Some time later, Horatio was shown into the room where he would be staying. It took considerable effort not to gape until the servant closed the door behind him. Though not matching the elegance he'd seen so far in the rest of the house, it was still the finest bedchamber he'd ever been in. There was a large bed, as big as the one he and Archie had shared the previous night, with wide carved posts, and a curtained canopy falling into thick soft drapes. He clasped his hands firmly behind his back to avoid touching them, but he thought the fabric might be velvet.
At the foot of this bed his own sea chest had been placed, looking dingy and cheap against the fine wool rug that warmed the floor. There was a small coal fireplace set in one wall putting out a lovely heat. Near it waited a washstand with brushes and bowls laid out. Opposite the bed was a wardrobe large enough to hide in, and under the room's one window, a little desk with a few books. Horatio couldn't help but look at the titles, mostly schoolbooks, with a few volumes of Shakespeare and other playwrights.
The walls were painted a deep peacock blue above the mahogany wainscoting. There were several small watercolors hung about in frames, some rather crude, others more skillfully executed, mostly scenes of the sea, and ships. The best showed a view of a crowded port, seen from the water, the bay choked with little boats full of brown people selling women and other wares. A few larger ships, from England mostly judging from the flags, seemed the focus of the activity.
Horatio's growing suspicions were confirmed when he came to a small oil painting, from the brush of a more skilled artist. It was clearly Kennedy, but done some years before. The trim little figure was in the unmarked blue coat and white britches of a volunteer. His friend's hair was lighter then, and curled around narrow shoulders like a girl's. The boy was standing next to a familiar brass-fitted sea chest. The round cherub face was all pink cheeks and white teeth, and the wide grin-young Kennedy looked very puffed up and proud-made Horatio smile.
A door between this chamber and the next, that he had barely noticed, opened then, and the portrait's subject poked a head in. "How do you like my room, Hornblower?"
"It is very nice." Horatio felt very conscious that they had not been alone since the coach. "But should you not have it?"
"They gave you the one that had actually been made up, I am relegated to cold and dust for surprising my mother with a houseguest. Not that I mind." Archie came in and closed the door behind him. "I spent time enough in here."
He did not know what sort of mood the boy was in now, and looked for a distraction. "Who painted these?" Horatio gestured about.
"I did some of them, my father's men did others. Not this one, of course." Kennedy had come to stand next to him. "My mother made me sit for this, before I left on the Guardian."
"Your first posting?"
"Aye. We had quite an adventure too." But Archie did not elaborate. Horatio thought to press the matter, the name of the ship sounded familiar to him, but then another question, that had been bothering him since they arrived, presented itself.
He turned his back on the portrait to face his friend more fully. "Why does your father call you Alexander?"
"To annoy me."
Horatio had little enough patience left for Kennedy's secrets, little patience left in general after a very long and nerve-wracking day. He just fixed Archie with a glare, until his friend threw up his hands and confessed.
"Because it is my name, if you must know. Alexander Archibald Kennedy, says so right on my papers. But when we were forced here to England, there was a friend of my mother's with a little boy, just my age, called Alex. I don't mind him at all now, but back then I apparently hated him, and refused to answer to Alexander anymore because it was his name." Archie grinned a bit at this, clearly proud of being a child just as stupidly stubborn as the man was proving to be.
"Anyway, I looked just like my oldest brother then, and followed him about everywhere, so they started calling me little Archie, and that is what stuck. You'll meet Arch, he's coming down from Scotland, with his wife and bairn. I don't look a thing like him now, but he's jolly and you'll get on well with him."
"Your father doesn't like nicknames?"
"Oh, he used to call me Archie too, well, when he bothered to use my name. He sort of had a habit of just barking out orders, to all of us, really. But I cocked up my chance to follow in his footsteps and make a brilliant naval career. It's been Alexander ever since."
Kennedy tossed this off very casually, but Horatio knew Archie enough at least to spot that as a mask. He tried to laugh it off as well. "It seems a bit early to give up on our careers, we're only midshipmen after all."
"Oh aye, but I should have been near lieutenant, you see. Who knows if I'll ever get put to the test even, with the fits and all. Still, we've a war now, and Indefatigable. Under Pellew, I ought to be able to get myself blown up dramatically and in an honorable fashion, which would please the old man." Archie grinned at him, but there wasn't any real light in it.
"I wish you wouldn't talk like that. Weren't you going on just yesterday about us swooping about the Mediterranean, picking up prize ships? And if anyone is going to die in battle, it's sure to be me. I'll probably end up crushed under my own gun crew's cannon in the first action."
Kennedy plucked up a pillow from the bed then, and threw it hard. Horatio, not able to dodge in time, caught it instead. "None of that, Hornblower. Guns are all paying attention and mathematics, you know. You'll be cracking at it once you've had a few drills."
"Are they really?" The few times the guns had been exercised on Justinian, all he could make of the exercise was noise that rattled his skull, men moving frantically in arcane pursuits, and the blinding smoke.
"Yeah. If you've time to aim, it's a matter of trajectories. How much powder, which kind of shot, what angle to fire at. In the heat of it, it's all about seconds, how fast everything can be done, and still done correctly. Fire one and a half times to each broadside from the enemy, and you win. That's what I remember them saying at least, I've never commanded a gun crew in battle."
Horatio lay down on Kennedy's bed, tucking the pillow under his head. He hadn't thought about it that way before, but he could picture the curves on a slate now, pulling out of memory equations that might apply. Force, distance, the weight of the shot, how to correct for the pitch of the ocean, aiming for the hull versus the rigging, so many variables to consider. "You've truly seen action, then?" He looked up at Archie, then away again at the boy's distant expression. "I always thought you were exaggerating," he couldn't help muttering.
He felt the bed sink under Archie's weight too, then fingers, stroking through his hair. "Just once. I expect we'll get our fill soon enough." They both fell silent then. Horatio's mind spun with calculations and the remembered smell of powder, and the awareness that in a few weeks, there might be men living and dying by numbers. By percentages and chance and his own commands.
It ought to panic him, he could feel the weakness fluttering in his belly. But the hand in his curls held him steady.
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