54
“THE IMPETUOUS PIRATE”
“I can’t own anyone, Jamie,” I said, looking in dismay at the papers spread out in the lamplight before me. “I just can’t. It isn’t right.”
“Well, I’m inclined to agree wi’ ye, Sassenach. But what are we to do with the fellow?” Jamie sat on the berth next to me, close enough to see the ownership documents over my shoulder. He rubbed a hand through his hair frowning.
“We could set him free—that would seem the right thing—and yet, if we do—what will happen to him then?” He hunched forward, squinting down his nose to read the papers. “He’s no more than a bit of French and English; no skills to speak of. If we were to set him free, or even give him a bit of money—can he manage to live, on his own?”
I nibbled thoughtfully on one of Murphy’s cheese rolls. It was good, but the smell of the burning oil in the lamp blended oddly with the aromatic cheese, underlaid—as everything was—with the insidious scent of bat guano that permeated the ship.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Lawrence told me there are a lot of free blacks on Hispaniola. Lots of Creoles and mixed-race people, and a good many who own their own businesses. Is it like that on Jamaica, too?”
He shook his head, and reached for a roll from the tray.
“I dinna think so. It’s true, there are some free blacks who earn a living for themselves, but those are the ones who have some skill—sempstresses and fishers and such. I spoke to this Temeraire a bit. He was a cane-cutter until he lost his arm, and doesna ken how to do anything else much.”
I laid the roll down, barely tasted, and frowned unhappily at the papers. The mere idea of owning a slave frightened and disgusted me, but it was beginning to dawn on me that it might not be so simple to divest myself of the responsibility.
The man had been taken from a barracoon on the Guinea coast, five years before. My original impulse, to return him to his home, was clearly impossible; even had it been possible to find a ship headed for Africa that would agree to take him as a passenger, the overwhelming likelihood was that he would be immediately enslaved again, either by the ship that accepted him, or by another slaver in the West African ports.
Traveling alone, one-armed and ignorant, he would have no protection at all. And even if he should by some miracle reach Africa safely and keep himself out of the hands of both European and African slavers, there was virtually no chance of his ever finding his way back to his village. Should he do so, Lawrence had kindly explained, he would likely be killed or driven away, as his own people would regard him now as a ghost, and a danger to them.
“I dinna suppose ye would consider selling him?” Jamie put the question delicately, raising one eyebrow. “To someone we could be sure would treat him kindly?”
I rubbed two fingers between my brows, trying to soothe the growing headache.
“I can’t see that that’s any better than owning him ourselves,” I protested. “Worse, probably, because we couldn’t be sure what the new owners would do with him.”
Jamie sighed. He had spent most of the day climbing through the dark, reeking cargo holds with Fergus, making up inventories against our arrival in Jamaica, and he was tired.
“Aye, I see that,” he said. “But it’s no kindness to free him to starve, that I can see.”
“No.” I fought back the uncharitable wish that I had never seen the one-armed slave. It would have been a great deal easier for me if I had not—but possibly not for him.
Jamie rose from the berth and stretched himself, leaning on the desk and flexing his shoulders to ease them. He bent and kissed me on the forehead, between the brows.
“Dinna fash, Sassenach. I’ll speak to the manager at Jared’s plantation. Perhaps he can find the man some employment, or else—”
A warning shout from above interrupted him.
“Ship ahoy! Look alive, below! Off the port bow, ahoy!” The lookout’s cry was urgent, and there was a sudden rush and stir, as hands began to turn out. Then there was a lot more shouting, and a jerk and shudder as the Artemis backed her sails.
“What in the name of God—” Jamie began. A rending crash drowned his words, and he pitched sideways, eyes wide with alarm, as the cabin tilted. The stool I was on fell over, throwing me onto the floor. The oil lamp had shot from its bracket, luckily extinguishing itself before hitting the floor, and the place was in darkness.
“Sassenach! Are ye all right?” Jamie’s voice came out of the murk close at hand, sharp with anxiety.
“Yes,” I said, scrambling out from under the table. “Are you? What happened? Did someone hit us?”
Not pausing to answer any of these questions, Jamie had reached the door and opened it. A babel of shouts and thumps came down from the deck above, punctuated by the sudden popcorn-sound of small-arms fire.
“Pirates,” he said briefly. “We’ve been boarded.” My eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim light; I saw his shadow lunge for the desk, reaching for the pistol in the drawer. He paused to snatch the dirk from under the pillow of his berth, and made for the door, issuing instructions as he went.
“Take Marsali, Sassenach, and get below. Go aft as far as ye can get—the big hold where the guano blocks are. Get behind them, and stay there.” Then he was gone.
I spent a moment feeling my way through the cupboard over my berth, in search of the morocco box Mother Hildegarde had given me when I saw her in Paris. A scalpel might be little use against pirates, but I would feel better with a weapon of some kind in my hand, no matter how small.
“Mother Claire?” Marsali’s voice came from the door, high and scared.
“I’m here,” I said. I caught the gleam of pale cotton as she moved, and pressed the ivory letter-opener into her hand. “Here, take this, just in case. Come on; we’re to go below.”
With a long-handled amputation blade in one hand, and a cluster of scalpels in the other, I led the way through the ship to the after hold. Feet thundered on the deck overhead, and curses and shouts rang through the night, overlaid with a dreadful groaning, scraping noise that I thought must be caused by the rubbing of the Artemis’s timbers against those of the unknown ship that had rammed us.
The hold was black as pitch and thick with dusty fumes. We made our way slowly, coughing, toward the back of the hold.
“Who are they?” Marsali asked. Her voice had a strangely muffled sound, the echoes of the hold deadened by the blocks of guano stacked around us. “Pirates, d’ye think?”
“I expect they must be.” Lawrence had told us that the Caribbean was a rich hunting ground for pirate luggers and unscrupulous craft of all kinds, but we had expected no trouble, as our cargo was not particularly valuable. “I suppose they must not have much sense of smell.”
“Eh?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Come sit down; there’s nothing we can do but wait.”
I knew from experience that waiting while men fought was one of the most difficult things in life to do, but in this case, there wasn’t any sensible alternative.
Down here, the sounds of the battle were muted to a distant thumping, though the constant rending groan of the scraping timbers echoed through the whole ship.
“Oh, God, Fergus,” Marsali whispered, listening, her voice filled with agony. “Blessed Mary, save him!”
I silently echoed the prayer, thinking of Jamie, somewhere in the chaos overhead. I crossed myself in the dark, touching the small spot between my brows that he had kissed a few minutes before, not wanting to think that it could so easily be the last touch of him I would ever know.
Suddenly, there was an explosion overhead, a roar that sent vibrations through the jutting timbers we were sitting on.
“They’re blowing up the ship!” Marsali jumped to her feet, panicked.
“They’ll sink us! We must get out! We’ll drown down here!”
“Wait!” I called. “It’s only the guns!” but she had not waited to hear. I could hear her, blundering about in a blind panic, whimpering among the blocks of guano.
“Marsali! Come back!” There was no light at all in the hold; I took a few steps through the smothering atmosphere, trying to locate her by sound, but the deadening effect of the crumbling blocks hid her movements from me. There was another booming explosion overhead, and a third close on its heels. The air was filled with dust loosed from the vibrations, and I choked, eyes watering.
I wiped at my eyes with a sleeve, and blinked. I was not imagining it; there was a light in the hold, a dim glow that limned the edge of the nearest block.
“Marsali?” I called. “Where are you?”
The answer was a terrified shriek, from the direction of the light. I dashed around the edge of the block, dodged between two others, and emerged into the space by the ladder, to find Marsali in the clutches of a large, half-naked man.
He was hugely obese, the rolling layers of his fat decorated with a stipple of tattoos, a jangling necklace of coins and buttons hung round his neck. Marsali slapped at him, shrieking, and he jerked his face away, impatient.
Then he caught sight of me, and his eyes widened. He had a wide, flat face, and a tarred topknot of black hair. He grinned nastily at me, showing a marked lack of teeth, and said something that sounded like slurred Spanish.
“Let her go!” I said loudly. “Basta, cabrón!” That was as much Spanish as I could summon; he seemed to think it funny, for he grinned more widely, let go of Marsali, and turned toward me. I threw one of my scalpels at him.
It bounced off his head, startling him, and he ducked wildly. Marsali dodged past him, and sprang for the ladder.
The pirate waffled for a moment, torn between us, but then turned to the ladder, leaping up several rungs with an agility that belied his weight. He caught Marsali by the foot as she dived through the hatch, and she screamed.
Cursing incoherently under my breath, I ran to the bottom of the ladder, and reaching up, swung the long-handled amputation knife at his foot, as hard as I could. There was a high-pitched screech from the pirate. Something flew past my head, and a spray of blood spattered across my cheek, wet-hot on my skin.
Startled, I dropped back, looking down by reflex to see what had fallen. It was a small brown toe, calloused and black-nailed, smudged with dirt.
The pirate hit the deck beside me with a thud that shivered the floorboards, and lunged. I ducked, but he caught a handful of my sleeve. I yanked away, ripping fabric, and jabbed at his face with the blade in my hand.
Jerking back in surprise, he slipped on his own blood and fell. I jumped for the ladder and climbed for my life, dropping the blade.
He was so close behind me that he succeeded in catching hold of the hem of my skirt, but I pulled it from his grasp and lunged upward, lungs burning from the dust of the choking hold. The man was shouting, a language I didn’t know. Some dim recess of my brain, not occupied with immediate survival, speculated that it might be Portuguese.
I burst out of the hold onto the deck, into the midst of a surging chaos. The air was thick with black-powder smoke, and small knots of men were pushing and shoving, cursing and stumbling all over the deck.
I couldn’t take time to look around; there was a hoarse bellow from the hatchway behind me, and I dived for the rail. I hesitated for a moment, balanced on the narrow wooden strip. The sea spun past in a dizzy churn of black below. I grasped the rigging and began to climb.
It was a mistake; I knew that almost at once. He was a sailor, I was not. Neither was he hampered by wearing a dress. The ropes danced and jerked in my hands, vibrating under the impact of his weight as he hit the lines below me.
He was coming up the underside of the lines, climbing like a gibbon, even as I made my slower way across the upper slope of the rigging. He drew even with me, and spat in my face. I kept climbing, propelled by desperation; there was nothing else to do. He kept pace with me, easily, hissing words through an evil, half-toothed grin. It didn’t matter what language he was speaking; his meaning was perfectly clear. Hanging by one hand, he drew the cutlass from his sash, and swung it in a vicious cut that barely missed me.
I was too frightened even to scream. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, and hoped it would be quick.
It was. There was a sort of thump, a sharp grunt, and a strong smell of fish.
I opened my eyes. The pirate was gone. Ping An was sitting on the crosstrees, three feet away, crest erect with irritation, wings half-spread to keep his balance.
“Gwa!” he said crossly. He turned a beady little yellow eye on me, and clacked his bill in warning. Ping An hated noise and commotion. Evidently, he didn’t like Portuguese pirates, either.
There were spots before my eyes, and I felt light-headed. I clung tight to the rope, shaking, until I thought I could move again. The noise below had slackened now, and the tenor of the shouting had changed. Something had happened; I thought it was over.
There was a new noise, a sudden flap of sails, and a long, grinding sound, with a vibration that made the line I was holding sing in my hand. It was over; the pirate ship was moving away. On the far side of the Artemis, I saw the web of the pirate’s mast and rigging begin to move, black against the silver Caribbean sky. Very, very slowly, I began the long trip back down.
The lanterns were still lit below. A haze of black-powder smoke lay over everything, and bodies lay here and there about the deck. My glance flickered over them as I lowered myself, searching for red hair. I found it, and my heart leapt.
Jamie was sitting on a cask near the wheel, with his head tilted back, eyes closed, a cloth pressed to his brow, and a cup of whisky in his hand. Mr. Willoughby was on his knees alongside, administering first aid—in the form of more whisky—to Willie MacLeod, who sat against the foremast, looking sick.
I was shaking all over from exertion and reaction. I felt giddy and slightly cold. Shock, I supposed, and no wonder. I could do with a bit of that whisky as well.
I grasped the smaller lines above the rail, and slid the rest of the way to the deck, not caring that my palms were skinned raw. I was sweating and cold at the same time, and the down-hairs on my face were prickling unpleasantly.
I landed clumsily, with a thump that made Jamie straighten up and open his eyes. The look of relief in them pulled me the few feet to him. I felt better, with the warm solid flesh of his shoulder under my hand.
“Are you all right?” I said, leaning over him to look.
“Aye, it’s no more than a wee dunt,” he said, smiling up at me. There was a small gash at his hairline, where something like a pistol butt had caught him, but the blood had clotted already. There were stains of dark, drying blood on the front of his shirt, but the sleeve of his shirt was also bloody. In fact, it was nearly soaked, with fresh bright red.
“Jamie!” I clutched at his shoulder, my vision going white at the edges. “You aren’t all right—look, you’re bleeding!”
My hands and feet were numb, and I only half-felt his hands grasp my arms as he rose from the cask in sudden alarm. The last thing I saw, amid flashes of light, was his face, gone white beneath the tan.
“My God!” said his frightened voice, out of the whirling blackness. “It’s no my blood, Sassenach, it’s yours!”
* * *
“I am not going to die,” I said crossly, “unless it’s from heat exhaustion. Take some of this bloody stuff off me!”
Marsali, who had been tearfully pleading with me not to expire, looked rather relieved at this outburst. She stopped crying and sniffed hopefully, but made no move to remove any of the cloaks, coats, blankets, and other impedimenta in which I was swaddled.
“Oh, I canna do that, Mother Claire!” she said. “Da says ye must be kept warm!”
“Warm? I’m being boiled alive!” I was in the captain’s cabin, and even with the stern windows wide open, the atmosphere belowdecks was stifling, hot with sun and acrid with the fumes of the cargo.
I tried to struggle out from under my wrappings, but got no more than a few inches before a bolt of lightning struck me in the right arm. The world went dark, with small bright flashes zigging through my vision.
“Lie still,” said a stern Scots voice, through a wave of giddy sickness. An arm was under my shoulders, a large hand cradling my head. “Aye, that’s right, lie back on my arm. All right now, Sassenach?”
“No,” I said, looking at the colored pinwheels inside my eyelids. “I’m going to be sick.”
I was, and a most unpleasant process it was, too, with fiery knives being jabbed into my right arm with each spasm.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said at last, gasping.
“Finished, are ye?” Jamie lowered me carefully and eased my head back onto the pillow.
“If you mean am I dead, the answer is unfortunately no.” I cracked one eyelid open. He was kneeling by my berth, looking no end piratical himself, with a bloodstained strip of cloth bound round his head, and still wearing his blood-soaked shirt.
He stayed still, and so did the cabin, so I cautiously opened the other eye. He smiled faintly at me.
“No, you’re no dead; Fergus will be glad to hear it.”
As though this had been a signal, the Frenchman’s head poked anxiously into the cabin. Seeing me awake, his face broke into a dazzling smile and disappeared. I could hear his voice overhead, loudly informing the crew of my survival. To my profound embarrassment, the news was greeted with a rousing cheer from the upper deck.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What happened?” Jamie, pouring water into a cup, stopped and stared over the rim at me. He knelt down again beside me, snorting, and raised my head for a sip of water.
“What happened, she says! Aye, what indeed? I tell ye to stay all snug below wi’ Marsali, and next thing I ken, ye’ve dropped out of the sky and landed at my feet, sopping wi’ blood!”
He shoved his face into the berth and glared at me. Sufficiently impressive when clean-shaven and unhurt, he was considerably more ferocious when viewed, stubbled, bloodstained, and angry, at a distance of six inches. I promptly shut my eyes again.
“Look at me!” he said peremptorily, and I did, against my better judgment.
Blue eyes bored into mine, narrowed with fury.
“D’ye ken ye came damn close to dying?” he demanded. “Ye’ve a bone-deep slash down your arm from oxter to elbow, and had I not got a cloth round it in time, ye’d be feeding the sharks this minute!”
One big fist crashed down on the side of the berth next to me, making me start. The movement hurt my arm, but I didn’t make a sound.
“Damn ye, woman! Will ye never do as you’re told?”
“Probably not,” I said meekly.
He turned a black scowl on me, but I could see the corner of his mouth twitching under the copper stubble.
“God,” he said longingly. “What I wouldna give to have ye tied facedown over a gun, and me wi’ a rope’s end in my hand.” He snorted again, and pulled his face out of the berth.
“Willoughby!” he bellowed. In short order, Mr. Willoughby trotted in, beaming, with a steaming pot of tea and a bottle of brandy on a tray.
“Tea!” I breathed, struggling to sit up. “Ambrosia.” In spite of the stifling atmosphere of the cabin, the hot tea was just what I needed. The delightful, brandy-laced stuff slid down my throat and glowed peacefully in the pit of my quivering stomach.
“Nobody makes tea better than the English,” I said, inhaling the aroma, “except the Chinese.”
Mr. Willoughby beamed in gratification and bowed ceremoniously. Jamie snorted again, bringing his total up to three for the afternoon.
“Aye? Well, enjoy it while ye can.”
This sounded more or less sinister, and I stared at him over the rim of the cup. “And just what do you mean by that?” I demanded.
“I’m going to doctor your arm when you’re finished,” he informed me. He picked up the pot and peered into it.
“How much blood did ye tell me a person has in his body?” he asked.
“About eight quarts,” I said, bewildered. “Why?”
He lowered the pot and glared at me.
“Because,” he said precisely, “judging from the amount ye left on the deck, you’ve maybe four of them left. Here, have some more.” He refilled the cup, set down the pot, and stalked out.
“I’m afraid Jamie’s rather annoyed with me,” I observed ruefully to Mr. Willoughby.
“Not angry,” he said comfortingly. “Tsei-mi scared very bad.” The little Chinaman laid a hand on my right shoulder, delicate as a resting butterfly.
“This hurts?”
I sighed. “To be perfectly honest,” I said, “yes, it does.”
Mr. Willoughby smiled and patted me gently. “I help,” he said consolingly. “Later.”
In spite of the throbbing in my arm, I was feeling sufficiently restored to inquire about the rest of the crew, whose injuries, as reported by Mr. Willoughby, were limited to cuts and bruises, plus one concussion and a minor arm fracture.
A clatter in the passage heralded Jamie’s return, accompanied by Fergus, who carried my medicine box under one arm, and yet another bottle of brandy in his hand.
“All right,” I said, resigned. “Let’s have a look at it.”
I was no stranger to horrible wounds, and this one—technically speaking—was not all that bad. On the other hand, it was my own personal flesh involved here, and I was not disposed to be technical.
“Ooh,” I said rather faintly. While being a bit picturesque about the nature of the wound, Jamie had also been quite accurate. It was a long, clean-edged slash, running at a slight angle across the front of my biceps, from the shoulder to an inch or so above the elbow joint. And while I couldn’t actually see the bone of my humerus, it was without doubt a very deep wound, gaping widely at the edges.
It was still bleeding, in spite of the cloth that had been wrapped tightly round it, but the seepage was slow; no major vessels seemed to have been severed.
Jamie had flipped open my medical box and was rootling meditatively through it with one large forefinger.
“You’ll need sutures and a needle,” I said, feeling a sudden jolt of alarm as it occurred to me that I was about to have thirty or forty stitches taken in my arm, with no anesthesia bar brandy.
“No laudanum?” Jamie asked, frowning into the box. Evidently, he had been thinking along the same lines.
“No. I used it all on the Porpoise.” Controlling the shaking of my left hand, I poured a sizable tot of straight brandy into my empty teacup, and took a healthy mouthful.
“That was thoughtful of you, Fergus,” I said, nodding at the fresh brandy bottle as I sipped, “but I don’t think it’s going to take two bottles.” Given the potency of Jared’s French brandy, it was unlikely to take more than a teacupful.
I was wondering whether it was more advisable to get dead drunk at once, or to stay at least half-sober in order to supervise operations; there wasn’t a chance in hell that I could do the suturing myself, left-handed and shaking like a leaf. Neither could Fergus do it one-handed. True, Jamie’s big hands could move with amazing lightness over some tasks, but…
Jamie interrupted my apprehensions, shaking his head and picking up the second bottle.
“This one’s no for drinking, Sassenach, that’s for washing out the wound.”
“What!” In my state of shock, I had forgotten the necessity for disinfection. Lacking anything better, I normally washed out wounds with distilled grain alcohol, cut half and half with water, but I had used my supply of that as well, in our encounter with the man-of-war.
I felt my lips go slightly numb, and not just because the internal brandy was taking effect. Highlanders were among the most stoic and courageous of warriors, and seamen as a class weren’t far behind. I had seen such men lie uncomplaining while I set broken bones, did minor surgery, sewed up terrible wounds, and put them through hell generally, but when it came to disinfection with alcohol, it was a different story—the screams could be heard for miles.
“Er…wait a minute,” I said. “Maybe just a little boiled water.…”
Jamie was watching me, not without sympathy.
“It willna get easier wi’ waiting, Sassenach,” he said. “Fergus, take the bottle.” And before I could protest, he had lifted me out of the berth and sat down with me on his lap, holding me tight about the body, pinning my left arm so I couldn’t struggle, while he took my right wrist in a firm grip and held my wounded arm out to the side.
I believe it was bloody old Ernest Hemingway who said you’re supposed to pass out from pain, but unfortunately you never do. All I can say in response to that is that either Ernest had a fine distinction for states of consciousness, or else no one ever poured brandy on several cubic inches of his raw flesh.
To be fair, I suppose I must not absolutely have lost consciousness myself, since when I began noticing things again, Fergus was saying, “Please, milady! You must not scream like that; it upsets the men.”
Clearly it upset Fergus; his lean face was pale, and droplets of sweat ran down his jaw. He was right about the men, too—several faces were peering into the cabin from door and window, wearing expressions of horror and concern.
I summoned the presence of mind to nod weakly at them. Jamie’s arm was still locked about my middle; I couldn’t tell which of us was shaking; both, I thought.
I made it into the wide captain’s chair, with considerable assistance, and lay back palpitating, the fire in my arm still sizzling. Jamie was holding one of my curved suture needles and a length of sterilized cat-gut, looking as dubious over the prospects as I felt.
It was Mr. Willoughby who intervened, quietly taking the needle from Jamie’s hands.
“I can do this,” he said, in tones of authority. “A moment.” And he disappeared aft, presumably to fetch something.
Jamie didn’t protest, and neither did I. We heaved twin sighs of relief, in fact, which made me laugh.
“And to think,” I said, “I once told Bree that big men were kind and gentle, and the short ones tended to be nasty.”
“Well, I suppose there’s always the exception that proves the rule, no?” He mopped my streaming face with a wet cloth, quite gently.
“I dinna want to know how ye did this,” he said, with a sigh, “but for God’s sake, Sassenach, don’t do it again!”
“Well, I didn’t intend to do anything…” I began crossly, when I was interrupted by the return of Mr. Willoughby. He was carrying the little roll of green silk I had seen when he cured Jamie’s seasickness.
“Oh, ye’ve got the wee stabbers?” Jamie peered interestedly at the small gold needles, then smiled at me. “Dinna fash yourself, Sassenach, they don’t hurt…or not much, anyway,” he added.
Mr. Willoughby’s fingers probed the palm of my right hand, prodding here and there. Then he grasped each of my fingers, wiggled it, and pulled it gently, so that I felt the joints pop slightly. Then he laid two fingers at the base of my wrist, pressing down in the space between the radius and the ulna.
“This is the Inner Gate,” he said softly. “Here is quiet. Here is peace.” I sincerely hoped he was right. Picking up one of the tiny gold needles, he placed the point over the spot he had marked, and with a dexterous twirl of thumb and forefinger, pierced the skin.
The prick made me jump, but he kept a tight, warm hold on my hand, and I relaxed again.
He placed three needles in each wrist, and a rakish, porcupine-like spray on the crest of my right shoulder. I was getting interested, despite my guinea pig status. Beyond an initial prick at placement, the needles caused no discomfort. Mr. Willoughby was humming, in a low, soothing sort of way, tapping and pressing places on my neck and shoulder.
I couldn’t honestly tell whether my right arm was numbed, or whether I was simply distracted by the goings-on, but it did feel somewhat less agonized—at least until he picked up the suture needle and began.
Jamie was sitting on a stool by my left side, holding my left hand as he watched my face. After a moment, he said, rather gruffly, “Let your breath out, Sassenach; it’s no going to get any worse than that.”
I let go of the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, and realized as well what he was telling me. It was dread of being hurt that had me rigid as a board in the chair. The actual pain of the stitches was unpleasant, all right, but nothing I couldn’t stand.
I let my breath out cautiously, and gave him a rough approximation of a smile. Mr. Willoughby was singing under his breath in Chinese. Jamie had translated the words for me a week earlier; it was a pillow-song, in which a young man catalogued the physical charms of his partner, one by one. I hoped he would finish the stitching before he got to her feet.
“That’s a verra wicked slash,” Jamie said, eyes on Mr. Willoughby’s work. I preferred not to look myself. “A parang, was it, or a cutlass, I wonder?”
“I think it was a cutlass,” I said. “In fact, I know it was. He came after…”
“I wonder what led them to attack us,” Jamie said, not paying any attention to me. His brows were drawn in speculation. “It canna ha’ been the cargo, after all.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” I said. “But maybe they didn’t know what we were carrying?” This seemed grossly unlikely; any ship that came within a hundred yards of us would have known—the ammoniac reek of bat guano hovered round us like a miasma.
“Perhaps it’s only they thought the ship small enough to take. The Artemis itself would bring a fair price, cargo or no.”
I blinked as Mr. Willoughby paused in his song to tie a knot. I thought he was down to the navel by now, but wasn’t paying close attention.
“Do we know the name of the pirate ship?” I asked. “Granted, there’s likely a lot of pirates in these waters, but we do know that the Bruja was in this area three days ago, and—”
“That’s what I’m wondering,” he said. “I couldna see a great deal in the darkness, but she was the right size, wi’ that wide Spanish beam.”
“Well, the pirate that was after me spoke—” I started, but the sound of voices in the corridor made me stop.
Fergus edged in, shy of interrupting, but obviously bursting with excitement. He held something shiny and jingling in one hand.
“Milord,” he said, “Maitland has found a dead pirate on the forward deck.”
Jamie’s red brows went up, and he looked from Fergus to me.
“Dead?”
“Very dead, milord,” said Fergus, with a small shudder. Maitland was peeking over his shoulder, anxious to claim his share of the glory. “Oh, yes, sir,” he assured Jamie earnestly. “Dead as a doornail; his poor head’s bashed in something shocking!”
All three men turned and stared at me. I gave them a modest little smile.
Jamie rubbed a hand over his face. His eyes were bloodshot, and a trickle of blood had dried in front of his ear.
“Sassenach,” he began, in measured tones.
“I tried to tell you,” I said virtuously. Between shock, brandy, acupuncture, and the dawning realization of survival, I was beginning to feel quite pleasantly light-headed. I scarcely noticed Mr. Willoughby’s final efforts.
“He was wearing this, milord.” Fergus stepped forward and laid the pirate’s necklace on the table in front of us. It had the silver buttons from a military uniform, polished kona nuts, several large shark’s teeth, pieces of polished abalone shell and chunks of mother of pearl, and a large number of jingling coins, all pierced for stringing on a leather thong.
“I thought you should see this at once, milord,” Fergus continued. He reached out a hand and lifted one of the shimmering coins. It was silver, untarnished, and through the gathering brandy haze, I could see on its face the twin heads of Alexander. A tetradrachm, of the fourth century B.C. Mint condition.
* * *
Thoroughly worn out by the events of the afternoon, I had fallen asleep at once, the pain in my arm dulled by brandy. Now it was full dark, and the brandy had worn off. My arm seemed to swell and throb with each beat of my heart, and any small movement sent tiny jabs of a sharper pain whipping through my arm, like warning flicks of a scorpion’s tail.
The moon was three-quarters full, a huge lopsided shape like a golden teardrop, hanging just above the horizon. The ship heeled slightly, and the moon slid slowly out of sight, the Man in the Moon leering rather unpleasantly as he went. I was hot, and possibly a trifle feverish.
There was a jug of water in the cupboard on the far side of the cabin. I felt weak and giddy as I swung my feet over the edge of the berth, and my arm registered a strong protest against being disturbed. I must have made some sound, for the darkness on the floor of the cabin stirred suddenly, and Jamie’s voice came drowsily from the region of my feet.
“Are ye hurting, Sassenach?”
“A little,” I said, not wanting to be dramatic about it. I set my lips and rose unsteadily to my feet, cradling my right elbow in my left hand.
“That’s good,” he said.
“That’s good?” I said, my voice rising indignantly.
There was a soft chuckle from the darkness, and he sat up, his head popping suddenly into sight as it rose above the shadows into the moonlight.
“Aye, it is,” he said. “When a wound begins to hurt ye, it means it’s healing. Ye didna feel it when it happened, did you?”
“No,” I admitted. I certainly felt it now. The air was a good deal cooler out on the open sea, and the salt wind coming through the window felt good on my face. I was damp and sticky with sweat, and the thin chemise clung to my breasts.
“I could see ye didn’t. That’s what frightened me. Ye never feel a fatal wound, Sassenach,” he said softly.
I laughed shortly, but cut it off as the movement jarred my arm.
“And how do you know that?” I asked, fumbling left-handed to pour water into a cup. “Not the sort of thing you’d learn firsthand, I mean.”
“Murtagh told me.”
The water seemed to purl soundlessly into the cup, the sound of its pouring lost in the hiss of the bow-wave outside. I set down the jug and lifted the cup, the surface of the water black in the moonlight. Jamie had never mentioned Murtagh to me, in the months of our reunion . I had asked Fergus, who told me that the wiry little Scot had died at Culloden, but he knew no more than the bare fact.
“At Culloden.” Jamie’s voice was barely loud enough to be heard above the creak of timber and the whirring of the wind that bore us along. “Did ye ken they burnt the bodies there? I wondered, listening to them do it—what it would be like inside the fire when it came my turn.” I could hear him swallow, above the creaking of the ship. “I found that out, this morning.”
The moonlight robbed his face of depth and color; he looked like a skull, with the broad, clean planes of cheek and jawbone white and his eyes black empty pits.
“I went to Culloden meaning to die,” he said, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. “Not the rest of them. I should have been happy to stop a musket ball at once, and yet I cut my way across the field and halfway back, while men on either side o’ me were blown to bloody bits.” He stood up, then, looking down at me.
“Why?” he said. “Why, Claire? Why am I alive, and they are not?”
“I don’t know,” I said softly. “For your sister, and your family, maybe? For me?”
“They had families,” he said. “Wives, and sweethearts; children to mourn them. And yet they are gone. And I am still here.”
“I don’t know, Jamie,” I said at last. I touched his cheek, already roughened by newly sprouting beard, irrepressible evidence of life. “You aren’t ever going to know.”
He sighed, his cheekbone pressed against my palm for a moment.
“Aye, I ken that well enough. But I canna help the asking, when I think of them—especially Murtagh.” He turned restlessly away, his eyes empty shadows, and I knew he walked Drumossie Moor again, with the ghosts.
“We should have gone sooner; the men had been standing for hours, starved and half-frozen. But they waited for His Highness to give the order to charge.”
And Charles Stuart, perched safely on a rock, well behind the line of battle, having seized personal command of his troops for the first time, had dithered and delayed. And the English cannon had had time to bear squarely on the lines of ragged Highlanders, and opened fire.
“It was a relief, I think,” Jamie said softly. “Every man on the field knew the cause was lost, and we were dead. And still we stood there, watching the English guns come up, and the cannon mouths open black before us. No one spoke. I couldna hear anything but the wind, and the English soldiers shouting, on the other side of the field.”
And then the guns had roared, and men had fallen, and those still standing, rallied by a late and ragged order, had seized their swords and charged the enemy, the sound of their Gaelic shrieking drowned by the guns, lost in the wind.
“The smoke was so thick, I couldna see more than a few feet before me. I kicked off my shoon and ran into it, shouting.” The bloodless line of his lips turned up slightly.
“I was happy,” he said, sounding a bit surprised. “Not scairt at all. I meant to die, after all; there was nothing to fear except that I might be wounded and not die at once. But I would die, and then it would be all over, and I would find ye again, and it would be all right.”
I moved closer to him, and his hand rose up from the shadows to take mine.
“Men fell to either side of me, and I could hear the grapeshot and the musket balls hum past my head like bumblebees. But I wasna touched.”
He had reached the British lines unscathed, one of very few Highlanders to have completed the charge across Culloden Moor. An English gun crew looked up, startled, at the tall Highlander who burst from the smoke like a demon, the blade of his broadsword gleaming with rain and then dull with blood.
“There was a small part of my mind that asked why I should be killin’ them,” he said reflectively. “For surely I knew that we were lost; there was no gain to it. But there is a lust to killing—you’ll know that?” His fingers tightened on mine, questioning, and I squeezed back in affirmation.
“I couldna stop—or I would not.” His voice was quiet, without bitterness or recrimination. “It’s a verra old feeling, I think; the wish to take an enemy with ye to the grave. I could feel it there, a hot red thing in my chest and belly, and…I gave myself to it,” he ended simply.
There were four men tending the cannon, none armed with more than a pistol and knife, none expecting attack at such close quarters. They stood helpless against the berserk strength of his despair, and he killed them all.
“The ground shook under my feet,” he said, “and I was near deafened by the noise. I couldna think. And then it came to me that I was behind the English guns.” A soft chuckle came from below. “A verra poor place to try to be killed, no?”
So he had started back across the moor, to join the Highland dead.
“He was sitting against a tussock near the middle of the field—Murtagh. He’d been struck a dozen times at least, and there was a dreadful wound in his head—I knew he was dead.”
He hadn’t been, though; when Jamie had fallen to his knees beside his godfather and taken the small body in his arms, Murtagh’s eyes had opened. “He saw me. And he smiled.” And then the older man’s hand had touched his cheek briefly. “Dinna be afraid, a bhalaich,” Murtagh had said, using the endearment for a small, beloved boy. “It doesna hurt a bit to die.”
I stood quietly for a long time, holding Jamie’s hand. Then he sighed, and his other hand closed very, very gently about my wounded arm.
“Too many folk have died, Sassenach, because they knew me—or suffered for the knowing. I would give my own body to save ye a moment’s pain—and yet I could wish to close my hand just now, that I might hear ye cry out and know for sure that I havena killed you, too.”
I leaned forward, pressing a kiss on the skin of his chest. He slept naked in the heat.
“You haven’t killed me. You didn’t kill Murtagh. And we’ll find Ian. Take me back to bed, Jamie.”
Sometime later, as I drowsed on the edge of sleep, he spoke from the floor beside my bed.
“Ye know, I seldom wanted to go home to Laoghaire,” he said contemplatively. “And yet, at least when I did, I’d find her where I’d left her.”
I turned my head to the side, where his soft breathing came from the darkened floor. “Oh? And is that the kind of wife you want? The sort who stays put?”
He made a small sound between a chuckle and a cough, but didn’t answer, and after a few moments, the sound of his breathing changed to a soft, rhythmic snore.