Dawn on a Distant Shore (35 page)

"That will be
Mrs. MacKay," said Hakim Ibrahim.

"I don't think
we'll need her anymore. Not as long as those goats don't decide to go for a swim,"
said Curiosity.

Hannah did not
particularly want to see Mrs. MacKay again and so she kept her attention on
Daniel, who clasped her wrist with both hands as if to guide the spoon toward
his mouth. But she could still hear the rise and fall of Hakim Ibrahim's voice,
and Mrs. MacKay's response: soft, hesitant, and in a tone that wavered between
defiance and breaking. Hannah looked at Curiosity, who only raised a brow in
surprise.

The Hakim came back
into the room but went straight to his medicine cabinet, where he plucked a
small bottle out of an intricate carved stand. Hannah watched him take a bit of
some soft material from a jar, and then he spoke a word to Mrs. MacKay.

She closed the door
behind her but stood looking past them as if they did not exist. Her eyes were red
rimmed and her color was very bad, even for a white woman. There were wet spots
on her bodice, and for the first time it occurred to Hannah that Elizabeth was
in much the same situation. Except Elizabeth would get her children back-- Hannah
knew in her heart that this was true--and this woman had no hope of such a
reunion. She might have said something to Mrs. MacKay, a word of thanks or even
apology, but the Scotswoman refused to meet her gaze.

The Hakim said,
"Tilt your head to the left, please."

With a turn of his
wrist he touched the material to the lip of the small bottle and a new scent flooded
the room, sharp but not unpleasant. Then Hakim Ibrahim touched the soaked cloth
to the inner shell of Mrs. MacKay's exposed right ear and held it there for a
moment, murmuring something under his breath that Hannah could not quite make
out. Finally he stepped back and bowed from the shoulders.

Mrs. MacKay said,
"I've a few shillings." But she seemed relieved when the Hakim would
not take her money, and slipped away without another glance in their direction.

Hannah said,
"What did you give her?"

"There is no
medicine for grief," said Hakim Ibrahim, taking up his mortar and pestle
again. "But sandalwood oil will quiet her womb."

Curiosity pushed out a
sigh. "There's women who never get over a stillbirth."

Hannah had heard this
before. Listening to birthing stories was a chore a girl couldn't escape: the spinning
and the washing and the garden hoe would always be there, and so would the idea
that someday she would find herself in childbed and have to struggle to come
out of it alive. Once you had started down the road you could no more walk away
from your fate than they could walk away from this ship on foot.

Her own mother had
failed at it. When Hannah closed her eyes she could see her still. In death one
corner of her mouth had turned down a little as it often did when she was
irritated. She left the world angry, but at whom? The women who failed to stop
her bleeding? Maybe it was the waxen-faced child they had folded so lovingly
into the cold cradle of her arms. Or maybe she had been angry with herself, and
her failure. Hannah had often wondered at it.

Daniel yanked hard at
her plait and she roused herself out of her daydream to scoop more gruel into
his mouth. She said, "I wish I had been kinder to her."

With a hushing sound
Curiosity said, "There's enough on your shoulders, child. You cain't take
on the woes of the world, too."

But the Hakim said
nothing, and only looked at her with a thoughtful expression.

By midday Hannah could
hardly contain her need to be up on the quarterdeck, where she could scan the horizon
for sails that might mean a quick rescue. But Curiosity would not go where she
might see Moncrieff, and Hannah was not so desperate that she would leave her
alone with the babies. Work might have distracted her, but there was little to
do: every possible need was attended to. The cabin boy had even taken away a
basket of dirty swaddling clothes to wash.

"Don' look so
surprised," said Curiosity. "I suppose a little poop ain't the worst
of what those boys have to put up with." She had found the bundle that
Runs-from-Bears brought from the voyageurs' camp, and now she stood over the Hakim's
table where she had spread out the deerskin. Sewing would have been a
distraction, if Hannah could only make herself concentrate.

The cabin boy
preoccupied her. His name was Charlie, and he seemed to her a very ordinary
sort of boy, a little younger than Liam but older than she was. She knew nothing
about him except that he was from Scotland, had been at sea for three years
already, and that his hands--red knuckled and work hardened--were cleaner than
her own. When he brought fresh water she asked him about this.

"The Hakim says
that the devil hides beneath the fingernails, miss." Hannah could hear him
trying to swallow his Scots and sound like the doctor. It made her curious
about him, even though she knew that it would not be a good idea to be too
friendly; he might be reporting everything to Moncrieff or the captain. And
still she was inclined to like him, for his competence and quickness, and
perhaps just because they had too few allies on the
Isis
to take him for
granted.

"I ain't sure
it's the best idea for you to be up on deck anyway," said Curiosity, angling
borrowed scissors down the length of the deerskin, her brow creased in
concentration. "What you need is sleep."

Hannah nodded, because
she could not find the energy to disagree.

In the drowsy
confusion of a warm, dim place, Hannah woke disoriented and with an aching
head. For a moment she lay listening to the counterpoint of the babies' quiet
breathing interwoven with women's voices: Curiosity and Elizabeth together at
the hearth, waiting for her to join them and take up her part of the work and
the conversation.

Then all around her
the timber box that was the ship creaked and shifted, and she knew where she
was--but the voices were there still. Hannah sat up with a little cry, rolled
out of her hammock, and was at the door in two steps.

But it wasn't
Elizabeth who looked around at her. Nor was it Mrs. MacKay, who might have come
back in the end for the company of her own kind. Across from Curiosity sat Miss
Giselle Somerville.

She seemed to have
sprouted up out of the earthy colors of the surgery. Her gown glowed in the pale
green of new grass, touched here and there with a pattern of winding roses; in
the sunlight her hair was the gold of old cornsilk. This close Hannah could see
the softening line of her jaw and the web of soft lines at the corners of her
eyes that gave away her age, but she held herself like a much younger woman.
For a long moment Hannah stared at Giselle Somerville and she looked back, neither
smiling nor frowning. As if it were the most normal thing in the world for her to
be here, come to call to pass the long afternoon with old friends. Hannah felt
herself flushing with surprise and something else that made her fingers twitch.

"Come and say
good day." Curiosity's voice had an unfamiliar tone: guarded, and grating faintly
with the effort. Hannah might have turned back to the other cabin, to stay
there in the warm dark where her little brother and sister slept. But Curiosity's
expression said that she wanted Hannah here, and Hannah could not disobey her; she
would not shame her before this woman.

Giselle Somerville
said, "I suppose you have heard of me from your father. He and I were once
good friends." Her tone was not warm, but there was a hidden kind of
eagerness in her eyes.

She wants to win me
over
,
thought Hannah.
I am nothing more than another prize to her.

Hannah swallowed.
"I don't think you could have ever been my father's friend."

Curiosity blinked, but
Miss Somerville smiled.

"It was a long
time ago. We were both very young."

It was a peace
offering of a kind, but Hannah was not in the mood for peace. "You kept my
uncle Otter in Montréal so that my grandfather had to come after him," she
said. "If it weren't for you, none of this would have happened and we
would be at home where we belong." She flushed with the power of speaking
the truth to this white woman, and saw from the corner of her eye how
Curiosity's back had straightened, whether in pride or alarm she could not
tell.

But Giselle Somerville
only raised one thin eyebrow in a surprised arch.

"I see little of
your father in your face, but you are very much like him."

"She ain't much
of a one for games, that's true," said Curiosity. "Maybe you better
just tell us what you got on your mind."

"Very well."
Giselle inspected an embroidered rose on her sleeve. When she raised her head
she was all cool determination again. "I intend to slip away. If you like,
you can join me."

In her surprise,
Hannah looked to Curiosity, but the older woman's attention was focused on
Giselle Somerville.

"Well, now,"
she said. "If you know Nathaniel Bonner as well as you say you do, then
you'll know that he ain't far behind us--and his father and wife with him. No
need for us to run off on our own."

A smile slid across
the even features and then was gone. "Nathaniel and his father--yes, I suppose
they will try to follow. And his wife, of course. What is the name that Otter
had for her? Bone-in-Her-Back, I believe. From what I saw of her, a very
determined type if not very pretty."

Curiosity put a cool
hand on Hannah's wrist, as if to steady her, or quiet her. Hannah bit down hard
and willed herself to stay calm.

Giselle smiled.
"But there is little chance of it, after all. They have no ship and no
prospects of finding one for such a long journey."

Because she could not
stop herself, Hannah said, "Moncrieff says they are on their way."

Giselle had a way of
blinking that put Hannah in mind of the white owl that sat in the rafters of
the barn at Lake in the Clouds, always watching for those small creatures who
put hunger or curiosity above caution. "Moncrieff is devious, is he not?
Any lie to meet his end. But surely you must realize that his only task is to
deliver an heir to Carryck. The child will be less trouble, and the same end
will be achieved--the title and the estate will be safe from the Campbells and
the Crown. That is all any of them care about-- they are Scots, after all, and
cannot be trusted to be reasonable. If the Bonners are alive at all, it is
certain that they are not on the
Osiris
."

Curiosity's hand on
Hannah's arm tightened like a vise. She smiled, quite broadly. "Ain't
nobody said a word about the
Osiris
."

There was a slight
tensing around Giselle's mouth, and it made Hannah's breath come easier to see
this, the first sign that she could not stand up to Curiosity. Few women could,
after all, but for a moment she had been worried that this one with her jewels
and silks and a knife blade of a smile might be as dangerous as she wanted to
seem.

"It only makes
sense that Moncrieff would have promised such a thing," Giselle said, utterly
calm now. "What else might he say to keep you in your place, and
acquiescent? You are, after all, nothing to him but a way to keep the boy in
good health until he can turn him over to the earl. And of course Moncrieff
likes to think of himself as irresistible."

"He ain't alone
in that, now is he?" said Curiosity.

Giselle rose suddenly,
her bracelets tinkling. "I was offering you a way to save these children from
being delivered to Carryck. I see my concern is not welcome. I will bid you
good day."

Curiosity held out her
hand, fingers curling in an easy invitation. "Now hold on. You ain't afraid
of a little straight talk, are you?"

Giselle slitted her
eyes, but she sat again. Her back was as straight as a rifle, her head cocked
at an angle.

They watched each
other for a moment, and then Curiosity leaned forward as if she had a secret to
tell. "You don' talk much to womenfolk, do you? Don' like dealing with
your own kind if you can avoid it. Well, never mind, we won' keep you long.
Now, this is what I see. Your daddy marrying you off to the captain to get shut
of you. You just as glad to get away from him, and so off you go to Scotland.
Ain't nothing unusual in any of it--women been trading one man for another as
long as we been putting children in this world. But the captain don' suit
you--maybe he ain't pretty enough, or maybe he too tame for you, or maybe you
just don' want the vexation. So you set to run off from him before he can tie
you down, legal like. Seen that happen before, too, and not so long ago.
Sometimes women got to take things in they own hands, after all. Now, I can see
you ain't slow-witted, so I expect you got a plan."

She paused, and
because the younger woman did not correct her, she continued.

"I imagine you
got some men bribed to look the other way when the time come. A boat, or a horse,
or some way to put some distance betwixt yourself and the captain. Got your
valuables tied up in a sack, ready to go, and you'll leave the rest behind,
travel light and fast. Now, why would you want to drag a contentious old black
woman and three little ones along when you on the run, and so much at stake? We
cain't travel fast, and if you're interested in layin' low, why, we'll stick out
like that old sore thumb folks always talking about. So I'm asking myself here,
are you offering something, or are you looking for something?"