Cinnamon and Gunpowder (41 page)

When I returned to her cabin, though, Mabbot had lapsed into a coma and would not wake. I pushed the liquid into her mouth, mopped it where it dribbled out, and hoped some of it made its way to her belly.

Friday, Later

She has been in and out of consciousness, and to my rising alarm, the infection and fever have grown worse. The surgeon’s visits are impotent and insulting. She has lost so much already, I will not let him bleed her, and he mumbles that nothing more can be done. Today as he leaned his drunken frame over her, I couldn’t hide my outrage.

“Have you considered amputating her head, good Doctor?”

“I can hear you, Wedge,” Mabbot said softly.

“The fever must break,” the doctor said. “There is nothing for it.”

Bai prepares the bitter medicine and comes to assist with her toilets, but otherwise he sits upon the deck looking out at the horizon day and night.

“Lonely as moonlight on a spoon, that one,” Mr. Apples remarked.

While I was busy nursing Mabbot, Bai had set Feng’s body upon the sea in a bier of lashed planks and watched the spot on the horizon where it had disappeared as if he could still see it.

Tonight, as the sun set, I mounted the deck to offer my condolences to Bai, but the rigging stopped me. Even to my untrained eyes, it was clear that the ship was severely disordered. The yardarms were topped at opposite angles, and the topgallant sails were set on the mizzen while the sheets sagged loose and lazy; a ship in this state could have caught the winds only in a strange dream. It looked as if a great hand had reached down and tousled the ship. I asked Mr. Apples, “Is this the discipline you keep? Captain Mabbot indisposed for a few days and we’ve come to this?”

“We’ve scandalized the ship out of respect for Feng,” Mr. Apples said. “Don’t fret, in an few hours we’ll clean her back up. I never took you for a bosun.”

I found Bai at his vigil and sat beside him. I had misunderstood and maligned him. There was no denying it—the man had spared no effort in saving my life. I made an attempt to reach him in his grief. I said, “I’ve had this pain. To tell you it will go away would be a lie. It will never go away. But, if you live long enough, it will cease to torture and will instead flavor you. As we rely on the bitterness of strong tea to wake us, this too will become something you can use.”

For his stoniness he may not have heard me at all.

Saturday, November 13

Mabbot’s wound has suppurated. I watched, worried, as the surgeon lanced it, and, when he left, I dressed it with the grey tree moss the twins had used on my injuries.

Later in the afternoon Mr. Apples came to Mabbot’s cabin and stood looking worried over her for many minutes, so I said, “Tell them that she is healing.”

He nodded gratefully.

“Tell them that I am cooking for her, that in a few days she will be her terrible self again.”

23

BROKEN BREAD

In which a sacrifice is accepted

Monday, November 15

I feed the rabbit oats and dried alfalfa. I feed Mabbot broth and, when she can chew, rice gruel and crushed garlic to fight the infection. I have pleaded with Mr. Apples to let us go to land to get some fresh meat, but we have set out for safer regions and are days from any port.

These are the details of my hands and eyes. I haven’t yet tried to write of the strange doings of my heart, for I am shocked by them and perplexed. Mabbot’s infirmity has filled me with horror. I long to see her fortified, lifted, and healed until she can mock me with that ferocious tongue—until she can rage into the wind. I putter about her, washing sheets, wetting her brow, petting her head when she is restless, and humming the tune Father Sonora sang while he worked, the only comforting song I know. But for hours at a time there is nothing to be done, and so I allow myself to look, just to look at her as I have never looked at another human being—her cheekbones and full lips, cracked now by thirst, the eyebrows that were thunder’s cousins now loose and elegant arches. The hand I hold, with its calluses and muscles and freckles, is unlike any other.

I long for her vigor to return, and yet I cherish these moments of quiet with her. Even Kerfuffle gnawing at my peg is tolerable.

In short, I am disastrously in love.

Tuesday, November 16

Some men have set up an altar and burn sandalwood outside her door. There are always a few lingering there, waiting for news. I try to give them encouraging words.

Of course, I worry what heaven and my lost Elizabeth see when they look down, but I have given up trying to accommodate them. I feel quite unable to make good with the celestial host when there is such imperative in front of me. God, in His infinite knowledge, has given me precious little and has allowed much calamity.

As for Elizabeth, if she knows anything, she knows that she lives in the purest parts of my heart. But she must also see that I am no longer the man she wed, that I have lived lifetimes since then, and that, if I am not yet to be called into the clouds, I must contend with the stains of this world, the blood and the sweat and the love.

Mabbot, for her part, seems grateful to find me near when she wakes, and once, fatigued by the effort of eating as I propped her up, she dropped her head upon my shoulder and rested her hot brow against my neck. We sat there pressed against each other for some time.

I do not know if, in her delirium, Mabbot has understood about Feng’s loss, but she has not asked for her, and so I must assume she has.

I’ve taken to reading to her, and though she sleeps through most of it, it calms both of us.

Wednesday, November 17

In her sleep she calls out to Leighton. Today, from her pillow, she told me of his birth. Though I tried to convince her to conserve her energy, I also hoped that speaking the story might serve as a purgative, for it has become clear to me that her fever is fueled as much by grief as by infection.

“I needed a safe place,” she said. “I was young and getting so heavy. The crew had disbanded, Ramsey hanged so many of them. I took my silver and bought a small house in the Canaries. Chickens in the backyard, a creek that ran straight to the sea. I had Leighton there, by myself. One minute I was screaming alone, and the next moment there were two of us—he filled the world. A woman came to clean and cook a few times a week, but I didn’t let her touch him. Such a bright light in his eyes, from the very first.”

Here I forced her to eat some rice gruel with salted pork and sauerkraut, coarse fare but the most nutritious thing I could give her. It hurt her to chew and so I mashed it well.

“This woman heard about the price on my head in some tavern, and she turned me in. She was remorseful enough to warn me before the men arrived. Well, you may imagine, one cannot run with an infant. I left him with the nuns in Ireland. Don’t hate me, Wedge, I had no choice. If they caught us, we would have rotted, both of us, in a cell. I didn’t know Ramsey would find him. I came for him as soon as he was old enough to sail, my ten-year-old prince.”

“I know, Hannah,” I said, trying to calm her. “You worked so hard to keep him from becoming like Ramsey. I understand why you had to find him again.”

She said nothing, and for a moment I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she said, “Let him be as cruel as his father, I don’t care, only let him live! I hunted him because I feared he was going to get himself killed. I may be a terrible mother, but I am a mother yet. I bungled it all. My Leighton! Whose shot killed him, Wedge? Did you see?”

I hadn’t. Mabbot’s tears were as fierce as her anger, each sob like a dagger in the gut. It was too much for me to bear and I pressed my hand to her cheek. “He drank from my body,” she said, and finally slept. I went to fetch Bai for more medicine. The bottle of tincture is nearly empty.

Thursday, November 18

Mabbot’s fever has worsened. I wrap her in blankets and still she shakes and cries out for warmth. She has been delirious all night. It will not relent and she twists, fighting phantom battles, clawing at her own skin until I am forced to hold her wrists.

The swelling about her scar has abated, but the fever is deep within her, and though I spooned the last of the medicine into her, I doubt she will survive. This cannot go on.

To make things worse, there is a storm bearing down upon us and no hope of outrunning it.