The Pirate Captain (46 page)

“What happened?” she asked stupidly.

“Nothing.” It was one of Nathan's poorer lies. Still distracted by the shouting outside, Nathan was now markedly calmer. “Justifiable, they said. Bloody too goddamned right,” he huffed, jerking his shoulders. “I’d like to see any of those cod-fisted bastards do any different.”

The increased pitch of voices forced him to raise his at the end. So stirred and angry they were, so reminiscent of the attempted mutiny.

“What’s going on out there?” Cate asked, shying at the increased shouting.

“The Court’s still convened,” said Nathan matter-of-factly, and then shot a loathing look over his shoulder. “This shan’t go unpunished. The sods are lucky all they did was lay hands on you.”

His vehemence came out in his application of the sponge, growing more vigorous by the moment. Seeing her wince, he sat back, idly fondling the sponge.

The near-mob’s shouts pitched another octave higher, snarling at the smell of blood. They were shouted down by Pryce, so that two quavering, defensive voices might be heard.

“Punishment will be brought.” Nathan spoke ostensibly for her benefit, but he seemed to glean considerable satisfaction from it. “And before all. Every man shall bear witness, lest there be a misunderstanding of how it was and to see what will happen to the next one.”

“How…? I mean who decides what…?”

Nathan blinked, surprised by Cate’s ignorance. “A jury’s selected.”

He seized on the small diversion. Considerably calmer now, he resumed washing in easier strokes. “Half of their own choosing, and half not. If they’re found guilty—no time to be wasted there—Pryce can announce punishment or a jury can choose.”

…a court of peers is always more harsh than the captain might…

Now more than ever, she saw the wisdom in Nathan staying above the proceedings, no matter how badly he wanted to be the one to pass sentence.

In times of extreme hazard, the mind has a way of barring all thoughts other than those required for survival, and thankfully so. Later, once safety was assured, the barriers would drop, as they did now. She was safe. The realization gradually settled over her. The warm water and the gentle friction of the sponge stirred her senses and delivered her back to reality. The tremors started from deep within, building like a tidal wave. When they broke to the surface, she shook with teeth-clattering violence. Alarmed, Nathan seized the bottle and tipped it to her mouth. She coughed and sputtered, only to have it pressed to her lips again, leaving her no option but to swallow or drown.

Earlier, Cate had wondered where they were, but now the tears arrived. Knotting her already throbbing eyes, they spilled over and she slowly fell apart. Nathan crouched on the edge of the bed and held her. Making little shushing sounds, he clutched her tightly enough to prevent her from hurting herself as she squealed and pounded his chest. At times shaking as hard as she, his strength and solid warmth kept her buoyant above a yawing pit of misery.

With the breakdown came a sharpening of her senses, the world coming back in brutal clarity. She could hear Pryce now, like Caesar before the Romans, listing the possible punishments:
By the board
.
Hock and heave. Hoisting. Strappado. Rosary. Fuses.

Cate had no idea of the meaning; the imagination was sufficient. She put her hands over her ears, unable to listen as sentences were handed down, chanting this was Bullock’s fault, not hers. But it was impossible to deny that she had put herself into their hands and allowed it to happen.

A bottle of brandy arrived and was liberally applied. Kirkland came with a pot of chamomile tea from a tin found in Mrs. Littleton’s trunk.

“For the love of Christ, man,” Nathan cried, watching him pour. “She’s not just been told the damned cat spilt the milk!”

Elbowing him away, Nathan poured a generous dollop of brandy into the cup, and then demonstrably dumped an even larger amount into the pot, his glower staving any complaints.

High, thin screams of torture carried on the air. Nathan looked to see Cate’s reaction, daring her to object. If only the most barbaric could take satisfaction in suffering, then a Tartar she was, for a part of her took deep pleasure at justice being served—pirate justice, but justice, nonetheless. Revenge did have its place. She had entertained serious doubts when hearing it said, but it was manna for a starved soul.

As she sat on the edge of the bed, Nathan on the stool at her knee, Cate realized what an intimate scene it was. Blood, tears, and snot: God, she was a wreck! The times she had allowed herself to imagine him coming to her bedside, it had hardly been like this. Out of gentlemanly forbearance or brotherly lack of interest, he appeared not to see as he dabbed her face with the sponge once more and smoothed back her rampaging hair. A jar of salve was brought, sworn to cure everything from palsy to pox. Nathan discreetly held up the quilt and averted his eyes, allowing her to apply it to the raked skin and bite on her breast.

Sometime later, she heard Nathan outside the curtain giving Hughes and Cameron stern orders loudly enough for her to know the two Highlanders, possibly the most devoted to her, would be on guard. The knife, a permanent resident in the corner of the bed, was checked. A pistol was deposited at the bed’s foot, after Nathan made a great show of priming and checking it in front of her. A small bell was set on the nightstand, within easy reach. A second oil lamp was hung and the candles restocked. She wondered how she was to sleep in such brilliance, but the thought of a dark room was even more disquieting.

Tucked well up, a cool cloth on her head, the camphorous vapors of salve curling in her nose, a steadying furnace of rum and brandy in her stomach, sleep loomed.

“The Fates have spoken. You shan’t be worried again,” Nathan told her solemnly.

And yet, she did.

###

Waking wasn’t necessarily a thing she wanted to do. Oblivion was ever so much more appealing. Still, forces drove Cate toward that very thing. Foremost was the desire to rejoin the living, a strong second being the need to know she wasn’t alone. She cracked open one eye. The feat came with difficulty and regret. The sliver of light stabbed her head. She winced. That small movement proved a grave mistake. She gasped. The battered muscles of her stomach knotted and refused to move for her next breath.

The curtain stirred, followed by the tinkling of bells and creak of leather.

“Hist, now. Hist. Quiet, luv. Be still.” Nathan’s gruff voice was a mere whisper.

Cate flinched at his touch. The sudden movement set off a series of protests throughout her body. She opened her eyes into a pair staring back, a nose but inches from hers. The corners of the eyes crinkled as he smiled, though a bit forced.

“There you are.” Nathan’s graveled voice was suede. “Kirkland insisted you weren’t in there, but I bet him a guinea to the contrary. Are you in need of anything? Kirkland thought he heard you stir.”

Cate recognized much of that as a lie, but made no comment, touched that Nathan would make such effort. The port was closed. She had no reference as to the time except for the dull glow of the deck prism. The air was heavy with the stillness of hours that neither day nor night would claim. She risked moving her head ever so slightly in negation, and then grimaced against the agony that shot through her from that small gesture.

“No.” The word came in a bare croak. “I’m fine…” That gross distortion of the truth stopped her. “I…I could…I am thirsty.” The taste of blood was still thick in her mouth and cloyed in the back of her throat.

While Nathan filled a cup at the ewer, Cate struggled to sit up, biting back the oaths that came with it. As he pressed the cup to her lips, she heard the groans of tortured men once more. The sounds had rose and fell on the night air, rendering them unearthly and inhuman. Their moaning and pleas for mercy had haunted her in her sleep, leaving her to wonder if it had been theirs or her own which had wakened her. She looked to Nathan, but his expression was unchanged. If anything, he bore an air of satisfaction. Another cry was heard and Nathan’s gazed fixed on hers, daring her to object.

Half-sickened by the voices, Cate nearly choked on the sip of water. Clucking his tongue, Nathan dabbed her mouth. He fell quiet. His brows knotted as he pensively fondled the cup.

“Perhaps you should come see,” he suggested delicately. “Witness your justice, know that none of them will ever do you harm again.”

“Vengeance doesn’t make it go away,” she said dully, resettling her head carefully on the pillow. “What happened, happened.”

“Aye, but you’d be knowing you don’t suffer alone.” Nathan gave her a level look. “Now more than ever, you’ll be safe. Every man aboard knows the price.”

“It doesn’t change men.”

He winced. “True enough. An aching cock can speak louder than the cat o’ nines.”

“Thank you.” It occurred to her she had said it already—several times—and yet, it seemed important to continue to do so.

“No worries, luv. I should have had Bullock flogged just for the way he looked at you. Crew and mutiny be damned, at least he would have thought again about…” Nathan choked off the thought, clamping his lower lip between his teeth.

Seeing Cate settled, he made to leave, but stopped at the curtain.

“This isn’t the first, is it?” he asked, slowly turning back. His lips whitened under his mustache. The corners of his eyes pinched with the apprehension of what he already knew to be true.

A cold rush took her, a crawling sensation prickling the nape of her neck. Cate imperceptibly nodded. There was nothing else to be said.

Nathan closed his eyes and swayed. Then he left.

Cate slept fitfully. When sleep could no longer protect her, she could hear moaning of the condemned. If any thoughts of sympathy for them rose, she need only move; the resulting aches and throbs erased them all. Still, hearing them was agonizing. She pulled the quilt higher and buried her head deeper into to pillow.

“Good God, man! Swab those decks!” cried a graveled voice from on deck. “She can’t be seeing that!” was the last she heard.

###

The next morning, Cate woke with the elevation of spirit that comes with having survived the night, not unlike when one suffers the ardors of fever, nightmares or terrors, which could only be dissolved by the pink of dawn. She woke, however, when the aforementioned pink was still in its infantile stages of grey.

Awake? Yes. Alive? Yes. Willing to move? Not quite. Enduring the discomfort brought on by the simple act of breathing, she took inventory, searching for three things on her body that didn’t hurt. Failing at that, she contemplated the prospects of remaining in her snuggery for eternity.

The ship rode easy “on a t’r’gall’nt n’ royal breeze,” as she had often heard Nathan call it. As daylight animated wind and water, the
Morganse
shook off her nocturnal lethargy, and her song raised several octaves.

Cate listened to the ship stir, awakening no differently than any household. She heard the rumble of Pryce’s voice taking several hands to task, his displeasure neither a pretty sight nor sound. The clang of the bell had barely faded before Mr. Hodder’s ungracious rousing of the men from their hammocks. Not long after came the grind of the holystones, gush of water, and flapping the decks dry. The bell rang and the hands were called to breakfast, with a clash of mess kits and hurried slap of bare feet.

Amid all that, however, there was a perceptible reserve in the hands’ manner: their conversation lacking the customary levity, their step less energetic. Listening to the cries of the tortured couldn’t have been pleasant for them either.

Cate was watching two geckos darting about the porthole, when the curtain stirred. Presuming it to be Nathan, with something between awe and amusement, she saw Beatrice push her way under the hem. In determined parrot-steps, and with as much dignity as could be managed by a bird afoot, she crossed the room. In a rustle of hyacinth-colored feathers and a flash of black underwing, she rose to the washstand. Taking a moment to disengage her tail feathers from the basin, she settled and regarded Cate with one beady eye.

Poking through the fog of the day before, Cate recalled Nathan telling her it had been Beatrice who had sounded the alarm and led to her rescue.

How does one go about thanking a parrot?

The presence of another living being was a comfort, even if it was no more than a curmudgeonly bird.

“
Flog the bastard,”
said Beatrice.

Cate carefully smiled. “I can’t say as I disagree.”

She sighed as contentedly as her aching body would allow. This was home, or the closest to it in several years. At times feeling like a barnacle on the keel, she had found the sense of belonging, usefulness and friendship, contrary to Nathan’s protests. Nothing could cause her to jeopardize any of it.

Through swollen eyes, Cate went back to the gecko, now on a beam. Anyone who complained of cockroaches or rats on a ship hadn’t lived in infested garrets, where it was necessary to leave precious bits of food as bait. Shoes could be worn while one slept, but it was difficult to protect fingers, lips, and noses from being gnawed. The patter of feet in the night was now a comfort, His Lordship on the prowl.

Thinking back to those times brought back several recollections. The hammering head Cate currently suffered was nothing compared to those that sprung from hunger, the ache of battered stomach muscles nowhere near the sharp pangs of starvation. She had been fed well on the
Constancy
, and even better on the
Ciara Morganse
, but she would have gained weight on ship’s biscuit and water. Still a shadow of her former self, she could no longer fit a finger between each rib.

Nathan’s tap on the doorjamb startled Cate. He must have tiptoed, for his appearance came without so much as a tinkle of a bell. He backpedaled at the sight of Beatrice. Her head came up from preening and the two squared off in a territorial stare.