Disclaimer: I do not own anyone except those of mine own invention. I claim the genius of the plot, but that's all. I do not own Hornblower, though sometimes I'd like to kidnap Archie for awhile. I do not own Lou Reed or his imaginative genius either.
Cheers and enjoy. MB.
A/N: The song playing throughout this is The Blue Mask by Lou Reed.
The Blue Mask
By
mingingbent
In the Interim – Retribution
"I will not say: do not weep
For not all tears are an evil."
- Gandalf, JRR Tolkien
The small cemetery in Kingston, Jamaica was the sole settlement in all the West Indies that would give a Christian his or her rightful burial. It was small, just a mere stone structure; the wooden and thatched roof hung limply someone's attempt of a steeple. A few figures in black accompanied by the baneful wooden coffin gathered in the small cemetery in back; a hollowed, broken down white picket fence place, with cracked stones and dead grass.
It was a brisk, cold day for Kingston the weather emanating the foul, sorrowful mood of the funeral below it. Dark waves clashed with dark waters just off the coast, and it looked as if a large storm front was moving in ready to pour down its misery from the heavens.
There was a thin, tall, beanstalk of a man wrapped tightly in a worn, dark greatcoat. He stood placidly, a mere twig next to the others (the gravedigger's and the chaplain) and when he looked to the heavens, it seemed in the right grey light he nodded his head, and he agreed.
They tied his arms behind his back
To teach him how to swim…
In his deep pockets there sat heavily a crumpled letter, one he would rather never read again.
To Mr. Hornblower,
We request your presence as the Commander of H.M.S Retribution…
He always stopped reading after that; he had no stomach for certain memories now. The only haunted him.
They put blood in his coffee
And milk in his gin…
The chaplain had finished his little part, the young man scowled at that. They couldn't even give him a proper burial – a sea burial. No, a traitor to the king, his majesty would be given all the courts could afford, a rough plot in the sullen earth, on an island, far from home. Forever his body would be laid to rest in an unmarked grave in a small ruddy church in Kingston. The man bit his cheek to keep himself of saying something outloud. The ceremony now finished, the man turned not wanting to see the rest. Watching the waves break out on the rocks nearby, a part of him flared up at the thought. No more laughs and smiles the animated face was dead within that oaken box. He would be alone once more.
They stood over the soldier
In the midst of the squalor
There was war in his body
And it caused his brain to holler…
And in those fleeting minutes to follow, the sea lapping up the shore, he though of those last brief, minutes and with one final tear caved in to grief.