95
THE CRUIZER
I WOKE EVERY MORNING, just before dawn. Worn out from worry and the Governor’s late hours, I slept like the dead, through all the thumps and rattlings and bell-ringings of the watch, shouts from boats nearby, occasional musket-fire from the shore, and the whine of the offshore wind as it passed through the rigging. But in that moment before the light, the silence woke me.
Today? was the single thought in my mind, and I seemed to hang bodiless for a moment, just above my pallet beneath the forecastle. Then I drew breath, heard my heart beating, and felt the gentle heave of the deck beneath me. Would turn my face to the shore, watching, as the light began to touch the waves and reach toward land. We had first gone to Fort Johnston, but had stayed there barely long enough for the Governor to meet with local Loyalists who had assured him how unsafe it was, before retreating further.
We had been aboard His Majesty’s sloop Cruizer for nearly a week, anchored off Brunswick. Lacking any troops save the Marines aboard the sloop, Governor Martin was unable to seize back control of his colony, and was reduced to writing frenzied letters, attempting to keep up some semblance of a government in exile.
Lacking anyone else to fill the office, I remained in my role as ad hoc secretary, though I had moved up from mere copyist to amanuensis, taking down some letters by dictation when Martin grew too tired to write himself. And cut off from land and information alike, I spent every spare moment watching the shore.
Today, a boat was coming, out of the fading dark.
One of the watch hailed it, and an answering “halloo” came up, in tones of such agitation that I sat up abruptly, groping for my stays.
Today, there would be news.
The messenger was already in the Governor’s cabin, and one of the Marines barred my way—but the door was open, and the man’s voice clearly audible.
“Ashe’s done it, sir, he’s moving against the fort!”
“Well, God damn him for a treasonous dog!”
There was a sound of footsteps, and the Marine stepped hastily out of the way, just in time to avoid the Governor, who came popping out of his cabin like a jack out of the box, still attired in a billowing nightshirt and minus his wig. He seized the ladder and scampered up it like a monkey, affording me an unwanted view from below of his chubby bare buttocks. The Marine caught my eye and quickly averted his own gaze.
“What are they doing? Do you see them?”
“Not yet.” The messenger, a middle-aged man in the dress of a farmer, had followed the Governor up the ladder; their voices floated down from the rail.
“Colonel Ashe ordered all the ships in Wilmington Harbor to take on troops yesterday and float them down to Brunswick. They were mustering just outside the town this morning; I heard the roll calls whilst I was doing the morning milking—nigh onto five hundred men, they must have. When I saw that, sir, I slipped away down to the shore and found a boat. Thought you ought to know, Your Excellence.” The man’s voice had lost its agitation now, and taken on a rather self-righteous tone.
“Oh, yes? And what do you expect me to do about it?” The Governor sounded distinctly cranky.
“How should I know?” said the messenger, replying in like vein. “I ain’t the Governor, now, am I?”
The Governor’s response to this was drowned out by the striking of the ship’s bell. As it died away, he strode past the companionway, and looking down, saw me below.
“Oh, Mrs. Fraser. Will you fetch me some tea from the galley?”
I hadn’t much choice, though I would have preferred to stay and eavesdrop. The galley fire had been banked for the night in its small iron pot, and the cook was still abed. By the time I had poked up the fire, boiled water, brewed a pot of tea, and assembled a tray with teapot, cup, saucer, milk, and toast, butter, biscuits, and jam, the Governor’s informant had gone; I saw his boat heading for the shore, a dark arrowhead against the slowly brightening surface of the sea.
I paused for a moment on deck and rested my tea tray on the rail, looking inland. It was just light now, and Fort Johnston was visible, a blocky log building that stood exposed on top of a low rise, surrounded by a cluster of houses and outbuildings. There was a fair amount of activity around it; men were coming and going like a trail of ants. Nothing that looked like an imminent invasion, though. Either the commander, Captain Collet, had decided to evacuate—or Ashe’s men had not yet begun their march from Brunswick.
Had John Ashe received my message? If he had . . . would he have acted? It wouldn’t have been a popular thing to do; I couldn’t blame him if he had decided that he simply couldn’t afford to be seen aiding a man widely suspected of being a Loyalist—let alone one accused of such a hideous crime.
He might have, though. With the Governor marooned at sea, the Council disbanded, and the court system evaporated, there was no effective law in the colony now—save for the militias. If Ashe chose to storm the Wilmington jail and remove Jamie, he would have faced precious little opposition.
And if he had . . . if Jamie were free, he would be looking for me. And surely he would hear quickly where I was. If John Ashe came to Brunswick and Jamie were free, he would surely come with Ashe’s men. I looked toward shore, seeking movement, but saw only a boy driving a cow desultorily along the road to Brunswick. But the shadows of the night were still cold around my feet; it was barely dawn.
I took a deep breath, and noticed the aromatic scent of the tea, mixed with the shore’s morning breath—the smell of tide flats and piney scrub. I hadn’t drunk tea in months, if not years. Thoughtfully, I poured a cup, and sipped it slowly, watching the shore.
WHEN I ARRIVED IN the surgeon’s cabin, which the Governor had taken for his office, he was dressed, and alone.
“Mrs. Fraser.” He nodded briefly to me, scarcely looking up. “I am obliged. Will you write, please?”
He had been writing himself, already; quills and sand and blotter were scattered about the desk, and the inkwell stood open. I picked out a decent quill and a sheet of paper, and began to write as per his dictation, with a sense of growing curiosity.
The note—dictated between bites of toast—was to a General Hugh MacDonald, and referred to the General’s safe arrival upon the mainland with a Colonel McLeod. Receipt of the General’s report was acknowledged, and request made for continuing information. Mention was also made of the Governor’s request for support—which I knew about—and assurances he had received regarding the arrival of that support, which I didn’t.
“Enclosure, a letter of credit—no, wait.” The Governor darted a look in the direction of the shore—to no particular avail, as the surgeon’s cabin boasted no porthole—and scowled in concentration. Evidently, it had occurred to him that in light of recent events, a letter of credit issued by the Governor’s office was possibly worth less than one of Mrs. Ferguson’s forgeries.
“Enclosure, twenty shillings,” he amended with a sigh. “If you will make the fair copy at once, Mrs. Fraser? These, you may do at your leisure.” He pushed across an untidy stack of notes, done in his own crabbed hand.
He got up then, groaning as he stretched, and went up, no doubt to peer over the railing at the fort again.
I made the copy, sanded it, and set it aside, wondering who on earth this MacDonald was, and what he was doing? Unless Major MacDonald had undergone a change of name and an extraordinary promotion of late, it couldn’t be he. And from the tone of the Governor’s remarks, it appeared that General MacDonald and his friend McLeod were traveling alone—and on some particular mission.
I flipped quickly through the waiting stack of notes, but saw nothing else of interest; just the usual administrative trivia. The Governor had left his writing desk on the table, but it was closed. I debated trying to pick the lock and rummage through his private correspondence, but there were too many people about: seamen, Marines, ship’s boys, visitors—the place was seething.
There was a sense of nervous tension aboard, as well. I’d noticed many times before how a sense of danger communicates itself among people in a confined setting: hospital emergency room, surgical suite, train car, ship; urgency flashes from one person to the next without speech, like the impulse down a neuron’s axon to the dendrites of another. I didn’t know whether anyone beyond the Governor and myself knew about John Ashe’s movements yet—but the Cruizer knew that something was up.
The sense of nervous anticipation was affecting me, too. I was fidgeting, toe tapping absently, fingers moving restlessly up and down the shaft of the quill, unable to concentrate enough to write with it.
I stood up, with no idea what I meant to do; only the fixed notion that I would suffocate with impatience if I stayed below any longer.
On the shelf beside the door to the cabin stood the usual half-tidy clutter of shipboard, jammed behind a rail: a candlestick, extra candles, a tinderbox, a broken pipe, a bottle with a twist of flax stopping it, a bit of wood that someone had tried to carve and made a mess of. And a box.
The Cruizer had no surgeon aboard. And surgeons tended to take their personal implements with them, unless they died. This must be a kit belonging to the ship itself.
I glanced out the door; there were voices nearby, but no one in sight. I hastily flipped open the box, wrinkling my nose at the scent of dried blood and stale tobacco. There wasn’t much there, and what there was was thrown in higgledy-piggledy, rusted, crusted, and of little use. A tin of Blue Pills, so labeled, and a bottle, not labeled, but recognizable, of black draught—laudanum, that is. A dried-up sponge and a sticky cloth stained with something yellow. And the one thing certain to be in any surgeon’s kit of the times—blades.
There were footsteps coming down the companionway, and I heard the Governor’s voice, talking to someone. Without pausing to consider the wisdom of my conduct, I grabbed a small jointing knife and thrust it down the front of my stays.
I slammed shut the lid of the box. There was no time to sit down again, though, before the Governor arrived, with another visitor in tow.
My heart was hammering in my throat. I pressed my palms, damp with sweat, against my skirt, and nodded to the new arrival, who was regarding me, open-mouthed, behind the Governor.
“Major MacDonald,” I said, hoping that my voice wouldn’t tremble. “Fancy meeting you here!”
MACDONALD’S MOUTH snapped shut and he drew himself more firmly upright.
“Mrs. Fraser,” he said, bowing warily. “Your servant, mum.”
“You know her?” Governor Martin glanced from MacDonald to me and back, frowning.
“We’ve met,” I said, nodding politely. It had occurred to me that it might not profit either of us for the Governor to think there was some connection between us—if indeed there was one.
The same thought had clearly struck MacDonald; his face betrayed nothing beyond faint courtesy, though I could see the thoughts darting to and fro behind his eyes like a swarm of gnats. I was entertaining a similar swarm, myself—and knowing that my own face was naturally revealing, I cast down my eyes demurely, and murmuring an excuse about refreshment, made off toward the galley.
I threaded my way through clumps of seamen and Marines, mechanically acknowledging their salutes, mind working furiously.
How? How was I going to speak to MacDonald alone? I had to find out what he knew about Jamie—if anything. Would he tell me, if he did know anything? But yes, I thought, he would; soldier he might be, but MacDonald was also a confirmed gossip—and he was plainly dying of curiosity at the sight of me.
The cook, a chubby young free black named Tinsdale, who wore his hair in three stubby braids that stuck out of his head like the horns of a triceratops, was at work in the galley, dreamily toasting bread over the fire.
“Oh, hullo,” he said amiably, seeing me. He waved the toasting fork. “Want a bit of toast, Mrs. Fraser? Or is it the hot water, again?”
“Love some toast,” I said, seized by inspiration. “But the Governor has company; he wants coffee sent. And if you have a few of those nice almond biscuits to go with it . . .”
Armed with a loaded coffee tray, I made my way toward the surgeon’s cabin a few minutes later, heart pounding. The door was open for air; evidently it wasn’t a secret meeting.
They were huddled together over the small desk, the Governor frowning at a wad of papers, these clearly having traveled some distance in MacDonald’s dispatch case, judging from the creases and stains upon them. They appeared to be letters, written in a variety of hands and inks.
“Oh, coffee,” the Governor said, looking up. He seemed vaguely pleased, plainly not recalling that he hadn’t ordered any. “Splendid. Thank you, Mrs. Fraser.”
MacDonald hastily picked up the papers, making room for me to set the tray down on the desk. The Governor had one in his hand; he kept hold of this, and I caught a quick glimpse of it as I bent to place the tray in front of him. It was a list of some sort—names on one side, numbers beside them.
I managed to knock a spoon to the floor, enabling a better look as I stooped for it. H. Bethune, Cook’s Creek, 14. Jno. McManus, Boone, 3. F. Campbell, Campbelton, 24?
I darted a look at MacDonald, who had his eyes fixed on me. I dropped the spoon on the desk, then took a hasty step back, so that I stood directly behind the Governor. I pointed a finger at MacDonald, then in rapid succession clutched my throat, tongue protruding, grabbed my stomach with crossed forearms, then jabbed the finger again at him, then at myself, all the while giving him a monitory stare.
MacDonald viewed this pantomime with subdued fascination, but—with a veiled glance at the Governor, who was stirring his coffee with one hand, frowning at the paper he held in the other—gave me a tiny nod.
“How many can you be quite sure of?” the Governor was saying, as I curtsied and backed out.
“Oh, at least five hundred men, sir, even now,” MacDonald replied confidently. “A great many more to come, as word spreads. Ye should see the enthusiasm with which the General has been received so far! I cannot speak for the Germans, of course, but depend upon it, sir, we shall have all the Highlanders of the backcountry, and not a few of the Scotch–Irish, too.”
“God knows I hope you are right,” the Governor said, sounding hopeful, but still dubious. “Where is the General now?”
I would have liked to hear the answer to that—and a good many other things—but the drum was beating overhead for mess, and thundering feet were already pounding down the decks and companionways. I couldn’t lurk about eavesdropping in plain sight of the mess, so was obliged to go back up top, hoping that MacDonald had indeed got my message.
The captain of the Cruizer was standing by the rail, his first mate beside him, both scanning the shore with their telescopes.
“Is anything happening?” I could see more activity near the fort, people coming and going—but the shore road was still empty.
“Can’t say, ma’am.” Captain Follard shook his head, then lowered the telescope and shut it, reluctantly, as though afraid something might happen if he didn’t keep his eyes fixed on the shore. The first mate didn’t move, still squinting fixedly toward the fort on its bluff.
I remained there by his side, staring silently toward the shore. The tide shifted; I had been on the ship long enough to feel it, a barely perceptible pause, the sea taking breath as the invisible moon yielded its pull.
There is a tide in the affairs of men. . . . Surely Shakespeare had stood upon a deck, at least once, and felt that same faint shift, deep in the flesh. A professor had told me once, in medical school, that the Polynesian seafarers dared their vast journeys through the trackless sea because they had learned to sense the currents of the ocean, the shifts of wind and tide, registering these changes with that most delicate of instruments—their testicles.
It didn’t take a scrotum to feel the currents that were swirling round us now, I reflected, with a sideways glance at the first mate’s securely fastened white breeches. I could feel them in the pit of my stomach, in the damp of my palms, in the tenseness of the muscles at the back of my neck. The mate had lowered his telescope, but still looked toward the shore, almost absently, his hands resting on the rail.
It occurred to me suddenly that if something drastic were to happen on land, the Cruizer would at once lift sail and head out to sea, carrying the Governor to safety—and me farther from Jamie. Where on earth might we end up? Charlestown? Boston? Either was as likely. And no one on that seething shore would have any notion where we had gone.
I’d met displaced persons during the war—my war. Driven or taken from their homes, their families scattered, their cities destroyed, they thronged refugee camps, stood in lines besieging embassies and aid stations, asking, always asking for the names of the vanished, describing the faces of the loved and lost, grasping at any scrap of information that might lead them back to whatever might be left. Or, failing that, preserve for a moment longer what they had once been.
The day was warm, even on the water, and my clothes clung to me with humid damp, but my muscles convulsed and my hands on the rail shook with sudden chill.
I might have seen them all for the last time, not knowing it: Jamie, Bree, Jemmy, Roger, Ian. That’s how it happened: I had not even said goodbye to Frank, had had no faintest inkling when he left that last night that I would never see him alive again. What if—
But no, I thought, steadying myself with a tighter grip on the wooden rail. We would find each other again. We had a place to return to. Home. And if I remained alive—as I most firmly intended to do—I would go back home.
The mate had shut his telescope and left; I hadn’t noticed his departure, absorbed in morbid thoughts, and was quite startled when Major MacDonald hove to alongside me.
“Too bad the Cruizer has nay long-range guns,” he said with a nod at the fort. “’Twould put a crimp in the plans o’ those wee heathen, eh?”
“Whatever those plans might be,” I replied. “And speaking of plans—”
“I’ve a kind of a griping in the wame,” he interrupted blandly. “The Governor suggested that ye might possibly have some sort of medicine to soothe it.”
“Did he indeed?” I said. “Well, come down to the galley; I’ll brew you a cup of something that will set you right, I expect.”