41
WE SET SAIL
It was a cold, gray day—there is no other kind in Scotland in December—when the Artemis touched at Cape Wrath, on the northwest coast.
I peered out of the tavern window into a solid gray murk that hid the cliffs along the shore. The place was depressingly reminiscent of the landscape near the silkies’ isle, with the smell of dead seaweed strong in the air, and the crashing of waves so loud as to inhibit conversation, even inside the small pothouse by the wharf. Young Ian had been taken nearly a month before. Now it was past Christmas, and here we were, still in Scotland, no more than a few miles from the seals’ island.
Jamie was striding up and down the dock outside, in spite of the cold rain, too restless to stay indoors by the fire. The sea journey from France back to Scotland had been no better for him than the first Channel crossing, and I knew the prospect of two or three months aboard the Artemis filled him with dread. At the same time, his impatience to be in pursuit of the kidnappers was so acute that any delay filled him with frustration. More than once I had awakened in the middle of the night to find him gone, walking the streets of Le Havre alone.
Ironically, this final delay was of his own making. We had touched at Cape Wrath to retrieve Fergus, and with him, the small group of smugglers whom Jamie had sent him to fetch, before leaving ourselves for Le Havre.
“There’s no telling what we shall find in the Indies, Sassenach,” Jamie had explained to me. “I dinna mean to go up against a shipload of pirates singlehanded, nor yet to fight wi’ men I dinna ken alongside me.” The smugglers were all men of the shore, accustomed to boats and the ocean, if not to ships; they would be hired on as part of the Artemis’s crew, shorthanded in consequence of the late season in which we sailed.
Cape Wrath was a small port, with little traffic at this time of year. Besides the Artemis, only a few fishing boats and a ketch were tied up at the wooden wharf. There was a small pothouse, though, in which the crew of the Artemis cheerfully passed their time while waiting, the men who would not fit inside the house crouching under the eaves, swilling pots of ale passed through the windows by their comrades indoors. Jamie walked on the shore, coming in only for meals, when he would sit before the fire, the wisps of steam rising from his soggy garments symptomatic of his increasing aggravation of soul.
Fergus was late. No one seemed to mind the wait but Jamie and Jared’s captain. Captain Raines, a small, plump, elderly man, spent most of his time on the deck of his ship, keeping one weather eye on the overcast sky, and the other on his barometer.
“That’s verra strong-smelling stuff, Sassenach,” Jamie observed, during one of his brief visits to the taproom. “What is it?”
“Fresh ginger,” I answered, holding up the remains of the root I was grating. “It’s the thing most of my herbals say is best for nausea.”
“Oh, aye?” He picked up the bowl, sniffed at the contents, and sneezed explosively, to the vast amusement of the onlookers. I snatched back the bowl before he could spill it.
“You don’t take it like snuff,” I said. “You drink it in tea. And I hope to heaven it works, because if it doesn’t, we’ll be scooping you out of the bilges, if bilges are what I think they are.”
“Oh, not to worry, missus,” one of the older hands assured me, overhearing. “Lots o’ green hands feel a bit queerlike the first day or two. But usually they comes round soon enough; by the third day, they’ve got used to the pitch and roll, and they’re up in the rigging, happy as larks.”
I glanced at Jamie, who was markedly unlarklike at the moment. Still, this comment seemed to give him some hope, for he brightened a bit, and waved to the harassed servingmaid for a glass of ale.
“It may be so,” he said. “Jared said the same; that seasickness doesna generally last more than a few days, provided the seas aren’t too heavy.” He took a small sip of his ale, and then, with growing confidence, a deeper swallow. “I can stand three days of it, I suppose.”
* * *
Late in the afternoon of the second day, six men appeared, winding their way along the stony shore on shaggy Highland ponies.
“There’s Raeburn in the lead,” Jamie said, shading his eyes and squinting to distinguish the identities of the six small dots. “Kennedy after him, then Innes—he’s missing the left arm, see?—and Meldrum, and that’ll be MacLeod with him, they always ride together like that. Is the last man Gordon, then, or Fergus?”
“It must be Gordon,” I said, peering over his shoulder at the approaching men, “because it’s much too fat to be Fergus.”
“Where the devil is Fergus, then?” Jamie asked Raeburn, once the smugglers had been greeted, introduced to their new shipmates, and sat down to a hot supper and a cheerful glass.
Raeburn bobbed his head in response, hastily swallowing the remains of his pasty.
“Weel, he said to me as how he’d some business to see to, and would I see to the hiring of the horses, and speak to Meldrum and MacLeod about coming, for they were out wi’ their own boat at the time, and not expected back for a day or twa more, and…”
“What business?” Jamie said sharply, but got no more than a shrug in reply. Jamie muttered something under his breath in Gaelic, but returned to his own supper without further comment.
The crew being now complete—save Fergus—preparations began in the morning for getting under way. The deck was a scene of organized confusion, with bodies darting to and fro, popping up through hatchways, and dropping suddenly out of the rigging like dead flies. Jamie stood near the wheel, keeping out of the way, but lending a hand whenever a matter requiring muscle rather than skill arose. For the most part, though, he simply stood, eyes fixed on the road along the shore.
“We shall have to sail by midafternoon, or miss the tide.” Captain Raines spoke kindly, but firmly. “We’ll have surly weather in twenty-four hours; the glass is falling, and I feel it in my neck.” The Captain tenderly massaged the part in question, and nodded at the sky, which had gone from pewter to lead-gray since early morning. “I’ll not set sail in a storm if I can help it, and if we mean to make the Indies as soon as possible—”
“Aye, I understand, Captain,” Jamie interrupted him. “Of course; ye must do as seems best.” He stood back to let a bustling seaman go past, and the Captain disappeared, issuing orders as he went.
As the day wore on, Jamie seemed composed as usual, but I noticed that the stiff fingers fluttered against his thigh more and more often, the only outward sign of worry. And worried he was. Fergus had been with him since the day twenty years before, when Jamie had found him in a Paris brothel, and hired him to steal Charles Stuart’s letters.
More than that; Fergus had lived at Lallybroch since before Young Ian was born. The boy had been a younger brother to Fergus, and Jamie the closest thing to a father that Fergus had ever known. I could not imagine any business so urgent that it would have kept him from Jamie’s side. Neither could Jamie, and his fingers beat a silent tattoo on the wood of the rail.
Then it was time, and Jamie turned reluctantly away, tearing his eyes from the empty shore. The hatches were battened, the lines coiled, and several seamen leapt ashore to cast free the mooring hawsers; there were six of them, each a rope as thick around as my wrist.
I put a hand on Jamie’s arm in silent sympathy.
“You’d better come down below,” I said. “I’ve got a spirit lamp. I’ll brew you some hot ginger tea, and then you—”
The sound of a galloping horse echoed along the shore, the scrunch of hoofbeats on gravel echoing from the cliffside well in advance of its appearance.
“There he is, the wee fool,” Jamie said, his relief evident in voice and body. He turned to Captain Raines, one brow raised in question. “There’s enough of the tide left? Aye, then, let’s go.”
“Cast off!” the Captain bellowed, and the waiting hands sprang into action. The last of the lines tethering us to the piling was slipped free and neatly coiled, and all around us, lines tightened and sails snapped overhead, as the bosun ran up and down the deck, bawling orders in a voice like rusty iron.
“She moves! She stirs! ‘She seems to feel / the thrill of life along her keel’!” I declaimed, delighted to feel the deck quiver beneath my feet as the ship came alive, the energy of all the crew poured into its inanimate hulk, transmuted by the power of the wind-catching sails.
“Oh, God,” said Jamie hollowly, feeling the same thing. He grasped the rail, closed his eyes and swallowed.
“Mr. Willoughby says he has a cure for seasickness,” I said, watching him sympathetically.
“Ha,” he said, opening his eyes. “I ken what he means, and if he thinks I’ll let him—what the bloody hell!”
I whirled to look, and saw what had caused him to break off. Fergus was on deck, reaching up to help down a girl perched awkwardly above him on the railing, her long blond hair whipping in the wind. Laoghaire’s daughter—Marsali MacKimmie.
Before I could speak, Jamie was past me and striding toward the pair.
“What in the name of holy God d’ye mean by this, ye wee coofs?” he was demanding, by the time I made my way into earshot through the obstacle course of lines and seamen. He loomed menacingly over the pair, a foot taller than either of them.
“We are married,” Fergus said, bravely moving in front of Marsali. He looked both scared and excited, his face pale beneath the shock of black hair.
“Married!” Jamie’s hands clenched at his sides, and Fergus took an involuntary step backward, nearly treading on Marsali’s toes. “What d’ye mean, ‘married’?”
I assumed this was a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t; Jamie’s appreciation of the situation had, as usual, outstripped mine by yards and seized at once upon the salient point.
“Have ye bedded her?” he demanded bluntly. Standing behind him, I couldn’t see his face, but I knew what it must look like, if only because I could see the effect of his expression on Fergus. The Frenchman turned a couple of shades paler and licked his lips.
“Er…no, milord,” he said, just as Marsali, eyes blazing, thrust her chin up and said defiantly, “Yes, he has!”
Jamie glanced briefly back and forth between the two of them, snorted loudly, and turned away.
“Mr. Warren!” he called down the deck to the ship’s sailing master. “Put back to the shore, if ye please!”
Mr. Warren stopped, openmouthed, in the middle of an order addressed to the rigging, and stared, first at Jamie, then—quite elaborately—at the receding shoreline. In the few moments since the appearance of the putative newlyweds, the Artemis had moved more than a thousand yards from the shore, and the rocks of the cliffs were slipping by with increasing speed.
“I don’t believe he can,” I said. “I think we’re already in the tide-race.”
No sailor himself, Jamie had spent sufficient time in the company of seamen at least to understand the notion that time and tide wait for no one. He breathed through his teeth for a moment, then jerked his head toward the ladder that led belowdecks.
“Come down, then, the both of ye.”
Fergus and Marsali sat together in the tiny cabin, huddled on one berth, hands clutched tight. Jamie waved me to a seat on the other berth, then turned to the pair, hands on his hips.
“Now, then,” he said. “What’s this nonsense of bein’ married?”
“It is true, milord,” Fergus said. He was quite pale, but his dark eyes were bright with excitement. His one hand tightened on Marsali’s, his hook resting across his thigh.
“Aye?” Jamie said, with the maximum of skepticism. “And who married ye?”
The two glanced at each other, and Fergus licked his lips briefly before replying.
“We—we are handfast.”
“Before witnesses,” Marsali put in. In contrast to Fergus’s paleness, a high color burned in her cheeks. She had her mother’s roseleaf skin, but the stubborn set of her jaw had likely come from somewhere else. She put a hand to her bosom, where something crackled under the fabric. “I ha’ the contract, and the signatures, here.”
Jamie made a low growling noise in his throat. By the laws of Scotland, two people could in fact be legally married by clasping hands before witnesses—handfasting—and declaring themselves to be man and wife.
“Aye, well,” he said. “But ye’re no bedded, yet, and a contract’s not enough, in the eyes o’ the Church.” He glanced out of the stern casement, where the cliffs were just visible through the ragged mist, then nodded with decision.
“We’ll stop at Lewes for the last provisions. Marsali will go ashore there; I’ll send two seamen to see her home to her mother.”
“Ye’ll do no such thing!” Marsali cried. She sat up straight, glaring at her stepfather. “I’m going wi’ Fergus!”
“Oh, no, you’re not, my lassie!” Jamie snapped. “D’ye have no feeling for your mother? To run off, wi’ no word, and leave her to be worrit—”
“I left word.” Marsali’s square chin was high. “I sent a letter from Inverness, saying I’d married Fergus and was off to sail wi’ you.”
“Sweet bleeding Jesus! She’ll think I kent all about it!” Jamie looked horror-stricken.
“We—I—did ask the lady Laoghaire for the honor of her daughter’s hand, milord,” Fergus put in. “Last month, when I came to Lallybroch.”
“Aye. Well, ye needna tell me what she said,” Jamie said dryly, seeing the sudden flush on Fergus’s cheeks. “Since I gather the general answer was no.”
“She said he was a bastard!” Marsali burst out indignantly. “And a criminal, and—and—”
“He is a bastard and a criminal,” Jamie pointed out. “And a cripple wi’ no property, either, as I’m sure your mother noticed.”
“I dinna care!” Marsali gripped Fergus’s hand and looked at him with fierce affection. “I want him.”
Taken aback, Jamie rubbed a finger across his lips. Then he took a deep breath and returned to the attack.
“Be that as it may,” he said, “ye’re too young to be married.”
“I’m fifteen; that’s plenty old enough!”
“Aye, and he’s thirty!” Jamie snapped. He shook his head, “Nay, lassie, I’m sorry about it, but I canna let ye do it. If it were nothing else, the voyage is too dangerous—”
“You’re taking her!” Marsali’s chin jerked contemptuously in my direction.
“You’ll leave Claire out of this,” Jamie said evenly. “She’s none of your concern, and—”
“Oh, she’s not? You leave my mother for this English whore, and make her a laughingstock for the whole countryside, and it’s no my concern, is it?” Marsali leapt up and stamped her foot on the deck. “And you ha’ the hellish nerve to tell me what I shall do?”
“I have,” Jamie said, keeping hold of his temper with some difficulty. “My private affairs are not your concern—”
“And mine aren’t any of yours!”
Fergus, looking alarmed, was on his feet, trying to calm the girl.
“Marsali, ma chère, you must not speak to milord in such a way. He is only—”
“I’ll speak to him any way I want!”
“No, you will not!” Surprised at the sudden harshness in Fergus’s tone, Marsali blinked. Only an inch or two taller than his new wife, the Frenchman had a certain wiry authority that made him seem much bigger than he was.
“No,” he said more softly. “Sit down, ma p’tite.” He pressed her back down on the berth, and stood before her.
“Milord has been to me more than a father,” he said gently to the girl. “I owe him my life a thousand times. He is also your stepfather. However your mother may regard him, he has without doubt supported and sheltered her and you and your sister. You owe him respect, at the least.”
Marsali bit her lip, her eyes bright. Finally she ducked her head awkwardly at Jamie.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, and the air of tension in the cabin lessened slightly.
“It’s all right, lassie,” Jamie said gruffly. He looked at her and sighed. “But still, Marsali, we must send ye back to your mother.”
“I won’t go.” The girl was calmer now, but the set of her pointed chin was the same. She glanced at Fergus, then at Jamie. “He says we havena bedded together, but we have. Or at any rate, I shall say we have. If ye send me home, I’ll tell everyone that he’s had me; so ye see—I shall either be married or ruined.” Her tone was reasonable and determined. Jamie closed his eyes.
“May the Lord deliver me from women,” he said between his teeth. He opened his eyes and glared at her.
“All right!” he said. “You’re married. But you’ll do it right, before a priest. We’ll find one in the Indies, when we land. And until ye’ve been blessed, Fergus doesna touch you. Aye?” He turned a ferocious gaze on both of them.
“Yes, milord,” said Fergus, his features suffused with joy. “Merci beaucoup!” Marsali narrowed her eyes at Jamie, but seeing that he wasn’t to be moved, she bowed her head demurely, with a sidelong glance at me.
“Yes, Daddy,” she said.
* * *
The question of Fergus’s elopement had at least distracted Jamie’s mind temporarily from the motion of the ship, but the palliative effect didn’t last. He held on grimly nevertheless, turning greener by the moment, but refusing to leave the deck and go below, so long as the shore of Scotland was in sight.
“I may never see it again,” he said gloomily, when I tried to persuade him to go below and lie down. He leaned heavily on the rail he had just been vomiting over, eyes resting longingly on the unprepossessingly bleak coast behind us.
“No, you’ll see it,” I said, with an unthinking surety. “You’re coming back. I don’t know when, but I know you’ll come back.”
He turned his head to look up at me, puzzled. Then the ghost of a smile crossed his face.
“You’ve seen my grave,” he said softly. “Haven’t ye?”
I hesitated, but he didn’t seem upset, and I nodded.
“It’s all right,” he said. He closed his eyes, breathing heavily. “Don’t…don’t tell me when, though, if ye dinna mind.”
“I can’t,” I said. “There weren’t any dates on it. Just your name—and mine.”
“Yours?” His eyes popped open.
I nodded again, feeling my throat tighten at the memory of that granite slab. It had been what they call a “marriage stone,” a quarter-circle carved to fit with another in a complete arch. I had, of course, seen only the one half.
“It had all your names on it. That’s how I knew it was you. And underneath, it said, ‘Beloved husband of Claire.’ At the time, I didn’t see how—but now, of course, I do.”
He nodded slowly, absorbing it. “Aye, I see. Aye well, I suppose if I shall be in Scotland, and still married to you—then maybe ‘when’ doesna matter so much.” He gave me a shadow of his usual grin, and added wryly, “It also means we’ll find Young Ian safe, for I’ll tell ye, Sassenach, I willna set foot in Scotland again without him.”
“We’ll find him,” I said, with an assurance I didn’t altogether feel. I put a hand on his shoulder and stood beside him, watching Scotland slowly recede in the distance.
* * *
By the time evening set in, the rocks of Scotland had disappeared in the sea mists, and Jamie, chilled to the bone and pale as a sheet, suffered himself to be led below and put to bed. At this point, the unforeseen consequences of his ultimatum to Fergus became apparent.
There were only two small private cabins, besides the Captain’s; if Fergus and Marsali were forbidden to share one until their union was formally blessed, then clearly Jamie and Fergus would have to take one, and Marsali and I the other. It seemed destined to be a rough voyage, in more ways than one.
I had hoped that the sickness might ease, if Jamie couldn’t see the slow heave and fall of the horizon, but no such luck.
“Again?” said Fergus, sleepily rousing on one elbow in his berth, in the middle of the night. “How can he? He has eaten nothing all day!”
“Tell him that,” I said, trying to breathe through my mouth as I sidled toward the door, a basin in my hands, making my way with difficulty through the tiny, cramped quarters. The deck rose and fell beneath my unaccustomed feet, making it hard to keep my balance.
“Here, milady, allow me.” Fergus swung bare feet out of bed and stood up beside me, staggering and nearly bumping into me as he reached for the basin.
“You should go and sleep now, milady,” he said, taking it from my hands. “I will see to him, be assured.”
“Well…” The thought of my berth was undeniably tempting. It had been a long day.
“Go, Sassenach,” Jamie said. His face was a ghastly white, sheened with sweat in the dim light of the small oil light that burned on the wall. “I’ll be all right.”
This was patently untrue; at the same time, it was unlikely that my presence would help particularly. Fergus could do the little that could be done; there was no known cure for seasickness, after all. One could only hope that Jared was right, and that it would ease of itself as the Artemis made its way out into the longer swells of the Atlantic.
“All right,” I said, giving in. “Perhaps you’ll feel better in the morning.”
Jamie opened one eye for a moment, then groaned, and shivering, closed it again.
“Or perhaps I’ll be dead,” he suggested.
On that cheery note, I made my way out into the dark companionway, only to stumble over the prostrate form of Mr. Willoughby, curled up against the door of the cabin. He grunted in surprise, then, seeing that it was only me, rolled slowly onto all fours and crawled into the cabin, swaying with the rolling of the ship. Ignoring Fergus’s exclamation of distate, he curled himself about the pedestal of the table, and fell promptly back asleep, an expression of beatific content on his small round face.
My own cabin was just across the companionway, but I paused for a moment, to breathe in the fresh air coming down from the deck above. There was an extraordinary variety of noises, from the creak and crack of timbers all around, to the snap of sails and the whine of rigging above, and the faint echo of a shout somewhere on deck.
Despite the racket and the cold air pouring in down the companionway, Marsali was sound asleep, a humped black shape in one of the two berths. Just as well; at least I needn’t try to make awkward conversation with her.
Despite myself, I felt a pang of sympathy for her; this was likely not what she had expected of her wedding night. It was too cold to undress; fully clothed, I crawled into my small box-berth and lay listening to the sounds of the ship around me. I could hear the hissing of the water passing the hull, only a foot or two beyond my head. It was an oddly comforting sound. To the accompaniment of the song of the wind and the faint sound of retching across the corridor, I fell peacefully asleep.
* * *
The Artemis was a tidy ship, as ships go, but when you cram thirty-two men—and two women—into a space eighty feet long and twenty-five wide, together with six tons of rough-cured hides, forty-two barrels of sulfur, and enough sheets of copper and tin to sheathe the Queen Mary, basic hygiene is bound to suffer.
By the second day, I had already flushed a rat—a small rat, as Fergus pointed out, but still a rat—in the hold where I went to retrieve my large medicine box, packed away there by mistake during the loading. There was a soft shuffling noise in my cabin at night, which when the lantern was lit proved to be the footsteps of several dozen middling-size cockroaches, all fleeing frantically for the shelter of the shadows.
The heads, two small quarter-galleries on either side of the ship toward the bow, were nothing more than a pair of boards—with a strategic slot between them—suspended over the bounding waves eight feet below, so that the user was likely to get an unexpected dash of cold seawater at some highly inopportune moment. I suspected that this, coupled with a diet of salt pork and hardtack, likely caused constipation to be epidemic among seamen.
Mr. Warren, the ship’s master, proudly informed me that the decks were swabbed regularly every morning, the brass polished, and everything generally made shipshape, which seemed a desirable state of affairs, given that we were in fact aboard a ship. Still, all the holystoning in the world could not disguise the fact that thirty-four human beings occupied this limited space, and only one of us bathed.
Given such circumstances, I was more than startled when I opened the door of the galley on the second morning, in search of boiling water.
I had expected the same dim and grubby conditions that obtained in the cabins and holds, and was dazzled by the glitter of sunlight through the overhead lattice on a rank of copper pans, so scrubbed that the metal of their bottoms shone pink. I blinked against the dazzle, my eyes adjusting, and saw that the walls of the galley were solid with built-in racks and cupboards, so constructed as to be proof against the roughest seas.
Blue and green glass bottles of spice, each tenderly jacketed in felt against injury, vibrated softly in their rack above the pots. Knives, cleavers, and skewers gleamed in deadly array, in a quantity sufficient to deal with a whale carcass, should one present itself. A rimmed double shelf hung from the bulkhead, thick with bulb glasses and shallow plates, on which a quantity of fresh-cut turnip tops were set to sprout for greens. An enormous pot bubbled softly over the stove, emitting a fragrant steam. And in the midst of all this spotless splendor stood the cook, surveying me with baleful eye.
“Out,” he said.
“Good morning,” I said, as cordially as possible. “My name is Claire Fraser.”
“Out,” he repeated, in the same graveled tones.
“I am Mrs. Fraser, the wife of the supercargo, and ship’s surgeon for this voyage,” I said, giving him eyeball for eyeball. “I require six gallons of boiling water, when convenient, for cleaning of the head.”
His small, bright blue eyes grew somewhat smaller and brighter, the black pupils of them training on me like gunbarrels.
“I am Aloysius O’Shaughnessy Murphy,” he said. “Ship’s cook. And I require ye to take yer feet off my fresh-washed deck. I do not allow women in my galley.” He glowered at me under the edge of the black cotton kerchief that swathed his head. He was several inches shorter than I, but made up for it by measuring about three feet more in circumference, with a wrestler’s shoulders and a head like a cannonball, set upon them without apparent benefit of an intervening neck. A wooden leg completed the ensemble.
I took one step back, with dignity, and spoke to him from the relative safety of the passageway.
“In that case,” I said, “you may send up the hot water by the messboy.”
“I may,” he agreed. “And then again, I may not.” He turned his broad back on me in dismissal, busying himself with a chopping block, a cleaver, and a joint of mutton.
I stood in the passageway for a moment, thinking. The thud of the cleaver sounded regularly against the wood. Mr. Murphy reached up to his spice rack, grasped a bottle without looking, and sprinkled a good quantity of the contents over the diced meat. The dusty scent of sage filled the air, superseded at once by the pungency of an onion, whacked in two with a casual swipe of the cleaver and tossed into the mixture.
Evidently the crew of the Artemis did not subsist entirely upon salt pork and hardtack, then. I began to understand the reasons for Captain Raines’s rather pear-shaped physique. I poked my head back through the door, taking care to stand outside.
“Cardamom,” I said firmly. “Nutmeg, whole. Dried this year. Fresh extract of anise. Ginger root, two large ones, with no blemishes.” I paused. Mr. Murphy had stopped chopping, cleaver poised motionless above the block.
“And,” I added, “half a dozen whole vanilla beans. From Ceylon.”
He turned slowly, wiping his hands upon his leather apron. Unlike his surroundings, neither the apron nor his other apparel was spotless.
He had a broad, florid face, edged with stiff sandy whiskers like a scrubbing brush, which quivered slightly as he looked at me, like the antennae of some large insect. His tongue darted out to lick pursed lips.
“Saffron?” he asked hoarsely.
“Half an ounce,” I said promptly, taking care to conceal any trace of triumph in my manner.
He breathed in deeply, lust gleaming bright in his small blue eyes.
“Ye’ll find a mat just outside, ma’am, should ye care to wipe yer boots and come in.”
* * *
One head sterilized within the limits of boiling water and Fergus’s tolerance, I made my way back to my cabin to clean up for luncheon. Marsali was not there; she was undoubtedly attending to Fergus, whose labors at my insistence had been little short of heroic.
I rinsed my own hands with alcohol, brushed my hair, and then went across the passage to see whether—by some wild chance—Jamie wanted anything to eat or drink. One glance disabused me of this notion.
Marsali and I had been given the largest cabin, which meant that each of us had approximately six square feet of space, not including the beds. These were box-berths, a sort of enclosed bed built into the wall, about five and a half feet long. Marsali fitted neatly into hers, but I was forced to adopt a slightly curled position, like a caper on toast, which caused me to wake up with pins and needles in my feet.
Jamie and Fergus had similar berths. Jamie was lying on his side, wedged into one of these like a snail into its shell; one of which beasts he strongly resembled at the moment, being a pale and viscid gray in color, with streaks of green and yellow that contrasted nastily with his red hair. He opened one eye when he heard me come in, regarded me dimly for a moment, and closed it again.
“Not so good, hm?” I said sympathetically.
The eye opened again, and he seemed to be preparing to say something. He opened his mouth, changed his mind, and closed it again.
“No,” he said, and shut the eye once more.
I tentatively smoothed his hair, but he seemed too sunk in misery to notice.
“Captain Raines says it will likely be calmer by tomorrow,” I offered. The sea wasn’t terribly rough as it was, but there was a noticeable rise and fall.
“It doesna matter,” he said, not opening his eyes. “I shall be dead by then—or at least I hope so.”
“Afraid not,” I said, shaking my head. “Nobody dies of seasickness; though I must say it seems a wonder that they don’t, looking at you.”
“Not that.” He opened his eyes, and struggled up on one elbow, an effort that left him clammy with sweat and white to the lips.
“Claire. Be careful. I should have told ye before—but I didna want to worry ye, and I thought—” His face changed. Familiar as I was with expressions of bodily infirmity, I had the basin there just in time.
“Oh, God.” He lay limp and exhausted, pale as the sheet.
“What should you have told me?” I asked, wrinkling my nose as I put the basin on the floor near the door. “Whatever it was, you should have told me before we sailed, but it’s too late to think of that.”
“I didna think it would be so bad,” he murmured.
“You never do,” I said, rather tartly. “What did you want to tell me, though?”
“Ask Fergus,” he said. “Say I said he must tell ye. And tell him Innes is all right.”
“What are you talking about?” I was mildly alarmed; delirium wasn’t a common effect of seasickness.
His eyes opened, and fixed on mine with great effort. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow and upper lip.
“Innes,” he said. “He canna be the one. He doesna mean to kill me.”
A small shiver ran up my spine.
“Are you quite all right, Jamie?” I asked. I bent and wiped his face, and he gave me the ghost of an exhausted smile. He had no fever, and his eyes were clear.
“Who?” I said carefully, with a sudden feeling that there were eyes fixed on my back. “Who does mean to kill you?”
“I don’t know.” A passing spasm contorted his features, but he clamped his lips tight, and managed to subdue it.
“Ask Fergus,” he whispered, when he could talk again. “In private. He’ll tell ye.”
I felt exceedingly helpless. I had no notion what he was talking about, but if there was any danger, I wasn’t about to leave him alone.
“I’ll wait until he comes down,” I said.
One hand was curled near his nose. It straightened slowly and slid under the pillow, coming out with his dirk, which he clasped to his chest.
“I shall be all right,” he said. “Go on, then, Sassenach. I shouldna think they’d try anything in daylight. If at all.”
I didn’t find this reassuring in the slightest, but there seemed nothing else to do. He lay quite still, the dirk held to his chest like a stone tomb-figure.
“Go,” he murmured again, his lips barely moving.
Just outside the cabin door, something stirred in the shadows at the end of the passage. Peering sharply, I made out the crouched silk shape of Mr. Willoughby, chin resting on his knees. He spread his knees apart, and bowed his head politely between them.
“Not worry, honorable First Wife,” he assured me in a sibilant whisper. “I watch.”
“Good,” I said, “keep doing it.” And went, in considerable distress of mind, to find Fergus.
* * *
Fergus, found with Marsali on the after deck, peering into the ship’s wake at several large white birds, was somewhat more reassuring.
“We are not sure that anyone intends actually to kill milord,” he explained. “The casks in the warehouse might have been an accident—I have seen such things happen more than once—and likewise the fire in the shed, but—”
“Wait one minute, young Fergus,” I said, gripping him by the sleeve. “What casks, and what fire?”
“Oh,” he said, looking surprised. “Milord did not tell you?”
“Milord is sick as a dog, and incapable of telling me anything more than that I should ask you.”
Fergus shook his head, clicking his tongue in a censorious French way.
“He never thinks he will be so ill,” he said. “He always is, and yet every time he must set foot on a ship, he insists that it is only a matter of will; his mind will be master, and he will not allow his stomach to be dictating his actions. Then within ten feet of the dock, he has turned green.”
“He never told me that,” I said, amused at this description. “Stubborn little fool.”
Marsali had been hanging back behind Fergus with an air of haughty reserve, pretending that I wasn’t there. At this unexpected description of Jamie, though, she was surprised into a brief snort of laughter. She caught my eye and turned hastily away, cheeks flaming, to stare out to sea.
Fergus smiled and shrugged. “You know what he is like, milady,” he said, with tolerant affection. “He could be dying, and one would never know.”
“You’d know if you went down and looked at him now,” I said tartly. At the same time, I was conscious of surprise, accompanied by a faint feeling of warmth in the pit of my stomach. Fergus had been with Jamie almost daily for twenty years, and still Jamie would not admit to him the weakness that he would readily let me see. Were he dying, I would know about it, all right.
“Men,” I said, shaking my head.
“Milady?”
“Never mind,” I said. “You were telling me about casks and fires.”
“Oh, indeed, yes.” Fergus brushed back his thick shock of black hair with his hook. “It was the day before I met you again, milady, at Madame Jeanne’s.”
The day I had returned to Edinburgh, no more than a few hours before I had found Jamie at the printshop. He had been at the Burntisland docks with Fergus and a gang of six men during the night, taking advantage of the late dawn of winter to retrieve several casks of unbonded Madeira, smuggled in among a shipment of innocent flour.
“Madeira does not soak through the wood so quickly as some other wines do,” Fergus explained. “You cannot bring in brandy under the noses of the Customs like that, for the dogs will smell it at once, even if their masters do not. But not Madeira, provided it has been freshly casked.”
“Dogs?”
“Some of the Customs inspectors have dogs, milady, trained to smell out such contraband as tobacco and brandy.” He waved away the interruption, squinting his eyes against the brisk sea wind.
“We had removed the Madeira safely, and brought it to the warehouse—one of those belonging apparently to Lord Dundas, but in fact it belongs jointly to milord and Madame Jeanne.”
“Indeed,” I said, again with that minor dip of the stomach I had felt when Jamie opened the door of the brothel on Queen Street. “Partners, are they?”
“Well, of a sort.” Fergus sounded regretful. “Milord has only a five percent share, in return for his finding the place, and making the arrangements. Printing as an occupation is much less profitable than keeping a h?tel de joie.” Marsali didn’t look round, but I thought her shoulders stiffened further.
“I daresay,” I said. Edinburgh and Madame Jeanne were a long way behind us, after all. “Get on with the story. Someone may cut Jamie’s throat before I find out why.”
“Of course, milady.” Fergus bobbed his head apologetically.
The contraband had been safely hidden, awaiting disguise and sale, and the smugglers had paused to refresh themselves with a drink in lieu of breakfast, before making their way home in the brightening dawn. Two of the men had asked for their shares at once, needing the money to pay gaming debts and buy food for their families. Jamie agreeing to this, he had gone across to the warehouse office, where some gold was kept.
As the men relaxed over their whisky in a corner of the warehouse, their joking and laughter was interrupted by a sudden vibration that shook the floor beneath their feet.
“Come-down!” shouted MacLeod, an experienced warehouseman, and the men had dived for cover, even before they had seen the great rack of hogsheads near the office quiver and rumble, one two-ton cask rolling down the stack with ponderous grace, to smash in an aromatic lake of ale, followed within seconds by a cascade of its monstrous fellows.
“Milord was crossing in front of the rank,” Fergus said, shaking his head. “It was only by the grace of the Blessed Virgin herself that he was not crushed.” A bounding cask had missed him by inches, in fact, and he had escaped another only by diving headfirst out of its way and under an empty wine-rack that had deflected its course.
“As I say, such things happen often,” Fergus said, shrugging. “A dozen men are killed each year in such accidents, in the warehouses near Edinburgh alone. But with the other things…”
The week before the incident of the casks, a small shed full of packing straw had burst into flames while Jamie was working in it. A lantern placed between him and the door had apparently fallen over, setting the straw alight and trapping Jamie in the windowless shed, behind a sudden wall of flame.
“The shed was fortunately of a most flimsy construction, and the boards half-rotted. It went up like matchwood, but milord was able to kick a hole in the back wall and crawl out, with no injury. We thought at first that the lantern had merely fallen of its own accord, and were most grateful for his escape. It was only later that milord told me he thought that he had heard a noise—perhaps a shot, perhaps only the cracking noises an old warehouse makes as its boards settle—and when he turned to see, found the flames shooting up before him.”
Fergus sighed. He looked rather tired, and I wondered whether perhaps he had stayed awake to stand watch over Jamie during the night.
“So,” he said, shrugging once more. “We do not know. Such incidents may have been no more than accident—they may not. But taking such occurrences together with what happened at Arbroath—”
“You may have a traitor among the smugglers,” I said.
“Just so, milady.” Fergus scratched his head. “But what is more disturbing to milord is the man whom the Chinaman shot at Madame Jeanne’s.”
“Because you think he was a Customs agent, who’d tracked Jamie from the docks to the brothel? Jamie said he couldn’t be, because he had no warrant.”
“Not proof,” Fergus noted. “But worse, the booklet he had in his pocket.”
“The New Testament?” I saw no particular relevance to that, and said so.
“Oh, but there is, milady—or might be, I should say,” Fergus corrected himself. “You see, the booklet was one that milord himself had printed.”
“I see,” I said slowly, “or at least I’m beginning to.”
Fergus nodded gravely. “To have the Customs trace brandy from the points of delivery to the brothel would be bad, of course, but not fatal—another hiding place could be found; in fact, milord has arrangements with the owners of two taverns that…but that is of no matter.” He waved it away. “But to have the agents of the Crown connect the notorious smuggler Jamie Roy with the respectable Mr. Malcolm of Carfax Close…” He spread his hands wide. “You see?”
I did. Were the Customs to get too close to his smuggling operations, Jamie could merely disperse his assistants, cease frequenting his smugglers’ haunts, and disappear for a time, retreating into his guise as a printer until it seemed safe to resume his illegal activities. But to have his two identities both detected and merged was not only to deprive him of both his sources of income, but to arouse such suspicion as might lead to discovery of his real name, his seditious activities, and thence to Lallybroch and his history as rebel and convicted traitor. They would have evidence to hang him a dozen times—and once was enough.
“I certainly do see. So Jamie wasn’t only worried about Laoghaire and Hobart MacKenzie, when he told Ian he thought it would be as well for us to skip to France for a bit.”
Paradoxically, I felt somewhat relieved by Fergus’s revelations. At least I hadn’t been single-handedly responsible for Jamie’s exile. My reappearance might have precipitated the crisis with Laoghaire, but I had had nothing to do with any of this.
“Exactly, milady. And still, we do not know for certain that one of the men has betrayed us—or whether, even if there should be a traitor among them, he should wish to kill milord.”
“That’s a point.” It was, but not a large one. If one of the smugglers had undertaken to betray Jamie for money, that was one thing. If it was for some motive of personal vengeance, though, the man might well feel compelled to take matters into his own hands, now that we were—temporarily, at least—out of reach of the King’s Customs.
“If so,” Fergus was continuing, “it will be one of six men—the six milord sent me to collect, to sail with us. These six were present both when the casks fell, and when the shed caught fire; all have been to the brothel.” He paused. “And all of them were present on the road at Arbroath, when we were ambushed, and found the exciseman hanged.”
“Do they all know about the printshop?”
“Oh, no, milady! Milord has always been most careful to let none of the smuggling men know of that—but it is always possible that one of them shall have seen him on the streets in Edinburgh, followed him to Carfax Close, and so learned of A. Malcolm.” He smiled wryly. “Milord is not the most inconspicuous of men, milady.”
“Very true,” I said, matching his tone. “But now all of them know Jamie’s real name—Captain Raines calls him Fraser.”
“Yes,” he said, with a faint, grim smile. “That is why we must discover whether we do indeed sail with a traitor—and who it is.”
Looking at him, it occurred to me for the first time that Fergus was indeed a grown man now—and a dangerous one. I had known him as an eager, squirrel-toothed boy of ten, and to me, something of that boy would always remain in his face. But some time had passed since he had been a Paris street urchin.
Marsali had remained staring out to sea during most of this discussion, preferring to take no risk of having to converse with me. She had obviously been listening, though, and now I saw a shiver pass through her thin shoulders—whether of cold or apprehension, I couldn’t tell. She likely hadn’t planned on shipping with a potential murderer when she had agreed to elope with Fergus.
“You’d better take Marsali below,” I said to Fergus. “She’s going blue round the edges. Don’t worry,” I said to Marsali, in a cool voice, “I shan’t be in the cabin for some time.”
“Where are you going, milady?” Fergus was squinting at me, slightly suspicious. “Milord will not wish you to be—”
“I don’t mean to,” I assured him. “I’m going to the galley.”
“The galley?” His fine black brows shot up.
“To see whether Aloysius O’Shaughnessy Murphy has anything to suggest for seasickness,” I said. “If we don’t get Jamie back on his feet, he isn’t going to care whether anyone cuts his throat or not.”
* * *
Murphy, sweetened by an ounce of dried orange peel and a bottle of Jared’s best claret, was quite willing to oblige. In fact, he seemed to consider the problem of keeping food in Jamie’s stomach something of a professional challenge, and spent hours in mystic contemplation of his spice rack and pantries—all to no avail.
We encountered no storms, but the winter winds drove a heavy swell before them, and the Artemis rose and fell ten feet at a time, laboring up and down the great glassy peaks of the waves. There were times, watching the hypnotic rise and lurch of the taffrail against the horizon, when I felt a few interior qualms of my own, and turned hastily away.
Jamie showed no signs of being about to fulfill Jared’s heartening prophecy and spring to his feet, suddenly accustomed to the motion. He remained in his berth, the color of rancid custard, moving only to stagger to the head, and guarded in turns day and night by Mr. Willoughby and Fergus.
On the positive side of things, none of the six smugglers made any move that might be considered threatening. All expressed a sympathetic concern for Jamie’s welfare, and—carefully watched—all had visited him briefly in his cabin, with no suspicious circumstances attending.
For my part, I spent the days in exploring the ship, attending to such small medical emergencies as arose from the daily business of sailing—a smashed finger, a cracked rib, bleeding gums and an abscessed tooth—and pounding herbs and making medicines in a corner of the galley, allowed to work there by Murphy’s grace.
Marsali was absent from our shared cabin when I rose, already asleep when I returned to it, and silently hostile when the cramped confines of shipboard forced us to meet on deck or over meals. I assumed that the hostility was in part the result of her natural feelings for her mother, and in part the result of frustration over passing her night hours in my company, rather than Fergus’s.
For that matter, if she remained untouched—and judging from her sullen demeanor, I was reasonably sure she did—it was owing entirely to Fergus’s respect for Jamie’s dictates. In terms of his role as guardian of his stepdaughter’s virtue, Jamie himself was a negligible force at the moment.
“Wot, not the broth, too?” Murphy said. The cook’s broad red face lowered menacingly. “Which I’ve had folk rise from their deathbeds after a sup of that broth!”
He took the pannikin of broth from Fergus, sniffed at it critically, and thrust it under my nose.
“Here, smell that, missus. Marrow bones, garlic, caraway seed, and a lump o’ pork fat to flavor, all strained careful through muslin, same as some folks bein’ poorly to their stomachs can’t abide chunks, but chunks you’ll not find there, not a one!”
The broth was in fact a clear golden brown, with an appetizing smell that made my own mouth water, despite the excellent breakfast I had made less than an hour before. Captain Raines had a delicate stomach, and in consequence had taken some pains both in the procurement of a cook and the provisioning of the galley, to the benefit of the officers’ table.
Murphy, with a wooden leg and the general dimensions of a rum cask, looked the picture of a thoroughgoing pirate, but in fact had a reputation as the best sea-cook in Le Havre—as he had told me himself, without the least boastfulness. He considered cases of seasickness a challenge to his skill, and Jamie, still prostrate after four days, was a particular affront to him.
“I’m sure it’s wonderful broth,” I assured him. “It’s just that he can’t keep anything down.”
Murphy grunted dubiously, but turned and carefully poured the remains of the broth into one of the numerous kettles that steamed day and night over the galley fire.
Scowling horribly and running one hand through the wisps of his scanty blond hair, he opened a cupboard and closed it, then bent to rummage through a chest of provisions, muttering under his breath.
“A bit o’ hardtack, maybe?” he muttered. “Dry, that’s what’s wanted. Maybe a whiff o’ vinegar, though; tart pickle, say…”
I watched in fascination as the cook’s huge, sausage-fingered hands flicked deftly through the stock of provisions, plucking dainties and assembling them swiftly on a tray.
“’Ere, let’s try this, then,” he said, handing me the finished tray. “Let ’im suck on the pickled gherkins, but don’t let ’im bite ’em yet. Then follow on with a bite of the plain hardtack—there ain’t no weevils in it yet, I don’t think—but see as he don’t drink water with it. Then a bite of gherkin, well-chewed, to make the spittle flow, a bite of hardtack, and so to go on with. That much stayin’ down, then, we can proceed to the custard; which it’s fresh-made last evening for the Captain’s supper. Then if that sticks…” His voice followed me out of the galley, continuing the catalogue of available nourishment. “…milk toast, which it’s made with goat’s milk, and fresh-milked, too…
“…syllabub beat up well with whisky and a nice egg…” boomed down the passageway as I negotiated the narrow turn with the loaded tray, carefully stepping over Mr. Willoughby, who was as usual crouched in a corner of the passage by Jamie’s door like a small blue lapdog.
One step inside the cabin, though, I could see that the exercise of Murphy’s culinary skill was going to be once again in vain. In the usual fashion of a man feeling unwell, Jamie had managed to arrange his surroundings to be as depressing and uncomfortable as possible. The tiny cabin was dank and squalid, the cramped berth covered with a cloth so as to exclude both light and air, and half-piled with a tangle of clammy blankets and unwashed clothes.
“Rise and shine,” I said cheerfully. I set down the tray and pulled off the makeshift curtain, which appeared to be one of Fergus’s shirts. What light there was came from a large prism embedded in the deck overhead. It struck the berth, illuminating a countenance of ghastly pallor and baleful mien.
He opened one eye an eighth of an inch.
“Go away,” he said, and shut it again.
“I’ve brought you some breakfast,” I said firmly.
The eye opened again, coldly blue and gelid.
“Dinna mention the word ‘breakfast’ to me,” he said.
“Call it luncheon then,” I said. “It’s late enough.” I pulled up a stool next to him, picked a gherkin from the tray, and held it invitingly under his nose. “You’re supposed to suck on it,” I told him.
Slowly, the other eye opened. He said nothing, but the pair of blue orbs swiveled around, resting on me with an expression of such ferocious eloquence that I hastily withdrew the pickle.
The eyelids drooped slowly shut once more.
I surveyed the wreckage, frowning. He lay on his back, his knees drawn up. While the built-in berth provided more stability for the sleeper than the crews’ swinging hammocks, it was designed to accommodate the usual run of passengers, who—judging from the size of the berth—were assumed to be no more than a modest five feet three or so.
“You can’t be at all comfortable in there,” I said.
“I am not.”
“Would you like to try a hammock instead? At least you could stretch—”
“I would not.”
“The captain says he requires a list of the cargo from you—at your convenience.”
He made a brief and unrepeatable suggestion as to what Captain Raines might do with his list, not bothering to open his eyes.
I sighed, and picked up his unresisting hand. It was cold and damp, and his pulse was fast.
“Well,” I said after a pause. “Perhaps we could try something I used to do with surgical patients. It seemed to help sometimes.”
He gave a low groan, but didn’t object. I pulled up a stool and sat down, still holding his hand.
I had developed the habit of talking with the patients for a few minutes before they were taken to surgery. My presence seemed to reassure them, and I had found that if I could fix their attention on something beyond the impending ordeal, they seemed to do better—there was less bleeding, the postanesthetic nausea was less, and they seemed to heal better. I had seen it happen often enough to believe that it was not imagination; Jamie hadn’t been altogether wrong when assuring Fergus that the power of mind over flesh was possible.
“Let’s think of something pleasant,” I said, pitching my voice to be as low and soothing as possible. “Think of Lallybroch, of the hillside above the house. Think of the pine trees there—can you smell the needles? Think of the smoke coming up from the kitchen chimney on a clear day, and an apple in your hand. Think about how it feels in your hand, all hard and smooth, and then—”
“Sassenach?” Both Jamie’s eyes were open, and fixed on me in intense concentration. Sweat gleamed in the hollow of his temples.
“Yes?”
“Go away.”
“What?”
“Go away,” he repeated, very gently, “or I shall break your neck. Go away now.”
I rose with dignity and went out.
Mr. Willoughby was leaning against an upright in the passage, peering thoughtfully into the cabin.
“Don’t have those stone balls with you, do you?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered, looking surprised. “Wanting healthy balls for Tseimi?” He began to fumble in his sleeve, but I stopped him with a gesture.
“What I want to do is bash him on the head with them, but I suppose Hippocrates would frown on that.”
Mr. Willoughby smiled uncertainly and bobbed his head several times in an effort to express appreciation of whatever I thought I meant.
“Never mind,” I said. I glared back over my shoulder at the heap of reeking bedclothes. It stirred slightly, and a groping hand emerged, patting gingerly around the floor until it found the basin that stood there. Grasping this, the hand disappeared into the murky depths of the berth, from which presently emerged the sound of dry retching.
“Bloody man!” I said, exasperation mingled with pity—and a slight feeling of alarm. The ten hours of a Channel crossing were one thing; what would his state be like after two months of this?
“Head of pig,” Mr. Willoughby agreed, with a lugubrious nod. “He is rat, you think, or maybe dragon?”
“He smells like a whole zoo,” I said. “Why dragon, though?”
“One is born in Year of Dragon, Year of Rat, Year of Sheep, Year of Horse,” Mr. Willoughby explained. “Being different, each year, different people. You are knowing is Tsei-mi rat, or dragon?”
“You mean which year was he born in?” I had vague memories of the menus in Chinese restaurants, decorated with the animals of the Chinese zodiac, with explanations of the supposed character traits of those born in each year. “It was 1721, but I don’t know offhand which animal that was the year of.”
“I am thinking rat,” said Mr. Willoughby, looking thoughtfully at the tangle of bedclothes, which were heaving in a mildly agitated manner. “Rat very clever, very lucky. But dragon, too, could be. He is most lusty in bed, Tsei-mi? Dragons most passionate people.”
“Not so as you would notice lately,” I said, watching the heap of bed-clothes out of the corner of my eye. It heaved upward and fell back, as though the contents had turned over suddenly.
“I have Chinese medicine,” Mr. Willoughby said, observing this phenomenon thoughtfully. “Good for vomit, stomach, head, all making most peaceful and serene.”
I looked at him with interest. “Really? I’d like to see that. Have you tried it on Jamie yet?”
The little Chinese shook his head regretfully.
“Not want,” he replied. “Say damn-all, throwing overboard if I am come near.”
Mr. Willoughby and I looked at each other with a perfect understanding.
“You know,” I said, raising my voice a decibel or two, “prolonged dry retching is very bad for a person.”
“Oh, most bad, yes.” Mr. Willoughby had shaved the forward part of his skull that morning; the bald curve shone as he nodded vigorously.
“It erodes the stomach tissues, and irritates the esophagus.”
“This is so?”
“Quite so. It raises the blood pressure and strains the abdominal muscles, too. Can even tear them, and cause a hernia.”
“Ah.”
“And,” I continued, raising my voice just a trifle, “it can cause the testicles to become tangled round each other inside the scrotum, and cuts off the circulation there.”
“Ooh!” Mr. Willoughby’s eyes went round.
“If that happens,” I said ominously, “the only thing to do, usually, is to amputate before gangrene sets in.”
Mr. Willoughby made a hissing sound indicative of understanding and deep shock. The heap of bedclothes, which had been tossing to and fro in a restless manner during this conversation, was quite still.
I looked at Mr. Willoughby. He shrugged. I folded my arms and waited. After a minute, a long foot, elegantly bare, was extruded from the bedclothes. A moment later, its fellow joined it, resting on the floor.
“Damn the pair of ye,” said a deep Scottish voice, in tones of extreme malevolence. “Come in, then.”
* * *
Fergus and Marsali were leaning over the aft rail, cozily shoulder to shoulder, Fergus’s arm about the girl’s waist, her long fair hair fluttering in the wind.
Hearing approaching footsteps, Fergus glanced back over his shoulder. Then he gasped, whirled round, and crossed himself, eyes bulging.
“Not…one…word, if ye please,” Jamie said between clenched teeth.
Fergus opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Marsali, turning to look too, emitted a shrill scream.
“Da! What’s happened to ye?”
The obvious fright and concern in her face stopped Jamie from whatever acerbic remark he had been about to make. His face relaxed slightly, making the slender gold needles that protruded from behind his ears twitch like ant’s feelers.
“It’s all right,” he said gruffly. “It’s only some rubbish of the Chinee’s, to cure the puking.”
Wide-eyed, Marsali came up to him, gingerly extending a finger to touch the needles embedded in the flesh of his wrist below the palm. Three more flashed from the inside of his leg, a few inches above the ankle.
“Does—does it work?” she asked. “How does it feel?”
Jamie’s mouth twitched, his normal sense of humor beginning to reassert itself.
“I feel like a bloody ill-wish doll that someone’s been poking full o’ pins,” he said. “But then I havena vomited in the last quarter-hour, so I suppose it must work.” He shot a quick glare at me and Mr. Willoughby, standing side by side near the rail.
“Mind ye,” he said, “I dinna feel like sucking on gherkins just yet, but I could maybe go so far as to relish a glass of ale, if ye mind where some might be found, Fergus.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, milord. If you will come with me?” Unable to refrain from staring, Fergus reached out a tentative hand to take Jamie’s arm, but thinking better of it, turned in the direction of the after gangway.
“Shall I tell Murphy to start cooking your luncheon?” I called after Jamie as he turned to follow Fergus. He gave me a long, level look over one shoulder. The golden needles sprouted through his hair in twin bunches, gleaming in the morning light like a pair of devil’s horns.
“Dinna try me too high, Sassenach,” he said. “I’m no going to forget, ye ken. Tangled testicles—pah!”
Mr. Willoughby had been ignoring this exchange, squatting on his heels in the shadow of the aft-deck scuttlebutt, a large barrel filled with water for refreshment of the deck watch. He was counting on his fingers, evidently absorbed in some kind of calculation. As Jamie stalked away, he looked up.
“Not rat,” he said, shaking his head. “Not dragon, too. Tsei-mi born in Year of Ox.”
“Really?” I said, looking after the broad shoulders and red head, lowered stubbornly against the wind. “How appropriate.”