45
MR. WILLOUGHBY’S TALE
As we passed the center of the Atlantic gyre and headed south, the days and evenings became warm, and the off-duty crew began to congregate on the forecastle for a time after supper, to sing songs, dance to Brodie Cooper’s fiddle, or listen to stories. With the same instinct that makes children camping in the wood tell ghost stories, the men seemed particularly fond of horrible tales of shipwreck and the perils of the sea.
As we passed farther south, and out the realm of Kraken and sea serpent, the mood for monsters passed, and the men began instead to tell stories of their homes.
It was after most of these had been exhausted that Maitland, the cabin boy, turned to Mr. Willoughby, crouched as usual against the foot of the mast, with his cup cradled to his chest.
“How was it that you came from China, Willoughby?” Maitland asked curiously. “I’ve not seen more than a handful of Chinese sailors, though folk do say as there’s a great many people in China. Is it such a fine place that the inhabitants don’t care to take leave of it, perhaps?”
At first demurring, the little Chinese seemed mildly flattered at the interest provoked by this question. With a bit more urging, he consented to tell of his departure from his homeland—requiring only that Jamie should translate for him, his own English being inadequate to the task. Jamie readily agreeing, he sat down beside Mr. Willoughby, and cocked his head to listen.
“I was a Mandarin,” Mr. Willoughby began, in Jamie’s voice, “a Mandarin of letters, one gifted in composition. I wore a silk gown, embroidered in very many colors, and over this, the scholar’s blue silk gown, with the badge of my office embroidered upon breast and back—the figure of a feng-huang—a bird of fire.”
“I think he means a phoenix,” Jamie added, turning to me for a moment before directing his attention back to the patiently waiting Mr. Willoughby, who began speaking again at once.
“I was born in Pekin, the Imperial City of the Son of Heaven—”
“That is how they call their emperor,” Fergus whispered to me. “Such presumption, to equate their king with the Lord Jesus!”
“Shh,” hissed several people, turning indignant faces toward Fergus. He made a rude gesture at Maxwell Gordon, but fell silent, turning back to the small figure sitting crouched against the mast.
“I was found early to have some skill in composition, and while I was not at first adept in the use of brush and ink, I learned at last with great effort to make the representations of my brush resemble the ideas that danced like cranes within my mind. And so I came to the notice of Wu-Xien, a Mandarin of the Imperial Household, who took me to live with him, and oversaw my training.
“I rose rapidly in merit and eminence, so that before my twenty-sixth birthday, I had attained a globe of red coral upon my hat. And then came an evil wind, that blew the seeds of misfortune into my garden. It may be that I was cursed by an enemy, or perhaps that in my arrogance I had omitted to make proper sacrifice—for surely I was not lacking in reverence to my ancestors, being careful always to visit my family’s tomb each year, and to have joss sticks always burning in the Hall of Ancestors—”
“If his compositions were always so long-winded, no doubt the Son of Heaven lost patience and tossed him in the river,” Fergus muttered cynically.
“—but whatever the cause,” Jamie’s voice continued, “my poetry came before the eyes of Wan-Mei, the Emperor’s Second Wife. Second Wife was a woman of great power, having borne no less than four sons, and when she asked that I might become part of her own household, the request was granted at once.”
“And what was wrong wi’ that?” demanded Gordon, leaning forward in interest. “A chance to get on in the world, surely?”
Mr. Willoughby evidently understood the question, for he nodded in Gordon’s direction as he continued, and Jamie’s voice took up the story.
“Oh, the honor was inestimable; I should have had a large house of my own within the walls of the palace, and a guard of soldiers to escort my palanquin, with a triple umbrella borne before me in symbol of my office, and perhaps even a peacock feather for my hat. My name would have been inscribed in letters of gold in the Book of Merit.”
The little Chinaman paused, scratching at his scalp. The hair had begun to sprout from the shaved part, making him look rather like a tennis ball.
“However, there is a condition of service within the Imperial Household; all the servants of the royal wives must be eunuchs.”
A gasp of horror greeted this, followed by a babble of agitated comment, in which the remarks “Bloody heathen!” and “Yellow bastards!” were heard to predominate.
“What is a eunuch?” Marsali asked, looking bewildered.
“Nothing you need ever concern yourself with, chèrie,” Fergus assured her, slipping an arm about her shoulders. “So you ran, mon ami?” he addressed Mr. Willoughby in tones of deepest sympathy. “I should do the same, without doubt!”
A deep murmur of heartfelt approbation reinforced this sentiment. Mr. Willoughby seemed somewhat heartened by such evident approval; he bobbed his head once or twice at his listeners before resuming his story.
“It was most dishonorable of me to refuse the Emperor’s gift. And yet—it is a grievous weakness—I had fallen in love with a woman.”
There was a sympathetic sigh at this, most sailors being wildly romantic souls, but Mr. Willoughby stopped, jerking at Jamie’s sleeve and saying something to him.
“Oh, I’m wrong,” Jamie corrected himself. “He says it was not ‘a woman’—just ‘Woman’—all women, or the idea of women in general, he means. That’s it?” he asked, looking down at Mr. Willoughby.
The Chinaman nodded, satisfied, and sat back. The moon was full up by now, three-quarters full, and bright enough to show the little Mandarin’s face as he talked.
“Yes,” he said, through Jamie, “I thought much of women; their grace and beauty, blooming like lotus flowers, floating like milkweed on the wind. And the myriad sounds of them, sometimes like the chatter of ricebirds, or the song of nightingales; sometimes the cawing of crows,” he added with a smile that creased his eyes to slits and brought his hearers to laughter, “but even then I loved them.
“I wrote all my poems to Woman—sometimes they were addressed to one lady or another, but most often to Woman alone. To the taste of breasts like apricots, the warm scent of a woman’s navel when she wakens in the winter, the warmth of a mound that fills your hand like a peach, split with ripeness.”
Fergus, scandalized, put his hands over Marsali’s ears, but the rest of his hearers were most receptive.
“No wonder the wee fellow was an esteemed poet,” Raeburn said with approval. “It’s verra heathen, but I like it!”
“Worth a red knob on your hat, anyday,” Maitland agreed.
“Almost worth learning a bit of Chinee for,” the master’s mate chimed in, eyeing Mr. Willoughby with fresh interest. “Does he have a lot of those poems?”
Jamie waved the audience—by now augmented by most of the off-duty hands—to silence and said, “Go on, then,” to Mr. Willoughby.
“I fled on the Night of Lanterns,” the Chinaman said. “A great festival, and one when people would be thronging the streets; there would be no danger of being noticed by the watchmen. Just after dark, as the processions were assembling throughout the city, I put on the garments of a traveler—”
“That’s like a pilgrim,” Jamie interjected, “they go to visit their ancestors’ tombs far away, and wear white clothes—that’s for mourning, ye ken?”
“—and I left my house. I made my way through the crowds without difficulty, carrying a small anonymous lantern I had bought—one without my name and place of residence painted on it. The watchmen were hammering upon their bamboo drums, the servants of the great households beating gongs, and from the roof of the palace, fireworks were being set off in great profusion.”
The small round face was marked by nostalgia, as he remembered.
“It was in a way a most appropriate farewell for a poet,” he said. “Fleeing nameless, to the sound of great applause. As I passed the soldiers’ garrison at the city gate, I looked back, to see the many roofs of the Palace outlined by bursting flowers of red and gold. It looked like a magic garden—and a forbidden one, for me.”
Yi Tien Cho had made his way without incident through the night, but had nearly been caught the next day.
“I had forgotten my fingernails,” he said. He spread out a hand, small and short-fingered, the nails bitten to the quicks. “For a Mandarin has long nails, as symbol that he is not obliged to work with his hands, and my own were the length of one of my finger joints.”
A servant at the house where he had stopped for refreshment next day saw them, and ran to tell the guard. Yi Tien Cho ran, too, and succeeded at last in eluding his pursuers by sliding into a wet ditch and lying hidden in the bushes.
“While lying there, I destroyed my nails, of course,” he said. He waggled the little finger of his right hand. “I was obliged to tear that nail out, for it had a golden da zi inlaid in it, which I could not dislodge.”
He had stolen a peasant’s clothes from a bush where they had been hung to dry, leaving the torn-out nail with its golden character in exchange, and made his way slowly across country toward the coast. At first he paid for his food with the small store of money he had brought away, but outside Lulong he met with a band of robbers, who took his money but left him his life.
“And after that,” he said simply, “I stole food when I could, and starved when I could not. And at last the wind of fortune changed a little, and I met with a group of traveling apothecaries, on their way to the physicians’ fair near the coast. In return for my skill at drawing banners for their booth and composing labels extolling the virtues of their medicines, they carried me along with them.”
Once reaching the coast, he had made his way to the waterfront, and tried there to pass himself off as a seaman, but failed utterly, as his fingers, so skillful with brush and ink, knew nothing of the art of knots and lines. There were several foreign ships in port; he had chosen the one whose sailors looked the most barbarous as being likely to carry him farthest away, and seizing his chance, had slipped past the deck guard and into the hold of the Serafina, bound for Edinburgh.
“You had always meant to leave the country altogether?” Fergus asked, interested. “It seems a desperate choice.”
“Emperor’s reach very long,” Mr. Willoughby said softly in English, not waiting for translation. “I am exile, or I am dead.”
His listeners gave a collective sigh at the awesome contemplation of such bloodthirsty power, and there was a moment of silence, with only the whine of the rigging overhead, while Mr. Willoughby picked up his neglected cup and drained the last drops of his grog.
He set it down, licking his lips, and laid his hand once more on Jamie’s arm.
“It is strange,” Mr. Willoughby said, and the air of reflection in his voice was echoed exactly by Jamie’s, “but it was my joy of women that Second Wife saw and loved in my words. Yet by desiring to possess me—and my poems—she would have forever destroyed what she admired.”
Mr. Willoughby uttered a small chuckle, whose irony was unmistakable.
“Nor is that the end of the contradiction my life has become. Because I could not bring myself to surrender my manhood, I have lost all else—honor, livelihood, country. By that, I mean not only the land itself, with the slopes of noble fir trees where I spent my summers in Tartary, and the great plains of the south, the flowing of rivers filled with fish, but also the loss of myself. My parents are dishonored, the tombs of my ancestors fall into ruin, and no joss burns before their images.
“All order, all beauty is lost. I am come to a place where the golden words of my poems are taken for the clucking of hens, and my brushstrokes for their scratchings. I am taken as less than the meanest beggar, who swallows serpents for the entertainment of the crowds, allowing passersby to draw the serpent from my mouth by its tail for the tiny payment that will let me live another day.”
Mr. Willoughby glared round at his hearers, making his parallel evident.
“I am come to a country of women coarse and rank as bears.” The Chinaman’s voice rose passionately, though Jamie kept to an even tone, reciting the words, but stripping them of feeling. “They are creatures of no grace, no learning, ignorant, bad-smelling, their bodies gross with sprouting hair, like dogs! And these—these! disdain me as a yellow worm, so that even the lowest whores will not lie with me.
“For the love of Woman, I am come to a place where no woman is worthy of love!” At this point, seeing the dark looks on the seamen’s faces, Jamie ceased translating, and instead tried to calm the Chinaman, laying a big hand on the blue-silk shoulder.
“Aye, man, I quite see. And I’m sure there’s no a man present would have done otherwise, given the choice. Is that not so, lads?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder with eyebrows raised significantly.
His moral force was sufficient to extort a grudging murmur of agreement, but the crowd’s sympathy with the tale of Mr. Willoughby’s travails had been quite dissipated by his insulting conclusion. Pointed remarks were made about licentious, ungrateful heathen, and a great many extravagantly admiring compliments paid to Marsali and me, as the men dispersed aft.
Fergus and Marsali left then, too, Fergus pausing en route to inform Mr. Willoughby that any further remarks about European women would cause him, Fergus, to be obliged to wrap his, Willoughby’s, queue about his neck and strangle him with it.
Mr. Willoughby ignored remarks and threats alike, merely staring straight ahead, his black eyes shining with memory and grog. Jamie at last stood up, too, and held out a hand to help me down from my cask.
It was as we were turning to leave that the Chinaman reached down between his legs. Completely without lewdness, he cupped his testicles, so that the rounded mass pressed against the silk. He rolled them slowly in the palm of his hand, staring at the bulge in deep meditation.
“Sometime,” he said, as though to himself, “I think not worth it.”
46
WE MEET A PORPOISE
I had been conscious for some time that Marsali was trying to get up the nerve to speak to me. I had thought she would, sooner or later; whatever her feelings toward me, I was the only other woman aboard. I did my best to help, smiling kindly and saying “Good morning,” but the first move would have to be hers.
She made it, finally, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a month after we had left Scotland.
I was writing in our shared cabin, making surgical notes on a minor amputation—two smashed toes on one of the foredeck hands. I had just completed a drawing of the surgical site, when a shadow darkened the doorway of the cabin, and I looked up to see Marsali standing there, chin thrust out pugnaciously.
“I need to know something,” she said firmly. “I dinna like ye, and I reckon ye ken that, but Da says you’re a wisewoman, and I think you’re maybe an honest woman, even if ye are a whore, so you’ll maybe tell me.”
There were any number of possible responses to this remarkable statement, but I refrained from making any of them.
“Maybe I will,” I said, putting down the pen. “What is it you need to know?”
Seeing that I wasn’t angry, she slid into the cabin and sat down on the stool, the only available spot.
“Weel, it’s to do wi’ bairns,” she explained. “And how ye get them.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Your mother didn’t tell you where babies come from?”
She snorted impatiently, her small blond brows knotted in fierce scorn. “O’ course I ken where they come from! Any fool knows that much. Ye let a man put his prick between your legs, and there’s the devil to pay, nine months later. What I want to know is how ye don’t get them.”
“I see.” I regarded her with considerable interest. “You don’t want a child? Er…once you’re properly married, I mean? Most young women seem to.”
“Well,” she said slowly, twisting a handful of her dress. “I think I maybe would like a babe sometime. For itself, I mean. If it maybe had dark hair, like Fergus.” A hint of dreaminess flitted across her face, but then her expression hardened once more.
“But I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
She pushed out her lips, thinking, then pulled them in again. “Well, because of Fergus. We havena lain together yet. We havena been able to do more than kiss each other now and again behind the hatch covers—thanks to Da and his bloody-minded notions,” she added bitterly.
“Amen,” I said, with some wryness.
“Eh?”
“Never mind.” I waved a hand, dismissing it. “What has that got to do with not wanting babies?”
“I want to like it,” she said matter-of-factly. “When we get to the prick part.”
I bit the inside of my lower lip.
“I…er…imagine that has something to do with Fergus, but I’m afraid I don’t quite see what it has to do with babies.”
Marsali eyed me warily. Without hostility for once, more as though she were estimating me in some fashion.
“Fergus likes ye,” she said.
“I’m fond of him, too,” I answered cautiously, not sure where the conversation was heading. “I’ve known him for quite a long time, ever since he was a boy.”
She relaxed suddenly, some of the tension going out of the slender shoulders.
“Oh. You’ll know about it, then—where he was born?”
Suddenly I understood her wariness.
“The brothel in Paris? Yes, I know about that. He told you, then?”
She nodded. “Aye, he did. A long time ago, last Hogmanay.” Well, I supposed a year was a long time to a fifteen-year-old.
“That’s when I told him I loved him,” she went on. Her eyes were fixed on her skirt, and a faint tinge of pink showed in her cheeks. “And he said he loved me, too, but my mother wasna going to ever agree to the match. And I said why not, there was nothing so awful about bein’ French, not everybody could be Scots, and I didna think his hand mattered a bit either—after all, there was Mr. Murray wi’ his wooden leg, and Mother liked him well enough—but then he said, no, it was none of those things, and then he told me—about Paris, I mean, and being born in a brothel and being a pick-pocket until he met Da.”
She raised her eyes, a look of incredulity in the light blue depths. “I think he thought I’d mind,” she said, wonderingly. “He tried to go away, and said he wouldna see me anymore. Well—” she shrugged, tossing her fair hair out of the way, “I soon took care of that.” She looked at me straight on, then, hands clasped in her lap.
“It’s just I didna want to mention it, in case ye didn’t know already. But since ye do…well, it’s no Fergus I’m worried about. He says he knows what to do, and I’ll like it fine, once we’re past the first time or two. But that’s not what my Mam told me.”
“What did she tell you?” I asked, fascinated.
A small line showed between the light brows. “Well…” Marsali said slowly, “it wasna so much she said it—though she did say, when I told her about Fergus and me, that he’d do terrible things to me because of living wi’ whores and having one for a mother—it was more she…she acted like it.”
Her face was a rosy pink now, and she kept her eyes in her lap, where her fingers twisted themselves in the folds of her skirt. The wind seemed to be picking up; small strands of blond hair rose gently from her head, wafted by the breeze from the window.
“When I started to bleed the first time, she told me what to do, and about how it was part o’ the curse of Eve, and I must just put up wi’ it. And I said, what was the curse of Eve? And she read me from the Bible all about how St. Paul said women were terrible, filthy sinners because of what Eve did, but they could still be saved by suffering and bearing children.”
“I never did think a lot of St. Paul,” I observed, and she looked up, startled.
“But he’s in the Bible!” she said, shocked.
“So are a lot of other things,” I said dryly. “Heard that story about Gideon and his daughter, have you? Or the fellow who sent his lady out to be raped to death by a crowd of ruffians, so they wouldn’t get him? God’s chosen men, just like Paul. But go on, do.”
She gaped at me for a minute, but then closed her mouth and nodded, a little stunned.
“Aye, well. Mother said as how it meant I was nearly old enough to be wed, and when I did marry, I must be sure to remember it was a woman’s duty to do as her husband wanted, whether she liked it or no. And she looked so sad when she told me that…I thought whatever a woman’s duty was, it must be awful, and from what St. Paul said about suffering and bearing children…”
She stopped and sighed. I sat quietly, waiting. When she resumed, it was haltingly, as though she had trouble choosing her words.
“I canna remember my father. I was only three when the English took him away. But I was old enough when my mother wed—wed Jamie—to see how it was between them.” She bit her lip; she wasn’t used to calling Jamie by his name.
“Da—Jamie, I mean—he’s kind, I think; he always was to Joan and me. But I’d see, when he’d lay his hand on my mother’s waist and try to draw her close—she’d shrink away from him.” She gnawed her lip some more, then continued.
“I could see she was afraid; she didna like him to touch her. But I couldna see that he ever did anything to be afraid of, not where we could see—so I thought it must be something he did when they were in their bed, alone. Joan and I used to wonder what it could be; Mam never had marks on her face or her arms, and she didna limp when she walked—not like Magdalen Wallace, whose husband always beats her when he’s drunk on market day—so we didna think Da hit her.”
Marsali licked her lips, dried by the warm salt air, and I pushed the jug of water toward her. She nodded in thanks and poured a cupful.
“So I thought,” she said, eyes fixed on the stream of water, “that it must be because Mam had had children—had us—and she knew it would be terrible again and so she didna want to go to bed with—with Jamie for fear of it.”
She took a drink, then set down the cup and looked at me directly, firming her chin in challenge.
“I saw ye with my Da,” she said. “Just that minute, before he saw me. I—I think ye liked what he was doing to you in the bed.”
I opened my mouth, and closed it again.
“Well…yes,” I said, a little weakly. “I did.”
She grunted in satisfaction. “Mmphm. And ye like it when he touches ye; I’ve seen. Well, then. Ye havena got any children. And I’d heard there are ways not to have them, only nobody seems to know just how, but you must, bein’ a wisewoman and all.”
She tilted her head to one side, studying me.
“I’d like a babe,” she admitted, “but if it’s got to be a babe or liking Fergus, then it’s Fergus. So it won’t be a babe—if you’ll tell me how.”
I brushed the curls back behind my ear, wondering where on earth to start.
“Well,” I said, drawing a deep breath, “to begin with, I have had children.”
Her eyes sprang wide and round at this.
“Ye do? Does Da—does Jamie know?”
“Well, of course he does,” I replied testily. “They were his.”
“I never heard Da had any bairns at all.” The pale eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“I don’t imagine he thought it was any of your business,” I said, perhaps a trifle more sharply than necessary. “And it’s not, either,” I added, but she just raised her brows and went on looking suspicious.
“The first baby died,” I said, capitulating. “In France. She’s buried there. My—our second daughter is grown now; she was born after Culloden.”
“So he’s never seen her? The grown one?” Marsali spoke slowly, frowning.
I shook my head, unable to speak for a moment. There seemed to be something stuck in my throat, and I reached for the water. Marsali pushed the jug absently in my direction, leaning against the swing of the ship.
“That’s verra sad,” she said softly, to herself. Then she glanced up at me, frowning once more in concentration as she tried to work it all out.
“So ye’ve had children, and it didna make a difference to you? Mmphm. But it’s been a long while, then—did ye have other men whilst ye were away in France?” Her lower lip came up over the upper one, making her look very much like a small and stubborn bulldog.
“That,” I said firmly, putting the cup down, “is definitely none of your business. As to whether childbirth makes a difference, possibly it does to some women, but not all of them. But whether it does or not, there are good reasons why you might not want to have a child right away.”
She withdrew the pouting underlip and sat up straight, interested.
“So there is a way?”
“There are a lot of ways, and unfortunately most of them don’t work,” I told her, with a pang of regret for my prescription pad and the reliability of contraceptive pills. Still, I remembered well enough the advice of the ma?tresses sage-femme, the experienced midwives of the H?pital des Anges, where I had worked in Paris twenty years before.
“Hand me the small box in the cupboard over there,” I said, pointing to the doors above her head. “Yes, that one.
“Some of the French midwives make a tea of bayberry and valerian,” I said, rummaging in my medicine box. “But it’s rather dangerous, and not all that dependable, I don’t think.”
“D’ye miss her?” Marsali asked abruptly. I glanced up, startled. “Your, daughter?” Her face was abnormally expressionless, and I suspected the question had more to do with Laoghaire than with me.
“Yes,” I said simply. “But she’s grown; she has her own life.” The lump in my throat was back, and I bent my head over the medicine box, hiding my face. The chances of Laoghaire ever seeing Marsali again were just about as good as the chances that I would ever see Brianna; it wasn’t a thought I wanted to dwell on.
“Here,” I said, pulling out a large chunk of cleaned sponge. I took one of the thin surgical knives from the fitted slots in the lid of the box and carefully sliced off several thin pieces, about three inches square. I searched through the box again and found the small bottle of tansy oil, with which I carefully saturated one square under Marsali’s fascinated gaze.
“All right,” I said. “That’s about how much oil to use. If you haven’t any oil, you can dip the sponge in vinegar—even wine will work, in a pinch. You put the bit of sponge well up inside you before you go to bed with a man—mind you do it even the first time; you can get with child from even once.”
Marsali nodded, her eyes wide, and touched the sponge gently with a forefinger. “Aye? And—and after? Do I take it out again, or—”
An urgent shout from above, coupled with a sudden heeling of the Artemis as she backed her mainsails, put an abrupt end to the conversation. Something was happening up above.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said, pushing the sponge and bottle toward her, and headed for the passage.
Jamie was standing with the Captain on the afterdeck, watching the approach of a large ship behind us. She was perhaps three times the size of the Artemis, three-masted, with a perfect forest of rigging and sail, through which small black figures hopped like fleas on a bedsheet. A puff of white smoke floated in her wake, token of a cannon recently fired.
“Is she firing on us?” I asked in amazement.
“No,” Jamie said grimly. “A warning shot only. She means to board us.”
“Can they?” I addressed the question to Captain Raines, who was looking even more glum than usual, the downturned corners of his mouth sunk in his beard.
“They can,” he said. “We’ll not outrun her in a stiff breeze like this, on the open sea.”
“What is she?” Her ensign flew at the masthead, but seen against the sun at this distance, it looked completely black.
Jamie glanced down at me, expressionless. “A British man-o-war, Sassenach. Seventy-four guns. Perhaps ye’d best go below.”
This was bad news. While Britain was no longer at war with France, relations between the two countries were by no means cordial. And while the Artemis was armed, she had only four twelve-pound guns; sufficient to deter small pirates, but no match for a man-of-war.
“What can they want of us?” Jamie asked the Captain. Raines shook his head, his soft, plump face set grimly.
“Likely pressing,” he answered. “She’s shorthanded; you can see by her rigging—and her foredeck all ahoo,” he noted disapprovingly, eyes fixed on the man-of-war, now looming as she drew alongside. He glanced at Jamie. “They can press any of our hands who look to be British—which is something like half the crew. And yourself, Mr. Fraser—unless you wish to pass for French?”
“Damn,” Jamie said softly. He glanced at me and frowned. “Did I not tell ye to get below?”
“You did,” I said, not going. I drew closer to him, my eyes fixed on the man-of-war, where a small boat was now being lowered. One officer, in a gilded coat and laced hat, was climbing down the side.
“If they press the British hands,” I asked Captain Raines, “what will happen to them?”
“They’ll serve aboard the Porpoise—that’s her,” he nodded at the man-of-war, which sported a puff-lipped fish as the figurehead, “as members of the Royal Navy. She may release the pressed hands when she reaches port—or she may not.”
“What? You mean they can just kidnap men and make them serve as sailors for as long as they please?” A thrill of fear shot through me, at the thought of Jamie’s being abruptly taken away.
“They can,” the Captain said shortly. “And if they do, we’ll have a job of it to reach Jamaica ourselves, with half a crew.” He turned abruptly and went forward, to greet the arriving boat.
Jamie gripped my elbow and squeezed.
“They’ll not take Innes or Fergus,” he said. “They’ll help ye to hunt for Young Ian. If they take us”—I noted the “us” with a sharp pang—“you’ll go on to Jared’s place at Sugar Bay, and search from there.” He looked down and gave me a brief smile. “I’ll meet ye there,” he said, and gave my elbow a reassuring squeeze. “I canna say how long it might be, but I’ll come to ye there.”
“But you could pass as a Frenchman!” I protested. “You know you could!”
He looked at me for a moment, and shook his head, smiling faintly.
“No,” he said softly. “I canna let them take my men, and stay behind, hiding under a Frenchman’s name.”
“But—” I started to protest that the Scottish smugglers were not his men, had no claim on his loyalty, and then stopped, realizing that it was useless. The Scots might not be his tenants or his kin, and one of them might well be a traitor. But he had brought them here, and if they went, he would go with them.
“Dinna mind it, Sassenach,” he said softly. “I shall be all right, one way or the other. But I think it is best if our name is Malcolm, for the moment.”
He patted my hand, then released it and went forward, shoulders braced to meet whatever was coming. I followed, more slowly. As the gig pulled alongside, I saw Captain Raines’s eyebrows rise in astonishment.
“God save us, what is this?” he murmured under his breath, as a head appeared above the Artemis’s rail.
It was a young man, evidently in his late twenties, but with his face drawn and shoulders slumping with fatigue. A uniform coat that was too big for him had been tugged on over a filthy shirt, and he staggered slightly as the deck of the Artemis rose beneath him.
“You are the captain of this ship?” The Englishman’s eyes were red-rimmed from tiredness, but he picked Raines from the crowd of grim-faced hands at a glance. “I am acting captain Thomas Leonard, of His Majesty’s ship Porpoise. For the love of God,” he said, speaking hoarsely, “have you a surgeon aboard?”