Dawn on a Distant Shore (47 page)

"Mungo?"
Elizabeth tried to catch his eye, but he would not look at her. "What is it?"

"I'm feart for
ye." He frowned, and ground a knuckle hard into his eye. "I'm feart
for ye if ye stay and I'm feart for ye should ye slip awa' and head for
hame."

Nathaniel's expression
hardened. "Say what you've got to say, Mungo."

The boy's face
crumpled suddenly. "Carryck will come after ye, and he willna be alone.
The earl wants ye alive, ye see, but John Campbell o' Breadalbane wants ye
daid."

Nathaniel's expression
was almost one of relief, to hear finally what he had suspected. "Tell me
what you know of this business."

Mungo's face drained
of color until it was so white that it seemed to have soaked up the moonlight
itself.

Elizabeth could hardly
breathe. "Mungo, please. Think of the children. Please help us."

"I owe ye my
life, missus, I ken that weel enough." He let out a whistling sigh and met
Nathaniel's gaze. "I can tell ye only what every man on this ship kens
already. Some years syne, the earl's dauchter Isabel ran off tae marry Walter
Campbell o' Loudoun."

Nathaniel jerked back.
"Carryck has a living daughter?"

Mungo's voice shook.
"He disowned her when she eloped wi' a Campbell o' the Breadalbane line.
Wi'oot a male heir all Carryck falls intae John Campbell's hands. That canna
happen, ye mun understan', and it willna happen, sae lang as there's a man
alive under Carryck tae fight."

Nathaniel pressed his
fingers to the bridge of his nose. "Are you saying that all
this--kidnapping women and children, the loss of a ship with two hundred men
aboard, and devil knows what else--that it was all to keep his money away from
his own daughter because she married into this Breadalbane clan?"

"No!"
Mungo's voice wavered and broke. "It's got naethin' tae do wi' money. It's
the land. Can ye no' understand? Carryck and every man who ever swore him an
oath wad die tae keep the Scot territories free o' the Campbells."

Nathaniel's brow
creased. "What does it matter to the men who sweat in Carryck's fields who
owns the land?"

"Nathaniel,"
Elizabeth said, as calmly and firmly as she could. "Surely you understand
the concept of a blood feud. You have told me similar stories of the
Hodenosaunee."

"No,"
Nathaniel said, his jaw set hard. "There's something else going on here. I
can smell it, and I'll wager Mungo can tell us what it is."

The boy's shoulders
rolled forward, and his gaze darted away into the shadows. When he looked at them
again, he was calm. "If I had anythin' tae tell ye that wad keep ye safe,
I wadna keep it tae masel'. And that's aye true."

The bosun's voice came
to them, raised in conversation with the marine on watch. Mungo sent them a
pleading look and slipped away silently.

When the watch had
passed and they were alone again, Nathaniel put his arm around Elizabeth and
pulled her close. "Boots," he said, his voice ripe with satisfaction.
"Our luck is turning."

"I trust you are
right. At least things are starting to make some sense now."

He grunted, a low and
comfortable sound. "You can't fool me. You might believe in me, but you can't
believe in a sign out of the sky."

She tugged on his
sleeve. "What do you mean, Nathaniel Bonner, with "might." Of
course I believe in you. I have never doubted you for a moment."

With a little laugh,
Nathaniel pulled her face up to his. "Slippery as ever. Listen, Boots.
It's time for you to go below."

She ducked her head
away. "For me to go below? And where will you be?"

"I've got business
with MacKay," he said.

He kissed her, a hard
stamp of his mouth. His stubble raked her cheek and then he put his lips to her
ear, nipping there so that a ripple ran down her spine to the small of her
back. "I'll be with you at sunrise. I swear it."

Elizabeth lit every
candle in the cabin and then she sat down to drum her fingers on the table. Directly
in front of her the rosewood clock sat in its wall niche, and it gave her sorry
news: just one o'clock in the morning, hours until sunrise. Hours in which
irritation and worry would battle for the upper hand.

In front of her there
was a small pile of books, Hannah's basket with its bits and pieces, papers and
notes, Mungo's sword, paper, quill and ink, and a half-eaten orange. In any
other setting these things would have been more than enough to pass the time
until sunrise, but this evening Nathaniel was roaming the ship in search of
Adam MacKay.

It is between Hannah
and her father
,
Elizabeth told herself resolutely.
And between Nathaniel and Adam MacKay.
She picked up the orange and peeled off a section. It was parched and sour, but
she swallowed resolutely. She would leave this to Nathaniel, as she had once left
Billy Kirby to him.

Hannah's journal lay
before her, the page held open by a small bottle of pale yellow fluid. Tucked
into the leaves were odd pieces of paper, some in the Hakim's handwriting,
others she did not recognize. On one page Hannah had begun to copy a letter addressed
to Hakim Ibrahim from a Dr. Jenner of Barkeley.

Most of the journal
was filled with Hannah's drawings, circle after circle of what she had seen
through the Hakim's microscope, each carefully labeled: skin of an onion, human
eyelash, chicken feather, codfish scale. And pages devoted to blood, the blood
of every animal on board, and human blood, too. Elizabeth studied them for a
good while and could decipher little beyond the notes that Hannah had already made
in her small, neat hand: a sea of small oval shapes, and with an occasional
larger, rounder shape among them. How strange that this unwanted journey should
bring to Hannah an opportunity she would otherwise never have had. It was
something to be thankful for, in spite of Adam MacKay.

But it was not enough.
Elizabeth stood and pushed the journal away. She could not sit here; she would not.
If Nathaniel might move about the ship at night with impunity, so could she.

The Kahnyen'kehâka
knew that the best time to attack an O'seronni village was at night. As a young
man training under Sky-Wound-Round, Nathaniel had heard the stories of such
raids, where rich merchants came under the knife with an open tinderbox
clutched in a fist. The Kahnyen'kehâka warriors, feared throughout the
Hodenosaunee Nation and far beyond for their ferocity and courage, shook their
heads over men afraid of the dark.

Nathaniel, growing up
between red and white worlds, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of
both, knew that this much was true: white men did not all fear the dark, but
most of them forgot how to use their ears when the sun set.

Now he made his way
through the darkened ship, navigating by his memory, by his senses of smell and
touch, and most of all by an ability to listen hard. In the endless forests he
knew the size of a doe by the sound of her step in the undergrowth; on the
Isis
he had come to recognize the walk of a dozen different men and boys by the way
the boards gave under their feet. Now, just above him on the middle deck, the
first officer was on his way to his quarters, weaving down a corridor he had walked
a thousand times, making as much noise as a child at play. Nathaniel kept pace
with Adam MacKay, moving soundlessly in the dark.

MacKay had been in the
round-house earlier in the evening, his strange profile standing out like a flag.
Nathaniel knew of the man only a few things: that he ignored his wife, or beat
her when he could not; that the sailors respected MacKay's seamanship but
disliked him for his poor humor, the tight fist he kept with rum rations, and
his generosity with the whip; that he took pleasure in giving little girls
nightmares.

Nathaniel ducked
around the thick pillar of the fore capstan, tucked his arms in close, and spidered
his way up the narrow ladder to the middle deck. MacKay was just behind now,
but not by much. Nathaniel crouched down low in the deeper shadows of the
capstan wheel, its long wooden spokes polished smooth by generations of
callused hands. The wood smelled of salt and sweat, and the great wheel muttered
softly to itself like an old horse at pasture.

Not ten feet away,
MacKay sang in a crusty monotone:

Heart of oak are our
ships

 Heart of oak are our
men

We always are ready

Steady, boys, steady

We'll fight and we'll
conquer again and again.

Nathaniel pulled in a
lungful of stale air tinged with gunpowder, axle grease, and salt. A calm came
over him; he could feel the blood moving through his arms and legs, pooling in
his hands. His fingers twitched slightly. It was the feeling a man got when he
came across a bear. Bear meant meat for a month or more, fat to cook with, a
good pelt. But a bear was always a gamble. Most would take a bullet to the
brain and lie down without an argument, but every once in a while you got one
too dumb or too ornery to give in quick, and that was the bear to watch out
for: she'd take all the lead you could offer and come roaring for more. The trick
was to strike fast and hard.

In a single quick
movement Nathaniel rose out of the shadows. With one hand he grabbed MacKay by
the throat, winding his fist in the white linen to yank him forward. With his
other hand he caught the lantern before it could fall. Then he lifted the man
off his feet and flipped him onto his back, pinned him down and straddled him,
one knee in his soft gut with his hands caught behind his back. The lantern he
put down out of reach, and then he grinned.

"You're up late
tonight, Coo MacKay." It was the name the sailors called him behind his back,
for his shape and his stare, dull as a cow's. The insult did its work: MacKay's
expression changed from confusion and surprise to outrage. Keeping him off
balance was Nathaniel's best chance of getting the man to say more than he
wanted to.

"I'll let go now,
but I'll come down hard again if you make a row. Are we clear on that?"

MacKay nodded.
"Aye."

Nathaniel wiped his
hands on his breeches. "Do you know what I want?"

MacKay's face went
white under the stubble of his beard. His expression said he didn't understand plain
English, or didn't care to.

"For the love of
the Almighty, man," he breathed heavily. "It's too late tae be playin'
games."

Nathaniel settled his
knee a bit harder. "Now, that surprises me. After all I've heard about how
fond you are of games."

The long face
twitched. "I dinna take yer meanin'."

MacKay grunted as
Nathaniel drew a knife from his belt.

"Think
hard," he said. "It'll come to you."

The narrow brown eyes
darted from the knife to Nathaniel's face. "Moncrieff willna like it
should ye cut me."

"What'll he do,
send me to bed without my supper?"

"Why dinna ye ask
him, and leave me be?"

Nathaniel contemplated
the tip of the knife. A casual flick netted one bone button off MacKay's
shirtfront. A twitching began at the corner of the broad mouth.

"Now there's the
riddle," Nathaniel said, studying the man's heaving chest. "Why would
you set out to hurt a child who's done you no harm?"

His eyes darted away.
"I dinna take yer meanin'."

The knife flicked
again, and MacKay's face went one shade paler. Nathaniel kept his own
expression flat as he took another button.

"I nivver laid a
hand on the little savage."

The knife was sharp,
and it slit the corner of the pale mouth with no sound at all. MacKay let out a
little sigh and his whole body seemed to fold in, as if Nathaniel had punctured
something deep inside him.

"Cut me,
then," MacKay whispered, his eyes eager and bright. "Go on and cut
me. It won't change anything. Ye'll burn in hell for your sins, for livin'
among the infidels and fatherin' more o' the same. And yer spawn will burn richt
beside ye."

In the heat of battle
it was dangerous to let rage or fear get the upper hand. A man made mistakes
when he let himself slip like that, and Nathaniel intended to make no mistakes
here. He breathed deep and let the calm flow through him, feeling the knife in
his hand and knowing what it would be like to put it in this man's throat and
watch him choke on his own blood. How right that would feel, at this moment.

MacKay took his calm
for fear. He smiled with bloody teeth and began to hiss, sputtering spit and
blood and venom: ""Because I have called, and ye refused. I also will
laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear
cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress
and anguish cometh upon ye. Then shall ye call upon me, but I will not answer;
ye shall seek me early, but ye shall not find me.""

"Proverbs,
chapter one. Mr. MacKay, I suggest you concentrate on the New Testament."
Elizabeth's voice came cool and calm, just above them. Her head poked through
the ladder hole, and then she came down in a rustle of skirts.