Absolute Honour Read Free Page A

eventually swap it for slaves
– had the strength of a donkey’s kick. He had vowed this night to be moderate, to dilute it half and half with rainwater.
However, he was aware that he had promised himself the same every night from the end of thesecond week of the voyage when his nausea had passed. The only thing worse than being in Captain Link’s company was being
drunk in his company. Yet he had failed to keep his vow above a half dozen times, such failures resulting in outbursts that
had given the Captain weapons to use against him. He never called Jack anything other than ‘the Honourable’ since he’d blurted
out that he was the son of a baronet and would be treated with respect. He’d also reacted badly to the realization that the
ship transporting him was a slaver, and had been foolish enough to voice his opposition to the trade. Since that night, Captain
Link had not let an evening pass when he would not lecture Jack as to the Christian rightness of it and describe its every
detail. And having once seen Jack’s disgust when he’d volunteered how he always fucked at least a dozen of the slave women
on the voyage, he returned again and again to the subject, like a dog to his own vomit.
    Link slammed his empty mug down. Immediately, his body slave, Barabbas, limped up to refill it. Jack found himself staring
yet again at the Negro’s pouring hand. Three fingers and half a thumb, and not a knuckle on what remained unbroken. Link often
boasted that Barabbas was the most spirited among a group of rebellious slaves he’d transported ten years before, and that
he’d tamed him with whips and thumbscrews. He’d done Link’s bidding ever since.
    As the laughter continued and Barabbas slipped again into the shadows, Jack glanced away, to the man who shared his side of
the table. The Irishman returned his gaze, a slight shake of the head indicating that Jack should leave this conversation
well alone. But Jack had always found that hard to do.
    ‘Perhaps, sir,’ he said, ‘if you had experienced the helplessness of a slave you would be less prepared to exploit it.’
    Link leaned his jowly, purple-bruised face across at Jack. The man was scorbutic, his foul breath and decaying teeth additional
indicators of the scurvy that had taken half the crew. ‘Do you speak again of your
weeks
spent with the Abenaki savages?’
    Jack nodded. He had told the story of his capture and escape after the Battle of Quebec in the early nights of the voyage
when they had all still been polite strangers. Now, two months into the crossing, it was another source of mockery for Link.
‘I do. And may I say—’
    ‘May I say,’
interrupted the Captain, his Bristol accent fashioning a mockery of Jack’s Westminster School-ed one, ‘that you were
never
a slave.’
    ‘Are you calling a me a liar, sir?’
    Jack’s voice, instead of rising, had dropped to a whisper. Link recognized the danger. The challenge went, if the mockery
did not. ‘Not at all. But I do say you mistook your state. For you are both white, Christian and, above all, a Briton. And
as you well know,’ he opened his half-toothed jaw and sang, ‘ “Britons never never never will be slaves.” ’
    The purser and the surgeon, when they recognized the tune, joined in, thumping their approval with pewter mugs.
    The verse done, the Captain continued. ‘Now, shall I tell you my favourites from among the tribes?’ He licked his lips. ‘The
Yaruba, see, are tall and strong but have narry enough flesh on ’em, to my taste. The Mina are squat and too plump. No, sirs,
for breasts and thighs, there’s none that can compare with your Ibo.’
    When Link’s cronies had finished with their huzzahs, when silence was brought by the necessity of more guzzling, a quiet voice
intruded. ‘Now, Captain, I was wondering, so I was, about a little point you might clarify for me?’
    Link wiped his mouth. Since the Irishman rarely spoke at his table the Captain had