Read Online Easton's Gold by Paul Butler - Free Book Online

smell only of blood or whether happier memories will flood upon him too. It was the last place he experienced true joy, yet it’s also the land of his deadliest recollections. He feels like a mortal recalled to the haven of the gods, where everything—joy, hope, love, despair—is felt on a Promethean scale.
    He thinks of the settlement he once knew, the rickety planks set up against the rush of winter, the stone walls nestled more stoically into the side of a hill. Despite the cold, the storms, and the toil, he remembers laughter as fresh as the virgin north wind.
    A breeze rises, bobbing the laurel leaves and causing his lantern flame to flicker; a momentary panic sweeps through him.
Do I have the courage to go through with it
? Everything he is will be swept away forever. No more “Fleet the apothecary.” No more London. The truth of his past will annihilate it all. And what will he be left with?
    Fleet’s heart beats faster.
I will go. I will go, but perhaps I will return here later
. He knows it is a foolish compromise, that there is no point if he does not commit himself. Going to Newfoundland with Easton and remaining “Fleet the apothecary” who can return to London without revealing himself is a betrayal of himself and his parents.
    He remembers being held high between the shoulders of the two men from the ship as they marched side by side back up the hill toward his burning house. He can feel again the vice-like grip of their hands and the sudden wrenching of his hair from behind as he tried to look away. “There’s your father!” one said as they came to a halt. His voice was neither loud nor angry, merely impatient at the boy’s struggling and eager to get on. “Stop calling for him. He was no good to us. But you and your mother are.” Though his vision became filled with tears, he could see that the body lying face up was no longer his father. The eyes were open but no more alive than the pebbles around him.
    The child knew for certain that the strange numbness he felt now was his new reality. He knew that the scene around him—punctured bodies; burning houses; a neighbour’s girl, young Elizabeth, staring out through a doorway now, destined to starve—would stay with him always. Commonplace things—cool pond water lapping against his skin; the warm breeze of August; laughter as he and his friends learned steps to a dance—would never again bring the same intensity of feeling. The house of his senses was burning along with the village; he was entering a place of darkness.
    Fleet remembers the chains that bound his mother’s wrists, how blood mingled with sweat when she struggled, and how one day, months after their capture, he met the desolate stare of her eye—a look so near death it was a premonition. She had given up on everything and would eat and drink no more.
    Fleet reaches for another snail, pulls it from a leaf and drops it into his sack. The shells clink against each other again, and he feels a tremor beneath his feet. He knows this comes not from the earth but from himself. He has become too comfortable with Fleet the apothecary; he must get ready for the great change.
    __________
    I T IS NOT YET DAWN AND Gabrielle still cannot sleep. She watches the strip of moonlight on the plaster ceiling and imagines the sway of a hull and the creaking of timbers. Philippa snores loudly as, no doubt, she will upon the ship.
    Travelling again so soon makes little sense. It isn’t just the voyage that worries her, or even her master’s health anymore. The Marquis’s words have teased away a scab she thought long healed. “Only your company when you can spare it,” he had said. Why should the captain want her company? Why should she feel obliged to give it?
    There was a hint of mockery in the situation, something out of place in the Marquis’s treatment of her. She turns onto her side and closes her eyes. She