Dawn on a Distant Shore (34 page)

When Moncrieff had run
out of promises Hannah simply picked up her brother and sister, one on each
hip, and waited for him to step aside so she could pass through the door.

"You needna go.
You're welcome to keep the use o' these cabins," he said. "I'll send
for Mrs. Freeman, as well."

But she only stared at
him, her silence marking him for the liar he was.

He flushed then. Gave
in and let her leave. There was only so far she could go, anyway.

There was no sign of
Hakim Ibrahim, but Hannah found Curiosity just waking in the small sleeping
cabin off the surgeon's quarters, where she had spent the night. She was clear-eyed
and finally free of fever, but she made Hannah repeat her story three times
before it seemed to take root. They were at sea, not headed for home, and
alone.

While they pieced
together the few bits of information they had, Curiosity simply rocked the babies.
They had settled into a new, softer wailing. Hannah looked away, afraid to be drawn
into their web of misery and despair.

"Ain't this a
woeful mess." Curiosity's voice was still a little hoarse, and she cleared
her throat more than once. "Elizabeth will be out of her head with worry.
Not to mention the folks at home." And her voice creaked and broke.

Hannah found she must
ask, or let the question choke her. "Do you think they're dead?"

"No."
Curiosity's dark eyes met her own, full-on. "It's Hawkeye and your daddy that
Moncrieff wants. You and these babies, you nothing but a way to get to them.
Your folks all alive and well, and not a day behind us--I'd wager my good right
hand on it. Do you hear me?"

Hannah nodded.
"There's a wet nurse, Moncrieff says."

"I figured. He
wouldn't want to deliver these children half dead to his earl, would he. The devil
ain't pure dumb, after all."

"Do you think
she
had something to do with it?"

Curiosity turned as if
she could look through the length of the ship to the bed where Giselle Somerville
was most certainly still fast asleep.

"Wouldn't be
surprised," was all she said. And she rocked the twins all the harder.

A scratching at the
door began a procession of cabin boys with platters of food, water, and a note
from the captain. This Curiosity did not even unfold before she dropped it into
the chamber pot. To the startled cabin boy she said only, "Tell him we
don' need no apologies and no excuses. What we need is that wet nurse."

The captain brought
the woman to the door himself. Curiosity met him with an expression so dark and
seething that Hannah felt the hair rising on her own nape. Pickering dropped
his gaze, and withdrew backward.

The wet nurse was
called Margreit MacKay. She was the wife of the first officer, delivered of a
dead child in Québec; she had a face as bitter as arrowroot and dun-brown hair
and eyes like a smear of slugs.

Lily and Daniel met
the offered breasts with all the fury they could muster. Lily gave in and suckled
only when hunger had grown stronger than her anger, falling into an exhausted
sleep after a quarter of an hour, and before she had her fill. Daniel held out
longer. Finally he nursed in a frenzy, working his fists and feet against the
pasty, slack flesh, winding his fingers in a hank of loose hair until tears
sprang into the woman's eyes. When he had taken all Margreit MacKay had to
offer, Hannah lifted him up against her shoulder and he collapsed into an
indignant sleep, shuddering with every breath.

Mrs. MacKay rubbed her
scalp and said, "Soor dooks, the baith o' them. Spoilt wi' gettin' their
own road."

Curiosity had Lily in
her arms, but she moved so quickly that Hannah could hardly follow it: she
grabbed Margreit MacKay by the elbow and pushed her, bare breasts swaying, to
the door.

"Three
hours," Curiosity said. "And don' be late, or I'll teach you what you
don' know about spoiled." And she shut the door before the astonished Mrs.
MacKay could protest.

But when Curiosity
turned back her anger was already gone, replaced by a trembling in her hands
that Hannah didn't like to see.

Curiosity went to bed
with the twins, thinking that her familiar smells and nearness might help them rest.
Hannah, agitated and ill at ease, wandered into the middle cabin of the surgeon's
quarters, where Hakim Ibrahim examined and treated the sick and injured.

There was still no
sign of the doctor. Hannah was both disappointed--she had a strong urge to see him,
and to know what part he had played in all of this --and relieved to have some
time alone in this cabin that was so pleasing to her. There were no carpets or
velvet cushions here, just the clutter that she associated with healers. Folded
bandages, baskets of roots, a huge medicine cabinet that took up an entire
wall. Overhead dried herbs hung in bunches as they did at home, but here they swung
with the rhythm of the hull against the waves.

Hannah made herself
breathe in and out slowly, taking in smells strange and familiar: cinnamon,
coriander, thyme, little-man root, mint and vinegar, cedar and sandalwood, camphor
and rose oil. On her first visit here --she could hardly credit that it was
only the day before yesterday--the Hakim had opened jars and bottles and named
the powders and oils first in English and then in the musical, winding sounds
of his own language, throaty and soft all at once. She had feared he would find
her curiosity unseemly, but there was nothing of irritation or impatience in
his manner.

Yesterday this
medicine cabinet had seemed a wondrous thing, with its cubbyholes to keep jars safe
from the rocking of the ship, dark glass bottles stoppered with cork, small
drawers labeled with a strange, flowing script she could not read. When she had
first come here with Runs-from-Bears, Hannah had wanted nothing more than time
to explore this little room and all its treasures. She had wished for it.
Perhaps she had called all of this down upon their heads with that wish.

There was a whispering
of sound and Hakim Ibrahim came through the door, in his arms a wide, flat basket
filled with bread and what seemed to be fruit. He was not so tall as the men of
her family, but taller than Moncrieff or the captain, and the way he held his
head put her in mind of a Kahnyen'kehâka elder. He did not have the age to be a
sachem--she thought he was probably not much older than her father--but he had that
way of looking, sharp but not cruel; his gaze cut but drew no blood. He was
looking at her that way now, and the welcoming smile on his face faded.

"Are you
unwell?" he asked.

Hannah knew that she
must find out if this man was enemy or friend. If he was an enemy, they would have
no one to trust on the ship. Her voice trembled because she could not help it.
"Hakim, did you know about this?" She gestured with one hand to the porthole
and the sea beyond.

Puzzlement showed on
his face in a line that ran down between his eyebrows. "Did I know that we
were to sail? Yes."

"Did you know
that we were to sail without my parents or grandfather?"

A ripple of surprise
and disquiet moved across the even features. "I did not," he said. "Perhaps
you would like to tell me what has happened."

While Hannah
talked--in halting words at first and then more quickly, pouring out what she
knew and what she only guessed--he stood listening, the high brow under the neatly
folded red turban creased.

Hakim Ibrahim said,
"Your stepmother was to sail with us to Scotland, as I understood
it."

Hannah's head came up
with a jerk. "We never agreed to sail to Scotland! We just wanted to go
home to New-York."

For a moment the Hakim
considered the basket in his arms.

"Perhaps there is
some reasonable explanation. I shall make inquiries. But first I should like to
talk to you about how best to care for your brother and sister until your
mother is restored to them. Perhaps you will share my breakfast with me while
we talk."

It might have been the
steadiness of his hands, or the calm expression in his eyes, or perhaps it was
just that he gave her a problem to work through, but Hannah felt some relief, a
loosening of the knot in her belly. She nodded.

There were small dark
fruits in the basket that he called dates, smooth-shelled nuts, and shiny,
coarse-skinned globes of a deep orange color that Hannah associated with
falling leaves. The Hakim held one out to her: a small sun caught in a web of
fingers the color of earth mixed with ash. Hannah made a bowl of her hands and
took it. It was heavy and dense, smooth to the touch, warm. She sat down with
it, and resisted the urge to rub it against her face. But he was waiting for
her to speak.

"They sent in a
woman to nurse the twins," she said. "Mrs. MacKay." She did not
care to speak Moncrieff's name out loud ever again, and was glad to see that it
was not necessary.

"Ah." He
pushed his thumb into one of the orange fruits, and the scent of it burst
through the room in a shower, light and still faintly sharp. "She is not
yet healed from her loss, either in mind or body."

"My sister and
brother do not like her," said Hannah, not wanting to hear about the Scotswoman's
problems. And then, in a rush: "I think her milk must be as bitter and
mean as she is."

Her grandmother would
have chided her for her lack of charity, but the Hakim merely blinked. He tore the
golden globe apart with a simple twist of his hands, and then he held out half
of it to her, dripping with juice that ran in a river over the strong brown
wrist. "Then we must find a better way. But first I must check on Mrs. Freeman,
and you must eat."

To Hannah's surprise,
there was livestock on board, some of the animals now on the open deck in pens
and others in the hold. She did not see them, for she refused to leave
Curiosity and the babies, but the Hakim sent the cabin boy away and he came
back with eggs still warm from the nest and a jug of fresh goat's milk. On the
small stove where he made his decoctions and teas and cooked his own food,
Hakim Ibrahim boiled two eggs until the whites had set, mixed them with a
little coarse salt and some soft cheese, and gave them to Curiosity with his
curious flat bread. He made a new tea while she ate, this one of horehound,
bayberry, valerian, and little-man root. Hannah was given a cup of the goat's
milk and more of the bread.

"Never thought
I'd be so glad of a nanny goat," said Curiosity. She had Lily in her lap,
simply because the baby would not let her go, just as Daniel clung to Hannah,
touching her face with both hands, patting her cheeks as if to hold her there
with him. Both of them were agitated, as unsettled as they had been as newborns
although Hannah reckoned them to be a full sixteen weeks old.

Hakim Ibrahim worked
the goat's milk into the finely mashed rice until it was a smooth gruel. He
looked up from the bowl at Lily and she stared back, round eyed.

"She ain't in a
flirting kind of mood," observed Curiosity.

"But she is
hungry," said the Hakim. He murmured to the baby in his own language and
her brow creased, whether in fear or at the novelty of it, they could not tell.
On Hannah's lap, Daniel fidgeted and yanked at her plaits.

Curiosity said,
"Let's see, then." She dipped her finger in the warm gruel and
touched Lily's full lower lip with it. Lily took the finger after a moment,
sucked once, and her face crumpled in dismay. She let out a squeak.

"Try again,"
said Hannah, shifting Daniel. He was watching the whole undertaking closely as
he mouthed his fists.

This time Lily took
Curiosity's finger with less hesitation, and her expression turned from dismay
to cautious interest.

"I have added a
very little cooked honey and a bit of weak fennel water," said Hakim
Ibrahim. "To quiet them and help them digest."

"My grandmother
would give them a little tea of parsnip root, and maybe blueberry." Hannah
was watching him out of the corner of her eye.

Hakim Ibrahim smiled.
"I hope you will tell me more of your grandmother's medicines."

"Now you in for
it," muttered Curiosity, but she hid a smile against the crown of Lily's head.

With a small flattish
spoon Curiosity began to feed Lily, and to Hannah's surprise the baby was
swallowing most of what she took in. As if to remind them all that he also had
an empty stomach, Daniel thumped Hannah's chest, his expression darkening
rapidly. She blew air gently into his face and he stopped, looking both hopeful
and confused, for this was something Elizabeth did to get his attention when he
was out of sorts.

"Try some of
this, little brother," Hannah said to him in Kahnyen'kehâka, dipping her
finger in the gruel.

He sucked hard enough
to make her wince. Then his mouth popped open in invitation for more.

"Look!"
Hannah felt herself flush with relief and pleasure.

"Hunger is the
best sauce, so they say." Curiosity sniffed a little. "Thank the
Lord."

There was a scratching
at the door.