Falconer's Quest (19 page)
She rested her hand lightly upon his arm. “John Falconer, do you think God hears only those who are whole in heart and mind? Tell me this and I shall throw myself overboard, for the last shred of hope I have will be lost forever.”
He had wept only once since he had put Ada in the ground. Yet here he was, fighting against eyes that burned like coals. “I do not know what to say, madam, except that it feels as though anything I say to this man is only half the truth.”
“Tell him why, and let him be the judge.” Slight as she was, her gentle pressure was enough to turn him around. “Speak, John Falconer.”
He tore a ragged breath from the salt-laden air. “My wife died last February. A love I waited a lifetime to find, gone like that.” Thumb and finger clicked her passing as Falconer looked into the man’s face.
Bernard Lemi’s gaze shifted from one to the other. The fighter who stood a head and more taller than himself, and the slight woman beside him. “I can only offer my sincerest regrets, sir.”
“You heard what I have said to the lady. I feel as though my wounds have left me unable to speak with the same strength of conviction as before.”
A multitude of questions working through the young banker’s mind played across his features. “And yet, when I hear you talk, I feel as though a door opens before me. One through which I am invited to enter. Though I understand not what lies on the portal’s other side.”
Falconer glanced back at Amelia, pleading now.
She revealed to him an uncommon change. Peace and trust shone in her face so that her own wounds, visible in eyes and expression, diminished. “Answer him the best you can. Leave the rest to God.”
Falconer stared at the eastern sky, out to where the sun was moments away from appearing. “Some time back, the year I captained a slaver, I met a man of faith. He spoke to me of a Savior. He spoke words I had never heard before, or perhaps heard yet never thought could apply to the likes of me.”
Bernard was silent through a trio of waves that crashed against the oak timbers beneath them. “And those words?”
“Salvation.” Falconer felt his voice crack, though he could not name the reason. “Healing. Eternal hope. Heaven.”
Bernard’s hunger to understand was so great he did not seem to notice Falconer’s distress. “I have lived among the churched all my days and never heard words spoken in such a manner as this. As though…”
When he was unable to explain, the woman on Falconer’s other side offered, “As though the words are not now spoken to your ears and mind, but rather to your very soul.”
Bernard took a long moment to murmur, “Indeed.”
“Ask him, John Falconer,” Amelia said.
He gripped the railing with both hands, as though wrestling with the wood helped him take that vital step beyond his own internal questions. “Would you care to pray?”
The day passed in the steady cadence of life at sea. The watches changed, the sails were shifted to meet the vagaries of wind and tide, the decks were holystoned, the meals served. Amelia Henning joined the men for dinner and even managed a smile at the tale they served up with the main course, of the heroics at the top of a cobblestone hill. The officers renamed it the Skirmish of Windmill Square.
After dinner she waited for the assembly to depart before turning to say, “Your prayer this morning, John Falconer, with the young French gentleman moved me. I think it moved him as well.”
He stared into her face and saw the fire rise strongly enough to quench momentarily the pain in her gaze. “I can scarcely remember a single word I spoke.”
“Some of the finest prayers I have ever known were formed just like that.”
“I could not have spoken those words, madam, had it not been for your urgings. You were right in all you said.”
“It is strange how I found the strength to speak only by looking at you.” The smile, though tiny, warmed them both. “I was thinking it might do us all good to begin a time of study and prayer. Captain Harkness has been good enough to offer us the use of his day cabin. Would you care to join us after breakfast in the morning?”
“Mrs. Henning, I could think of nothing more welcome.” Falconer found the smile remained imbedded on his heart long after she was gone.
They made an odd assortment the next morning, or so it seemed to Falconer as he entered the room and glanced around. Amelia Henning had taken the captain’s chair, dressed in her threadbare frock. Sunlight flooded through the great stern windows, illuminating the pinpoint of sadness at the core of her gaze. Yet this strange and lovely woman, who had not spoken a dozen words for days on end, who had initially refused to dine with the ship’s company, now smiled a greeting and bid them welcome in the Lord’s name.
Reginald Langston, owner of a worldwide system of ship and trading, was seated beside the widow. Then Matt, then Bernard, then Soap. The wizened steward was clearly uncomfortable seated in the master’s cabin. Falconer found a place next to Soap. One of the barrel-chested sailors who had aided Falconer in Windmill Square was next. Another of the midshipmen made eight. Captain Harkness and Lieutenant Bivens stood at the corner chart table, their heads almost touching as they softly discussed tides and depths and wind.
Amelia Henning looked at Falconer and asked, “Would you like to lead us in an opening prayer?” When he hesitated, she pressed gently, “A gentleman is seated among us this morning because of you. Prayer in such times is a recognition of God among us, John Falconer.”
He invited the others to bow their heads. He spoke the words, and felt a stirring resonance within his own heart. When he lifted his head, he found Amelia Henning gazing at him. “My late husband,” she said, “may he rest in God’s eternal peace, often said that some of the finest confessions he had ever heard were spoken out of the depths of wounding confusion. Because only then did the strong among us come to accept their desperate need for God. Would you care to confess your own confusion, John Falconer?”
Had he known this was where she was headed, Falconer might have refused to come. As it was, however, he found a faint yearning call rising within him. As though some part of him had wanted this very chance to speak, though his mind might have rebelled at the prospect. “My wife, Matt’s mother, passed away last winter,” he started, speaking to the floorboards by his boots. “For much of the time since then, my heart has been a stone. Many of my prayers have seemed so empty they have felt almost like fables. I prayed with Bernard yesterday because Mrs. Henning requested it. But I feel I did a disservice to him, because though I spoke of God’s abiding love, I felt it not.”
To his surprise, it was Matt who spoke up then. “But you love me, Father John.”
“Aye, lad. That I do. No question about that.”
“The Good Book says God is love.”
Amelia Henning spoke in a voice Falconer did not recognize. “It does indeed, young sir.”
“If you love me, Father John, doesn’t that mean God is still close to you?”
To that, Falconer had no answer.
Amelia Henning asked the table at large, “Would anyone else care to confess a weakness, a need that remains unfulfilled, a wound that troubles them greatly?”
“Aye, that I would, ma’am.” To their surprise, it was the young lieutenant who spoke. Bivens shifted around and opened his coat, revealing a sling. “Against the advice of both the skipper and Falconer, I insisted upon carrying my share of the gold yesterday. My injury from the storm has worsened to where I can scarcely lift a fork.”
Harkness said, “I ordered him to shield the wing for a fortnight.”
“Which means,” Bivens said, “I cannot accompany Falconer on his mission. I feel I have let down the brethren because of my stubborn nature.”
Soap came to seated attention. “I’d count it an honor to go with you, sir.”
“You have no idea what you’re saying,” Falconer replied. “Or what lies in store.”
“Don’t matter a whit, sir. I’m your man.”
Bernard Lemi said, “I would beg to be included in your company as well, sir. I have never been in battle, but I am known as a fine shot with both pistol and musket.”
Amelia Henning softly tapped the table. “I suggest we leave further discussion of plans and weapons for when the lamp of prayer is not lit.”
“Well said, madam.” Harkness stumped across the cabin. He directed Bivens into the one remaining chair and pulled over a footstool. He waved Soap back into his chair. “Well said indeed.”
Amelia Henning said, “Would anyone else care to speak of unanswered need?”
It was Reginald Langston who spoke up next. “All who know me realize I am a man of action. I love nothing more than a hard day’s work followed by a night of good friends, my family, and good cheer. I love life, I love a good table, I love my church. I have never been a man of great intelligence and it has never bothered me at all. I have given everything I have to whatever task is before me. Until this time, it has served me well enough.”
His gaze had gradually lowered until his eyes rested upon the hands clasped on the table before him. “Yet now my power as a merchant and a man of action is brought to nothing. In the months leading up to my departure from Washington, my dear wife often slipped from our marriage bed so that her sobs would not wake me, or so she thought, as she mourned over her son. But my helpless state had already robbed me of sleep. I have been forced to learn what it means to do nothing but wait upon the Lord. And this act of waiting has been the hardest challenge I have ever faced. I have sought to study. At some times the words seem illuminated by my powerlessness. At others, my mind makes neither head nor tail of what I read. One moment I find peace, and the next I am so frustrated and worried my peace seems but a lie. And in those dark moments, my prayers…”
Falconer found himself speaking for his friend, “They are but dust that falls from our lips.”
Reginald sighed to his hands, and nodded once.
In the silence that followed, a young boy’s broken voice struggled to shape the words, “I miss my mama.”
Amelia Henning’s hand came to rest upon Matt’s. She cast a glance around the table, and when no one else spoke, she said, “You are all far too aware of my own troubles. Yet in the midst of my own dark hour, when my daughter seems lost to me…”
It was the lady’s turn to stop and take a very hard breath. “I find I question many of my most cherished memories. I felt God leading me to remain in Africa and continue my late husband’s work. I have no family in America, no one to care for us or miss us while we are away. It was just Kitty and me, and my daughter loved Africa more than I, if that were possible. Yet in my darkest night since leaving my daughter in that foul dungeon, I have wondered if perhaps I listened to a different voice, one that spoke of selfish yearnings to remain where I was needed, where my life had meaning, and thus put my own daughter in grave peril.”
A strong flame rose in Falconer’s chest. He clenched himself hard, bunched a fist, and pressed it fiercely onto his ribs. He was a man of the sea. A soldier. Such people as he were not brought to tears by a woman’s words.
Amelia Henning went on, “God is showing me again what it means to be open in weakness. How to speak when I have no answers. When I am blinded with pain, and understand nothing that has happened to me, still I am called to
choose
.”
Bernard Lemi took a breath that was midway between a gasp and a sob. He covered his eyes.
“And this above all else I know,” Amelia Henning said. “God is here. With us. This day. Though He seems distant, though our weakness and our pain are all we might see.” She looked to the ceiling, far enough to where the tears were released. “Our God is here with us.”
Hours were spent each day in meticulous planning and preparation. Perhaps Harkness insisted upon such discussions because he was to remain with his ship. But Falconer did not think that was the case. Harkness might skipper a merchant vessel, but he possessed a true leader’s eye for exactitude. They went through the plan in scrupulous detail. When they were finished, they did it again. By the third repetition, Falconer’s rough concept had been reformed into a strategy of stealth and possible success.
The fourth morning after their departure for the north African coast, Harkness ended the now-daily prayer meeting by inviting the company to join him on the foredeck. Only Matt could not do so, as it was his assignment to stand watch. Lieutenant Bivens stared at the empty yellow wasteland beyond the passing shoreline and said, “I have heard tales of galleys rowed into battle by men chained to their oars.”
Falconer watched Matt cluster with the other middies. They took a shot of the sun with a shared sextant and quarreled mildly over the calculations. “The rumors are true enough.”
Bivens watched him intently. “How do you fight such a foe?”
“Such vessels cannot carry the same weight of arms as we do,” Falconer replied. “Nor are they well disciplined. They strike when their foes are weak and flee before reinforcements arrive.”
“That may all be true,” Harkness muttered, peering through his telescope at the southern vista. “But I’ll never let one of them draw to my windward side. With us relying on sails, they’d have me as trapped as a monkey in a barrel.”