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smackenzieIt was another three weeks before they encountered another ship, although during that time they stopped on an island for several days in order to fix a leak that had sprung up in the hold of the merchant ship. Doren had tried to patch it with pitch, as she did most small leaks on the Black Lightning, but she finally had to admit defeat and announce to Bernade and Maggie that they needed to put ashore for a few days to mend the leak as well as a few other things she had discovered on the merchant ship. Bernade suggested that they could take the opportunity to rename the ship and perhaps paint a new one on her prow.
Because the crew had jointly voted to sail both ships together, and because splitting the crew between the ships had left each one with fewer pirates than anyone preferred, the Black Lightning had to weigh anchor in the shallows off the small island where they stopped. Some pirates elected to stay on board, perhaps preferring the gentle rocking of the ship to the solidity of dry land, but most swarmed off the ship and onto the island.
They slept in hammocks and on the ground and under makeshift shelters built out of fallen tree branches and giant palm leaves, and when they explored the place they discovered few wild animals but an abundance of fruit. After three days several of the crew had tried to build a crude still in an attempt to ferment the fruit and make liquor, but three days was not nearly enough time and the fruit pulp merely started to rot. Yora, the master gunner, had lived on a small island as a child and tried to gather a fishing party to supplement the dried beef in the ships' holds. The crew of the merchant ship had already killed and eaten the ducks they had captured with it – the birds turned out to be males and did not lay eggs, unlike the chickens on board the Black Lightning, so there was no point in keeping them alive and wasting valuable space - and pirates, like anyone, preferred their meat fresh when they could get it.
The priest wandered around after Maggie, alternately annoying her and keeping her entertained, and to her relief he made no more advances. She had no doubt that some of the sailors who had been on the merchant ship had taken to chasing some of her girls, but she also had faith that her girls had put them off. She knew for a fact one of them had taken a liking to Bernade – and she knew for a fact that Bernade scared him – but Bernade had a girl back at Port Doras and was not interested in men in any case.
(Her Port Doras girl was not much of an incentive to faithfulness if another pretty girl crossed her path – the pirate life was not particularly kind to men and women of a strictly monogamous bent, although neither was a life with a navy or as a merchant sailor, or life as the spouse of one – but Bernade was so uninterested in sex with men that when she mentioned to Maggie that this merchant sailor was trying to bed her, Maggie could only laugh. He never did learn.)
It rained twice – once a light rain that lasted half a day, and once a heavy downpour that cleared off after an hour or so – but while the merchant ship was undergoing repairs the sun shone and the sky blazed blue and pirates lounged around the shore and under the trees taking their leisure. Maggie was as desperate to get back to sea as anyone, but she forced herself to relax and enjoy their brief detour into this tiny paradise.
Bernade took suggestions as to what to name the merchant ship, now that it was theirs, and finally settled on the Cormorant, a bird she had never seen but which she understood was black and pointy and more important, a water bird. Besides, she liked the name. Someone found whitewash in the hold of the merchant ship, and one of the riggers hung over the side on a rope ladder to paint the new name on the prow. Bernade was more proud of this than she had a right to be, considering it was not really her ship and she could conceivably be voted out of the captain's cabin and there was no guarantee they wouldn't all decide to sell the ship once they reached a convenient port. There was even a chance that some other pirate vessel would cross their path and decide to try and capture it, although in that case it would be one ship against two, and Bernade was sure that she and Maggie and the rest of the crew would emerge victorious.
“Should we discuss it in case the event arises?” Maggie asked her late one day, as they sat on the edge of the sand and watched the sun set behind the ships.
“Perhaps,” Bernade said. “I do not think the chances are very great, though. We have not seen a single other ship near enough to us since we left Port Doras, other than the Cormorant.”
“There was the Usurper's ship of the line. But we could not have taken her. She would have blown us out of the water.”
Maggie's flag was well-known among the great sea-faring countries, especially those with close ties to both the Usurper or the king-in-exile, and Maggie well knew that her capture would be a great coup for any minor naval officer. She could no doubt make someone's career, assuming the standing order was to take her alive. She could believe that ships had been ordered to fire on the Black Lightning if they ever came close enough, and that it did not matter to any ruler or military officer or trading company official if she was taken alive or not, as long as she was put out of commission.
She did not even think she was alone in this – any pirate captain, she knew, was a prize worth seeking, and any pirate ship a vessel worth capturing. She had nothing to fear from her compatriots – there was honor among thieves, she knew from experience – and even if promised freedom for information leading to her capture, they could not share her position once she had put out to sea, for the simple fact that no one's charts were especially accurate and she did not sail on any predefined path. No pirates did.
Doren came over and flopped down on the grass on the other side of Bernade, followed shortly by the rigger who had painted the Cormorant's new name and a few other pirates. Soon there was a group of women and a couple of the men sitting around, talking and laughing and demanding to know when they were going to be fed. Doren sent someone to find Ellim, the Black Lightning's cook, and to see if Yora had succeeded in catching a decent number of fish, and by the time the sun had set there was fruit and hardtack and rum – always rum – and surprisingly fresh water from a stream farther into the island, and even some fish.
The priest brought Maggie a full cup, which he explained was the last of the wine they had liberated from the captain's cabin on the Cormorant, and she jokingly asked if he meant to bless her and her crew with it. He did not look amused.
“Why did you leave the priesthood?” she asked, aware that it was perhaps a nosy question but not especially concerned that he might take offense. There was no privacy on a pirate ship, and while he had made no secret of his previous life, he had yet to tell her why it was previous. She herself had no problem telling people how she became a pirate and what had been taken from her.
“It is no concern of yours,” he said, his voice tight. He took the cup back from her and drank. She raised an eyebrow, amused.
“You did not know there are no secrets on board a pirate vessel? For instance, I could tell you that Viga, the girl over there” - she pointed to a tall girl with hair so blonde it was nearly white, who was playing cards with some other pirates and apparently losing - “she is the one who painted the Cormorant's name on the prow, and she used up the whitewash by attempting to paint the other riggers. I could tell you that those two” - now she pointed to the two boys who had been lashed for conducting their lovers' spat in public - “have been together, fought, separated, and returned to each other easily nine times a week for the past month. I could tell you that Bernade sleeps fully dressed, that Yuna will let exactly one girl touch her hair, that Yora has a husband back at Port Doras – an honest man, if you can believe that, a cobbler – she has said nothing to anyone and yet it is not a secret.” She grinned. “I know that you are no longer a priest, and that you paid for passage on the merchant ship to return to the mainland, because you could not live on the islands any longer. What else do you wish to know?”
“So even if I tell you nothing, you will still divine all my secrets?”
“Perhaps. Or someone else will. Pirates can be very good judges of character.”
“Well, I already know that your concept of mercy is not mine. I know that you are determined and disciplined and that in your heart you still consider yourself a naval officer.” He gestured to her coat, which she had taken off and folded on the short, spiky grass. “You still wear the coat of a captain in a navy.”
“I was a trained officer for longer than I have been a pirate. The skills are much the same. It is merely the object of one's exercises that is different. I am waging a war against a much more nebulous enemy than I ever did in the Royal Navy.”
“You are waging your war against the woman you call the Usurper.”
“I am. I will always be.” She lay on her back on the grass and looked up at the stars. There were few trees this close to the sand and there was nothing to block her view. “But while I am hounding her, I can likewise chase after fat, slow merchants, to capture their goods and pay my crew and help fill the coffers of the man I think should be king.”
“And to benefit yourself, of course.”
The priest was still sitting up, but he looked at her with no expression on his face. Maggie smiled at him, wondering what his point was or if he was just talking to have something to say.
“Why else would I do it?” she asked lightly. “I have a fur now, and fabric to make into new clothes, and when we are finally done with this voyage we will split the booty that remains and I will take my share of goods and gold and buy some nice things. The Usurper took everything from me, as well you know, and without piracy I would starve.”
“You have no friends to help?”
“Oh, I have friends. But most of them are in the same position I am. They went into exile as I did and so far I have no desire to put them in jeopardy by asking for their help. I do not need it yet in any case.”
“You do not have pirate friends?” He sounded oddly concerned, and Maggie had to laugh.
“Look around you, priest.” She lifted an arm to gesture at the pirates scattered around the beach and along the shore, and to imply the presence of other women and men who had ventured farther into the island.
“They are not your friends,” he said. “They are your crew.”
“Have we not had this conversation once before? They are only my crew because they choose to be so, because they have chosen me to captain the ship. The Black Lightning is mine and I will take her with me if I ever leave this life, but for now, I am captain merely because the rest of the crew has voted me so.”
“But you treat them as if they are your crew and not your equals.”
“Did you yourself not say that in my heart I still consider myself a captain in the navy? Why would a naval officer consider herself the equal of any sailor on her ship? And yet to these pirates, we are all equal. Any one of us can rise to any position. And for now, yes, they are my friends, as I am theirs. I lead them into battle and they fight at my side.”
He was silent. He was no longer looking down at her, but out at the sea. Maggie felt momentarily sorry for him.
“Do you not have friends, priest?” she asked gently.
“I do not know.”
“Among the women and men of the Black Lightning and the Cormorant?”
“Perhaps.”
“You can be very standoffish, but they are not unfriendly people. We are all comrades in our quest for gold.”
“Why do you always refer to me as 'priest'?” he asked, apparently trying to change the subject.
“You have never told me your name. What else should I call you?” A pause. “A woman might think you still consider yourself an ordained man.”
“You are still the naval captain who fought for the losing side in a civil war, and I am... perhaps still a priest, in my heart. I do not wear the collar and robes and I, I do not know what faith I still have, if I have faith – what do I believe? I do not know. But I do believe something. I cannot do otherwise. My church, no, I do not believe in it. But my god, yes, I think I still do. I do not know how to reconcile these things – my faith in God but not my faith in the structures surrounding His word.”
Maggie sat up and put a hand on his shoulder. It had been a very long time since anyone had been so naked and vulnerable in his presence, and she felt as if she should comfort him, because he seemed to need to be comforted. It did not come easily to her, but she could certainly try. She knew what it was like to need support and not know where to turn or who to ask, or even if there was a place to go and a person to seek out.
The priest was silent. They could hear the carousing of the crew, laughter and shouts and the noise of rested, cheerful, argumentative people.
“I was called to God as a young man,” the priest went on, his voice quiet as if he were talking to himself more than to Maggie. “I felt a pull, you might say. I trained for this one thing, I learned one way to love God, one way to worship, and that was within the strictures of the church. And now that I have left the church, how do I worship Him? Because I think – I have been thinking, there is nothing to do on your ship but think – I have tried to work this through – I still wish to worship. I have not abandoned all my faith. But I have no structure. I do not know how to express... I have a goal I do not know how to accomplish.”
Maggie did not understand this. She had always known how to achieve her goals, or at least how to attempt them. She did not know in practical terms how the king-in-exile might win back his throne from the Usurper, and how she herself might recover her ancestral hall and her estates, but she did know what she could do to help him, and that was to send him money to help fund the army he would have to raise. She did not know what it was like to want something and have not the first idea how to go about acquiring it.
“I cannot believe I have told you all this,” the priest said suddenly, chuckling. “These are things I have never told a soul, not even my confessor.”
“I am not a religious woman,” Maggie said, considering her words. “But I do know this – I love the sea and I love my ship, and I can see the divine in the wind and the sky and the clouds and the waves, in the way the sails flap in the breeze and the way the prow of the Black Lightning cuts through the water. There is glory to be found on the sea, and treasures to be found in it, and if I did believe strongly in a god, I could well believe He had designed the world thus, so that I could see His glory and worship His works and yet follow my own heart. I do not believe everything has a reason – for what reason could there be in the Usurper taking the throne, claiming my land and estates and all I possessed, sending me into exile – but I do think this – you can see the divine in the world if you but look. I do not think you need a church in which to worship your god. I worship the sun and the sky and the wind and the water, and that is my faith. And who is to say that my faith, my manner of worship, is any worse or any less valuable than that of a woman who goes to chapel and kneels by the altar and begs her god for mercy?”
“I cannot worship that way. I do not know how.”
“But that is what I am trying to tell you – there is no one way to serve your god. There is no one way for me, for anyone, to serve the king-in-exile. Why do you think your god will only accept your prayers if you pray them in a church? Why do you not think He will accept them out here? Look at me, priest.” She took his chin in her hand and turned his head to face her. It was dark where they were, far enough from the groups and the little fires on the beach, the only light shining on them from the waning moon. The priest's face was in shadow. Maggie could not see his expression. “This is what I believe – if you love your god, if you wish to serve Him and worship Him, He will still accept you. You may need to find your own way to Him, but there is a way.”
He reached up, as if to brush her hair back, but let his hand fall.
“I would not have expected you to be such a wise woman,” he said. Maggie chose not to be offended. “I had not expected this kind of mercy.”
“You thought I was cold,” she reminded him, but her voice was gentle. “And I can be. I have to be. This is not a life for the soft-hearted. But I can still be kind.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly, and now he did brush his hand over her cheek to tuck her hair behind her ear. It was a very intimate gesture and Maggie could not deny the tiny shiver of pleasure that the gesture left in its wake.
“We are still at sea,” she reminded him.
“We are now on land.”
“I am not going to sleep with you.” She felt closer to him than she had felt towards anyone in a long time, because he had shared something private and vulnerable of himself without asking anything of her in return. She would have gladly taken him to bed were they in Port Doras, but this was her rule, and she would not do it here. She felt as if she might owe him some comfort, and she did not mind giving it, but not that.
“Will you sleep next to me? I will keep my hands to myself to follow your code.”
“That I will do, yes.” She did not mind that they were out in the open and anyone would see – she knew a few pairs had already vanished into the trees for some privacy – they were not going to do anything, and she did not have to worry about breaking her own code and unintentionally signaling to her crew that it was acceptable for them to do it as well.
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Because the crew had jointly voted to sail both ships together, and because splitting the crew between the ships had left each one with fewer pirates than anyone preferred, the Black Lightning had to weigh anchor in the shallows off the small island where they stopped. Some pirates elected to stay on board, perhaps preferring the gentle rocking of the ship to the solidity of dry land, but most swarmed off the ship and onto the island.
They slept in hammocks and on the ground and under makeshift shelters built out of fallen tree branches and giant palm leaves, and when they explored the place they discovered few wild animals but an abundance of fruit. After three days several of the crew had tried to build a crude still in an attempt to ferment the fruit and make liquor, but three days was not nearly enough time and the fruit pulp merely started to rot. Yora, the master gunner, had lived on a small island as a child and tried to gather a fishing party to supplement the dried beef in the ships' holds. The crew of the merchant ship had already killed and eaten the ducks they had captured with it – the birds turned out to be males and did not lay eggs, unlike the chickens on board the Black Lightning, so there was no point in keeping them alive and wasting valuable space - and pirates, like anyone, preferred their meat fresh when they could get it.
The priest wandered around after Maggie, alternately annoying her and keeping her entertained, and to her relief he made no more advances. She had no doubt that some of the sailors who had been on the merchant ship had taken to chasing some of her girls, but she also had faith that her girls had put them off. She knew for a fact one of them had taken a liking to Bernade – and she knew for a fact that Bernade scared him – but Bernade had a girl back at Port Doras and was not interested in men in any case.
(Her Port Doras girl was not much of an incentive to faithfulness if another pretty girl crossed her path – the pirate life was not particularly kind to men and women of a strictly monogamous bent, although neither was a life with a navy or as a merchant sailor, or life as the spouse of one – but Bernade was so uninterested in sex with men that when she mentioned to Maggie that this merchant sailor was trying to bed her, Maggie could only laugh. He never did learn.)
It rained twice – once a light rain that lasted half a day, and once a heavy downpour that cleared off after an hour or so – but while the merchant ship was undergoing repairs the sun shone and the sky blazed blue and pirates lounged around the shore and under the trees taking their leisure. Maggie was as desperate to get back to sea as anyone, but she forced herself to relax and enjoy their brief detour into this tiny paradise.
Bernade took suggestions as to what to name the merchant ship, now that it was theirs, and finally settled on the Cormorant, a bird she had never seen but which she understood was black and pointy and more important, a water bird. Besides, she liked the name. Someone found whitewash in the hold of the merchant ship, and one of the riggers hung over the side on a rope ladder to paint the new name on the prow. Bernade was more proud of this than she had a right to be, considering it was not really her ship and she could conceivably be voted out of the captain's cabin and there was no guarantee they wouldn't all decide to sell the ship once they reached a convenient port. There was even a chance that some other pirate vessel would cross their path and decide to try and capture it, although in that case it would be one ship against two, and Bernade was sure that she and Maggie and the rest of the crew would emerge victorious.
“Should we discuss it in case the event arises?” Maggie asked her late one day, as they sat on the edge of the sand and watched the sun set behind the ships.
“Perhaps,” Bernade said. “I do not think the chances are very great, though. We have not seen a single other ship near enough to us since we left Port Doras, other than the Cormorant.”
“There was the Usurper's ship of the line. But we could not have taken her. She would have blown us out of the water.”
Maggie's flag was well-known among the great sea-faring countries, especially those with close ties to both the Usurper or the king-in-exile, and Maggie well knew that her capture would be a great coup for any minor naval officer. She could no doubt make someone's career, assuming the standing order was to take her alive. She could believe that ships had been ordered to fire on the Black Lightning if they ever came close enough, and that it did not matter to any ruler or military officer or trading company official if she was taken alive or not, as long as she was put out of commission.
She did not even think she was alone in this – any pirate captain, she knew, was a prize worth seeking, and any pirate ship a vessel worth capturing. She had nothing to fear from her compatriots – there was honor among thieves, she knew from experience – and even if promised freedom for information leading to her capture, they could not share her position once she had put out to sea, for the simple fact that no one's charts were especially accurate and she did not sail on any predefined path. No pirates did.
Doren came over and flopped down on the grass on the other side of Bernade, followed shortly by the rigger who had painted the Cormorant's new name and a few other pirates. Soon there was a group of women and a couple of the men sitting around, talking and laughing and demanding to know when they were going to be fed. Doren sent someone to find Ellim, the Black Lightning's cook, and to see if Yora had succeeded in catching a decent number of fish, and by the time the sun had set there was fruit and hardtack and rum – always rum – and surprisingly fresh water from a stream farther into the island, and even some fish.
The priest brought Maggie a full cup, which he explained was the last of the wine they had liberated from the captain's cabin on the Cormorant, and she jokingly asked if he meant to bless her and her crew with it. He did not look amused.
“Why did you leave the priesthood?” she asked, aware that it was perhaps a nosy question but not especially concerned that he might take offense. There was no privacy on a pirate ship, and while he had made no secret of his previous life, he had yet to tell her why it was previous. She herself had no problem telling people how she became a pirate and what had been taken from her.
“It is no concern of yours,” he said, his voice tight. He took the cup back from her and drank. She raised an eyebrow, amused.
“You did not know there are no secrets on board a pirate vessel? For instance, I could tell you that Viga, the girl over there” - she pointed to a tall girl with hair so blonde it was nearly white, who was playing cards with some other pirates and apparently losing - “she is the one who painted the Cormorant's name on the prow, and she used up the whitewash by attempting to paint the other riggers. I could tell you that those two” - now she pointed to the two boys who had been lashed for conducting their lovers' spat in public - “have been together, fought, separated, and returned to each other easily nine times a week for the past month. I could tell you that Bernade sleeps fully dressed, that Yuna will let exactly one girl touch her hair, that Yora has a husband back at Port Doras – an honest man, if you can believe that, a cobbler – she has said nothing to anyone and yet it is not a secret.” She grinned. “I know that you are no longer a priest, and that you paid for passage on the merchant ship to return to the mainland, because you could not live on the islands any longer. What else do you wish to know?”
“So even if I tell you nothing, you will still divine all my secrets?”
“Perhaps. Or someone else will. Pirates can be very good judges of character.”
“Well, I already know that your concept of mercy is not mine. I know that you are determined and disciplined and that in your heart you still consider yourself a naval officer.” He gestured to her coat, which she had taken off and folded on the short, spiky grass. “You still wear the coat of a captain in a navy.”
“I was a trained officer for longer than I have been a pirate. The skills are much the same. It is merely the object of one's exercises that is different. I am waging a war against a much more nebulous enemy than I ever did in the Royal Navy.”
“You are waging your war against the woman you call the Usurper.”
“I am. I will always be.” She lay on her back on the grass and looked up at the stars. There were few trees this close to the sand and there was nothing to block her view. “But while I am hounding her, I can likewise chase after fat, slow merchants, to capture their goods and pay my crew and help fill the coffers of the man I think should be king.”
“And to benefit yourself, of course.”
The priest was still sitting up, but he looked at her with no expression on his face. Maggie smiled at him, wondering what his point was or if he was just talking to have something to say.
“Why else would I do it?” she asked lightly. “I have a fur now, and fabric to make into new clothes, and when we are finally done with this voyage we will split the booty that remains and I will take my share of goods and gold and buy some nice things. The Usurper took everything from me, as well you know, and without piracy I would starve.”
“You have no friends to help?”
“Oh, I have friends. But most of them are in the same position I am. They went into exile as I did and so far I have no desire to put them in jeopardy by asking for their help. I do not need it yet in any case.”
“You do not have pirate friends?” He sounded oddly concerned, and Maggie had to laugh.
“Look around you, priest.” She lifted an arm to gesture at the pirates scattered around the beach and along the shore, and to imply the presence of other women and men who had ventured farther into the island.
“They are not your friends,” he said. “They are your crew.”
“Have we not had this conversation once before? They are only my crew because they choose to be so, because they have chosen me to captain the ship. The Black Lightning is mine and I will take her with me if I ever leave this life, but for now, I am captain merely because the rest of the crew has voted me so.”
“But you treat them as if they are your crew and not your equals.”
“Did you yourself not say that in my heart I still consider myself a captain in the navy? Why would a naval officer consider herself the equal of any sailor on her ship? And yet to these pirates, we are all equal. Any one of us can rise to any position. And for now, yes, they are my friends, as I am theirs. I lead them into battle and they fight at my side.”
He was silent. He was no longer looking down at her, but out at the sea. Maggie felt momentarily sorry for him.
“Do you not have friends, priest?” she asked gently.
“I do not know.”
“Among the women and men of the Black Lightning and the Cormorant?”
“Perhaps.”
“You can be very standoffish, but they are not unfriendly people. We are all comrades in our quest for gold.”
“Why do you always refer to me as 'priest'?” he asked, apparently trying to change the subject.
“You have never told me your name. What else should I call you?” A pause. “A woman might think you still consider yourself an ordained man.”
“You are still the naval captain who fought for the losing side in a civil war, and I am... perhaps still a priest, in my heart. I do not wear the collar and robes and I, I do not know what faith I still have, if I have faith – what do I believe? I do not know. But I do believe something. I cannot do otherwise. My church, no, I do not believe in it. But my god, yes, I think I still do. I do not know how to reconcile these things – my faith in God but not my faith in the structures surrounding His word.”
Maggie sat up and put a hand on his shoulder. It had been a very long time since anyone had been so naked and vulnerable in his presence, and she felt as if she should comfort him, because he seemed to need to be comforted. It did not come easily to her, but she could certainly try. She knew what it was like to need support and not know where to turn or who to ask, or even if there was a place to go and a person to seek out.
The priest was silent. They could hear the carousing of the crew, laughter and shouts and the noise of rested, cheerful, argumentative people.
“I was called to God as a young man,” the priest went on, his voice quiet as if he were talking to himself more than to Maggie. “I felt a pull, you might say. I trained for this one thing, I learned one way to love God, one way to worship, and that was within the strictures of the church. And now that I have left the church, how do I worship Him? Because I think – I have been thinking, there is nothing to do on your ship but think – I have tried to work this through – I still wish to worship. I have not abandoned all my faith. But I have no structure. I do not know how to express... I have a goal I do not know how to accomplish.”
Maggie did not understand this. She had always known how to achieve her goals, or at least how to attempt them. She did not know in practical terms how the king-in-exile might win back his throne from the Usurper, and how she herself might recover her ancestral hall and her estates, but she did know what she could do to help him, and that was to send him money to help fund the army he would have to raise. She did not know what it was like to want something and have not the first idea how to go about acquiring it.
“I cannot believe I have told you all this,” the priest said suddenly, chuckling. “These are things I have never told a soul, not even my confessor.”
“I am not a religious woman,” Maggie said, considering her words. “But I do know this – I love the sea and I love my ship, and I can see the divine in the wind and the sky and the clouds and the waves, in the way the sails flap in the breeze and the way the prow of the Black Lightning cuts through the water. There is glory to be found on the sea, and treasures to be found in it, and if I did believe strongly in a god, I could well believe He had designed the world thus, so that I could see His glory and worship His works and yet follow my own heart. I do not believe everything has a reason – for what reason could there be in the Usurper taking the throne, claiming my land and estates and all I possessed, sending me into exile – but I do think this – you can see the divine in the world if you but look. I do not think you need a church in which to worship your god. I worship the sun and the sky and the wind and the water, and that is my faith. And who is to say that my faith, my manner of worship, is any worse or any less valuable than that of a woman who goes to chapel and kneels by the altar and begs her god for mercy?”
“I cannot worship that way. I do not know how.”
“But that is what I am trying to tell you – there is no one way to serve your god. There is no one way for me, for anyone, to serve the king-in-exile. Why do you think your god will only accept your prayers if you pray them in a church? Why do you not think He will accept them out here? Look at me, priest.” She took his chin in her hand and turned his head to face her. It was dark where they were, far enough from the groups and the little fires on the beach, the only light shining on them from the waning moon. The priest's face was in shadow. Maggie could not see his expression. “This is what I believe – if you love your god, if you wish to serve Him and worship Him, He will still accept you. You may need to find your own way to Him, but there is a way.”
He reached up, as if to brush her hair back, but let his hand fall.
“I would not have expected you to be such a wise woman,” he said. Maggie chose not to be offended. “I had not expected this kind of mercy.”
“You thought I was cold,” she reminded him, but her voice was gentle. “And I can be. I have to be. This is not a life for the soft-hearted. But I can still be kind.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly, and now he did brush his hand over her cheek to tuck her hair behind her ear. It was a very intimate gesture and Maggie could not deny the tiny shiver of pleasure that the gesture left in its wake.
“We are still at sea,” she reminded him.
“We are now on land.”
“I am not going to sleep with you.” She felt closer to him than she had felt towards anyone in a long time, because he had shared something private and vulnerable of himself without asking anything of her in return. She would have gladly taken him to bed were they in Port Doras, but this was her rule, and she would not do it here. She felt as if she might owe him some comfort, and she did not mind giving it, but not that.
“Will you sleep next to me? I will keep my hands to myself to follow your code.”
“That I will do, yes.” She did not mind that they were out in the open and anyone would see – she knew a few pairs had already vanished into the trees for some privacy – they were not going to do anything, and she did not have to worry about breaking her own code and unintentionally signaling to her crew that it was acceptable for them to do it as well.
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