Free The Randolph Legacy by Eileen Charbonneau Page B

least.
    “There, good,” Fayette assured him. “Now, together we descend to the fighting top. We’ll ride out this fine storm there, yes?”
    Jamie looked down. His hand slipped from Fayette’s shoulder.
    Fayette barely had time to grab Jamie’s wrist as he fainted. He was an anchor now, one that made Fayette feel as though the tendons in his shoulder were bursting. Still, he held on, for they were swinging over the hard, unforgiving main deck of the Standard. “There now,” Fayette crooned down at the boy.
    The wind answered, blowing them over the small square of the fighting top. His tortured hand released. He heard the sound of the boy’s body landing on the top deck. Fayette smiled. Agood landing. Not even any broken bones, he thought. It will not be so difficult to bring this young one back to life. Not so difficult as ten years ago.
    The boy lying on the top deck dissolved from his sight. Then the ship itself was gone. In their place were green hills. They were like the rolls of the ocean, seen from the top of the mizzenmast. Fayette’s vision was as clear as his eyes had given him in his prime. He heard Judith’s voice, exclaiming both joy and pain as she gazed over the same green mountains. Washington stood behind her, unseen. How different he looked, standing. How handsome his petit général was, Fayette thought, his eyes misting. Or perhaps it was misting there, in the rolling waves of the valleys below.
    He reached out to them. Judith stumbled.
    “Take your lady’s burden,” Fayette instructed Washington impatiently.
    Judith laughed, raising her shining eyes to Fayette’s. She shook her head. “Go on, Fayette,” she told him, before she threw her head back and a wild, ecstatic sound burst from her. He’d never heard anything like it.
    Yes, he had. Madeline had cried out like that, once.
    The wind changed direction. Judith’s cry became the faint sounds of warning from below. But the arm that had held the boy so tenaciously would not obey his mind’s command. Hold on. Grip. Grip the ropes. They could not.
    There was no pain as he fell. The pain came, of course, in the landing. It sent him through the gratings and onto the gundeck. He heard the brutal cracking of his bones.
    He looked up into the face of Lieutenant Mitchell, the first officer he’d trusted with the knowledge of Washington’s existence. He heard the voices, even through the pain.
    “Take him to the hold.”
    “The hold, sir?”
    “As carefully as you can. And hurry, while the captain is busy at the wheel.”
     
     
    W ashington heard footsteps. Many of them, not just Fayette’s. No, none of them were Fayette’s. When the door opened, the opposite of his imaginings happened: The water on his side drained out. He watched its flow. That was why he saw only the sailors’ bare feet, the officers’ booted ones, until they laid Fayette down.
    Washington leaned over him. His fingers ached to give Fayette comfort, but knew they would only add to his friend’s torment.
    “Where’s his coat?” Washington demanded. “He’s cold.”
    The midshipman with swollen eyes handed it to him.
    Washington placed it carefully over the broad chest.
    Fayette opened his eyes in the swinging lantern’s light. His mouth twitched into a smile. “Fell out of your hammock, did you?”
    Washington shrugged, smearing the fresh blood from his nose and lip across the back of his hand.
    “Have Thrumming make you up a salve.”
    Washington nodded, the tears flowing down his face.
    “Now,” his friend admonished, “you knew this day would come.”
    “Plus tard,” Washington heard the abandoned child whisper.
    “Listen to me. You are not without friends. They will do their best to keep you safe until Judith comes. I saw her, petit général. And I saw you, beside her. Standing. Imagine!”
    “Fayette—”
    “My name is Maupin. Henri Maupin, Washington. And I have finally had one of your confounded visions. Of green mountains and
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