Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle (18 page)

Leander threw up his slim arms. “In that case, I am going. I’m going to get some sleep.”

“You’re welcome to my corner, although the floor in there is wet, so you’ll have to sleep on the stool next to Magpie.”

He dipped his hands into a basin of pink water and dried them on a square of cloth. “Thank you, but I have a cabin down on the orlop deck. Unless we do battle again in the next few hours, Osmund should be fine with his charges. And Mr. Evans, as he still possesses all of his limbs and faculties, has promised to watch out for you while I’m gone.”

Morgan saluted Emily from his cot, but his eyes did not meet the compassionate light that shone from hers. She turned away from Morgan and lowered her voice. “How is he, Doctor?”

“Very low. He has said nothing since his coming here.” Leander fumbled in his pockets for his cabin key, unaware that the letter he had been writing in the night to the enigmatic “Jane” had slipped out and onto the damp hospital floor. Emily was about to pick it up when Osmund, carrying a bucket of body wastes, crushed it with his large foot.

“What about Miss Emily, Doctor? Whose bed is she gonna sleep in now Magpie’s in her cot?” Osmund stood there with his fetid bucket, licking his thick lips, awaiting the doctor’s reply.

A flush of colour crept into Leander’s white face. “That, Mr. Brockley, is not your concern. Keep your thoughts focused on your tasks or I’ll send you packing along with Mr. Crump.” Having said that, he meandered slowly through the maze of hammocks towards the galley door.

With Leander gone, a hush fell upon the hospital. Emily could hear her footsteps on the floorboards as she squeezed her way through the hammocks, offering a drink of water to those with parched lips, aware that several pairs of curious eyes had locked onto her every move. She was frantic to rescue Leander’s letter from the floor, but didn’t dare, in case any of the men had witnessed it falling from the doctor’s pocket. Like a hovering hawk about to go in for the kill, Osmund stood awkwardly by, still holding his bucket, his tongue hanging out of his mouth as he watched her.

“Mr. Brockley,” came a firm voice from one of the hammocks behind Emily, “we could all breathe a bit easier if you would please take that which you are holding and dump it over the side of the ship.”

Osmund awakened from his reverie and sprang into action. Grunting an apology, he tripped his way up the ladder, sloshing some of the bucket’s contents upon the rungs. It was Morgan Evans who had spoken. Smiling, Emily refilled the water cup and went to stand next to his head. He looked up at her like a shy schoolboy and took the cup from her hands.

“You are very kind to me, Mr. George,” he said quietly.

“And you have been nothing but kind to me, Mr. Evans,” she whispered. Seeing a shadow of a smile pass over his face, she pulled the nearest stool up to his bed. “I have been told that you were the one who rescued me from the sea.”

“It was my pleasure, Mr. Geo … ma’am! But I can’t take all the credit. It was Mr. Walby who first spied you through his glass.”

“Perhaps it was, but Mr. Walby might have laboured in vain to pull me from the fallen mizzenmast and into the cutter, now wouldn’t he?”

A shot of red rushed into Morgan’s unshaven cheeks, which set Mr. Crump howling in mirth.

“Oh ho, Miss, ya made Morgan blush like a maiden,” he laughed, scratching the stump of his leg. “Be careful what ya be sayin’ to him; otherwise, he’ll think ya fancy him.”

Morgan pulled the pillow from beneath his head and hurled it at Crump, hitting him in his raised stump.

“Oooh, me leg, me leg,” he cried in pain.

“At least, Crump, Morgan’s still got thee necessary parts for a woman,” said a rheumy-eyed sailor whose head was bound in bandages. “Can’t rightly tell how much thee doc had to cut away from ye.”

A storm of laughter arose from those who had been eavesdropping.

“Aye, I heard Morgan complainin’ he hadn’t had a woman in a long time,” quipped a young powder monkey with a badly burned face. “And he thinks he’s too good for the likes o’ Meggie Kettle.”

Morgan turned purple with humiliation and gripped the sides of his hammock.

“And what would a young lad like yerself be knowin’ of our Meggie Kettle?” the rheumy-eyed sailor asked the powder monkey.

“I seen what she does with the men in her cot when she ain’t at her laundry,” the little boy said, sitting up in his hammock, thrilled to be included in the men’s discussion.

As the hospital vibrated with merriment, Emily noticed Biscuit standing behind her, holding up a pitcher of grog, his old face rosy with drink and hilarity. He cleared his throat and bellowed, “Here, here, now! I bring yas all a bit o’ refreshment and what does I find? Ya’ve all takin’ leave o’ yer senses, forgettin’ yerselves in front o’ our lady guest. So yer mothers never taught ya any manners? Well, old Biscuit will have to teach yas all a bit o’ thee etiquette.”

“But I saw ya laughin’ with the others, Biscuit,” sneered the powder monkey.

“Shut up there or I’ll be fryin’ the other side o’ yer face on me galley stove.”

The banter ceased the moment Osmund returned with his empty bucket. Spying Biscuit’s grog pitcher, his eyes lit up. “Hurry up. Pour it round. One never knows how long Dr. Braden will be gone to his bed.”

Biscuit happily set about doing Osmund’s bidding, and once the attention had shifted from Morgan, the young carpenter collected the courage to look up at Emily again.

“I am truly sorry for all that.”

It was on her lips to tell Mr. Evans she had quite enjoyed the conversation – it being such a departure from the idle chit-chat that women of her class were wont to indulge in when left to their own devices in their richly-decorated drawing rooms – but she thought better of it and encouraged him instead to get some sleep.

Four bells soon sounded around the
Isabelle,
summoning the men from their beds and mess tables, their below-deck stations, and down from their lofty posts on the masts, to the burial service. While Emily moved among the hospital hammocks, offering a bit of solace to the injured wherever she could, she imagined the scene as the seamen – officers, marines, sailors, idlers, landsmen alike – silently assembled above deck under a mournful sky that refused admittance to the sun. There they would pray and sing hymns, and Captain Moreland, whose many duties included that of ship’s chaplain, would read out the names of the thirty-seven men killed in yesterday’s conflict. And when the sermon was over, the bodies – sewn into their hammocks with a heavy ball of lead at their feet – would be poured into the now-purring sea, there to join Mr. Alexander in his watery grave.

The moment Osmund became engaged in changing soiled dressings and Morgan’s eyes finally closed in sleep, Emily filched a felt hat from an oak hook and set out to fetch Magpie’s blanket from the sail room on the orlop deck. She paused only once, to pick up the remains of Leander’s crumpled letter from the damp floor, concealing it in the pocket of her trousers as she passed from the room.

10:20 a.m.

(Forenoon Watch)

WITH THE FELT HAT sitting low on her forehead, Emily wandered the empty decks of the
Isabelle
as invigorated as a child in a cave of treasures; so distracted, she was able to forget her ankle, which caused her such grief climbing down the ladders. In the distance, she could hear men’s muted voices, but no one crossed paths with her, leaving her alone to delight in exploring every shadowy storeroom, corner, and compartment. She marvelled at the cramped living conditions of the sailors, touched the chests, ditty, and duffel bags containing their meagre possessions, and stopped to pet the poor animals in their lonely stables.

“I know how you feel,” she commiserated with the female goat brought aboard in Bermuda, stroking her narrow fuzzy face. “I have a mind to take you exploring with me.” Worrying she might cause a livestock stampede were she to open the stable gate, Emily reconsidered her proposal, kissed the goat’s head, and pushed on.

The orlop deck was below water level, and had neither gunports nor windows to let in daylight. It was dark and the air was musty, heavy with mildew and brine. Little scurrying sounds on the floor around her silk shoes reminded her that she was not completely alone, and caused her some repulsion. The timbered walls beneath her steadying hands were wet and slippery, like the perspiration of a labouring sailor. She shivered, wondering if the walls were full of shipworm. In the carpenter’s storeroom, she stole a lighted lantern – comforted by the thought that neither Mr. Alexander nor Morgan Evans would report it missing – and raised its dim illumination to each closed door, searching for Magpie’s sail room. After several moments of wandering in circles, she finally found it, tucked away in the deck’s narrowing bow, between the bosun’s storeroom and the sturdy base of the foremast.

Inside Magpie’s confined quarters, she hung the lantern by the door and stood back to survey its scanty contents. Lined against the longest wall were several rolls of sail canvas, each tied up with a neat knot of rope and identified with either a wooden tally or a small square of card paper on which was written the name of the sail in black ink:
sprit topsail, fore topgallant royal, mizzensail, lower main studdingsail, flying jib, main staysail.
In the centre of the room was a slim wooden post with a tackle looped around its base, and beside it on the floor a clean length of square canvas. Emily could see Magpie’s needle still stuck in the fabric where he had been cross-stitching near a clew on the lower corner of the sail. Near the wooden post was a small, low bench with a series of holes in it to house Magpie’s few sail-making tools: a mallet and awl, and a thick spool of twine. In the darkest corner sat a pile of torn, tattered sails, and above that hung Magpie’s hammock.

The only personal item in the room, besides the bed, was Magpie’s chest, half-hidden in the old sails. Emily crept over to it and crouched down to read the name carved into its oaken lid:
Mr. Magpie, Esq.
She couldn’t help smiling as she lifted the lid. Inside was his
special
blanket, a pond-green square of downy quilting, neatly folded upon his hairbrushes and few articles of clothing. As she gently pulled the blanket from the chest, something fell from its folds, striking the floor and spinning away out of sight. Emily swept the sweating floorboards with her hands, over and over again, searching for the wayward object. She was about to abandon all hope of finding it when the lantern’s weak light gleamed upon a shiny something next to a roll of jib sails. She reached out for it, seized it, and brought it up to her eyes.

“Good Lord!” she gasped, staring in astonishment at the gold-framed miniature she held in her hands. It was a portrait of a young woman with dark eyes, her hair swept up on her head in a tumble of pale yellow curls adorned with pearls. Beneath her smiling lips was a collar and braided jacket of sapphire-blue velvet, and across her white throat, a single strand of pearls to match those in her hair. On the back of the tiny portrait, written in calligraphic script, were the words
Princess Emeline Louisa Georgina Marie, daughter to Henry, Duke of Wessex, 1810.

Emily sank to her knees upon Magpie’s quilt, still beholding the miniature, and started to laugh, a few chuckles at first, then bursting forth into a gleeful convulsion that seized her for such a long time the muscles in her chest ached and her lungs screamed for air.

“Why our little sail maker has a good amount of explaining to do!” she cried out to the shadows that quivered about her like small nautical sprites in the lantern-light.

Emily threw herself down upon the softness of the quilt to gaze around the dank room as she caught her breath. Near her outstretched arm, two cockroaches twitched with curiosity before vanishing within the layers of tattered sails beneath Magpie’s hanging bed. Beside the door she spied a rope-tailed vermin hastening through a hole in the wall, and from the low oaken-timbered ceiling above, droplets of water splattered down upon Magpie’s chest and workbench. Without warning, a feeling as dark as the room engulfed her and tears began spilling from her brown eyes. Clutching the miniature to her breast, she buried her face in the quilt and wept bitterly for the happy young woman she once had been. She wept for the walls and willow trees of her childhood home, for her lost girlhood of yesteryear, and for those she loved, now lying lonely and forgotten in churchyards and unmarked graves. Emily lay there, twisted into a fetal position, choking up suppressed emotions until she heard the distant, disturbing sound of splashing water as the dead bodies of the seamen were entrusted to the sea.

Realizing there was little time left before the service ended and the men returned to their stations below deck, Emily bolted upright to dry her tears on the sleeves of her checked shirt. She shoved the miniature into her trousers pocket alongside Leander’s untouched letter, scrambled to close up Magpie’s chest, and slipped the quilt under one arm. Just as she was about to rise to her feet, there came a whooshing noise behind her and the sail room went black.

She heard him before she could see him, his breathing heavy, his breath laced with rum and the essence of unwashed teeth. He let out a low laugh that stopped her heart, and then he started towards her, the heel of his boots scraping the floorboards. It was a minute before her swollen eyes could adjust to the gloom, but without the lantern light she could only make out a grey, sinister shape. She dropped Magpie’s blanket and froze, remembering another murky figure that had once come towards her in the dimness of the lower decks, intent on harming her. A rat crawled about on her as if she were a heap of trash. Shuddering in revulsion, she opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The boots came closer and another menacing laugh pierced the silence.