The Pirate Captain (7 page)

The pat of blood dripping on the boards marked the seconds as she held Chin’s gaze. His defiance faltered, his lids lowering. They snapped open, only to close once more.

“Bleeding like that for another hour or two,” Cate said, “you’ll be half out of it, probably verging on delirium. By then, weakened by all the blood lost—”

“Right she is!” Pryce cried. “I ain’t never seen a gash what benefitted with the waitin.’”

Pryce’s declaration was endorsed by encouraging murmurs from all around. From behind Chin’s back, Pryce moued at having to agree with her. She looked to Blackthorne for some sign of having done right, but he was too intent on Chin to notice.

“What man would pass up the chance for a lady’s hand on his leg and not have to pay first?” Blackthorne winked, prompting a lewd chuckle from the rest. “Hell, I’ll throw in all the rum you can swallow.”

Chin’s increasing struggle to keep his eyes open gave credence to her prophesy. Through a haze of pain, he regarded her with cold suspicion, trust apparently a scarce commodity among the pirates.

“I’ll warn ye, Cap’n,” Chin said at last. “That could be a fair bit.”

“I’ve a quid in me pocket what says you can’t make a pottle,” said Blackthorne as he rose to his feet.

Catching their captain’s spirit, the men made their wagers, bringing forth coppers, shillings, shares of grog, and other tokens of value. Blackthorne turned and clapped a hand on Cate’s shoulder. To the idle observer, it would have seemed a genial gesture, but he squeezed the soft muscle until she winced.

“A life for a life ’tis our motto, so have a care,” he said, low-voiced in her ear. “And hark ye well: there are no secrets on a ship, so I shan’t advise foolery.”

Chin made it as eminently clear as his broken English would allow to all within hearing that he would not be touched until properly numbed. He ground out black-sounding Chinese at being lifted to a table. He beamed, however, when the promised rum arrived, and he drank with purpose.

As it turned out, Pryce and Kirkland, the cook, shared the duty of ship’s chirurgeon. A medicine chest was brought, containing a sharpened sailmaker’s needle and a spool of cord-like thread.

“That’ll never do,” Cate muttered, poking a finger at them. “There should be a sewing kit in those trunks from the
Constancy.
In the smallest one, I believe.”

“Fetch it!” barked a voice.

“Bring some of those petticoats, too,” she called after the hand who scrambled away.

The remainder of the medicine stores was disappointingly sparse: a few rags, a bottle of liniment smelling of things long-gone bad, and a jar of innocuous salve. That, plus hot water from the galley, and rum, composed the total of her weapons. Meager, yes, but she had gone into battle against injury with far less.

An ebony
etui
was delivered. It bore a silver family crest with the initials “LL.” Lucy Littleton. Cate stroked the glossy wood, seeing once more the slip of a girl. Barely fifteen, Lucy had possessed all the innocent sparkle of youth, breathily anticipating her coming life, a husband her greatest aspiration. She would have been stunned to see her symbols of ladyhood being put to such brutal use.

But Lucy was gone now.

Cate flicked open the small case and extracted two silver needles and the ivory bobbin of black thread.

Next to where Chin lay appeared a man. As tall as he was broad, he seemed a mountain in the low-ceilinged space. Black of hair and eye, his body was so encased in bands of geometric tattoos it was difficult to discern his skin’s natural tone. He shifted as she did, always taking a position directly in her line of sight. Arms crossed over a hogshead chest, he stood disquietingly still, except for the start he held: a length of rope, a fist-sized knot at its end. He swung the bludgeon-like thing with well-practiced ease, passing it several times closely enough for her to observe the knot’s discoloration, looking too much like dried blood. The knot was periodically struck with startling force against whatever surface that happened to be within range.

At one point, there was a subtle shift in the press of men around her, parting to allow a single figure forward. The dry old stick’s rheumy eyes regarded Chin’s leg, the man’s withered mouth pursing in consideration.

“Huh! I’ve seen worse.” The creaky-voiced pronouncement came with the same significance of a verdict handed down at Old Bailey. And then he was gone. Puzzled, Cate forbore inquiring as to what that performance had been about.

While waiting for Chin’s rum to take sufficient effect, Cate inspected the other casualties those who would allow her, that is. A good many would not deign to subject themselves to the hands of a woman, preferring to bind their wounds themselves or be attended to by their mates with whatever bit of rag might be to hand, in spite of her protests.

“Eye fer an eye,” came a low-voiced rumble from somewhere behind her.

“Justice,” hissed another.

She spun around to where several men sat wearing a unified mask of malice.

“We’ll see whose blood stains the deck next,” said Chin in a rum-thickened slur.

She spun back to Chin, now dull-eyed with drink, but glaring nonetheless. Her breast and ribs stinging anew, she thought to apologize to him, but a hollow gesture it would have been, for if the circumstances were to present themselves again, she would have done the same. She straightened, a strange calm befalling her as she took the bottle from his increasingly limp hand. She met his stare as she poised the bottle over his wound and poured. She took great satisfaction from the resulting bellow. It was cut short, however, by the crack of the knotted rope on the bench at her knee. She started as if she had been the one struck, and her hard-found will dissolved.

As she picked up the threaded needle, her pulse raced, her mouth gone dry. She had repaired many a man, but never damage done by her own hand. She periodically paused to swipe the sweat from her eyes; putting a needle through skin wasn’t as easy as one might imagine. Chin’s jaw muscles stood rigid with determination to present a stoic front. And yet, no amount of resolve could prevent his flesh from twitching at every stab. The needle slipped often from her blood-slicked fingers.

She worked under the added pressure of being observed not only by the rope-swinging watchdog, but two others, loosely disguised as assistants. One, small and squat, with huge bulging eyes and an inordinately wide mouth — Frog, as she privately christened him — stood poised with a knife—being disinclined to trust her with it—to cut the thread as she knotted off each stitch. The second, tall and thin to the point of near frailty, with a neck and limbs befitting a great bird, Crane ripped bandages in between sprinkling sand under her feet whenever the floor grew too slippery with blood. She resented their lack of trust, flattering herself as one who possessed enough honor not to exact revenge on a wounded man.

With a sigh of relief, she tied off the last stitch. She moved on to the next one injured, and then the next, all the while working under the severe mask of Watchdog and every man she treated. Those who conceded to being treated by her were, for the most part, as stoic as Chin. Unflinching as she sewed their flesh or set their bones, they didn’t scruple, however to smirk at her terrified state.

The bastards!

Cate glanced at the faces of each one and tried to match them with those she had seen during the fight on the
Constancy
. It was impossible that she could have been directly responsible for every injury, but clearly they thought as much. She focused on her task, allowing her bent head to take the brunt of their malice. Now bloody to the wrists, she could smell her own sweat above the press of bodies around her. Her jaw ached from being set. Determination turned inward, some might have called it “fortitude,” but her father, brothers, and husband had called it “stubbornness.”

Be damned if I’m going to be cowed by a bunch of pirates!

At least that was what she told herself, until her pace slowed. Mastiff swung his club-rope with a resounding whack, spurring her to work with renewed fervor. Under more ordinary circumstances, she could have worked with confidence; she had staunched a war’s worth of wounds. This wasn’t the maiming and dismemberment as wrought by cannon fire. Hand-to-hand battle produced more in the way of slashes, fractures, and dislocations, dismemberment being limited to knuckles, noses, or ears. The blood, however, ran just as red, the agony just as real.

The hatch grates were drawn back and ’tween decks was flooded with daylight. With it a came a downdraft of fresh air; she inhaled deeply several times through her nose to clear away the fug of blood, vomit, and unwashed male. The lowering to the hold of plunder from the
Constancy
began, bulging net after net. The process involved a great deal of cursing and shouting, often requiring her to shout into the ear of her patient. Those injured in the loading process took their place in the makeshift sick bay’s line: a gaffing hook to the foot, a smashed hand, and one who had taken an inopportune step and tumbled through the
Constancy
’s hatch.

And then, she was done. Wincing, Cate slowly straightened and waited. No one stepped forward; no one beckoned. Flushed with exertion, she washed the blood and filth from her hands in a bucket and dried them on her hem. Little could be done for the shift she wore, now smeared red from chest to knees. All told, there had been well over a score to be seen, all now either resting comfortably in their hammocks or back on duty. She wasn’t ashamed to admit there was a small part of her that had enjoyed the work. For once, she had felt useful, a sense she had thought to be long dead.

Mastiff, Frog, and Crane having disappeared, she stood half expecting someone to either drag her away to be confined somewhere, or returned to Blackthorne’s cabin. Many of the men circled around her as if she carried wharf fever, while others intentionally brushed against her as they passed, murmuring lewd remarks. She retreated to as out-of-the-way corner as could be found in such tightly-packed quarters: atop a sea chest wedged between the aftmost guns—yes, she needed to remember that at sea cannon were called “guns”—and waited.

There was a bone-rattling bellow of “Swabbers!” She picked up her feet, crusted with the same slurry of sand and blood that fouled the floor, to allow the pile of reddish-brown crumbles to be swept away by one of the men who appeared armed with brooms, mops, and buckets. He worked with a low-voiced grumble of “Damned landsmen what don’t know how to mind a deck. Swab. Swab. Swab. And not a moment’s rest. ’Twas like the Glory Almighty was coming to visit.”

Mess was called, with all its furor of gathering men. The pirates hunched over tables slung between the guns and gobbled down their meal oblivious to the cargo nets, which still passed up and down. The smell of food reached her, but her stomach was closed, the scent leaving her queasy.

A dull ache seemed to have permanently settled behind her eyes. It was a different sort from the pain that thudded where she had hit back of her head. The sense of fulfillment faded and cold fingers of fear clawed her gut again. The price of idleness was time to think. Nothing pleasant came to mind, only broken recollections of the ominous warnings heard on the
Constancy
. She looked down at her hands, now resting in her lap, and wondered when the trembling might stop. She buried her head in her hands and covered her ears, in hopes that if she was to block it all out, she might wake from this nightmare. A more desperate hope was that she had actually drowned and was dead.

That would make this Purgatory
, she thought, scanning the pirates.

And a fitting description it was: a soulless, damned-looking lot they were. There was, however, none of the despondency or misery one would expect in Hell’s waiting room. These men laughed and jested, poking good-naturedly at each other as they ate with zeal.

Through the clamor of men and handling of cargo nets, she felt first through the floor, and then heard the footsteps coming toward her, heavy with irritation and the desire to make that displeasure known.

“Ah! So the lamb couldn’t find its way through the wolves back to the flock?” Blackthorne jeered as he drew up before her. “Have to be a dull-witted dawcock not to be able to find your way aft.”

“No one said…You never…”

“Tach! Must I bid you to breathe, as well?” he cut in, an annoying habit, she was coming to discover.

Exhaustion and tension had rendered her uncommonly over-sensitive, for his image blurred.

“Bloody hell, not blubbering again,” Blackthorne said at seeing her eyes fill, as he handed her down from her perch. “Your bladder lie too close to your eyeballs, does it? Shall I leave you with them, so you might truly have something to wail about?” he asked with a gesture toward the men.

He was back in character, Cate thought glumly as he shoved her back toward the Great Cabin, a considerably more circuitous path with the tables now set up and hatches opened. The affable, engaging captain seen among his men was gone, the glowering, fractious one returned.

Once in the cabin, she quickly retreated to her previous spot. Standing there, she gazed out the window at the low-slanted sun’s rays. The day was almost over and of prodigious proportions it had been. She hoped never to see another like it. There was, however, the niggling possibility that it might be her last. Fixed on that thought, she was deep in observation of the patterns of light and shadows on the water, committing them to everlasting memory, when she was interrupted by Pryce’s arrival.

“We’ve cleared the prize of everythin’ need be,” he said, pulling up before Blackthorne, now seated at the table. Behind him, she could see the deck still teemed with the shipping of the
Constancy
’s plunder
.
“We’ve looked from tops to wells. ’Tweren’t no other women yet, exceptin’ the capt’n’s wife there.”

Pryce looked at her with a coldness that reached across the room.

“Guns disabled?” Blackthorne asked.

Folding his hands behind his back, Pryce proudly rocked on his heels. “Aye, sir. Guns spiked and rudder disabled. ’Twill be the morrow earliest afore she’ll be makin’ ready. There be no danger o’ her givin’ chase, nor makin’ port soon.”