Boyett-Compo, Charlotte - WindTales 02 (2 page)

The hatchway down into the hold was battened down, locked with a heavy padlock that appeared to be

newer than the hasp into which it had been fitted. It took both Weir and Tarnes’ combined strengths to

pry the padlock open with a crowbar Genny found above decks. Once the padlock was off and the

hatch opened, an overbearing stench assaulted the boarding party's nostrils, making eyes water and

stomachs roll.

“By the holy ghost!” Tarnes gasped, covering his mouth and nose with a hastily-drawn kerchief. “What

the hell is that smell?” He gagged, swallowing a rapidly-rising clump of bile which was threatening to

erupt from his watering mouth.

“If that's the crew, they've been down there awhile,” Genny murmured, holding her nose and breathing

heavily through her parted lips.

“I've never smelled such foulness,” Tarnes mumbled, his eyes watering from the stench.

“Ho, there!” Weir called into the blackness of the hold. “We're from the Wind Lass. Is anyone there?"

There was silence from the ebony depths.

“It could have been rats we heard,” Weir said.

“Mighty damned big rats to have made a thump like we heard.” Tarnes squinted his eyes, leaned over

the hatchway and peered into the darkness.

“I can't see a bloody thing."

“Genny, go find us a lantern or something. I'm not going down there without a light of some kind.” Weir

Saur was a brave man, but darkness was not something he was comfortable with.

Genny nodded at her brother's request, well understanding his one weakness, and left to do his bidding.

“Ho, there!” Weir called out again. “Is anyone there?” Only more silence and a horrible waft of the

stomach-churning stench greeted his hail.

“God, but that's a right offensive odor!” Tarnes said. “What the hell could cause such a smell?"

Weir didn't know and he wasn't so sure he really wanted to find out. The smell had an evil about it that

bespoke the very bubbling pits of hell. “Whatever it is, there sure can't be anything human living in it. I

can hardly breathe up here."

A flicker of light washed over the men and they looked over their shoulder to see Genny striding forward

with two lanterns swinging in her hands. The light from the amber-tinted shades cast her small oval face in

an ivory glow, lighting her forehead while the area below her nose was lost in deep shadow. If Mr.

Neevens had seen her coming at him like that, he would have bolted for sure.

“When I was in the galley, I found something very interesting, Weir,” she told her brother.

“What?” Weir Saur accepted one of the lanterns from his sister.

Genny handed the other lantern to Tarnes. “There were a lot of herbs and roots lying scattered about the

cook table and there was a crucible of quinine on one of the shelves."

“Sounds like they had fever on board,” Tarnes said.

Genny nodded. “There's a lot of that at the penal colonies, I hear. Looked as though they were brewing

a remedy for malaria."

A sound from behind them made the three turn in surprise, but upon seeing who had joined them, they

relaxed.

“Find anything?” the newcomer asked.

“We're about to go down into the hold. We heard a sound earlier, but there wasn't any answer to my

call,” Weir said.

Genny looked at the newcomer and smiled, as she smiled every time she was within eyesight of Patrick

Kasella. Her gray eyes twinkled, her ivory complexion ran a peach blush and her heart skipped a beat or

two every time her brother's best friend and partner looked her way.

“What is that godawful smell? Is that coming from the hold?” Patrick asked, smiling briefly, brotherly, at

Genny before turning his attention to Weir. “Surely that can't just be bilge water."

“I don't think so neither, and it's getting worse the longer we stand here,” Tarnes quipped. He stepped

gingerly over the hatch and put his booted foot on the top rung of the ladder leading into the hold. “I'm

either going to see what's causing it or faint from the smell of it."

The men didn't see the hurt look fall over Genny's face at Patrick's easy dismissal of her; not that the

Ionarian had ever looked at her with anything other than easy dismissal. In his charming, North Boreal

way, Patrick, or Paddy as his friends called him, treated Genny no differently than he did the rest of

Weir's crew. That he didn't seem to see her as a budding young woman bothered no one but Genny;

certainly not Weir who didn't want any man looking at his sister in any way other than brotherly.

Weir stepped down the ladder behind Tarnes and Patrick followed. The men didn't think of Genny until

she bumped into Paddy's back as she stepped off the ladder.

“Damn it, Genevieve!” Weir cursed, eyeing her with displeasure. “We don't know what we're going to

find down here!"

Her pert nose in the air, Genny glared at him, her lips pursed tightly together, still stung by Patrick's

unknowing disregard. “So?” she challenged.

“You've got no business being down here until we find out what's causing that godawful smell!” Weir

snarled. “There could be plague or the likes down here!"

“Hush!” Tarnes cautioned. He squinted. “There it is again.” He hefted his lantern and peered about the

hold. The stench was worse where they stood, enveloping the four of them in an atmosphere that was

almost palpable.

“I'll look to the aft,” Weir said as he took Genny's arm. “You come with me."

Paddy followed behind Tarnes as the Second Mate made his way amidships and then, finding nothing

but splintered wood from broken open cargo, ventured further into the deeper darkness of the stinking

hold.

Weir stumbled over a coil of hemp and bumped hard into the bulkhead, banging his shoulder painfully

against the wood. He almost dropped the lantern in the process, but Genny reached out to steady him.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

“I didn't hear anything,” Weir grumbled as he wiped his hand down his pant leg. There was thick, slimy

moisture on the wall of the ship's hold. “What did it sound like?"

The young woman listened hard, shushing her brother as he repeated his question. She inched forward,

searching the planking beneath her feet.

“Look at this, Weir,” she said as she pointed.

Weir came forward and lowered the lantern. “There's nothing but bulkhead back there."

Genny wasn't so sure. “Do you see anything odd about the wood?” she asked, stepping over another

coil of rope as her vision followed the planking.

“No,” he told her. He held the lantern a bit higher. “I don't see anything odd. It's flat. What else should it

be?"

“We didn't find anything but unsalvageable cargo,” Patrick told them as he and Mr. Tarnes joined them.

“Nothing that could have made the sounds you heard."

“We may have found something, Paddy,” Genny said.

Weir rolled his eyes, looked at Patrick. “Little miss know-it-all thinks there's something odd about the

bulkhead."

Genny stooped down, touched her hand to the horizontal planking covering of the bulkhead, tapped on

the wood. There was a hollow sound. She looked over her shoulder at her brother. “There's something

behind this wall."

Patrick eased around Tarnes and hunkered down beside Genny. He rapped on the planking and

gagged. “Mother of Alel!” he gasped. “Whatever that smell is, it's coming from behind here.” He turned

his head away and gathered a mouthful of saliva and then spat, hoping to exorcise the bile riding up his

gullet.

“Is there a latch of some sort on this wall, Paddy?” Genny asked, running her hands over the wood.

Reluctant to even touch the wood concealing such a foul odor, Patrick nevertheless put his hands on the

planking and felt, wincing at the feel of the slick wood beneath his flesh. His fingers touched something

cold, stopped, went back, and fumbled until the smooth expanse of metal ran under his fingertips.

“Here! Weir, hold that lantern closer!"

Bending forward, Weir Saur thrust his lantern close to his friend's shoulder and caught sight of the iron

bolt set into the wood. He watched keenly as Patrick threw the bolt back.

“Where's the handle?” Genny asked, seeing none.

“Inside spring lock,” Patrick told them as he pushed on the door to release it.

“Holy ghost!” Tarnes gasped, reeling from the stench, which shot out from behind the moving panel.

Genny thought she would vomit as the smell assailed her. She crabwalked back from the door as Patrick

pulled it further open.

A hollow sound, a rusty sound that moved from behind the panel and the four froze.

“There's something there,” Tarnes warned.

A pitiful sound, a human sound, seeped from behind the panel. It was a groan, a cry for help.

“There's a man in there!” Weir whispered as the lantern light from Tarnes’ hand fell partially into the

hidden area behind the planking.

Patrick looked up. “No, there are two."

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He was the most pitiful sight Weir Saur had ever seen in his life.

Long, dirty blond hair, matted with filth, alive with crawling, breeding vermin, hung in thick clumps down

a pathetically thin back that was covered with age-old lash marks. A ragged beard, covering much of the

man's lower face and hanging well down his chest, was slick with grease, mottled with dried vomitus and

the gods alone knew what else. Some fingernails were broken into the quick while others were long and

chipped, dirt-caked. That part of his flesh, that wasn't marred with thick white scar tissue, was gray from

years without benefit of bathing. Weir could count every rib along the man's sides, measure the frail

shoulder blades, as well as the thrusting hipbones. Unconscious, barely breathing, the man nevertheless

had a steady, if weak, heartbeat. It appeared as though he was surviving the horror of his situation by a

mere thread of stubborn resistance to give in to his fate.

The other man found in the hidden section of the hold had not fared any better.

Somewhere close to sixty, that man was semi-conscious, babbling to himself, shivering from fever,

riddled with uncontrollable spasms that bent and twisted his body as he lay on a makeshift bed in the

Captain's cabin of the unknown ship. Not as thin as the other man, the older of the two also looked

malnourished, desperately in need of food. His sunken cheeks, heavily whiskered face, and dark-rimmed

eyes were gaunt, fever-bright. His gnarled hands clutched at the bedcovers one moment then thrust

straight out in front of him the next as though warding off some sort of physical threat.

“No!” the toothless mouth would gasp. “Don't hurt us no more, Sir! Don't hurt us no more!” Saliva

dribbled from the slack mouth sprayed the air as another burst of pleading shot from the man's cracked

parched lips. “The lad is sick. He is sick!"

“How could anyone treat a human being like this?” Genny asked, her eyes instantly filling with tears as

Weir and Patrick had pulled the first man from the place in that they had obviously been kept.

“Don't hurt us!” the older man cried out, clutching twisted fingers together as he stared wild-eyed at

Weir. “Please don't hurt us!"

“You're safe,” Patrick told him, reaching out to grip the man's thin shoulder. “We're friends. You're in

good hands, now."

The old man swung his haunted gaze to Patrick, took instant measure of the man, and nodded. “Get him

out, Sir, would you please? The boy is bad off."

Weir and Patrick helped the old man up, steadying him as Tarnes took hold of him, helping him to

unbend his obviously arthritic limbs from the confines of the narrow place in that he had spent time.

“Hurry, Sirs!” the old man pleaded. “He's awful sick."

“I can see,” Patrick said, spying the blood-streaked vomitus splattered inside the hideyhole."

“Is he alive?” Tarnes asked as Weir pulled the second man, limp, and red-hot to the touch, from the

cage.

“Not by much,” Weir answered. He laid the man down on the planking and bent over him, putting his

ear to the thin chest. “He's breathing, but that's about it."

Patrick surprised Genny when he had easily hefted the man in his arms and strode purposefully toward

the hatchway with him.

“Damn it, Patrick!” Weir growled. “Aren't you afraid of catching his fever?"

“If he doesn't get help, he'll die for sure,” Paddy snarled. “Besides, this fever isn't contagious."

“How do you know that?” Weir demanded, but Paddy ignored him.

Paddy carried the unconscious man to the captain's cabin, with Tarnes close behind supporting the

staggering weight of the older man. Weir yelled across to the Wind Lass for the Healer who had

accompanied them on their journey. Once in the cabin, Patrick gently lowered the unconscious man to

the captain's bare bunk and ordered a pallet set up for the older man. No sooner had a spread of canvas

been laid on the cabin floor, than the old man fell hard into a deep, disturbed sleep, mumbling over and

over again: “See to the lad, mate; please see to the lad."

As they waited for the Healer to come aboard, Patrick stood beside the bunk and stared down at the

man with a look no one could quite fathom. When a sailor from the Wind Lass brought a blanket or two

to cover the unconscious man, Patrick took the woolen material and laid it gently over the still body,

tucking in the corners around a barely-moving chest.

“Why would they have hid them down there, do you suppose?” Weir asked.

“I don't think they were hiding them,” Patrick growled. “They were punishing them."