*To the End of the Road*

For the first days he dared not leave Horatio’s side, fearing every minute as he suffered in the fever, the life in him reduced to a fragile thing, always on the brink of breaking. A doctor came once, but his remedy was to administer a bleeding that left Horatio in an unconsciousness so profound that for hours he barely seemed to breathe. Having never had great faith in doctors, he did not call the man again, although he himself could do little more than keep coaxing Horatio to drink water in his more lucid moments. And talk with him, urging him to make a fight for life, telling him and telling him that it was over, that he could have a future worth living if only he would live for it. He feared that he was not being heard.

Self-contained even in delirium, Horatio never cried out. But the way he would freeze, attempting to press himself downwards into the hard mattress, and the occasional flinch, when he realised he was not alone, were quite eloquent enough He had seen the scars when he washed Horatio after their first arrival, scars that he had not had a year before, and he guessed clearly enough what lay beneath the nightmares.

He kept on, grimly nursing, sleeping only when exhaustion forced it, containing the fury which could serve no purpose.

The only comfort, and it was one he felt almost ashamed of, was that Horatio trusted him still. Whatever past he was lost in, whenever he was awake he would, after an occasional moment of fear, recognise his carer, and visibly relax a little. If die he must, then at least he would die tended by loving hands, and knowing he was not alone. All he had done would be worth it for just for that. But still, with all his soul, he wanted Horatio to live.

The day came at last when he found the dark eyes fixed upon him, sunken and dull, but with the first real awareness he had seen in all this time. Awareness, but no hope.

“We’re both dead, aren’t we?” It was a mere thread of a voice.

“No!” Shaken to the core it was some moments before he could form more than a flat denial. “No, Horatio, neither of us is dead.”

“But... I can’t be alive and, and....” Horatio seemed unable to finish. Archie could guess at it. Alive and no longer there.

“Yes, you can,” he said. “But don’t worry about it now. Just believe that we are both alive, and you are quite safe.”

A glimmer of the familiar stubborn look. A relief, but, at this point, also a problem. “I don’t see… how….” but Horatio was so drained, so physically weak, he could not finish.

“I’ll tell you when you are stronger. For now, just trust me.”

Thankfully Horatio was already slipping back into unconsciousness.

But he did grow stronger, day by day, and of course in the end it could be postponed no longer.

“Archie.” Horatio’s gaze was painful in its intensity. “I need to know. What happened?”

“How much do you remember?” Archie temporised.

“I remember a court martial. A trial, over taking the command from Captain Sawyer. I remember… you were hurt.”

“Yes, I was wounded. I was delirious for days, and when I recovered it was all over. Do you remember the verdict?”

“Of course I remember.” There was a little of the old Horatio in the snap to the answer. “They found me guilty, didn’t they?” On the last words his voice dropped almost to a whisper and his eyes dropped also.

“Yes, you were convicted. Mostly on Clive’s testimony as I heard it.” He swallowed, barely to articulate the rest. “The sentence… was commuted, because of your previous good record. At least that is what I was told.”

The dark eyes were boring into him now. “Imprisonment. For life.”

“Yes.” And how must Horatio have felt when he had heard that.… Not relieved, he was certainly not relieved. To Horatio the commutation would have been not mercy, but an extension of torture. Anyone who thought it mercy could have no idea what such imprisonment would mean.

“It was a long time before I was well again and back in England,” he said. “And a longer time before I could find what had been done with you.” He did not say more. No need to speak of his shock when he had learned Horatio had been sent to the hulks. The infamous prison hulks, the decommissioned ships which served as makeshift prisons, and whose reputation as a home of human misery was known even to a careless young man like himself. All but unheard of for an officer, even a degraded one, to be sent there, that must have been Hammond’s spite.

“But how am I here?” Horatio did not sound as if he expected to like the answer. “Where are we, anyway?”

“A small town, inland. I don’t suppose its name would mean anything to you, it was just the right kind of place. Quiet, but not too quiet.” He was running on, attempting to postpone the answer to the first question. But that was cowardly. “As for how.… Money, Horatio.”

“Money?”

“My legacy from my father. Not a fortune, but enough. Money will buy freedom… where the gaolers are corrupt.”

There was a long pause, and Archie found that he was holding his breath. Finally Horatio said flatly, “You bribed the gaolers.”

“Yes, I bribed the men who had charge of the hulk to get you out.” The simple description seemed oddly inadequate. No true expression of the searching, the testing, the intense need for control, least a wrong word, a wrong choice, should destroy all. No mention of the fear, of the driving intensity, of the obsession that had led everything to fade into insignificance beside the accomplishment of this one end. All reduced to a few simple words, as though the thing itself had been quite simple. Perhaps, when he looked back, it had been. It was the self-control which had been so very hard.

“You broke the law!” Horatio was looking at him with a kind of quiet horror. “Archie, that means they’ll be looking. You’re in danger.”

“No, I’m not. Not unless someone recognises you and there’s not much chance of that here.” He had to draw on his control again. He had always known this moment would not be easy, but that did not mean that he had been prepared. “Officially, you are dead. They entered you on the records as dead from gaol-fever, it was the best way for them as well as us. And it was very nearly true. You were ill when I got you out, very ill. No wonder you don’t remember.” Despite all his best efforts he had to stop there, because he could not control his voice and an emotional scene would be the last thing Horatio would want.

“You broke the law.” Horatio repeated staring at him bleakly. Well, what response had he expected? Gratitude? Knowing Horatio as he did, he had certainly not expected that.

“Yes, I broke the law. And I’d do it again.” He hoped that would settle that, at least for the time being. Horatio would not let it go forever, but he must be still weakened. “For now, there are things you need to know. The couple who own this inn think you are my cousin, just returned from India, and very ill from the climate there. I don’t suppose you’ll be seeing much of them, but just in case, that’s the story.”

Horatio nodded, but reluctantly, almost sullenly in fact. “You could have been caught.” He made it sound like an accusation. “You could have been ruined.”

“It was my choice. And it’s done.” He did not say, ‘you would have done the same for me’, because he did not think it true. Horatio would do many things for a ship-mate, including spending his last penny, but he would not have broke the law so. That did not matter.

Ship-mate. Was that all he thought he was to Horatio? No, but Horatio would do neither more nor less for his closest friend than he would do for the lowliest seaman. That was Horatio, and if he were any different he wouldn’t be himself.

Getting Horatio out had been the easy part. The hard one lay ahead.

Two more days passed, uncomfortably. Horatio was docile, but spoke little, lying for most of the time with closed eyes and unmoving face. It was deeply worrying. He had seen Horatio ill before, he had always been a difficult patient, cross and fretful, trying to do more than was wise, to pretend he was recovering faster than he was. This was not right at all.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Horatio said one day.

“Why not?” This, too he had expected.

“You should be with a ship.”

“I doubt I could get one. The war is… I was about to say finished, but paused might be a better way of putting it. Most of the Navy is laid up. I don’t know how long it will last, but the fighting’s been over for months.”

“Oh.” Horatio seemed disconcerted, as though braced for an argument that had proved impossible. “Well, we thought it was coming.”

“We did, of course.” Meaningless words. If the politicians had dragged their feet a bit less the whole Renown horror would not have happened. No point in saying that.

There was a long pause, then Horatio said, “What happened to the others?”

That was easy enough to answer. “Bush got a command. One of the ships we took from the Spanish. He took Styles and Matthews with him. I don’t know what’s happened to any of them since the peace though.” He hadn’t looked. There had only been one search that had truly mattered to him.

“And you?” He could have passed it off, said that there had been nothing for him by the time the wound was healed. But he could not lie to Horatio.

“I was offered another post. Pellew said he could get me one on an Admiral’s flag-ship, when I was well.”

“You turned him down?” Burning, incredulous eyes.

“Of course I did.” Truth? Yes, it had to be truth, however much wiser it might have been to wait. “It was a pay-off, Horatio. Pellew would never have got me such an appointment in the normal way of things. I was never a blue-eyed boy to him. It was a bribe. Take a plum post, and keep your mouth shut. He knew I could make trouble, if I chose. Yes, I turned him down.”

“He wouldn’t.…” Horatio started and then stopped.

“Do you really believe that?” Silence.

At last Horatio said, “What about Bush? Was that a pay-off too?”

Archie considered. “Probably not. Bush barely knew you, why would he wreck his career to expose the truth? No, I think that was simply a desire to make a hero out of someone. A live hero, someone they could praise and promote for that business at the fort.” He could not keep the bitterness from his voice.

An odd alarm seemed to spring into Horatio’s haggard face. “Archie, you haven’t… have you?”

“Made the truth public? No, I haven’t.” He should probably have left it there, but deep-rooted, long helpless fury drove him on. “I could have, of course. I could have shouted it to the skies, made the names of Sawyer and every man on that tribunal stink. I wonder, really, that they weren’t more afraid of that…. But it wouldn’t have helped you. And that was what mattered.” He had never considered risking his plans by venting the truth.

“But you should not!” Horatio started half-upright, as though alarmed that Archie might be about to contact the newspapers that very minute. “Archie, for the good of the service–”

“Don’t trot that one out, Horatio, please. What do you suppose would have happened if the truth about Sawyer – or even the truth of the tribunal – had been told?” The words forced their way through, but he kept his tone steady. “You can’t claim we’d lose the war, there isn’t one right now. It was almost over at the time of the trial, and we knew it. As for the Navy, it’s quite capable of surviving one mad captain, or even one rotten tribunal.”

Horatio was shaking his head, “No,” he insisted, “No. You cannot do that.”

“I’m not going to do it. I never said I was going to do it. I only said I could have.” He got a grip. There was no point in persisting with arguments Horatio would never accept. “I’ll keep my mouth shut, rest assured.” He’d keep silence because anything else would be too much danger to Horatio.

That seemed at least to quiet Horatio, for now, but it did nothing to quiet Archie, and his own thoughts drove him, the next day, to leave Horatio a little to himself and go out into the air, go out and walk and walk as fast as he could walk until he had worn the sharpest edges of his rage away.

Rage at the Navy. Rage at Horatio, for still adhering to the Navy. Rage even at himself, for holding silence on such a shameful matter.

Because, to his mind, the right thing would have been to speak. Right to expose incompetence and rottenness so there would be less chance of such things occurring again. If he cared for the men who risked their lives, he should speak out. If he had done that, then perhaps good would come from the horrible business. And if Horatio had died, he would have done it.…

But he was not like Horatio, to put a principle before the life of one man. He was not like Horatio to place the good of nameless men before that of the man he cared for before all others. He was not like Horatio, and if that made him wrong or weak, so be it.

Horatio would never understand.

He had faced some hard prospects in the days which followed the first breaking of the raging fever. Horatio would not accept that what he had done was right. Even though preservation of his own life had been the goal – no, especially because preservation of his life had been the goal. Archie had never met anyone more inclined to hold his own life as a thing of no account. He thought it true selflessness, rather than an actual thirst for death. He hoped so. There were things about Horatio’s nature even he could not be sure of.

Was it possible that saving Horatio’s life would end their friendship? That Horatio would never forgive him for the act of preservation? He had weighed the prospect and found no answer, only the certainty that saving him was worth any price.

But much though he feared to lose Horatio, a greater fear was that Horatio would regret the choice made for him. That he would have preferred death, even such a death as that, to continued existence cut off from all that had driven his life.

Horatio had lived for the service, not because he loved it, but because it seemed that only there could he seek a kind of satisfaction he had never found. Success, promotion, the approval of his superiors, those were the things that mattered most to him, not from cold ambition, but from a relentless urge to prove himself. That Archie did understand, in some degree, although not Horatio’s refusal to acknowledge flaws in the superiors whose regard he sought so fiercely.

‘You do me wrong to take me out the grave.…’ No. Please, no. Not Horatio.

The next days passed uncomfortably. Most of the time Horatio took food and water and submitted to Archie’s simple tendings. Occasionally he would push his food away, or raise some weak objection, insisting he did not want to be disturbed, but there was no spirit to the little rebellions and they were easily overborne. Archie did not like it at all. It reminded him too much of Hunter after his failed escape bid. The submission of a man in whom something vital had broken.

Then came the news that he had been half-expecting. For some time after hearing it he considered whether to say nothing, whether to conceal this fresh development. It was too risky. Now Horatio was starting to mend he had been briefly visited by the landlord, a well-intentioned soul, and he would soon be strong enough to walk about a little. He would hear soon. It had better be now.

Unconsciously squaring his shoulders, he went to break the news. Britain was again at war.

Ten years ago he had stood on a dockyard and rejoiced at the chances opened up. Ten years had passed, and all had dwindled to this. To a single room and a single life and a friendship barely preserved.

“Then you will be going back.” He had expected that, but it made it no easier to answer.

“And leave you alone? No.”

“I will be well enough,” Horatio said tonelessly.

“No, you will not. You are far from well. The Navy will do perfectly well without me. There is no shortage of officers no worse than I was. I might not even get a ship.”

“You should go back.” Horatio spoke as though the fact were so obvious he could not understand how there could be any argument.

“I am going nowhere whilst you need me.”

“Do you think I want that?” A spark of feeling in the voice, the first he had heard for days. “Do you think I wish to be a burden?”

“You are no burden.” Inadequate words, but all that could be said. Anything more would be beyond what Horatio’s reserved soul could accept. “This is my choice. My wish.”

He expected further argument and was rendered uneasy when he did not receive it.

Instead Horatio lapsed into an almost total silence that absorbed him for most of the next two days. Archie made little attempt to break through the barrier. Weakened as Horatio was he could surely have done so, but that was not the way. To force a response from him now would only destroy Horatio still further. What he needed was to recover the will to live, not merely exist. But Archie did not know how to give it.

He thought of it much, indeed he thought of little else. But how did one repair a soul which had sustained so bitter a wound? He did not know. Horatio’s sense of his own worth had been so bound up with the Navy that now the Navy had cast him off he did not know how to renew it, and Archie did not know how to guide him. At nights he sat up, hour upon hour, but no help came.

It was the pain, living and palpable, in the room that finally drove him out. Towards the close of the second day he could bear it no further, and felt he must escape, at least for a little. He was going out for a walk, he said, out to stretch his legs, out to get a breath of air. Horatio murmured a lifeless acknowledgement, and he left in a retreat that was almost a flight, unable any longer to bear the legacy of what he had done.

Coward, his conscience scorned him. Coward.

It was the truth, he knew. He had made this, he had known full well what he did and what he risked, and the least that he could do was face up to it now. Even if he could offer no help, he had no right to run away.

So, within a short time of leaving, he went back.

He had not imagined this. Never in his darkest fears had he imagined that Horatio would do violence to himself.

He had used a razor and had cut the veins on both his wrists. In an attempt at neatness he had placed the water basin on the floor so that his blood could flow into it. He had slumped forward, head resting on knees, but had not yet collapsed.

It was not too late.

No one could serve long in a war without getting a basic idea of how to deal with wounds. Yet Archie’s hands were shaking as he dragged a sheet free, and slashed strips from it with his knife. Horatio even tried to fight back as Archie grabbed his wrists and wound the strips swiftly around and around, but he was too weakened to put up much resistance and Archie dragged the strips as tight as he dared, before wrapping more and more lengths around, more lengths than his sense and experience told him were needed. Horatio had managed a deep cut on the left wrist, but had done little more than break the skin on the right. He had collapsed unconscious by the time Archie finished binding up the self-inflicted wounds, but he was breathing clearly enough. He was not dead.

He was not dead, and only the next few hours would tell if he had lost enough blood to die. Archie was too shocked himself to try to check the strength of Horatio’s pulse. He managed to lift him – Horatio was barely more than skin and bone – and return him to the bed. That was as much as he could do. Shaken to the marrow, he simply dropped onto the floor, and lowered his head into his hands.

Why, Horatio? Why? Is what they think of you truly so important?

The question burned and burned and he lost no time in asking it next day.

“Why did you do it?”

Horatio was conscious again, pulse and breathing steady. He would not die from these wounds. But Archie dared lose no time if he was to prevent any such act happening again.

Horatio turned his head away and said nothing.

“Horatio! What in hell did you think you were doing?” The words were more angry than he had meant them to be, but they at least sparked a response.

“Setting you free.” The words were a sullen whisper.

“Free?” He had felt that way once; had truly believed that dying was the best thing he could do for his old shipmates. But this situation was not like that one! How could Horatio think that his death would mean any kind of freedom?

This time Horatio did look at him.

“Archie, I – what you did… it was an act of considerable loyalty. I do appreciate that. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for me to go on being a burden to you. You’ve got a future to pursue. You should be back in the service, fighting for England.” He closed his eyes. “Your duty to me is done, Mr Kennedy. Your duty to the Navy remains.”

Archie snapped. “Do not tag me with your damned labels!” Horatio’s eyes flew open, staring at him in incomprehension. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to be loyal! And duty had nothing to do with it. I did it because I wanted you to live. In freedom. Because I wanted you to have a future worth having.” More calmly he continued, “You make it sound as though I was trying to live up to some kind of standard. I did it for one reason only. Because you matter to me.”

It was out. In all the years, they had never spoken words of affection. For his part, there had been no need: he had long known. For Horatio’s part – he knew only that Horatio shied from hearing such things spoken. But he was going to hear now, because it might be his only chance. He leaned forwards.

“I care for you too much to let you rot. And I value your friendship too much to be willing to lose it.”

Horatio looked… frightened? “You should go back….” he whispered, but there was no strength behind the words.

“Horatio, if you died tomorrow, I would not go back. If you had died in the hulk, I would not have gone back. After Kingston, I could never go back.”

He drew in a long breath. He had not intended to say any of this, but it had to be done now. “Horatio. I cannot continue to serve the institution which did that to you. I cannot fight for something which I no longer find worth fighting for.”

Horatio started to say something, but Archie swept over him. “Hear me out, then you can think of me, and say of me, whatever you wish.

“Horatio, if our positions were reversed, perhaps you could go on, and give the Navy no less good service than you gave before. But I can’t. All I can feel is that if our side has so little morality, we might as well join Bonaparte and be done. What’s the point of fighting, if we are no better than him? Do you think a man who feels that way would be of any benefit in the Navy’s ranks?

“I don’t expect you to agree with me, but please believe this much: I have nothing to offer the Navy now. There is no point to my going back.”

There was a long, long, silence. Then Horatio said, “If you feel that way, you should at least resign.”

“I suppose… yes, you are right. I will.”

Then there was more silence, which remained unbroken, yet he did not think Horatio was asleep.

It was late that evening when, out of nowhere, Horatio asked, “ Did you mean what you said? About… when you said you wanted me to live?”

“Of course I meant it. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.” He stared back at the haggard face. “Horatio, have you really served beside me all these years without knowing…?” Light words came more easily to him than sentiment, but instinct told him he must speak. “I want you to live, and I want to keep your friendship, more than anything in the world I want that. You are… more than family to me, and you must never think your life has no worth. What we have shared means more than admiral’s rank or all the plaudits of the Navy ever could. Please, Horatio, don’t make me lose you now.”

There was no answer, Horatio had closed his eyes, but not as though retreating. As if to hide emotion too great to show. Oh, Horatio. You didn’t know, did you? Does it really mean so much? Gently he reached out, laid one hand on Horatio’s arm, and felt the grip returned with unexpected strength.

“What will you do now?” The question was barely audible.

“I don’t know yet. But,” here was the crucial moment, “I was hoping it would be we, Horatio. I was hoping that very much.”

Another pause, he barely dared to breath. “It won’t be safe in England.”

“No, I know. I’ve got some money left. Should be enough to see us to… wherever.”

“I don’t think I can travel yet.”

“I’m sure you can’t. But that will mend in time.”

“Not too much time, I hope.” That was all, but there was at least a touch of the old impatience with illness, a hint of looking forward. That was all, but it was something.

Archie did not suppose the damage done would heal quickly or easily. Probably it would only be when – and if – they could find something to put in place of the long devotion to the Navy that Horatio would really begin to live again. And some of the pain he might well carry to his grave. The road ahead was likely to be a hard one, but at least he had expressed the will to face it.

There was a future ahead of them, however troubled and uncertain.

For now, that was enough.

**The End**

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