Dawn on a Distant Shore (51 page)

"Aye," said
Stoker with a bloody frown. "Sure and that day will come sooner than you
think."

The marines pulled the
longboat through rough waters toward the
Leopard
. Hawkeye sat shoulder
to shoulder with Robbie; Fane was out of earshot at the other end of the boat.

On the
Jackdaw
the crew had already set about repairs, half of them heaving the spare mast into
place while the others were at work on the rigging. There was no damage to the
hull, and Hawkeye didn't doubt that they would be under sail again before morning.

Below them, turning
gently on their wake, Micah's body floated amid the jetsam. Only Giselle stood
at the rail to watch them go, her fists clenched like stones.

Hawkeye said, "I
should have seen it long ago. She's got Iona's eyes."

The wind whipped the
words from him, but Robbie had understood. He wiped the sea spray from his
face.

"I gave ma word
that I wad nivver speak o' it."

Hawkeye tried to
remember Wee Iona as he had last seen her in the shadows of the pig farmer's
barn on the outskirts of Montréal, but another picture came to mind. A young Highland
Scotswoman he had first met after the battle of Québec; she had put aside the veil
to live among the roughest sort of men. It made too much sense to be doubted.

"I suppose Pink
George must be her father, or he wouldn't have taken her in. But why would Iona
give her up to him?"

Robbie hunched his
shoulders. "It's a complicated tale, Dan'l. One I canna tell in guid
faith."

Hawkeye put the
question out between them, because he could do nothing else.

"And the boy? Is
it true?"

Robbie ran a hand over
his face. "Aye," he said hoarsely. "It's aye true. But Dan'l, ye
mun believe me when I tell ye, I didna ken aboot the lad until I broucht
Moncrieff tae Montréal just after the New Year. I couldna think how tae tell ye."

A flock of tiny
seabirds settled around the longboat. The men called them little peters, the souls
of lost sailors who danced along the tops of the waves; bound to the sea in
death as they had been in life. Beneath the water long sleek forms wove silver
streams, moving faster than any horse. Headed somewhere else. Hawkeye took a
deep breath, salt and storm, the endless sea. One grandchild unclaimed; the
others equally out of reach, headed for an unknown shore. He wished that he had
Cora beside him, for her quiet counsel and the simple sound of her voice.

"Dan'l, do ye
think we shall ever see hame agin?"

They were close enough
to the
Leopard
now to make out the voices of the men peering over the
rail at them. More officers and curious sailors, the gun crews still standing
alert at their cannons; sharpshooters up in the rigging. And someone else.

"Look, Rab,
here's an old friend," Hawkeye said by way of answer.

Robbie raised his
head. "Christ Jesus," he said softly. "Young Will Spencer. For
the love o' Mary, what is he doin' on the
Leopard
?"

"Come to
Elizabeth's rescue, looks like," said Hawkeye. "Now we'll just have
to track her down."

Almost two years out
of home port, the
Isis
was overflowing with the evidence of her industry
and enterprise. The hold was as big as a longhouse but still it was filled to
bursting with kegs of cinnamon and mace, cardamom and saffron; endless bales of
India silk, cashmere and cotton and a hundred seroons of indigo. On the last
leg of the journey up the eastern seaboard to Halifax, the
Isis
had
taken on what seemed to Hannah to be more Virginia tobacco than the whole Hodenosaunee
nation had ever produced, or needed. And still, the sailors told stories of the
real treasures kept in a locked room on the lower deck. None of them had ever
been inside, but Hannah went there with Hakim Ibrahim early one morning when
Charlie's brother Mungo lay dying.

It was not the blow to
his head, but a mysterious ache in his lower belly that was dragging him away against
his will. The pain had come and gone for a week and for that whole time the Hakim
had kept Mungo in a darkened room where he was forbidden any activity at all.
He had been given only boiled water and a tea made of flaxseed and steeped wild
yam. Curiosity and Elizabeth took turns sitting with Mungo to keep the cold compresses
on his belly fresh, and for a time it seemed to Hannah that he would get well.

Then, on the very day
that the
Isis
first came within sight of Scotland, he began vomiting
again, and the pain settled in for good. Curiosity called it an angry belly,
for its heat and hardness and the fullness of misery it brought with it. The
Hakim called it the vermiform appendix and showed them drawings of a little
finger of gut that was spilling poison into the blood. Mungo wrestled with the pain,
and did not care what name they gave it.

After a particularly
difficult night, Charlie came to the Hakim, his eyes red with weeping, but his
voice steady. "Can we no' give him laudanum to ease his passing?"

Hannah held her
breath. She knew well enough that Hakim Ibrahim had no more laudanum. He had
used the last of it when a sailor called Jonathan Pike had mangled his hand in
a winch.

Hakim Ibrahim pressed
Charlie's bony shoulder. "I will do what I can for him."

So he took Hannah with
him to the locked storage room and opened the door with a key that hung on a
cord around his neck. A sticky-sweet, warmish smell met them. He reached up to
hang the lantern from the hook in the ceiling, and the room came into focus.

In the middle of it
all sat a throne. It was carved of some dark wood Hannah did not recognize and
so tall that the curved back touched the timbers overhead. The whole of it
glinted with inlay work of pearl and silver and gold that told a hunting story.
Men with eyes like the doctor's held long lances. A tiger ran through tall grass,
its tail winding.

"You may sit in
it," said the Hakim, and so Hannah climbed up.

It was very
uncomfortable, but she stayed to study the room so she could tell the story.
Forests of ivory tusks longer than a man sprouted in dark corners. A whole army
of statues of all sizes crowded together, wrapped and padded with sacking so
that only faces peeked out: some of polished white stone, others so old that
noses and ears had been softened away to almost nothing. Animals, dragons,
warrior women with furious hard faces. Piles of furs such as she had never seen
before spilled out of trunks: some striped, some spotted, some deep black and
others glossy brown. Spread out over a humped chest Hannah recognized the pelt
of a lion by its mane, and because the paws and tail and head were still
attached. The mouth was propped open with an ivory box, so that the lantern
light played on the heavy yellow teeth. Dusty glass eyes stared into the
shadows where wooden spice casks lined the walls.

Hakim Ibrahim opened
one, and the sweet smell rose into the room in a fresh wave. Hannah went to
stand beside him. There was another chair here and a little table, its rumpled
cloth sprinkled with tobacco. On it were a flint box with a pierced tin lid, a
few pewter plates, a half-bottle of port, a carved ivory case, a scale, and a
worn hornpipe, the stem almost bitten through. Hannah wondered how often the captain
sat here alone, smoking.

The Hakim took a cake
from the open cask and put it on a clean plate. It was flattish, a deep dark
brown, with small bits of leaf stuck to it.

"Laudanum would
be easier," he said. "But raw opium will serve too, if he can keep it
down."

He opened the ivory
case. Inside, a row of metal weights nestled in green velvet, the smallest no
larger than Hannah's thumbnail, and cast in the shape of a spider. She saw a
deer, a fish, a turtle, a horse, a cow, a tiger. The largest, the size of a
hen's egg, was fashioned in the shape of an elephant with a trunk curled
upward.

The Hakim took the
turtle weight and placed it on the scale. The knife flashed bright as he cut
into the brown cake. When he had three pieces of opium, each equal to the
weight of the little turtle, he quickly put the cake back in the cask and
replaced the lid.

He said, "I will
miss your assistance in the surgery. You have been a very good student."

Hannah was so
surprised that she could say nothing in return, but only bobbed her head.

"I need not
encourage you to continue to study. But I will caution you to be alert in
Scotland. Your natural curiosity is a powerful thing, but it may put you in
danger."

"My father will
protect me."

Beneath the red turban
the Hakim's brow creased thoughtfully. "Your father is a brave man of excellent
understanding. But he is coming to a strange land, and he will need all the
assistance you can give him. There are men in Scotland--" He paused, and
then went on. "There are bad men in Scotland who would do you harm."

"There are bad
men everywhere," said Hannah. The images came to mind without her bidding:
Mr. MacKay and his ruined face; a man hung from a dead oak with his hands
hacked off; the old Tory with his notched ears and moccasins of skin, hissing at
her in her own language. And Liam as he had first come to them, beaten by his
only brother until his bones had broken inside him. She had not thought of Liam
in days, and a sudden swell of homesickness came over her. But when she opened her
mouth to say this, to talk about home, something else came out.

Hannah said, "Are
there many men like Mr. MacKay in Scotland?"

"And what kind of
man is Mr. MacKay?" the Hakim asked. He was looking at her thoughtfully,
and he waited while Hannah gathered her thoughts.

"The kind who
thrives on the pain of others," she said finally. Thinking of Margreit
MacKay, worn so thin by grief that she lost all connection to the world.

"There are men
like Mr. MacKay everywhere," said the Hakim. "But there are also men
like your father, and women like Mrs. Freeman and your stepmother. Like the
woman you will be one day."

He was trying to
comfort her, but the truth was simple. She said, "I am afraid of Scotland."

Hakim Ibrahim picked
up the plate of opium, covered it with a cloth, and they went back to the
surgery, where Mungo waited.

Dearest Many-Doves,

I write this letter in
the trust that we will encounter a packet bound for Boston or New-York in the
next day or so. By my calculations it is now the second week of June. God grant
that it may reach you by September. I would wish for nothing more than to
deliver it to you myself, but I fear it will be many months before we are
safely home again.

From Runs-from-Bears
you will have learned that the children were taken from us in Québec. Let me reassure
you first that we were reunited with them within days, and that they suffered
no permanent harm. Nathaniel, Squirrel, Daniel, Lily, Curiosity, and I are
together now on the
Isis
, and we remain all in good health. It is a matter
of great concern to us that we cannot give you word of Hawkeye and Robbie, but
they follow us on the
Jackdaw
, and we have not seen that ship in more
than a week.

This evening we came
within sight of the Isle of Man; I expect we shall be in Scotland tomorrow morning.
We are unsure of what is to happen next, except that we shall soon see the Earl
of Carryck, who has caused us to come so far against our will. I pray that the
earl proves a more reasonable and honest man than his emissaries Mr. Moncrieff
and Captain Pickering have been. Nathaniel still hopes that an opportunity will
present itself to turn about immediately and sail for home, but how that might
be achieved is unclear.

Daniel and Lily
thrive, as does Squirrel, who has been kept busy by studying with the ship's
surgeon. Nathaniel rarely sleeps, now that we are within sight of land; Curiosity
seems to do little else. We think of you every day and pray that you are all in
good health, and that Blue-Jay continues to thrive. Nathaniel bids me tell you
all that he has seen the Panther in the Sky, and it was running toward home. A
good omen.

Please share this
letter with my father and those friends who inquire after us.

  Elizabeth Middleton
Bonner

  10th day of June in
the Year 1794

  Aboard the Isis

My dearest husband
Galileo Freeman,

This ship will come to
rest soon. I ask the Lord what he has got on his mind for us in a country as
homely and wet as this Scotland I see outside the window, but he don't talk
much to me these days.

Think of this when you
worry about me: Nathaniel Bonner is the same good man he has always been, and
if there is a way in this world to get me home to you he will find it.
Otherwise I go to my reward thanking the Lord for the good husband he sent my
way all those years ago, and for the fine children he put into my care.

  Your loving wife