Bell Weather (17 page)

“Thank you,” Molly said.

Mr. Fen smiled. He put the bottle away and said, “You must be more careful. Other pains are far more difficult to soothe.”

“So is the captain’s temper.”

“You always have a friend here below,” he assured her.

“I’m glad of your companionship with Jacob so terribly ill.”

Mr. Fen returned to his hammock, opening his book but keeping his attention courteously on Molly. “Is he improving?”

“No,” she said, trying not to twitch or look away. “I fear he won’t recover for the duration of the trip. He has always been prone to sickness.”

“It was kind of you to marry him,” Mr. Fen said, glancing at her hand, which was bare of any ring.

“We were destitute in Umber,” Molly said, as if confessing. “But Jacob has excellent prospects in Grayport. Please forgive me—I should go to him now. Thank you for your care.”

Mr. Fen nodded and reclined to read his book. The lantern just above him, momentarily erratic, bleached his face while the rest of him was darkened by the shadow.

She left him there and continued back to her own cabin, telling herself she needed more rehearsal for her lies.

Nicholas lay in his cot. His hair was slicked against his brow and he was dressed, beneath a blanket, in a badly ripened shift. The sea had worn him out and brought on the grippe, and now his fevers left him damp. Nicholas had packed in haste and traveled very light; aside from a pair of cloaks, extra stockings, and two spare shifts, they had only what they’d worn the day of their escape. The trunk contained little else—a medical book; the pistol; gold and silver coins—so she washed and dried his shifts as quickly as she could, barely keeping up with Nicholas’s sweats.

Other than this and begging him to eat, there was nothing to do but wipe his forehead, straighten his blanket, and keep him company when he was conscious enough to notice. She did so now, cleaning his face with a rag and meeting his filmy eyes. He recognized her still—she felt relief at this whenever he awoke—but he lacked the strength and will to speak above a whisper.

She stood and held his hand—it felt as pitiful and flimsy as a bird crab’s wing—and talked about her derring-do high above the deck. The stories of her day were all that seemed to cheer him, and it was this, more than boredom, that encouraged her to venture on deck every morning.

Whenever she was finished and had nothing left to tell, she talked about the life that lay ahead of them in Grayport.

“We’ll have a house in the city, and every day I’ll walk to the market and buy something new,” she said, imagining a continent of unfamiliar foods. “We’ll explore every street and visit every shop, and in the afternoons and evenings we can entertain our friends. We’ll have very many friends, a whole second family. When we tire of the city, we’ll go to a house in the country.”

“It is wilderness,” he murmured, “outside the city.”

“We’ll meet the Elkinaki—they’ve been friendly to the Florians—and after visiting their village, we’ll return to the city and tell our friends of our adventures. Won’t they be amazed! They’ll beg to hear it all.”

He fluttered forth a smile but the effort wore him out, and then he sighed and shut his eyes, falling heavily asleep. Molly checked his pulse to see that it was moving and her own strong pulse nearly drowned it out. She thought again of Grayport, imagining their house—a drawing room with rosy friends and curious liqueurs—but the vision felt puerile. What if Nicholas died? She might find herself in Floria alone, and what then? How would she survive without her brother to rely on?

*   *   *

Mr. Fen accompanied Molly on deck the following day. She had invited him out of habit, having done so daily the entire previous week, but she regretted it at once when he happily accepted. Disinviting him would only serve to deepen his suspicion, so she walked with him at length and answered all his questions.

“What are your husband’s prospects?” he asked her near the bow. A dense bank of fog was approaching from the west and Molly paused to view it, sweating in the breeze. The warmth that pressed around them seemed to issue from the fog but she feared her perspiration would be misconstrued as stress. “Forgive me,” he continued, “if I overstep my bounds.”

“Not at all,” Molly said. “I must admit, Jacob’s prospects are vague. His education is extraordinary—I have never known a man more thoroughly developed—but he has yet to choose a path from the many at his feet.”

“An autodidact,” Mr. Fen said.

“Excuse me?”

“He has educated himself.”

“Why do you think—”

“I apologize,” he said, “if I assumed too much. A graceless tendency of mine. I remembered that you told me you were destitute in Umber and assumed he lacked for proper schooling.”

“Oh, I see,” Molly said, dripping more profusely. A smell of vegetation thickened in the air as if the fog, ever closer, were the steam of heated plants. “He was born amid wealth and lacked for nothing in his youth, but his father ruined himself in business and—I am ashamed to say it—took his own life when Jacob was fifteen. He and his mother lived as well as they could, but they were forced to sell most of their belongings to escape a growing avalanche of debt. She died last year.”

Molly bowed her head, pausing in memoriam.

“I’m an autodidact,” she said with extra levity, as if the previous subject had depressed her and she meant to perk herself up. “You may have noticed I am often posing questions to the crew.”

“That I have,” said Mr. Fen, pivoting to face her, close enough to give their talk an intimate appearance. “You are wonderfully precocious.”

“Mr. Knacker,” Molly said, relieved to find the wall-eyed sailor walking by. “What is the curious fogbank coming at the ship?”

Mr. Knacker walked up and bobbed with nervous pleasure. He and the crew had grown enamored of Molly’s high jinks and chatter, but Mr. Fen had put a damper on her spirits that morning, acting like a chaperone and hogging her attention. She had felt the men’s resentment when he led her by the arm. Even worse, Mr. Fen had seemed offended by their squalor, steering her away whenever they were near.

Mr. Knacker looked affectionately at Molly while keeping his colder, squintier eye directed at Mr. Fen. “That is waterbreath,” he said. “Proof that we have reached the Serpentine Current.”

He had described the current before: a potent flow of water streaming from the south, dividing the Eccentric Ocean halfway from Bruntland to Floria. Its vigor slowed ships, sometimes sending them a week off course. The current teemed with sea life pulled from the equator and its tropical heat was infamous for breeding vivid weather.

Molly turned to look and said, “The river in the sea.”

“Aye,” said Mr. Knacker. “Soon the water will be greener and the ship will start to drift. Our only way through is spreading sail and touching wood.”

“Waterbreath,” she said, enchanted by the novelty.

“A sailor’s word for fog,” mumbled Mr. Fen, who started walking off as if expecting her to follow.

“That it ain’t,” Mr. Knacker said exclusively to Molly. “It is breezes made of water, difficult to breathe. You might be scared of it at first because it feels like you’re drowning, but it rarely lasts a day and few of us succumb.”

Mr. Fen returned to her side. He put his hand behind her waist and said, “He’s trying to impress you with his tales and superstitions. There is no cause for worry.”

Molly felt a quiver of revulsion up her spine.

“It wasn’t my aim to worry you, Mrs. Smith,” said Mr. Knacker.

“I’m not afraid of waterbreath, however thick it comes!” she said, consoled by Mr. Knacker’s friendly reassurance.

“Molly Smith is scared of nothing,” said the grim second mate, descending from the foremast and landing with a thud. He had scars instead of wrinkles, and a beard like dirty snow. “It’s Mr. Fen you’ve worried,” he assured Mr. Knacker. “Took the man weeks to poke his head above deck.”

“I beg your pardon,” Mr. Fen began.

“Acts as if he owns her now,” the second mate continued. “Mrs. Smith is one of
us.
Go pour a fucking candle.”

“Come,” said Mr. Fen, and squeezed Molly’s arm.

“I’ll stay and watch the fog,” she said, pulling from his grip.

Mr. Fen squared his jaw as much as he was able, but his softness and his petulance were rather too effete.

“I’ll see you below,” he said to Molly, marching off with resolute strides.

“You won’t see a thing,” the second mate called, “once the
ghost fog
surrounds us!”

Much of the crew began to laugh. Molly couldn’t help but join them.

*   *   *

But she did grow alarmed when the waterbreath arrived. She stood with Mr. Knacker at the bow to watch it come. The fog approached the
Cleaver
like a tidal wave, as wide as she could see from starboard to port—pale, faintly blue, and ominously silent.

They had encountered fog before and even the denser banks thinned once the ship was moving through, but the waterbreath intensified and utterly engulfed them. Molly felt as if a saturated bag were on her head. She gasped and couldn’t breathe, which made her heart begin to race, which made her pant and hyperventilate and panic even more. Mr. Knacker and the second mate were hazy at her side. The sails disappeared. She couldn’t see her feet. Captain Veer shouted orders from behind her on the forecastle but his voice was oddly muted in the hissing of the mist.

“Worse than I expected,” Mr. Knacker said beside her, choking on the words until he coughed, and coughed again.

“Cup your hands around your mouth,” the second mate instructed.

Molly did so. It kept away the thickest of the vapor, and she finally got a breath and felt her heart begin to calm. The temperature had risen ten degrees in half a minute and the air smelled of gardens after heavy summer rain.

“It’ll be clearer in your cabin,” Mr. Knacker said, “at least until it settles. Can I help you find your way?”

Molly clasped his elbow and breathed through her hand. He had bragged to her once that he could walk the deck blind, and now he proved it: she could see only an arm’s length away. They shuffled to the hatch, where he guided her below. Before he wished her well and shut the door above her, Molly saw the waterbreath pouring down the stairs, where it spread upon the floor and pooled ankle deep.

Hurrying to her cabin, she passed Mr. Fen. He was lying in his hammock, dozing it would seem, but she felt as if his eyes opened slightly in the dark.

The atmosphere was thickening; the walls began to sweat. All the moisture would be ruinous to Nicholas’s lungs. She entered the cabin, went to her brother’s side, and tucked his blanket more securely, hoping to keep the air from dampening his clothes.

“The most extraordinary fog is filling up the ship,” she said, smoothing down his cowlick and kissing him over the eye.

Nicholas looked at her and frowned, seeming puzzled by her face, as if she might have been a figment of an ongoing dream. He dropped his head and closed his eyes, possibly asleep. She cupped her hands above his mouth but couldn’t feel him breathe and took them off again, fearing she would stifle him completely.

Molly’s skirts hung heavy and her lungs felt full. She crawled beneath the blanket in her own swinging cot. Waterbreath slipped through every crack and filled the cabin. It was only midday but dark had come upon them, and despite her fascination and her fear, she fell asleep, terribly fatigued from drowning in the air.

*   *   *

She woke beneath a solid weight, unable to open her mouth and thinking, in the gloom, that her head had gotten tangled in her own sodden blanket. When she tried to throw it off, her arms refused to move. Every part of her was pressed down tight against the cot. There was just enough light to see the waterbreath around her, like a dark foggy night with an inkling of the moon. Hot, putrid air pulsed around her throat. She heard a moan and thought it was Nicholas, but no—the moan was
with
her, and the pressure on her chest was someone else’s body.

The shock made her struggle and she almost freed her face. Mr. Fen’s palm tightened on her mouth.

“Quiet,” came his whisper, “or I’ll suffocate your brother.”

Molly wheezed through her nose. Had he really said “brother”?

Mr. Fen’s lips were just below her ear, but he had forced her head sideways and Molly couldn’t see him. He groped her breast and squeezed his legs, slippery bare, around her stocking. She could tell that he was dressed in nothing but a shift. His nether part was firm and slid above her knee, up and down, back and forth against the muscles of her thigh.

She saw it clearly in her mind and longed to shrink away, but a deeper sort of weight had paralyzed her limbs. He ground against her leg. She struggled not to cry.

She thought of Elise in bed with the chimney sweep, remembering their joy, and then she prayed, small and wordless, that he wouldn’t push inside her. Mr. Fen’s balding pate rubbed softly on her cheek.

She looked for Nicholas but couldn’t see his cot through the mist. He was safe in his oblivion. She hoped he wouldn’t stir.

Between the sweat and the oppressive saturation of the air, she and Mr. Fen were tangled in a sticky mess of limbs, and once he spasmed, growing rigid when he flexed upon her thigh, she felt his body soften like a jellyfish around her.

After a long spell of silence, Mr. Fen raised his head and whispered in her ear. His voice was too sibilant and close to understand. All she heard was “secret.” Then he peeled himself away. He tipped the cot climbing out and righted it with care, steadying its movement like a father with a cradle.

Molly watched him go. He vanished in the fog. When she finally reached down to pull the blanket over her legs, she felt the fluid on her thigh and rubbed it with her fingers. It was slippery as an egg white, copious and smooth. The darkness didn’t cover her but held her there, exposed. She wished the waterbreath were rain, never-ending rain.

Chapter Twelve

Molly woke and couldn’t remember falling asleep. She tried to convince herself that Mr. Fen’s assault hadn’t happened, that his body weight had simply been her own heavy limbs, his whispers mere delirium induced by the fog. But the smell of him had lingered, sulfurous and sweaty, and the cloth with which she’d cleaned her leg was crumpled on the floor. The waterbreath had thinned and it was easier to breathe. She could now see Nicholas distinctly in his cot. She changed her clothes before he woke, but even her extra shift had dampened in the night and every inch of her was sticky, every part of her was fouled.