The Pirate Captain

CHAPTER 21: Storm Tossed

Once dressed, Cate balked at the curtain as Nathan’s words rang in her head.

…settling their bets…

Mortification knotted her gut. Everyone aboard knew…

Every man, jack, tar, and mate knew what they had been doing, not only just then, but the night before, too. She tried to think back, wondering if she had cried out at any point. She wasn’t usually given to doing so at those crucial moments of passion, but it had been a very long time.

Everybody knew…which meant she was going to have to face everyone, knowing they knew. From the forecastlemen, to the foretopsmen, to the afterguard, to anyone slaving in the hold moving water butts…everybody knew.

“No secrets on a damned ship,” she grumbled under her breath.

Cate prayed—vowed—not to go bright red at the first person met, and then worried as to who it might be.

When she came around the curtain, Nathan stood at the table, leaned over a chart. He nimbly walked the brass dividers, his fingers tapping the parchment in calculation, reminding her so much of her first day aboard, and innumerable times since. His charts were his pride, and justifiably so. Detailed and finely scripted in his florid handwriting, they were works of art. She had spent many an hour watching him work on them, embellishing with further details and descriptions.

He looked up, brightening at seeing her.

“We’re to meet Thomas at Cogburn’s Island,” Nathan explained at her inquiry as to their destination.

A ringed finger indicated their current position, and then the aforementioned island. His rag-bound hand reminded her of the cut he had suffered from Thomas’ sword. Earlier attempts on her part to attend it had failed; hopefully he would yield this time.

“Allow me to—” she said, reaching to examine it.

“It’s fine. Observe.” Jerking free of her grasp, he worked his hand to illustrate. His checked wince—slight, but unmistakable—robbed the desired effect. His hands were near the color of mahogany, but she could see bright red peeking from under the binding.

“It needs to be—” she said more determinedly

“I’m fine,” he said in a tone that would brook no further discussion.

Conceding, she peered over his shoulder and pressed against him, still thrilled at being able to do so. “How far?”

“Two days.” Nathan shifted his hips in acknowledgement of her nearness. His fingers sought hers where they rested on the parchment and stroked her knuckles.

“Sometimes three, if the winds are in our favor. Doesn’t appear, however, as though Calypso is going to bless us today,” he added with a grudging sigh.

“How bad is it going to blow?” She had endured storms on the Constancy, but had yet to experience a bad one on the Morganse. Her apprehension stemmed only from not knowing what to expect. Her faith in Nathan’s seamanship was unquestioned. With Pryce and the crew, it became an impossible sum to add up the total number of years of experience represented on these decks.

“Not sure.” Straightening, Nathan cast a dubious eye over his shoulder, toward the glass. It was an inconspicuous, odd-looking instrument: a long tube with a bulb at its bottom. Gimbaled on a rosewood board on the bulkhead, it was consulted with a devotion and reverence normally paid to a religious icon.

“Weather glass says bad, right nasty. The wind is steady, but I don’t like the looks of that swell,” he said, swiveling a speculative gaze out the windows.

Cate had been vaguely aware of an increase in the action of the ship. The sea was kicking up rough. A dark and tumultuous-looking bank of clouds hung low on the east horizon.

“We’re required to see what comes,” he went on, looking to the chart once more. “We might scud before it, if it will answer, and be taken leagues off course. If it overtakes us, then we’ll take the worst of it on the stern.”

It was spoken as if there was something positive to be found in that outcome.

He gave her an encouraging grin and squeezed her arm. “Not going lily-livered on us, are you?”

Cate straightened and pasted on a smile. “Of course not! Don’t you dare get hurt.”

She had waited for what seemed a lifetime to have him; to lose him to storm or injury would be too cruel. And yet, life had proven to be exactly that. Yes, she was afraid…for both of them.

Nathan bent to kiss her, brief but meaningful.

“Now there’s the motivation what a man needs,” he said, grinning with devilment. Grabbing his coat from the chair, he sauntered to the door and stopped. “Stay under hatches. Don’t come out, no matter what you hear.”

And then, he was gone.



###



That a storm was brewing was no great surprise: cloud formations, bird sightings, coffee grounds, and aching bones had all been read, the omens conflicting only with regards to severity. The glass had dipped its lowest according to many, and yet Millbridge’s hip said nothing so severe. Hermione retreated to her manger below, while His Lordship and the geckos were nowhere to be seen.

The swell grew to more precipitous heights, while relieving tackles on the rudder and masts were rigged, topmasts lowered and storm canvas bent. The air turned sultry and still, the world taking on a bilious green cast that rendered sky and sea inseparable. Guns were bowsed up and double secured; a half ton of iron careening across a deck could smash a man, or worse yet, pierce the hull, taking everyone to Davy Jones’ depths. Hatches were bonneted, bulkheads secured. Pitch stoves sent up sharp-smelling curls of smoke as the caulking irons were put to their fullest application to seal every gunport and port, including the gallery windows and skylight.

As the wind stiffened, the Great Cabin was swept clear. Rugs were rolled, furniture and trunks lashed, and oil lamps tucked safe away; many a ship had burned to the waterline from an oil slick gone unnoticed. It was in that process that Cate encountered her first member of the crew, since her and Nathan’s…er, tryst: Millbridge. She willed herself to put on a strong front, but her cheeks heated, nonetheless. She expected severity, at the least the old codger’s customary churlishness, but was met only with benign benevolence. It was more disquieting than if he had openly pointed and laughed.

Having failed the first test, she passed the second, barely. Her blush had paled in comparison to Kirkland’s. For that matter, Nathan had left with a levity in his step heretofore unseen, and she could have sworn she heard humming.

The galley fires were doused after the dog watches, allowing the men their last hot meal. As if waiting for that last meal to be finished, the blow arrived in full fury. The wind pressed a stiff arm at the Morganse’s masts, heeling her over and holding her there.

Cate stood in the middle of the cabin as great doors were slammed shut. Hearing the resounding clunk! of the crosspiece dropped into its brackets, she was seized by a sense of being entombed. She wasn’t completely sealed in: the galley steps stood open—she could come and go as she pleased, Nathan’s final orders notwithstanding—but the feeling was undeniable. So empty, so quiet, in spite of the full gale outside.

With all the furniture stowed, Cate stood wondering what to do next. She shied from the gallery, the wind and rain lashing at the thick panes. Flashes of lightning illuminated the mountainous waves of greenish-grey water just the other side of the glass, the foam at their crests hanging like snarling great teeth, seeking to devour anything in its path. The deck now at a violent pitch, she half-crawled to a locker. It was against a lee bulkhead, which meant she could sit atop and lean back against the wall with a modicum of comfort.

Beset by a chill reminiscent of the more sour days in the Highlands, she hunched on the trunk, listening to the gale tear at the windows and doors, clawing to violate her solitary bastion. The ship lurched to dizzying heights, and then sickeningly pitched downward, disorienting one to the point of doubting which way was up. The rain a hammering drone, the wind screaming through every crevice, and the grind of planking combined into a din that battered one to numbness.

The gunmetal sky had given way to a Stygian night, lightning the only illumination, when Millbridge appeared at the galley companionway, reporting over the storm’s clamor of men injured. Cate stirred from her torpid state and her corner. She skated helplessly on a skim of water over the slanted deck and slammed into Merdering Mary’s carriage. Rising shakily, she crabbed across the room to follow Millbridge down the steps, the elder carrying her blood box under one arm, as well as a watch lamp. They wove through the swaying cocoon-like hammocks, filled with sodden, sleeping men, to the gunroom to where the injured waited.

A near senseless Mr. Seymour was met with first, reported to have been knocked in the head by a swinging block. Blood and rainwater glistening on his face and chest, he sat oblivious, even when spoken to directly. Afraid to appear “lily-livered,” but in desperate need to know, she inquired after Nathan as she strapped Ogden, his ribs having taken the brunt of a battle with the ship’s wheel.

“A fiend he is during a blow.” Bald head gleaming with wetness, Ogden rolled his eyes upward with something between fear and awe. “He’s up there now, a-darin’ Calypso to take ’im.”

Mr. Harrier appeared, cradling his arm. “Bo’lun snapped it like a dry twig.” A nasty rope burn entwining the forearm gave credit to his testimony.

A table suspended over a gun her surgery, a steady trickle of injured continued. Fractures and dislocations became the mode of the day: ribs, shoulders, arms, and collarbones. Millbridge stoically held the lamp while she groped in her box for salve, splints, and bandages, ignoring the water that dripped down her neck and sloshed at her feet, soddening her skirts. Her station was nearly at the ship’s waist, much nearer the ship’s heart than in the Great Cabin, rendering the storm that much more immediate.

“How bad is it?” she asked of Millbridge, straining for all the nonchalance she could manage.

“None so bad,” he said judiciously. The seamed face was immobile and of little guidance. “Water’s only knee-deep at the waist and the spars are still standing.”

She looked upward at the deck overhead, uneasy at the thought of such waves washing just on the other side of those planks.

“We ain’t been pooped…waves overtaking the stern,” he explained semi-patiently to her puzzled look. “And I heard the Cap’n laugh a bit ago.”

“Daft he is,” put in Harrier, with significance.

“Charmed,” Millbridge countered solemnly. “And we’ll all have the benefit for it.”

As the injured filed in, she was kept abreast of Nathan’s well-being through their reports. “Cross-braced…,” “double-rigged…,” “relief-tackled…,” “spliced and knotted…”: she had no idea as to the meaning. The wonderment mixed with the graveness with which the deeds were reported were indicative of the import.

The clang of the watch bell was barely discernible over the howl of the storm, and yet sufficient to stir the men from their sleep and to “show a leg.” No one desired Hodder to come looking, nor be seen as a slacker. The relieved watch came down, half-drowned and exhausted. Some headed straight away for their hammocks, collapsing with an audible groan. The remainder perched on the guns or wherever they might. Rain and seawater dripping from their clothes, they huddled over the cups of half-warm coffee, tea, or tepid portable soup and ship’s biscuit, served by Kirkland and Millbridge. Hollow-eyed, their spirits were high, not a worried face among them.

And the noise…always, the noise!

At one point, Cate thought the storm to be easing, and said as much to Hallchurch—Mr. Mole, she had first christened him—as she strapped his broken collarbone, thinking it to be a good sign.

“Not if it backth on ye.” Hallchurch’s ominous warning came through horrifically bucked teeth and a severe lisp. “Just as bad, if not worsth, but from the opposhite direction. The seath all ahoo…” Shuddering, the rest was left to her imagination.

A galvanic crack of thunder made everyone jump. A marrow-penetrating charge, like a massive frisson, shot through her, while simultaneous explosions came from directly overhead. All eyes were fixed upward, wondering what the hell had happened, why the rush of feet and cries of alarm. Every downward tilt of the capering ship filled Cate with a rising panic that they were sinking, every lee lurch feeling like it was about to bowl over. Everyone was still deep in wonderment when three more men stumbled in. All larbolin forecastlemen, they were severely shaken and their hands burned.

Mr. Heap sat round-eyed and stunned, responding in vague monosyllables, and only if spoken to. At one point he turned his head into the light. Like most f’c’stlemen, his pride was his pigtail, long and tarred, but it was no more. He was singed bald.

“Sparked and went up like a goddamned torch, beggin’ yer pardon, sir,” reported Fouts, one of his mates. “The sod woulda been naught but glowin’ cinder had the Cap’n not doused ’im.”

Heap’s freshly denuded skull was livid red in the semi-dim, the sharp tang of burned hair, and a lesser of urine, stirring at his every move.

“Glowin’ like a babe’s bum,” snickered Fouts.

“Might never grow back, neither,” said Hughes, one eye closed in speculation.

“What happened?” Cate asked as she examined Heap.

“Lightning bolt hit the larboard kedge,” said Hughes in restrained awe. “Set off Lucifer and Beelzebub to boot.”

“Damn near blew Bloody Bess clean off her carriage,” Fouts added.

Cate smiled faintly at the affection for a cannon, so tenderly named.

“Thought the Almighty was sendin’ me a signal,” said Heap. His blistered hand shook violently as he reached for a cup proffered by Millbridge.

“After all the drinkin’ and blasphemin’, ain’t the Lord gonna be comin’ after you,” said Hallchurch.

“Ain’t nothin’ that damned ugly allowed in Heaven,” added Seymour. His senses finally had congealed enough to follow the conversation.

“Tossed Cheeves over,” Owens announced over his cup, as flat-voiced as if asking for someone to pass the bread barge. His shoulder moved in a half-shrug at Cate’s aghast. “T’weren’t enough o’ him left for services.”

All the men fell quiet. Those manning the forecastle tended to be most seasoned seamen aboard, and were a tight-knit, proud group, and severely felt the loss of a mate. Cheeves was given his moment of silence then, with an unspoken pledge that a more official memorial would be held at a more opportune time. Cheeves was sure to be remembered fondly at the next dispensing of grog, and for many months to come.

With rum liberally applied to all patients, and patients resting as comfortably as could be expected, Cate judged it a good time to resupply her blood box. Nearly all the bandages and splints were gone, the carron oil, too. The burn dressing could be mixed up readily enough—half limewater and half sweet oil, shaken well—but the middle of a storm was no time to attempt it. Honey, vinegar, or just fresh lard would serve well—sometimes better. All of which could be found in the galley. Kirkland would either have what she needed, or as keeper of the keys to the stores, could get it for her. And so she struck off.

Groping through the lightless ’tween deck was like finding one’s way through an underground cave. Cate knew the ship well enough, but navigation was rendered nigh impossible by the total darkness and wildly pitching floor. Any landmarks she might have relied upon had either been moved for the storm, or blocked by hammocks. The lamp she carried had long died, either guttered out or doused by the steady drip of water from overhead. With no flint, she clutched it anyway, if for no other reason than security, and the slim hope of light sometime in the future.

After colliding with several hammocks, eliciting rude remarks from the occupants, bumping into two guns, and tripping on the training tackle of a third, she found what she hoped was the aft bulkhead. The ship took a violent lurch and she had the sense of flying through the air. Landing hard, she lay in a crumpled heap, gasping for the wind knocked out of her. The ship tilted anew and she began to slide, discovering then that she had been lying on the bulkhead. Cate lay with a spinning head, not only from the collision, but the pain of still trying to draw a breath. She groped with one hand, and thought she might be on the floor. Unable to trust her battered senses, she considered remaining there until the storm passed, in spite of the risk of being trampled in the dark.

“Cate!”

A bobbing light broke the darkness and came steadily toward her.

“Cate! Cate!”

Nathan’s gruff voice rose over the racket of the storm. Each cry grew more urgent, verging on panic, as he cast about with the lamp. It was a prayer answered, proof Providence, or whatever deity, watched over her.

“Cate!”

“Here,” she called in a thin wheeze.

He sped to her. Lifting the lantern over her, he slumped with relief.

“Goddammit to bloody hell! You weren’t there. What the hell are you doing here?”

“They were hurt,” was all she could manage.

“Tachh!”

Rainwater dripping from every aspect, it was unclear if he understood or even gave a damn as to her excuse. Her muddled head allowed her to vaguely wonder if he was more annoyed at having to search for her, or that she had disobeyed orders. Swearing and mouthing very unflattering references, he hauled her, floundering, up from the floor and propelled her toward the companionway. Nathan bolstered her when she staggered or slid as they climbed, flashes of lightning from the cabin above and Nathan’s lantern lighted the way topside.

“Stay here or I’ll lash you to that mizzenmast,” he said, once they were in the cabin.

Given his mood, it was a credible threat.

Nathan saw her concern and smiled. He patted the mast, and then clapped a startlingly warm hand on her shoulder with considerably less affection. “No worries, luv! Neither I or this ol’ girl are ready to wait upon Jones and his Locker anytime soon.”

Wet to the marrow, bright red-rimmed eyes, braced against the sickening pitch, half-hoarse from shouting over wind and water, and she believed him. He brushed her cheek with a kiss, his lips hot against her chilled skin.

The lamp’s small flicker faded as Nathan trundled down the stairs, and she was alone again.

Standing in the middle of the room, Cate avoided looking toward the sweep of the gallery windows. In the darting flashes of lightning, it was necessary to look up to see the wave crests. It was too easy to imagine them bursting through—the dreaded “pooped,” as represented by Millbridge. Merdering Mary and Widower strained at their lashings. If they were to break loose, it would mean a near half-ton of iron careening about. Lingering anywhere in the salon was less than appealing.

Cate made a halting path to the sleeping quarters and her bunk. There she lay, braced by both feet and hands to keep from being tossed out. In spite of those precautions, a violent lee lurch pitched her out. She landed in a rib-jarring heap where bulkhead and floor met, and there she remained. Fine sheets of water sloshed back and forth across the planks, soaking her clothing and the quilt in which she was cocooned.

Thirst and hunger gnawed. Exhaustion being an unfailing sleep potion, at last she slept.



###



Cate was jerked awake by a commotion at the cabin door. Its loudness and air of urgency brought her upright from the floor. Through the howl of the storm, she heard the heavy scrape of the cabin door being unbolted. As she sped into the salon, it crashed open. A burst of seawater broke over the coaming, carrying Towers, lantern on high. Bazzi and Squidge were directly behind him, staggering under the weight of Nathan, slung by the shoulders between them. Pryce came tight on their heels, more grim than stern. All were grim, for that matter, alarmingly so.

“Avast! Away, you! Get your goddamned bloody hands off me, you cod-faced, motherless bastards. I’ll have every one of you sons o’ bitches hocked and heaved before the night’s out! I’m fine. Off, I say! I’m fine…!” Nathan growled as the small, sodden parade half-dragged him toward the sleeping berth.

Shivering from the blast of cold air, Cate followed. At the bedside, Nathan was to his feet. He batted the two men away as one would an annoying insect. A puddle of water growing at his feet, he swayed precariously, while struggling to focus on her. Once her face was found, he broke into a beatific smile.

“’ello, luv!”

His eyes rolled back and he toppled backwards onto the bed. He landed with a cry one would have expected from someone landing on the deck, not a mattress. She thought him to be drunk—an extreme curiosity, for he never drank while on watch—until she touched him.

“He’s burning up!”

“Aye.” Pryce glared with the irritability of someone who had just suffered a severe scare. “A wave damn near carried ’im away. Found ’im tangled in the mizzen chains, we did. If it hadn’t been fer them…”

He allowed her to mind finished the unspoken: overboard, lost at sea. At night, in such savage seas, there would be no finding him.

It was a shock and a puzzle. Nathan was like a cat on deck; never a wrong foot set, nor even caught by an abrupt lee lurch that sent others scrabbling for a handhold. He seemed to possess a second sense regarding oncoming waves, never taking one unprepared. She had seen him walk the rails and yards like most would stroll the Sunday church aisle.

“But what…?” Cate looked at Nathan as she set to pulling off his water-logged boots, trying to comprehend what malady could have struck him with such sudden force. He flailed in a feeble attempt to rise, and cried out again, cursing and clutching his right hand.

The light caught the pinprick brightness in Nathan’s eyes that only came with fever, the very brightness she had seen just a few hours before, when he had come to check on her. She had thought it to be excitement of the storm, the heat of his touch due to the coldness of the room.

Damned fool!

Squidge, Bazzi, and Towers filed out. Millbridge hung at the door, while Cate undressed Nathan the rest of the way. The sensation spurred him into sudden amorousness. Murmuring severely slurred street slang and vulgarities, groped at her cleavage, crying out in pain every time his hand was jostled.

“He’s raving,” said Millbridge, stepping in to help.

“So it would seem,” Cate said, ducking another assault from Nathan’s searching tongue.

She stripped Nathan down, each item making a wet splat! when it hit the floor. While Cate tucked up Nathan in the quilt, Millbridge snatched up the sodden mass and took it away. She began to bid him to hang the clothes before the galley fires, but then recalled those were long cold.

Nathan fell quiet, his breath now reduced to short bursts. Cate sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand. It lay like a hot coal in her palm, bright red in the dim light of the horn lamp. Swollen to the point of looking like a bladder blown full of air, the fingers were like sausages. She drew out her knife and slit away the ragged binding, the very one she had begged to remove that morning, and several times before that. Guilt surged, but shifted quickly to anger: anger at him for refusing; a considerably larger dose reserved for herself for not having been more insistent.

The makeshift bandage had once been crusted with dried blood. The hours of rain had softened it, but it still required a firm tug in order to pull it free. Nathan moaned and jerked. Mumbling a curse, he settled once more. Once a mere slit, the edges of the wound were now curled back and oozed with a greenish-white pus. Her nose was met with a fetid smell. Infection, yes, she thought, sniffing delicately. Something worse? Not yet.

Initially, it had been relatively minor in the way of blade injuries: a clean slice across the back of Nathan’s hand, nowhere near deep enough to consider sewing. She had suggested a sticky plaster, but Nathan had literally laughed at her. The last time she had seen it was on the road from Lady Bart’s, after reopening during the fight with Harte. Nathan had waved her brusquely away and bound it with a strip of cloth.

It’s your fault. It’s your fault…

There was no rhyme or reason to wounds or injury. The grandest and most grotesque could heal, a virtual miracle, while the smallest nick could fester to the point of death or loss of limb. She resolutely blocked the last possibility. No such thing was going to happen, so there was nothing to be gained by worrying.

“He should be bled,” came Kirkland’s voice from behind her.

“I haven’t the tools, the training, nor the stomach for that.”

Nathan cried out—a pitiful sound—at the mere act of lowering his hand on the mattress next to him. Her stomach squeezed at the thought of what must come next.

“It needs cleaning. Bring hot water and—” Cate began.

“There is none, sir. The fires are out.”

She bit back a snappish reply. Her anger was with herself for so foolishly in forgetting.

“Then we’ll have to make do,” she sighed, ignoring the inner voices screaming in objection. “Bring rum, and a brush or cloth, or…or something,” she said finally.

Her faith in the curative powers of whiskey was long-established, but rum was largely untested. Rum, however, was all there was to be had, and so rum it would have to be.

“Pass the word for some help. We’ll need to hold him down,” she called in Kirkland’s wake.

As preparations were being made, she watched Nathan with increasing concern as he became more listless and less aware of the world around him.

Perhaps for this next part, it might be just as well.

Chin and Mute Maori appeared shortly, one dripping wet, the other bleary-eyed from being jerked from his hammock. Stern-faced, they resolutely took up positions, one at Nathan’s legs; the other at his shoulders. Millbridge held the bowl. Cate took a deep breath and poured rum over Nathan’s hand. With his scream still vibrating her ears, she set to scrubbing with a soft-bristled brush.

Like Highlanders, seamen tended to be a stoic lot in the face of injury. The fever, however, had robbed Nathan of such restraint. He twisted against the grasp of the ship’s goliaths with uncommon strength, the already ragged voice going guttural as he screamed. She resolutely kept her eyes averted from Nathan’s, so accusing and pleading.

It has to be done! It has to be done.

Cate scrubbed and poured, scrubbed and poured, the stench of fouled flesh was sharp through the rum’s sweetness. At one point, she called for the lantern to be brought closer, and verified that nothing more remained than raw flesh, bleeding freely but cleanly.

She knocked the damp strand of hair from her face with a forearm. A stream of moisture tracked between her shoulder blades. Everyone in the room was shaken and sweating. Nathan gazed at her through dull eyes, and then rolled his head away.

Kirkland arrived with a bowl containing a mix of relatively warm milk and linseed oil, a slab of bread already soaking. For a proper poultice, the milk should have been near boiling and the softtack fresh. In order for the milk to have been as warm as it was, Kirkland had to have heated it over a candle the while. She fished out the bread, squeezed, and pressed it to Nathan’s hand

She drew the stool up to the bedside and settled in for the vigil.

Nearly lost him. Nearly lost him, an inner voice chanted as Cate trickled a mix of water, brandy, and honey into Nathan’s mouth.

She had no recollection of where the habit had come from, but it had allowed many a person—injured, ill, or otherwise incapacitated—to thrive. Her faith in it was dampened somewhat, for whiskey was the proven ingredient. Brandy, however, was all that was to be had. She ran a mental list of known febrifuges—catnip, coneflower, willow bark—with longing, for she had none. She was obliged to rely on what was to hand: a tepid poultice, a compromised potion, and Nathan’s spirit. Her greatest faith was in the latter.

As she sponged Nathan’s head and limbs and kept a wet cloth on his head, she tried not to think about how vital and compelling his body had been. Exactly how long ago was unclear; time had gone missing with the sun. His body was paler still than from when he had been brought in. It had been too much like watching the glow of life drain as he grew to near bone white. The light carved deep shadows in the curves and dips, rendering him almost skeletal. The ebony braids were a stark, tangled framework around a pallid face. His hand lying on his stomach was a livid slash against the pale of his stomach, the barest brush of the skin causing him to flinch. Bruises had begun to bloom on his ribs and hip from the battering of being swept off the deck.

Nearly lost him. Nearly lost him.

Voices were periodically heard outside the curtain, the men inquiring as to their Captain’s progress.

“The day will tell,” came Millbridge’s ancient creak.

Day?

Cate blinked and looked around. It could have been day. The gloom in the cabin had brightened somewhat. The storm still raged, however, the wind still screaming through the ship’s every crevice.

In spite of her attentions, Nathan’s fever deepened. His body radiated with an internal inferno, and his skin drew dry and taut over the bones of his face. The rattle of his rapid breathing was audible over the storm. He barely stirred when spoken to, and she fought the nagging sensation that she had lost him already.

Sometime, Nathan slipped into delirium. Cate called for strong hands to help tie him down. It was a precaution not only to keep him from doing himself harm, but to prevent him from being tossed from the bunk by the capering ship. His brow furrowed, and his bound limbs worked against the bindings. His head jerked and eyelids twitched as he rambled, names and orders, fragmented conversation mumbled in varying degrees of lucidity. He tossed his head as his agitation grew, until the cloth upon it was flung to the floor. Cate bent to pick it up and straightened to find his eyes had opened. They were fever-glazed and as vacant as a sleepwalker’s.

“Hattie?” He spoke a dry croak, in a strange combination of puzzlement and hope.

With a sharp intake of air, Cate lurched back on the stool. Before she could decide how or if to respond, Nathan’s eyes rolled closed and he sank away. Bone-rattling jolts emitted from deep within, wave upon wave. She couldn’t breathe, her chest seeming as bound as Nathan’s arms. Through an increasing haze of wetness, she watched from a careful distance as he churned and mumbled.

In his agitation, his hand was often jostled or flexed, causing him cry out. His moans of agony gradually gave way to ones of yearning and apprehension, some verging on sheer joy. His breath quickened, whether in arousal or fear she couldn’t tell. Either way, she couldn’t bring herself to touch him. Then he went rigid.

“Hattie!” Nathan arched his head back into the pillow, his graveled voice eloquent with anguish. The tortured body writhed against the soft bindings, whether in defense or desire was impossible to know.

Gasping as if she had been punched, Cate clapped a hand over her mouth. She heard a wet splat!, and looked down to see she had dropped the cloth, gone forgotten in her hand. She turned from the bedside and closed her eyes, tears cascading down her cheek.

He went suddenly still, deathly so. Panicked, she swung around directly into his glassy-eyed gaze. A face so recently tortured was now completely at peace.

“There’s me darling. I knew you’d come,” he said in utter tenderness.

Allowing him to think she was his precious Hattie seemed to provide him ease, and so she sat frozen, her heart pounding dully in her ears.

“I knew you’d come, me blessed angel. From the first…So long…needed you…needed…so long…so…” His head rolled aside and he faded once more into oblivion.

Cate clamped her lower lip between her teeth, struggling to dam the flood of emotions that washed over her: fury, hurt, shock, confusion…and hurt, unspeakable hurt. There was a small crack as her heart broke, and then the sharp pain in her chest as it was torn out.

You stupid fool. You stupid, silly, gullible…stupid fool. What the hell else did you expect?

She bent and sobbed into the linen folds of her skirt.

“He’s out of his head.”

Startled, she jerked up to find Pryce standing at the door, braced against the storm. With his Captain incapacitated, command had fallen to him. The weight of it showed, for he was grey and haggard. Thoroughly sodden, he brought with him the smell of rain and the sea.

She dashed her face dry. “Yes, I know.”

“He don’t reckon—”

“Yes, I know!” she hissed, more sharply than intended. “There’s always the chance that he does reckon, isn’t there?”

“She shot him.”

“He loved her,” she retorted. Her gaze fixed on the divoted scar on Nathan’s chest. A shadow cast across it rendered it almost a hole—the same she felt in her chest. “And still does,” she added bitterly.

“She was named after Cape Hatteras.” Pryce offered the innocuous detail as if it might equivocate or allay, or if nothing else, a bridge to a subject less unpleasant.

It failed on all counts.

“Really?” Cate asked, wholly disinterested.

“Aye, born there durin’ a storm.”

Cate gave a feeble attempt at a laugh. “I suppose she should have been grateful it hadn’t been off Cape Cod.”

A strained silence fell between them. Water dripping from Pryce patted on the floor where he stood at the end of the bunk. His expression darkened further as he listened to his Captain ramble.

“’Tis possible someone…” Pryce began delicately.

Cate looked up, blinking dully. “Someone what?”

“Someone was t’ put somethin’ on the blade, assurin’ this very thing,” he said with a significant lift of his grizzled brows.

“But Thomas…” Weariness fogged her mind, turning every thought back on itself. Urinating on or sullying weapons by other means wasn’t unknown to her. It meant the merest nick would doom the enemy to a torturous death from a fouled wound. She strained to think back to that day on the beach.

“That’s ridiculous. There was no time for such scheming,” she heard herself say.

Pryce’s broad shoulders lifted under the wet shirt and dropped. “Mebbe.”

“I love him, Pryce,” she blurted.

It is a wonder, she thought dimly, what prompted such a confession. The dark room, the glow of the lanterns, and sense of timelessness gave the room the air of a confessional. A wholly unnecessary confession, she suspected. Surely by now it was written on her forehead. And yet it seemed an important one, if for no other reason than a rationale for her steadfastness, or as steadfast as Nathan would allow. She was resigned to that inevitable day, when she would no longer serve his needs as a substitution for the one he truly longed for, and would be set off, banished, or just left.

Just like you used him for Brian?

No, it was different. Brian was…gone.

She looked at Nathan, now tranquil, and smiled faintly. It would seem the two of them were much more alike than supposed. One man: she had been prepared to remain so to the end of her days. And Nathan? Granted, he had held many a woman in his arms, but only held one in his heart.

Nathan’s forearm was turned away, but Cate could see the tattoo there, for it was as indelibly etched in her mind as it was on his skin: a swallow bearing a heart, pierced and bleeding. Not much more need be said. It was unreasonable to expect Nathan to forget such a love, when she couldn’t do the same. What a tragic lot they were: two lost people cleaving onto the first bit of flotsam to keep from drowning in the loneliness.

Cate gave a mirthless laugh. “I know it’s the last thing anyone, especially him desires to hear, but there it is. Do you think me foolish?”

Gentleness touched the usually severe grey eyes. “Nay, to do otherwise would be akin to desirin’ ye not to draw breath. And that’s the pity of it. He’ll hurt, ye, sir. He won’t be intendin’, but he’ll hurt ye just the same.”



###



Bells, bells, and bells.

Cate’s existence narrowed down to the watch bells, changing the poultice, and the space in between.

Ignoring an aching back and burning joints, she sponged Nathan’s fever-ravaged body and trickled her potion into his mouth with trembling hands. She swayed on the stool, desperate for sleep, but the thought of leaving his side was intolerable. The damp and chill of the storm had penetrated to her core. She jerked from a tremor and guiltily thought of lying next to Nathan’s heated body to warm herself, just as she had just a few days ago.

The sound of dripping water came from somewhere. In the Highlands, it was believed the sound was the harbinger of death, a water spirit come to collect a soul.

She leaned defensively over Nathan’s body. “Go gather elsewhere. There’s no one to be had here.”

Her nostrils twitched constantly for the first hint of mortification.

Not yet.

Only the foulness of infection was detected. She had seen the looks from Pryce, Millbridge and others, and knew what they were thinking. When changing the poultice, she had seen the red streaks, now reaching nearly to Nathan’s wrist. They seemed no worse, but she couldn’t trust judgment quite possibly skewed by desperate hope. To believe otherwise was to be obligated to consider the options: death, which she could not allow, or in the well-meaning spirit of avoiding that, amputation.

The sharp taste of bile rose in her throat.

Cate had witnessed amputations, heard the saw grind through tendon and bone, seen the blood spurt as veins were severed, and then smelled the seared flesh when the hot iron was touched to the stump. Many healed and flourished; others had withered and perished, in spirit if not in body.

She eyed Nathan lying there, his ribs rising and falling as he labored for each intake of air. Every cloud had a lining. Some would say Providence had just provided a salvation: remove his hand and take the “S” brand with it. Nathan would no longer be a marked man, the threat of ownership gone. He could have his life back, the freedom he so cherished.

Would it be to clip his wings, like his precious swallows, no longer able to fly? The ends of a few fingers and toes, the top of one ear: life had taken its swipes and he had prevailed. But how much more could his spirit take before it surrendered? With his right hand gone, he would be defenseless in a violent world. He could learn to use his sword with his left, but living long enough to do so would be the challenge. He could, however, still have his ship.

Would she? Could she stand by and watch as Nathan’s hand was cut off? Or would she fight against it and watch him die in putrefying agony? What would she face when he woke: hatred or gratitude, relief or resentment? Would he wish his precious Hattie had been there? Could she have kept him alive and whole?

She rubbed her forehead wearily.

The price…always the damned price.

“No mind. We’re a long way from that,” she said as she mopped Nathan’s fevered brow. “So let us not dwell.”

She found solace in the determination in her voice. The furrow in Nathan’s brow softened and he calmed ever so slightly, as if he might have found ease, too.

Pryce’s suggestion rolled and pitched through her mind like the deck beneath her. In the long hours of darkness, hunger and exhaustion began to play tricks on her, lucid thought more elusive. Thomas’ blade catching Nathan’s hand couldn’t have been intentional, nor something put on the blade itself. And yet, there was no denying that Nathan’s fever was remarkably high.

Still Thomas’ oath rode heavy.

If that damned fool hurts you, I will not abide it.

Thomas was Nathan’s best friend; he trusted him as she had seen Nathan trust no other, including herself, she thought ruefully. Thomas had become a pirate only because of Nathan.

Pirate.

And treachery abounded in their world.

She preferred to not admit her judgment of Thomas was skewed by his resemblance to Brian. She tried to see a darker side to the man, but couldn’t find one. Perhaps Thomas was the greater actor, even better than Nathan. Ruthlessness could lurk behind that genial smile. The two men had come to blows over a woman before. It would be too cruel to think it could be happening again, all because of her. Or it could be that she flattered herself too much, that she was but a piece in an old grudge match.

A shift in her world shoved all further thoughts aside: Nathan’s fever broke.

Now, he was consumed by chills with teeth-chattering violence. Sweat formed a dark circle on the canvas mattress, his braids leaving dark trails of moisture on the pillow as he tossed and churned. In between changing the poultice, Cate wiped his face and strove to keep the quilt about him, which he fought with the determination of the possessed.

During the brief interludes when he quieted, Cate rested a hand on his shoulder, rested her head on the raised edge of the bunk and closed her eyes. She had been dozing thusly when she woke to a deafening silence.

The storm was gone, blown itself out. Sunlight streamed under the curtain, illuminating the room in a warm flood of eye-squinting brilliance.

Joyous in the absence of one noise, she was alarmed by the absence of another.

Like the storm, Nathan had gone still, deathly still. Heart in her throat, she checked for the rise and fall of his chest, leaned her ear next to his mouth, and then sagged with relief. He still breathed, but barely so: shallow and quick, but not labored, no wetness, no death rattle. It wasn’t the deep sleep of restoration, but more like his body no longer possessed the strength to fight.

Cate pressed her hand to his cheek, the bristle of his several-day beard a soft plush against her palm. Compared to the raging fever, he was almost cold to the touch.

“How does he do?” came Millbridge’s voice from the door.

“Not sure,” she said frowning. Exhaustion was making it so blessedly impossible to think. “The fever’s broke, but…I’m not sure.”

Kirkland brushed past Millbridge bearing a bowl of now steaming milk and linseed oil. Heartened by having a fresh and proper poultice, Cate squeezed out the already soaking bread. She undid the binding and lifted away the old.

“It might have been wasted effort, Mr. Kirkland,” she said. Nathan’s hand shimmered in the wetness that filled her eyes.

The gash was still there, widened by corruption. Clear fluid, faintly tinged with blood, welled from the raw flesh, but the angry brilliance of inflammation gone. Nathan's hand was healthy and pink…relatively.

He would be both whole and alive.



###



With the storm past, the Morganse exhaled, a long expulsion of air pressing up from her bowels. It was over.

The hatches were beaten open. Bands of sunlight stabbed through the below decks’ gloom to illuminate the damage wrought, and the process of recovery was begun.

Seeing that Nathan rested comfortably, with pledges from both Kirkland and Millbridge that she would be woken at the slightest change, Cate was drawn like a compass needle to north to the stern sill. Now blazing with sunlight and warmth, she stretched out there in on in glorious comfort and collapsed into a deep sleep.

Cate’s reprieve was brief. The storm had been violent, the injuries many: splinters—some almost as long as her hand—gashes, contusions, smashed digits, burns, and battered ribs were only a sampling of what awaited. Two men had been stricken with inexplicable fevers, and two more were confined to their hammocks with busted guts.

As for the ship, before the mast was a snarled mess, her jibs and forestays a cat’s-cradle of jury-rigging. The forecastle jacks and carpenters worked in ant-like fury to set their world aright. The stricken anchor was barely recognizable and quite the spectacle. Flung from its cathead by the lightning bolt, it had landed prong-down, and stuck in the forecastle planking like the sea bottom itself. The opposing hook, higher than a man’s head, was contorted, as if a gargantuan had made a rude attempt at a bowline knot. The nearby kevels, nearly shoulder-wide wooden cleats mounted on the rail, had been shattered; its splinters Cate had removed from the flesh of several of the men. The tar and varnish that coated everything had been sparked by the lightning, leaving parts of the bowsprit, forepeak, and forecastle charred. It made one thankful for the storm’s deluge, which had doused the fire before the ship was consumed.

The carpenters and smith, and their respective mates, hammered out new blocks, eyes and fittings, nails, pins, bolts, and pegs. Amid the flurry of splicing, knotting, reeving, and fair weather sails bent, the teeming decks were a virtual snowbank of drying hammocks, clothing, and sails. A constant vigil was maintained on the rigging, lest the masts be wrung. In spite of its covering of pitch, wind-driven rain could saturate a rope, causing it to stretch. Drying rope shrank, damaging her sticks and yards. The smell of tar stoves returned, as the hands furiously toiled to fill the seams loosened by the ship’s working, the rap of caulking mallets a backdrop to every conversation.

“Two feet in the well, sir,” was the carpenter mate’s report to Pryce, “but holding,” came with a sigh of relief.

“At least the scuttlebutts are full,” said Millbridge in his aged pragmatism, as he scanned the ruin. Fresh drinking water was the least of their concerns.

The seas calmed, the wind freshened and steadied, and the mizzen, jury-rigged staysails and royals bellied out. A tops’l breeze, to be sure. The topmasts, however, remained on deck.

“She can’t bear it just now,” Pryce said, casting a concerned but loving eye upward.

A battered queen, the Morganse sailed, her dignity broken, but still regal.

Between mending the ill and injured, and fraying oakum—vast amounts now being in desperate need—Cate was busy. As promised, Kirkland and Millbridge kept her regularly informed of Nathan’s condition, but she was still compelled to see for herself. She found him the same: sleeping as peacefully as a babe, recouping and repairing, just as his ship.

It was after the second dog watch—notable because during that the hands had their first warm meal served in days—that Cate went to check on Nathan, once more. She pushed the curtain aside, careful so as not to rattle the curtain rings. A watch lamp hung, so that he might be readily observed but not disturbed. Careful not to trip on the stool, she crept closer, pressing her skirt to her legs, lest the rustle of the cloth might wake him. A reflexive, useless gesture, for it would have been lost amid the babel from outside.

There was a stillness about the room, the odd tranquility that shrouded the ill when they slept. The riot of noise outside somehow muffled and distant, the most prominent sound was the somnolent rhythm of his breathing, a slight rattle in his throat echoing the ragged of his voice. Looking up at the port, she made note of the need to pass the word for a carpenter’s mate to unseal it, so that the room might be rid of the smell of sickness. The thought was immediately dismissed, until after Nathan had his rest.

Nathan was inherently so animated, it was disquieting to see him so still. Stranger was to see him lying in his own bed, a rarer thing to see him sleep—she still had no idea where he had slept these weeks past. An internal voice demanded that he should drink; another, he should eat. “He should rest” won out. The rictus of pain and delirium gone, his was a peaceful face. His hand, almost mahogany against the blue and yellow quilt, rested on his stomach, a sticking-plaster in place. No swelling. No redness. No smell. He would be whole. She closed her eyes in thankfulness once more.

Cate resisted the urge to straighten the quilt or brush the braid from his chest, and the even stronger ones to clasp his hand or kiss his cheek. Seeing Nathan now, almost angelic, she regretted her earlier indignation and anger. The hurt she suffered at being called Hattie was less readily put aside, but not indispensably entrenched. She shouldn’t like to be held responsible for what she might utter in fever or dreams; neither should anyone else. After all, the unconsciousness wasn’t the realm of reality.

God help me, I love him.

She sat heavily on the stool with the impact. Love: an elixir, which could erase and ease more ills and hurts than any potion or palliative. Either by his charm, the Fates, or whatever controlling powers might be, she had been drawn. She had seen the pit looming and had fallen in; there was now no escape.

She lingered for some while to watch him sleep, memorizing every curve and line, odd hair and blemish. What the light didn’t allow, her mind filled in. His headscarf was gone, but its ghost remained as a pale line across the high forehead, just above the sweep of sable brows. A thread-like scar ran from his temple up into his hairline. The thick copper-tipped lashes had an almost girlish curve. The color was repeated in the three bright copper hairs at one corner of his beard. The somberness caused by the downward curve of his mouth from the sharp peak in the center was softened by the hooks of his mustache lifting it in a half-smile, his cheeks rounding with it.

Sleep could be highly contagious, mere observation sufficient for one to be stricken. With a body suddenly filled with sand, Cate rose and trudged out. The cabin’s furniture was yet to be released from its storm-lashings, and so she went to the sill once again. She pulled the combs and shook out her hair, then stretched until her joints popped, expelling a groan of relief like she had heard her grandmother emit.

The stern window was open. The breeze brushed her cheek as she lay with her head pillowed on her arm. It was a soft night, as were most in the Caribbean. With the light of a lop-sided moon glittering on the water and outlining scallop-edged clouds, she watched phosphorescent wake of the ship reach back into eternity. She thought of all the things she should do, and all the reasons why she shouldn’t: no one was seriously ill, the injured had been tended, a great mound of oakum stood before those charged with rolling it for the caulkers, and Nathan was within earshot, if he was to stir or call out.

The pounding of adzes, mallets, and hammers her lullaby, she slept.