The Pirate Captain (109 page)

Would she? Could she stand by and watch as Nathan’s hand was cut off? Or would she fight against it and watch him die in putrefying agony? What would she face when he woke: hatred or gratitude, relief or resentment? Would he wish his precious Hattie had been there? Could she have kept him alive and whole?

She rubbed her forehead wearily.

The price…always the damned price.

“No mind. We’re a long way from that,” she said as she mopped Nathan’s fevered brow. “So let us not dwell.”

She found solace in the determination in her voice. The furrow in Nathan’s brow softened and he calmed ever so slightly, as if he might have found ease, too.

Pryce’s suggestion rolled and pitched through her mind like the deck beneath her. In the long hours of darkness, hunger and exhaustion began to play tricks on her, lucid thought more elusive. Thomas’ blade catching Nathan’s hand couldn’t have been intentional, nor something put on the blade itself. And yet, there was no denying that Nathan’s fever was remarkably high.

Still Thomas’ oath rode heavy.

If that damned fool hurts you, I will not abide it.

Thomas was Nathan’s best friend; he trusted him as she had seen Nathan trust no other, including herself, she thought ruefully. Thomas had become a pirate only because of Nathan.

Pirate.

And treachery abounded in their world.

She preferred to not admit her judgment of Thomas was skewed by his resemblance to Brian. She tried to see a darker side to the man, but couldn’t find one. Perhaps Thomas was the greater actor, even better than Nathan. Ruthlessness could lurk behind that genial smile. The two men had come to blows over a woman before. It would be too cruel to think it could be happening again, all because of her. Or it could be that she flattered herself too much, that she was but a piece in an old grudge match.

A shift in her world shoved all further thoughts aside: Nathan’s fever broke.

Now, he was consumed by chills with teeth-chattering violence. Sweat formed a dark circle on the canvas mattress, his braids leaving dark trails of moisture on the pillow as he tossed and churned. In between changing the poultice, Cate wiped his face and strove to keep the quilt about him, which he fought with the determination of the possessed.

During the brief interludes when he quieted, Cate rested a hand on his shoulder, rested her head on the raised edge of the bunk and closed her eyes. She had been dozing thusly when she woke to a deafening silence.

The storm was gone, blown itself out. Sunlight streamed under the curtain, illuminating the room in a warm flood of eye-squinting brilliance.

Joyous in the absence of one noise, she was alarmed by the absence of another.

Like the storm, Nathan had gone still, deathly still. Heart in her throat, she checked for the rise and fall of his chest, leaned her ear next to his mouth, and then sagged with relief. He still breathed, but barely so: shallow and quick, but not labored, no wetness, no death rattle. It wasn’t the deep sleep of restoration, but more like his body no longer possessed the strength to fight.

Cate pressed her hand to his cheek, the bristle of his several-day beard a soft plush against her palm. Compared to the raging fever, he was almost cold to the touch.

“How does he do?” came Millbridge’s voice from the door.

“Not sure,” she said frowning. Exhaustion was making it so blessedly impossible to think. “The fever’s broke, but…I’m not sure.”

Kirkland brushed past Millbridge bearing a bowl of now steaming milk and linseed oil. Heartened by having a fresh and proper poultice, Cate squeezed out the already soaking bread. She undid the binding and lifted away the old.

“It might have been wasted effort, Mr. Kirkland,” she said. Nathan’s hand shimmered in the wetness that filled her eyes.

The gash was still there, widened by corruption. Clear fluid, faintly tinged with blood, welled from the raw flesh, but the angry brilliance of inflammation gone. Nathan's hand was healthy and pink…relatively.

He would be both whole and alive.

###

With the storm past, the
Morganse
exhaled, a long expulsion of air pressing up from her bowels. It was over.

The hatches were beaten open. Bands of sunlight stabbed through the below decks’ gloom to illuminate the damage wrought, and the process of recovery was begun.

Seeing that Nathan rested comfortably, with pledges from both Kirkland and Millbridge that she would be woken at the slightest change, Cate was drawn like a compass needle to north to the stern sill. Now blazing with sunlight and warmth, she stretched out there in on in glorious comfort and collapsed into a deep sleep.

Cate’s reprieve was brief. The storm had been violent, the injuries many: splinters—some almost as long as her hand—gashes, contusions, smashed digits, burns, and battered ribs were only a sampling of what awaited. Two men had been stricken with inexplicable fevers, and two more were confined to their hammocks with busted guts.

As for the ship, before the mast was a snarled mess, her jibs and forestays a cat’s-cradle of jury-rigging. The forecastle jacks and carpenters worked in ant-like fury to set their world aright. The stricken anchor was barely recognizable and quite the spectacle. Flung from its cathead by the lightning bolt, it had landed prong-down, and stuck in the forecastle planking like the sea bottom itself. The opposing hook, higher than a man’s head, was contorted, as if a gargantuan had made a rude attempt at a bowline knot. The nearby kevels, nearly shoulder-wide wooden cleats mounted on the rail, had been shattered; its splinters Cate had removed from the flesh of several of the men. The tar and varnish that coated everything had been sparked by the lightning, leaving parts of the bowsprit, forepeak, and forecastle charred. It made one thankful for the storm’s deluge, which had doused the fire before the ship was consumed.

The carpenters and smith, and their respective mates, hammered out new blocks, eyes and fittings, nails, pins, bolts, and pegs. Amid the flurry of splicing, knotting, reeving, and fair weather sails bent, the teeming decks were a virtual snowbank of drying hammocks, clothing, and sails. A constant vigil was maintained on the rigging, lest the masts be wrung. In spite of its covering of pitch, wind-driven rain could saturate a rope, causing it to stretch. Drying rope shrank, damaging her sticks and yards. The smell of tar stoves returned, as the hands furiously toiled to fill the seams loosened by the ship’s working, the rap of caulking mallets a backdrop to every conversation.

“Two feet in the well, sir,” was the carpenter mate’s report to Pryce, “but holding,” came with a sigh of relief.

“At least the scuttlebutts are full,” said Millbridge in his aged pragmatism, as he scanned the ruin. Fresh drinking water was the least of their concerns.

The seas calmed, the wind freshened and steadied, and the mizzen, jury-rigged staysails and royals bellied out. A tops’l breeze, to be sure. The topmasts, however, remained on deck.

“She can’t bear it just now,” Pryce said, casting a concerned but loving eye upward.

A battered queen, the
Morganse
sailed, her dignity broken, but still regal.

Between mending the ill and injured, and fraying oakum—vast amounts now being in desperate need—Cate was busy. As promised, Kirkland and Millbridge kept her regularly informed of Nathan’s condition, but she was still compelled to see for herself. She found him the same: sleeping as peacefully as a babe, recouping and repairing, just as his ship.

It was after the second dog watch—notable because during that the hands had their first warm meal served in days—that Cate went to check on Nathan, once more. She pushed the curtain aside, careful so as not to rattle the curtain rings. A watch lamp hung, so that he might be readily observed but not disturbed. Careful not to trip on the stool, she crept closer, pressing her skirt to her legs, lest the rustle of the cloth might wake him. A reflexive, useless gesture, for it would have been lost amid the babel from outside.

There was a stillness about the room, the odd tranquility that shrouded the ill when they slept. The riot of noise outside somehow muffled and distant, the most prominent sound was the somnolent rhythm of his breathing, a slight rattle in his throat echoing the ragged of his voice. Looking up at the port, she made note of the need to pass the word for a carpenter’s mate to unseal it, so that the room might be rid of the smell of sickness. The thought was immediately dismissed, until after Nathan had his rest.

Nathan was inherently so animated, it was disquieting to see him so still. Stranger was to see him lying in his own bed, a rarer thing to see him sleep—she still had no idea where he had slept these weeks past. An internal voice demanded that he should drink; another, he should eat. “He should rest” won out. The rictus of pain and delirium gone, his was a peaceful face. His hand, almost mahogany against the blue and yellow quilt, rested on his stomach, a sticking-plaster in place. No swelling. No redness. No smell. He would be whole. She closed her eyes in thankfulness once more.

Cate resisted the urge to straighten the quilt or brush the braid from his chest, and the even stronger ones to clasp his hand or kiss his cheek. Seeing Nathan now, almost angelic, she regretted her earlier indignation and anger. The hurt she suffered at being called Hattie was less readily put aside, but not indispensably entrenched. She shouldn’t like to be held responsible for what she might utter in fever or dreams; neither should anyone else. After all, the unconsciousness wasn’t the realm of reality.

God help me, I love him.

She sat heavily on the stool with the impact. Love: an elixir, which could erase and ease more ills and hurts than any potion or palliative. Either by his charm, the Fates, or whatever controlling powers might be, she had been drawn. She had seen the pit looming and had fallen in; there was now no escape.

She lingered for some while to watch him sleep, memorizing every curve and line, odd hair and blemish. What the light didn’t allow, her mind filled in. His headscarf was gone, but its ghost remained as a pale line across the high forehead, just above the sweep of sable brows. A thread-like scar ran from his temple up into his hairline. The thick copper-tipped lashes had an almost girlish curve. The color was repeated in the three bright copper hairs at one corner of his beard. The somberness caused by the downward curve of his mouth from the sharp peak in the center was softened by the hooks of his mustache lifting it in a half-smile, his cheeks rounding with it.

Sleep could be highly contagious, mere observation sufficient for one to be stricken. With a body suddenly filled with sand, Cate rose and trudged out. The cabin’s furniture was yet to be released from its storm-lashings, and so she went to the sill once again. She pulled the combs and shook out her hair, then stretched until her joints popped, expelling a groan of relief like she had heard her grandmother emit.

The stern window was open. The breeze brushed her cheek as she lay with her head pillowed on her arm. It was a soft night, as were most in the Caribbean. With the light of a lop-sided moon glittering on the water and outlining scallop-edged clouds, she watched phosphorescent wake of the ship reach back into eternity. She thought of all the things she should do, and all the reasons why she shouldn’t: no one was seriously ill, the injured had been tended, a great mound of oakum stood before those charged with rolling it for the caulkers, and Nathan was within earshot, if he was to stir or call out.

The pounding of adzes, mallets, and hammers her lullaby, she slept.

Chapter 22: Trouble in Paradise

M
r. Hodder’s bellow echoed up the galley companionway with sufficient force to yank Cate from a profound sleep.

“Show a leg, you pimpish, misbegotten bunch o’ sluggards! Haul yer asses, ladies! Goddamned, spindle-shanked swag-bellies, the lot o’ yous!”

She bounded to her feet, before realizing it was only meant for the men in their hammocks.

In spite of her unscheduled awakening, a pot of hot coffee sat steaming on the table. How Kirkland did it was a mystery for the ages. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she shuffled over, poured a cup, and sipped, aware Kirkland’s brew was always capable of scalding the unsuspecting. Once braced up, she went to see how Nathan did.

It was a mild but pleasant surprise to find him lying on his back, staring at the beams overhead.

“Get me clothes,” he said without preamble, pulling the quilt closer about him.

“I give you joy of the morning as well,” she said tartly. It wasn’t quite the start of the day she had imagined. Nathan could be curt in the morning, but there was a particularly unpleasant edge about him.

“It’s too soon for you to be abroad,” she said, with reserved concern.

“I’ve shirked long enough.” He frowned, uncertain as to how long that had been.

She reached to inspect his hand. He successfully jerked it from her grasp, but failed at concealing the pursuing wince. Crossing her arms, she stood over him, feet planted squarely. Her intention was to block him from rising, but the position also provided a fair view of his hand. It looked better, no longer inflamed and angry-looking. The swelling had gone down to where his fingers were near normal-sized, and his knuckles were once again visible.

He fixed a defiant eye up at her and bellowed, “Mr. Millbridge!” Nathan’s glare held through Millbridge’s arrival and, “Me clothes, if you please,”

Millbridge darted a rheumy eye at her, and then knuckled his forehead in salute, a rare and a bit mocking gesture.

“At least linger here the day,” Cate pleaded after Millbridge’s departure. A relapse of the fever wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

“Indolence ’tis not a virtue,” Nathan said doggedly.

Clutching the quilt about him, he lurched to his feet. All color instantly drained from his face, and an odd greenish tinge set in about his nose and mouth. He looked sure to either vomit or fall out, but determination saw him through. He stood defiantly before her, weaving and catching the edge of the bed. A high-chinned glare suggested she was expected to not notice.