and hung his head, great forearms thrown over his neck, elbows on the knees, none of this structure too steady. “Sorry, sir,” the boy whispered, his voice barely audible.
    “Don’t apologize,” Hayden bid him. “You’ve had quite a fright.”
    “If I hadn’t grabbed the shrouds…”
    Hayden crouched down, trying to get a glimpse of the boy’s face. The lad lolled to one side and would have slid limply to the deck, but Hayden and Wickham caught him and supported his ample weight. The doctor appeared then, fetched from his charges by Mr Archer.
    Griffiths bent over the boy and felt for the carotid pulse. “What happened?” he asked.
    “He fell from the mizzen top,” Hayden reported, “but managed to catch hold of a shroud or he would have come to much harm.”
    “He didn’t fall to the deck, then?” the doctor asked.
    “No. He slid down the shroud,” Wickham said, “but then turned ashen and light-headed.”
    “Got the vapours,” one of the crew whispered and the men laughed.
    “Well, he’ll come round in a moment, I’ll venture,” Griffiths said, and the boy did move at that instant, one eye slitting open. “There you are, Giles. All of a piece, I see. Nothing broken, no severed arteries, not even a modest contusion. I think you’ll live. No, don’t try to sit up. Lay still a moment and let the blood find its natural level.” Griffiths looked up at Hayden and nodded. “He’ll be perfectly hale in a moment. Saved the deck a nasty bashing, I should think.”
    Hayden retreated with Wickham in his wake, and a servant called them for the midday meal.
    “That was a bit of luck that he saved himself that way,” Hayden said, as they reached the top of the companionway. “You know him, do you?”
    Wickham nodded. “I do, sir. We are the same age but for three days.”
    Hayden must have shown his surprise.
    “He has great size for his years, doesn’t he?” Wickham stated.
    “For any tally of years, I would venture.”
    Wickham looked around rather furtively and then leaned closer to Hayden, pitching his voice low. “Did you hear the men whispering, sir? saying that Giles didn’t fall?”
    “What did they mean, he didn’t fall? We saw him come tumbl—” But then he realized what was meant. “They believed it was not an accident?”
    “That’s what I assume, sir.”
    Hayden pressed a palm against his forehead, appalled. “Did anyone see what happened? Did they see someone push the boy?”
    “I don’t know, sir.”
    “Send young Giles down to me.”
    A moment later Giles descended the companionway stair and Hayden met him outside the gunroom. Not being captain, he did not have a cabin suitable for private interviews, so he led the boy down to the orlop and ranged forward of the sick-berth—the nearest thing to privacy they would find at that time of day. Giles’ big, simple face could not hide the apprehension he felt, and Hayden wondered how much of that was just being young and called by a superior officer.
    “Feeling better, Giles? No harm done?”
    “I’m perfectly hale, Mr Hayden.”
    Hayden fixed his gaze on the boy-man, trying to read his doughy, rather inexpressive face. “Tell me honestly, Giles, did you fall from the mizzen top, or were you pushed?”
    A small flare of alarm, open to interpretation. “Pushed, sir?! Why, Mr Hayden…” but his sentence devolved into