The Pirate Captain (108 page)

It’s your fault. It’s your fault…

There was no rhyme or reason to wounds or injury. The grandest and most grotesque could heal, a virtual miracle, while the smallest nick could fester to the point of death or loss of limb. She resolutely blocked the last possibility. No such thing was going to happen, so there was nothing to be gained by worrying.

“He should be bled,” came Kirkland’s voice from behind her.

“I haven’t the tools, the training, nor the stomach for that.”

Nathan cried out—a pitiful sound—at the mere act of lowering his hand on the mattress next to him. Her stomach squeezed at the thought of what must come next.

“It needs cleaning. Bring hot water and—” Cate began.

“There is none, sir. The fires are out.”

She bit back a snappish reply. Her anger was with herself for so foolishly in forgetting.

“Then we’ll have to make do,” she sighed, ignoring the inner voices screaming in objection. “Bring rum, and a brush or cloth, or…or something,” she said finally.

Her faith in the curative powers of whiskey was long-established, but rum was largely untested. Rum, however, was all there was to be had, and so rum it would have to be.

“Pass the word for some help. We’ll need to hold him down,” she called in Kirkland’s wake.

As preparations were being made, she watched Nathan with increasing concern as he became more listless and less aware of the world around him.

Perhaps for this next part, it might be just as well.

Chin and Mute Maori appeared shortly, one dripping wet, the other bleary-eyed from being jerked from his hammock. Stern-faced, they resolutely took up positions, one at Nathan’s legs; the other at his shoulders. Millbridge held the bowl. Cate took a deep breath and poured rum over Nathan’s hand. With his scream still vibrating her ears, she set to scrubbing with a soft-bristled brush.

Like Highlanders, seamen tended to be a stoic lot in the face of injury. The fever, however, had robbed Nathan of such restraint. He twisted against the grasp of the ship’s goliaths with uncommon strength, the already ragged voice going guttural as he screamed. She resolutely kept her eyes averted from Nathan’s, so accusing and pleading.

It has to be done! It has to be done.

Cate scrubbed and poured, scrubbed and poured, the stench of fouled flesh was sharp through the rum’s sweetness. At one point, she called for the lantern to be brought closer, and verified that nothing more remained than raw flesh, bleeding freely but cleanly.

She knocked the damp strand of hair from her face with a forearm. A stream of moisture tracked between her shoulder blades. Everyone in the room was shaken and sweating. Nathan gazed at her through dull eyes, and then rolled his head away.

Kirkland arrived with a bowl containing a mix of relatively warm milk and linseed oil, a slab of bread already soaking. For a proper poultice, the milk should have been near boiling and the softtack fresh. In order for the milk to have been as warm as it was, Kirkland had to have heated it over a candle the while. She fished out the bread, squeezed, and pressed it to Nathan’s hand

She drew the stool up to the bedside and settled in for the vigil.

Nearly lost him. Nearly lost him
, an inner voice chanted as Cate trickled a mix of water, brandy, and honey into Nathan’s mouth.

She had no recollection of where the habit had come from, but it had allowed many a person—injured, ill, or otherwise incapacitated—to thrive. Her faith in it was dampened somewhat, for whiskey was the proven ingredient. Brandy, however, was all that was to be had. She ran a mental list of known febrifuges—catnip, coneflower, willow bark—with longing, for she had none. She was obliged to rely on what was to hand: a tepid poultice, a compromised potion, and Nathan’s spirit. Her greatest faith was in the latter.

As she sponged Nathan’s head and limbs and kept a wet cloth on his head, she tried not to think about how vital and compelling his body had been. Exactly how long ago was unclear; time had gone missing with the sun. His body was paler still than from when he had been brought in. It had been too much like watching the glow of life drain as he grew to near bone white. The light carved deep shadows in the curves and dips, rendering him almost skeletal. The ebony braids were a stark, tangled framework around a pallid face. His hand lying on his stomach was a livid slash against the pale of his stomach, the barest brush of the skin causing him to flinch. Bruises had begun to bloom on his ribs and hip from the battering of being swept off the deck.

Nearly lost him. Nearly lost him.

Voices were periodically heard outside the curtain, the men inquiring as to their Captain’s progress.

“The day will tell,” came Millbridge’s ancient creak.

Day?

Cate blinked and looked around. It could have been day. The gloom in the cabin had brightened somewhat. The storm still raged, however, the wind still screaming through the ship’s every crevice.

In spite of her attentions, Nathan’s fever deepened. His body radiated with an internal inferno, and his skin drew dry and taut over the bones of his face. The rattle of his rapid breathing was audible over the storm. He barely stirred when spoken to, and she fought the nagging sensation that she had lost him already.

Sometime, Nathan slipped into delirium. Cate called for strong hands to help tie him down. It was a precaution not only to keep him from doing himself harm, but to prevent him from being tossed from the bunk by the capering ship. His brow furrowed, and his bound limbs worked against the bindings. His head jerked and eyelids twitched as he rambled, names and orders, fragmented conversation mumbled in varying degrees of lucidity. He tossed his head as his agitation grew, until the cloth upon it was flung to the floor. Cate bent to pick it up and straightened to find his eyes had opened. They were fever-glazed and as vacant as a sleepwalker’s.

“Hattie?” He spoke a dry croak, in a strange combination of puzzlement and hope.

With a sharp intake of air, Cate lurched back on the stool. Before she could decide how or if to respond, Nathan’s eyes rolled closed and he sank away. Bone-rattling jolts emitted from deep within, wave upon wave. She couldn’t breathe, her chest seeming as bound as Nathan’s arms. Through an increasing haze of wetness, she watched from a careful distance as he churned and mumbled.

In his agitation, his hand was often jostled or flexed, causing him cry out. His moans of agony gradually gave way to ones of yearning and apprehension, some verging on sheer joy. His breath quickened, whether in arousal or fear she couldn’t tell. Either way, she couldn’t bring herself to touch him. Then he went rigid.

“Hattie!” Nathan arched his head back into the pillow, his graveled voice eloquent with anguish. The tortured body writhed against the soft bindings, whether in defense or desire was impossible to know.

Gasping as if she had been punched, Cate clapped a hand over her mouth. She heard a wet
splat!,
and looked down to see she had dropped the cloth, gone forgotten in her hand. She turned from the bedside and closed her eyes, tears cascading down her cheek.

He went suddenly still, deathly so. Panicked, she swung around directly into his glassy-eyed gaze. A face so recently tortured was now completely at peace.

“There’s me darling. I knew you’d come,” he said in utter tenderness.

Allowing him to think she was his precious Hattie seemed to provide him ease, and so she sat frozen, her heart pounding dully in her ears.

“I knew you’d come, me blessed angel. From the first…So long…needed you…needed…so long…so…” His head rolled aside and he faded once more into oblivion.

Cate clamped her lower lip between her teeth, struggling to dam the flood of emotions that washed over her: fury, hurt, shock, confusion…and hurt, unspeakable hurt. There was a small crack as her heart broke, and then the sharp pain in her chest as it was torn out.

You stupid fool. You stupid, silly, gullible…stupid fool. What the hell else did you expect?

She bent and sobbed into the linen folds of her skirt.

“He’s out of his head.”

Startled, she jerked up to find Pryce standing at the door, braced against the storm. With his Captain incapacitated, command had fallen to him. The weight of it showed, for he was grey and haggard. Thoroughly sodden, he brought with him the smell of rain and the sea.

She dashed her face dry. “Yes, I know.”

“He don’t reckon—”

“Yes, I know!” she hissed, more sharply than intended. “There’s always the chance that he does
reckon
, isn’t there?”

“She shot him.”

“He loved her,” she retorted. Her gaze fixed on the divoted scar on Nathan’s chest. A shadow cast across it rendered it almost a hole—the same she felt in her chest. “And still does,” she added bitterly.

“She was named after Cape Hatteras.” Pryce offered the innocuous detail as if it might equivocate or allay, or if nothing else, a bridge to a subject less unpleasant.

It failed on all counts.

“Really?” Cate asked, wholly disinterested.

“Aye, born there durin’ a storm.”

Cate gave a feeble attempt at a laugh. “I suppose she should have been grateful it hadn’t been off Cape Cod.”

A strained silence fell between them. Water dripping from Pryce patted on the floor where he stood at the end of the bunk. His expression darkened further as he listened to his Captain ramble.

“’Tis possible someone…” Pryce began delicately.

Cate looked up, blinking dully. “Someone what?”

“Someone was t’ put somethin’ on the blade, assurin’ this very thing,” he said with a significant lift of his grizzled brows.

“But Thomas…” Weariness fogged her mind, turning every thought back on itself. Urinating on or sullying weapons by other means wasn’t unknown to her. It meant the merest nick would doom the enemy to a torturous death from a fouled wound. She strained to think back to that day on the beach.

“That’s ridiculous. There was no time for such scheming,” she heard herself say.

Pryce’s broad shoulders lifted under the wet shirt and dropped. “Mebbe.”

“I love him, Pryce,” she blurted.

It is a wonder, she thought dimly, what prompted such a confession. The dark room, the glow of the lanterns, and sense of timelessness gave the room the air of a confessional. A wholly unnecessary confession, she suspected. Surely by now it was written on her forehead. And yet it seemed an important one, if for no other reason than a rationale for her steadfastness, or as steadfast as Nathan would allow. She was resigned to that inevitable day, when she would no longer serve his needs as a substitution for the one he truly longed for, and would be set off, banished, or just left.

Just like you used him for Brian?

No, it was different. Brian was…gone.

She looked at Nathan, now tranquil, and smiled faintly. It would seem the two of them were much more alike than supposed. One man: she had been prepared to remain so to the end of her days. And Nathan? Granted, he had held many a woman in his arms, but only held one in his heart.

Nathan’s forearm was turned away, but Cate could see the tattoo there, for it was as indelibly etched in her mind as it was on his skin: a swallow bearing a heart, pierced and bleeding. Not much more need be said. It was unreasonable to expect Nathan to forget such a love, when she couldn’t do the same. What a tragic lot they were: two lost people cleaving onto the first bit of flotsam to keep from drowning in the loneliness.

Cate gave a mirthless laugh. “I know it’s the last thing anyone, especially him desires to hear, but there it is. Do you think me foolish?”

Gentleness touched the usually severe grey eyes. “Nay, to do otherwise would be akin to desirin’ ye not to draw breath. And that’s the pity of it. He’ll hurt, ye, sir. He won’t be intendin’, but he’ll hurt ye just the same.”

###

Bells, bells, and bells.

Cate’s existence narrowed down to the watch bells, changing the poultice, and the space in between.

Ignoring an aching back and burning joints, she sponged Nathan’s fever-ravaged body and trickled her potion into his mouth with trembling hands. She swayed on the stool, desperate for sleep, but the thought of leaving his side was intolerable. The damp and chill of the storm had penetrated to her core. She jerked from a tremor and guiltily thought of lying next to Nathan’s heated body to warm herself, just as she had just a few days ago.

The sound of dripping water came from somewhere. In the Highlands, it was believed the sound was the harbinger of death, a water spirit come to collect a soul.

She leaned defensively over Nathan’s body. “Go gather elsewhere. There’s no one to be had here.”

Her nostrils twitched constantly for the first hint of mortification.

Not yet.

Only the foulness of infection was detected. She had seen the looks from Pryce, Millbridge and others, and knew what they were thinking. When changing the poultice, she had seen the red streaks, now reaching nearly to Nathan’s wrist. They seemed no worse, but she couldn’t trust judgment quite possibly skewed by desperate hope. To believe otherwise was to be obligated to consider the options: death, which she could not allow, or in the well-meaning spirit of avoiding that, amputation.

The sharp taste of bile rose in her throat.

Cate had witnessed amputations, heard the saw grind through tendon and bone, seen the blood spurt as veins were severed, and then smelled the seared flesh when the hot iron was touched to the stump. Many healed and flourished; others had withered and perished, in spirit if not in body.

She eyed Nathan lying there, his ribs rising and falling as he labored for each intake of air. Every cloud had a lining. Some would say Providence had just provided a salvation: remove his hand and take the “S” brand with it. Nathan would no longer be a marked man, the threat of ownership gone. He could have his life back, the freedom he so cherished.

Would it be to clip his wings, like his precious swallows, no longer able to fly? The ends of a few fingers and toes, the top of one ear: life had taken its swipes and he had prevailed. But how much more could his spirit take before it surrendered? With his right hand gone, he would be defenseless in a violent world. He could learn to use his sword with his left, but living long enough to do so would be the challenge. He could, however, still have his ship.