Dawn on a Distant Shore (61 page)

She swallowed the last
of her tea, and getting up from the little bow-backed chair, Elizabeth smoothed
her rumpled skirt as best she could. She smelled of horse, but this was not the
time to worry about such things.

"The children
will sleep here with me, so I have no interest in the nursery. Right now I will
go to see my husband, if you will stay and watch over the babies?"

Mally lowered her eyes
and nodded her agreement, but not before Elizabeth saw something flash across
her expression--pleasure, and perhaps a little apprehension.

"You need do
nothing but make sure they do not roll from the bed in their sleep. I will
return before they awake, or I will send my stepdaughter."

The cheerful round
face bobbed up toward her. "The red Indian, mem?"

Another truth she had
forgotten: news spread among servants at an unthinkable speed.

"My stepdaughter
is Miss Bonner," Elizabeth said firmly. She thought for a moment, knowing
that whatever information she passed on now would make its way to the entire
household, and would influence Hannah's stay here for better or worse. "I
trust you will do all in your power to make her welcome, Mally. If she is unhappy
at Carryckcastle, so will the rest of us be. Do you understand me?"

Mally's cheeks,
already ruddy, flushed even darker. "Oh, aye, mem. I meant no offense,
mem."

"I'm sure you did
not. Now I must go see how my husband is faring."

"And what shall I
tell Mrs. Hope, mem?"

Elizabeth paused at
the door. "Is there a chamber that connects to this one?"

Mally nodded eagerly.
"Aye, mem." She pointed to a closed door. "Through the dressing room."

"Do you know who
Mrs. Freeman is?"

"The Negress,
mem? I saw her frae the window."

Elizabeth said,
"Give Mrs. Hope this message from me: Mrs. Freeman and my stepdaughter
require that chamber for their own as long as we are here."

The girl swallowed
hard--Elizabeth could almost see the thoughts moving behind her eyes--but then she
bobbed her head. "Aye, mem."

"Otherwise I
leave no message for her at all."

Some of Carryck's men
were still milling about when Elizabeth found her way back to the hallway off
the courtyard. As soon as they caught sight of her, their conversation faded
away and they fell to studying the flagstones under their feet with great concentration
and interest. They put her in mind of schoolboys, in spite of all their size and
bulk.

"May I?"
Elizabeth addressed the oldest of them, the man who had taken Hannah before him
on his saddle. He ushered her through the men and then opened the door for her
with an odd little bow.

"Thank you, Mr.
...?"

"Thomas
Ballentyne, mem." He was gruff, but his expression was intelligent, and
not unkind. She would ask Hannah about him when there was an opportunity.

It was a small room,
and by its smell one used primarily for the storing of coffee and spices and
dried herbs, but given over now to the Hakim for his surgery. A long table
stood beneath a bank of windows, and on this, Nathaniel lay stretched out, his
wounded leg elevated on a bolster. Hakim Ibrahim was bent over his wounded
shoulder; just opposite him, Hannah stood with her back to the door. Curiosity
was at a workbench, grinding a pestle into a small stone bowl.

"Mrs.
Bonner," said the Hakim, glancing up only briefly. "Just a few more
stitches, and then the leg must be attended to."

"Boots,"
Nathaniel said. His voice was very hoarse. "The babies?"

"Fed, and
sleeping." She came closer, but Nathaniel kept his gaze on the ceiling overhead.
The muscles in his jaw jumped with every movement of the Hakim's needle.

"How goes it
here?"

"Very well,"
said Hakim Ibrahim. "The bullet broke the bone, but there is no damage to
the larger blood vessels."

"He is not in
danger," Hannah translated.

Curiosity made a
disapproving noise. "Maybe the shoulder won't kill him, but it wouldn't be
the first time I saw a man die of pure stubborn."

"There is another
scar here, well healed." The Hakim's tone was very calm, in spite of the
speed with which he worked. "A battle injury?"

Nathaniel sent a
sidelong glance toward Elizabeth. "You could call it that. My father-in-law
shot me."

"A hunting
accident." Elizabeth wiped the sweat that ran down his brow to his temple.
"Will you tease me even now?"

"Especially
now," he said, and closed his eyes. His left arm twitched convulsively.

Behind her Curiosity
said, "Don' bother askin', 'cause he won't take no laudanum."

She looked up in
surprise. "He's had nothing at all?"

Nathaniel squeezed her
fingers so hard that she jumped. "No laudanum."

"You see?"
Curiosity raised an eyebrow at Elizabeth. "Stubborn." There was a
swipe of dried blood on her headcloth, dark brown against the sprigged yellow
calico.

Elizabeth saw Hannah's
mouth settle in a strong line. There was an expression about her that she had
not seen very often: defiance, and disdain. She was proud of her father's
ability to withstand this pain, and resentful of the idea that he might not be
equal to it.

"He doesn't want
to sleep," Hannah said.

"And why should
he?" Curiosity snapped. "Up all night chasing around strange roads, gettin'
shot. Why sleep? Maybe the man got a bridge to build, or a war to fight."

Nathaniel closed his
eyes briefly and then opened them again. "Curiosity, if there's a war that
needs fighting, you go on ahead without me. They won't stand a chance."

Hannah ducked her head
to hide her smile, but Curiosity sucked in one cheek and let it out again as
she worked the pestle. "You better hope I don't take up weapons while I'm
so put out with you, Nathaniel Bonner. I'll put a bullet in that other
shoulder, fix you up proper."

The Hakim put down his
needle and took up a feather, which he dipped in a bowl filled with a liquid,
exactly the same shade of red as his turban. It had a strange scent, sharp and green,
the smell of marshes and growing things.

"This is the sap
of a tree that is native to Brazil," he told Elizabeth.

"It's called
dragon's blood," said Hannah.

"Brazil?"
Elizabeth looked more closely at the bowl.

"The earl has a
specimen in his conservatory," said the Hakim. "Which is very fortunate."

It was clear that this
was not Nathaniel's first encounter today with this feather, for he grasped Elizabeth's
hand hard even before it touched the skin. He jerked convulsively and hissed
through his teeth but Hakim Ibrahim continued painting the wound with quick,
even strokes. "It will prevent infection. It is not pleasant, however.
Much like salt in a wound."

"Too much like
it," Nathaniel said.

"The shoulder
will swell but the break was clean. I expect that in two weeks you will be able
to use your arm again."

Curiosity sniffed.
"I'd like to see you keep the man in bed for two weeks."

"I don't think
that will be necessary," said the Hakim. "A few days' rest to regain
his strength at most. And you must wear a sling, to protect the arm."

Nathaniel opened his
eyes and looked straight at the Hakim. "I'm indebted to you for your help,
but I can't go to bed right now. Hannah, tell the men out in the hall I'm ready
to see Carryck."

Elizabeth held up her
hand. "Nathaniel, please be reasonable. When the Hakim is finished dressing
your leg, you will eat, and then you will rest for an hour, and then if you are
sufficiently restored, you may speak to whomever you like. But right now
Carryck can wait."

He blinked at her.
"Maybe the earl can wait, Boots, but I can't. Whatever he knows about
Hawkeye and Robbie, I need to hear it."

Hannah's expression
went very still as she looked from Nathaniel to Elizabeth. "Are they dead?"

He raised a hand to
touch her cheek. "I don't know, Squirrel. Maybe."

She made a little
clicking sound deep in her throat, and Nathaniel's grip tightened on her shoulder.
"It's a possibility, I can't tell you that it ain't. I managed to get a
few words with Stoker's first mate before the dragoons caught wind of me, and
he told me that they were picked off the
Jackdaw
by a frigate headed for
battle."

Curiosity put down her
bowl with a thump. "That don't make much sense," she said thoughtfully,
all of her irritation suddenly gone. "Why take the two oldest men on board
and leave the young ones? Maybe the man was lyin' to protect his own
skin."

Elizabeth said,
"I might come to the same conclusion, if the earl hadn't told me the same
story right before Nathaniel came back to the inn."

"But how would
the earl know about what happened on the
Jackdaw
?" asked Hannah.
And then her face brightened. "Unless he has had word of the frigate?"

The Hakim had been
strangely quiet as he dressed the wound on Nathaniel's leg, but now Elizabeth
felt his attention on her.

He said, "The
earl knows of what happened on the
Jackdaw
because he has questioned her
captain at some length."

Nathaniel sat up with
such suddenness that Elizabeth stepped back in surprise.

"Mac Stoker was
here?"

Hakim Ibrahim nodded.
"He is here still, and he will be for some time. I have been kept busy treating
gunshot wounds just recently."

Nathaniel lay down
again.

"I want to see
him before I see Carryck."

"Good," said
Hannah. "Let's go see him, then."

There was a small
silence, and then Nathaniel reached out a hand to Hannah. She came to stand
just beside him.

"Squirrel,"
he said, speaking Kahnyen'kehâka now to spare her embarrassment before the Hakim.
"We need you to look after the babies."

"But--"

"I don't want you
anywhere near Mac Stoker." His jaw clenched and then relaxed again.

Hannah turned on her
heel and held out her palms toward Elizabeth. A request, written in worry lines
that were out of place on a young girl's face. And Curiosity watching, wondering
if she would give in this time, or do what was best for the child and send her
away.

"Your father is
right, Squirrel. I will bring you the news myself, if there is any."

She held her head up straight,
but her mouth trembled slightly. After a long pause, she nodded.

A servant showed
Hannah the way. He wore a long-tailed coat of dark blue with gold facings, and
he had a twitch in his left cheek that reminded her of a bird fluttering. She wondered
if he had had it all his life, but she could not ask him about it: all the way through
the halls he watched her out of the corner of his eye as if he expected her to
pull a tomahawk from beneath her skirt and take his scalp.

She had been sent away
like a little child, and she was angry about it, and hurt. But even in her poor
mood, Hannah could not ignore the castle. It was full of interesting things:
bears and stags and dragons carved into wood paneling and even into the rafters.
A stag's head mounted on the wall. Paintings of dogs and horses and sailing
ships in heavy golden frames. At the foot of a great stair two vases big enough
for a girl to hide in, decorated with colorful birds.

There was a little man
on the landing, made entirely of polished metal, and she could no more walk
past him without stopping than she could have ignored a live monkey. He was
barely taller than she was and cleverly made, down to the hinged fingers and
the face, constructed of many small plates somehow held together to make a nose
and cheeks and a chin. Behind grillwork the eye sockets were blank, and she
found herself a little relieved.

"What is
this?" she asked the servant.

He cleared his throat.
"A suit of armor, miss. As the gentlemen wore tae joust in days lang
syne." And seeing her blank look, he added, "Twa men runnin' at each
ither on horseback wi' lances, ye ken?"

Hannah did not quite
understand why men would wrap themselves in metal to get on a horse, but she sensed
that the servant's patience with her questions might not reach so far. She
nodded.

The upstairs hall was
lined with candle sconces and small carved tables, and on each of them stood a
carving of an elephant, some bone white and others milky green. She would have
paused to look, but the servant stopped in front of a door.

Hannah did not like to
be impolite, so she waited with him. "What is your name?"

One eye blinked, and
then the other; it was a good trick. "MacAdam, miss."

"And what is it
that you do here?"

"I'm one o' the
footmen, miss."

She considered his
feet, and saw nothing unusual about them.