The Pirate Captain (17 page)

It had been enlightening to watch Pryce. Behind that monstrous face was a man of passions. As fiery as he was commanding his men, his compassion had been limitless, either holding their hand while they suffered, or whispering comfort in their ear as they died.

Away from the makeshift sickbay ’tween decks, the scene was quite different. The
Nightingale
’s plunder of rum, wine, and beer had been consumed, as testified to by the numerous dark shapes of bodies sprawled and slumped, several of which she nearly tripped over. Those still upright huddled in the glow of the lamps, proclaiming on this victory and reliving those of the past.

The combination of darkness and drink made her uneasy. It was known to prompt many a man to mischief he mightn’t have committed else. She moved nearer to the Great Cabin and the deterrence provided by a Captain, sleeping though he was. Leaning against the rail, she tipped her face into the breeze. She was coming to relish the soft tropical nights. Granted, the air lacked the bracing freshness of the Highlands and the stars weren’t the icy pinpricks of the northern skies. The Caribbean air wrapped one like a mother’s blanket, the stars glowing with the warmth of a hearth’s light through a window.

Exhaustion drove her inside. The low-angled moonlight banding through the gallery windows showed her way to the sleeping quarters. She drew the curtain aside carefully, lest the rings rattle. Once her eyes adjusted to the dim, she could make out Nathan on the bunk. His outline was limned by the blue-green of the moon through the deck prism, one arm flung in slumbering abandon. She listened to his even breathing, its raspiness echoing his graveled voice. It was a fetching sound; resting her head against the doorframe, she lingered.

It had been more than a little annoying to learn that both Pryce and Kirkland possessed a credible skill at sewing the flesh, and with something far more fitting than the sailmaker’s needle she had been handed to mend Chin’s leg. It seemed they had been having a bit of a go at her. Their Captain had to have been in on it, she thought unkindly. She felt quite put upon, but seeing the innocence with which he slept dissolved her annoyance.

At length, she moved to the table. There she slouched in a chair and tried to think of a single place in her body that didn’t ache. Every joint felt as if it had been ground into the next. She sat staring out the stern gallery, shaking with fatigue, covered in vomit, blood, and filth, pulsing with a sense of fulfillment.

She had been needed.

Every bone ached, but at the same time, she was exhilarated. The true reward had come in the grateful faces. She was very familiar with the way men away from home yearned for a woman’s touch, a kind word and a smile often doing more than bandages or salve. What she had forgotten was how taxing the process could be, as if each man had taken with him a small piece, until there was nothing but an exhausted body and a drained spirit.

With an exhausted groan, she fell across the table, pillowing her head on her arms.

Another day done. How many more to go?

Chapter 4:
Captivated

C
ate woke to the puzzling sensation of being tugged by the hair and a strange smell, curiously reminiscent of hay and barns.

Not knowing where she was only added to her disorientation. Not in bed, certainly, but where? She cracked one eye open to a sideways view of a room. A cabin…a hard surface against her cheek…sitting rather than lying…And then the night before came tumbling back.

Her hair was pulled again. Not painfully, but more out of impatience. She pried her cheek from where it stuck to the table, turned her head, and was met by two vertically slitted golden eyes, a startled bleat, and a blast of goat breath.

“Ah, you’ve met!”

Cate sat up at the sound of Nathan’s voice. He stood braced in the doorway of the sleeping quarters, hair matted, blood-streaked shirt rumpled and askew. Both eyes had blackened in the night, one swollen considerably more than the other. It left him looking quite cockeyed.

“We haven’t exactly met,” she said, eyeing the goat. The beast ducked its head to snatch her hair again, bleating in protest when Cate reflexively jerked away.

“Hermione, mind your manners, you ruddy beast. You needn’t be afraid of her,” Nathan directed to Cate.

He balefully regarded the goat as he crept across the room. He moved with the utmost care of one suffering the severe aftermath of a night of overindulgence. Careful not to cross the line of demarcation, his path veered to snatch up the rum bottle as he passed. “She bites, but only when in drink.”

“I’m not afraid. It’s…She’s…I wasn’t expecting—”

“No goats?” Nathan mused on the thought as he slouched in his chair. “Can’t imagine why not. Come to think on it, there’s been one on nearly every ship I’ve served. Good milk, not to mention fresh meat on the hoof. Gives the men a bit of the sense of home, too. Never could abide pigs aboard,” he added as an afterthought. “They don’t fancy the sea. Nothing more unsightly than a seasick pig.”

“Where’s your bandage?” Pulling her attention from the goat, Cate saw that Nathan’s headscarf was back in place. A dark circle, looking suspiciously like blood, bloomed in the neighborhood of where he had been wounded.

“Can’t be seen as infirmed,” he said with a flap of the hand. He took a drink from the bottle. “Besides, ’tis fine,” he said with his eyes closed, waiting for the rum’s restorative effects.

“I rather doubt that. A wound like that doesn’t disappear overnight.”

Nathan's eyes popped open to give her a dark look from under his brow. “I had one mum and shan’t be in need of another, if you please.”

While Cate slept, cups and a pot had been left on the table. The pot was still hot, surprisingly so. Pouring, she was pleased to find it was coffee. She gestured to Nathan in silent query as to whether he desired any. A shudder and a lift of the mouth was her answer.

She took a drink.

Tea was fine for afternoon parlors, but nothing started the day like a good cup of coffee. This particular cup, however, tasted like musty socks and had a thick gritty texture that left a coating on her tongue and an edge on her teeth. She wondered how much delicacy would be required to convince Mr. Kirkland to change his brewing methods.

Sensing she was being stared at, Cate looked up into an intent gold-eyed gaze at her elbow. Hermione’s narrow nostrils flared interestedly in the direction of her cup.

“She fancies tea,” said Nathan.

“This is coffee,” she pointed out to the goat as it persistently nudged her arm.

“Aye, well, she’s only a goat. Mr. Kirkland!” The bellow directed toward the galley companionway was but a shadow of its former self. The effort evoked a pained grunt. “It would appear Hermione has been left wanting…
again
!”

“Aye, sir,” came a querulous reply from below.

“Mind your meal as well,” Nathan said to Cate, with a narrow look toward Hermione. “She’s no manners a-tall. Away with you, you wretched, cloven-hoofed spawn of the Devil.”

Name-calling having no apparent effect on her goat feelings, Hermione blithely turned away to browse the room.

Kirkland appeared directly with what could only be assumed to be a dish of tea.

“Is it hot enough?” Nathan demanded, following Kirkland with dull eyes. “You know how she gets, if it isn’t hot enough.”

“Aye, sir,” the red-faced cook replied tolerantly, setting the steaming dish with care at the animal’s cloven feet. “’Twas near jumping out o’ the kettle.”

Nursing the kind of headache earned through exhaustion, Cate sipped her coffee against the backdrop of the goat’s indelicate slurps.

Pryce came in to interrupt their domestic scene. Quite slumped with exhaustion, he reported, idly scratching Hermione’s ears, while she mouthed his sleeve. Bracing his head with a delicacy befitting a crystal bowl, Nathan listened to the list of damage, a litany far too technical for a landsman such as Cate to comprehend. Nathan scowled with the effort of listening, the corners of his eyes tightening with the throb in his head. From the seamanlike discussion, she was able to glean that the
Ciara Morganse
had inflicted nearly lethal damages, but had not escaped damage herself. In spite of it all, the ship was still able to make weigh, but was in dire need of a place in which to lick her wounds.

“
Isla de las Aguas de los Santos Sedientos
,” Nathan announced in Pryce’s wake.

“Water of the Thirsty Saints Island?” Cate asked.

“
Muy bien
.
Habla español.”

“Almost exclusively, my early years.”

“Could explain that accent of yours,” he mused with an air that suggested he was still of two minds regarding her truthfulness of her identity.

“Rather a lofty title for a very diminutive spot of land,” he said, returning to the subject at hand. “Supposed to be some magical springs, or some such nonsense somewhere or another.”

Nathan plucked a piece of fruit from a plate in the center of the table. He peered at it, sniffed, curled his nose, and put it back. He grabbed up the honey jar instead, swirled his finger inside and popped a golden glob into his mouth.

“We go in with them thinking we aim to raid,” Nathan went on, licking the stickiness away. “We give them the opportunity to ask for quarter, and then agree, if they bring us water and wood, and a bit of beef, if they’re so inclined. Why do all the work, when you can get someone else to do it? I call it winning all ’round!”

“How do you figure that?” There were so many things wrong in that argument, she didn’t know where to begin, the most troubling being he thoroughly believed it to be flawless.

“We get what we desire and they don’t get their fair town rampaged, which is exactly what they want. It’s genius. Hostages, torture, pillaging, mayhem: ’tis nasty business. All that blood and wailing ’tis bad for one’s humours. This is ever so much more better and pleasanter for everyone involved.”

He lifted the bottle in a toast to the grandness of his scheme.

“Why am I confident ‘genius’ isn’t the first word which comes to their minds?” Cate said under her breath.

“A town so far off the trade routes they mightn’t have seen a ship in months, perhaps years. ’Tis perfect.”

Nathan rose carefully, wincing at the movement. He critically surveyed her and the ruin wrought by a night of tending the wounded. She was smeared to her feet with dried blood, vomit, and filth.

“We may even find you some clothes. Those seem a bit...soiled?” he said dryly.

He frowned, considered, and then began tentatively. “There is the chance—a very remote one, mind—that I might have not represented meself in the most flattering aspect.”

Humble, clearly, was not a natural state for him.

“There are times when one becomes…” Nathan paused to clear his throat several times. “One becomes, oh, caught up…Still, I might…stipulate that our pact…might still prevail…”

Cate checked for the line on the floor, thinking she might have inadvertently crossed it and was about to be admonished.

“…you yet agree…not to…attack?” The lilt in his voice held the question.

She ruffled at the implication it had all been of her doing, but desisted, knowing it would prove little. She might have been the one to throw the first punch, but she had been taunted beyond endurance. From a certain point of view, if she leaned ever so carefully to the proper angle, it was an apology.

It hurt not to smile, but she remained straight-faced, nonetheless. “Agreed.”

Nathan’s relief was evident in the way of a broad grin and a drop of his shoulders.

“Very well. Agreed,” he said, more to himself. He dashed at the floor with his boot, as if to scuff the line away. Gingerly placing the battered leather tricorn on his head, he squared his shoulders.

“On with it, then.” He made a zigzagging path, from one side of the erased line to the other, until he was out the door.

###

To the rhythmic thump of the pumps and gush of hoses washing the decks, Cate went to check on the wounded, whose name Pryce was entering on the binnacle list. Grooves and Harrison were warm with fever; they would bear closer watching. To those in pain, more rum was administered, water laced with porter or honey for the rest.

Cate came on deck to the sight of Nathan and several others standing before the hose. Arms extended, he turned slowly, allowing the rush of water to wash the blood and filth from his clothes. He stepped to the scuttlebutt, a reservoir for rainwater. He scooped a bucketful and doused over his head, more or less rinsing the salt water away. After, he shook off like a great dog, water spraying in all directions. His shirt was still streaked with dried blood, but the worst was gone.

She smiled privately at seeing a mattress—hers, no doubt, for odds were it was the only one aboard—dragged out given the same ablutions, and then left on the grates to air.

The ship’s people moved with nowhere near the same vigor, but were far more vigorous than she had expected after taking such a beating. This was far from the first battle, and God willing, far from the last. She had seen troops so shocked by battle they were barely able to rouse from their blankets. These men showed no such symptoms. They were bound by blood and faith in each other, faith in their ship and her heart and strength, a stronger faith in their captain, who didn’t take their lives lightly.

Once the ship was well under way, her people went on to the next order of business: services for the dead.

Tradition held that a seaman’s hammock was his shroud. With two round shot at their feet, six such bundles were laid out at the rail: four killed outright in battle and two succumbing to their wounds in the night. One was a man by the name of Croftsford; she had held his hand in his final hour of delirium.

He died with a smile and calling her “Mary.”

All hands able turned out. As captain, Nathan presided over the ceremony. His shirt still dark with wetness, one eye ticking with pain, he took a pen and symbolically struck their names from the muster book. It was a solemn scene, with a reverence of which one might have thought these ruffians incapable. Watching from a discreet distance, she was struck by the camaraderie and brotherhood that bound them, a connection no less deep than the blood of a Highland clan. Pirates they may have been, but at that moment they were men grieving the loss of a shipmate.