He’d allowed Job’s sons and daughters to die. But then, they’d been adults and, by implication, not particularly godly ones. Mel was trying. She read her Bible.
“Oh, God, why this little girl?” Phoebe cried aloud. She pounded her fists against the table, then pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes to stem the flow of tears that seemed ceaseless. “Lord, please heal this precious life.”
Behind her, the door latch clicked. Phoebe didn’t look. She smelled Belinda’s lavender oil. If Belinda said one word of complaint about her tiny quarters now, Phoebe feared she would have no control over her reaction.
But Belinda slipped an arm around Phoebe’s shoulders and just stood beside her in silence, save for a half dozen sniffs that suggested she wept too.
Phoebe glanced at her. Indeed, tears coursed down Belinda’s pretty face. “You love her too, don’t you?”
“I do.” Belinda nodded. “She . . . well, she’s made me want to be a mother. And to lose her—” Her voice broke into a sob.
“We need to pray for a miracle.” Phoebe crossed the cabin to Mel’s side.
The girl lay as motionless as ever, good for her cracked ribs, not so good for her future. She hadn’t moved for nearly twelve hours. Darkness had fallen, and she made no reaction to the lanterns Phoebe lit. She lifted one of Mel’s lids and shone the light directly into them. Her pupils neither contracted nor expanded. They remained pinpoints in her face, the irises more gray than green.
Phoebe dropped to her knees. Belinda stood behind her, her hands on Phoebe’s shoulders. Phoebe clasped one of Mel’s delicate hands and sought words that would break through the pain around her heart, the turmoil in her mind. She felt like a kettle with its lid pressed down and unable to let off the steam boiling up inside. If something didn’t change, she might begin to shriek and not stop.
“Lord, we need a miracle,” she managed through stiff lips. “I don’t know how she will awaken now without one. Please, God, send Your healer.”
“Amen,” Belinda murmured.
Neither of them moved. Phoebe didn’t open her eyes. Mel’s hand remained limp in hers, her breathing shallow.
“God, did you hear me?” Phoebe cried.
Once again the door latch clicked. This time Jordy slipped into the cabin, his face grim, his eyes suspiciously red. “I can sit with the lass a wee bit. You two go on and fetch your dinner. Her da will be down in a moment.”
“Then I’ll wait for him.” Phoebe shoved herself to her feet. “He probably shouldn’t be alone.”
“Nay.” Jordy met her gaze across the intervening space. “He blames himself for not waking up sooner, though ’twas the best rest he’d had in weeks. And he is not responsible for the cut line.”
“Who is?” Phoebe clenched her fists. “I might toss him overboard myself.”
Belinda gasped. “Phoebe.”
“Aye, I ken what you are saying, lass.” Jordy’s mouth hardened into a thin line for a moment. “We think ’twas Jones but cannot prove it. No one claims to seeing him up there. But if we ever can . . . weel, the captain will haul him up before a court on land, I’m thinking.” For the first time, he glanced at Mel. “No change?”
“None.” Phoebe bit her lip. “You’re a praying man. Maybe your prayers will be heard. I fear for Rafe—for the captain—if anything happens to her.”
“Aye, I already fear for his soul. And him such a godly lad.” Jordy cleared his throat. “I am praying, but I’m thinking there may be more that can be done.”
Phoebe and Belinda straightened. “What?” they chorused.
“’Tis an operation I saw once before.” Jordy turned a bit green beneath his sun-bronzed skin. “’Twas a gruesome thing, but it relieved the pressure on the brain, like lancing a boil, the surgeon said, and the man lived.”
“Not—” Phoebe’s stomach rolled with the memory of a picture she’d seen in one of Tabitha’s medical tomes. “Trepanning?”
“What’s that?” Belinda asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Phoebe said. “It takes a man with skill and training, and that’s rarely found aboard a ship, let alone the proper equipment needed. Maybe if we could keep her alive long enough to turn back for Bermuda, or perhaps sail into a port in France that might be closer? Under a flag of truce, of course.”
“We do not ken if we can keep her alive so long.” Jordy shoved his fingers through his graying hair, dislodging strands from his queue. “Two weeks at the least either way. But we do have a body aboard with the training and the equipment.”
“You do?” Belinda grasped Jordy’s arm. “Why wasn’t I told? I wouldn’t have had to drag Phoebe along as my midwife if I’d known there was a trained surgeon aboard.”
“Aye, weel, he does not like to recall the fact, as ’twas long ago, but this is a special circumstance. If I can be convincing him.”
“A trained surgeon?” Phoebe felt like shaking Jordy, not clutching his arm. “Who? Why hasn’t he acted?”
“Not a surgeon,” Jordy said, gazing past their heads to the stern windows. “He’s a physician from Edinburgh Univer—”
Phoebe shoved past Jordy and Belinda and raced up the steps to the deck. Near darkness met her, and she slid to a halt on the smooth planks, blinking to gain her night sight, straining her ears to hear anyone around, letting her nostrils flare for a hint of ginger.
She found him between the rail and the cutter. He gripped the bulwark as though needing it to keep him upright or anchored to the deck. He didn’t move, didn’t even turn his head as she charged up to him.
“You’re a physician?”
He jerked straight. “Jordy?”
“Yes, but I should have guessed. Your manner when I was sick. Questions you’ve asked.” She shook him. “So did you train, or were you merely working toward it?”
“Aye, I was beginning to work with my father in his practice.” He sounded fatigued. “You would ne’er ken it, would you now?” He gave her a tight smile. “Do no harm, my oath said, and I’ve spent nine years doing naught else.”
“But you have the training to save your daughter’s life.”
“Or kill her in the attempt, aye.” He rested one hand on Phoebe’s shoulder. “I have been standing here wishing I still believed God cared enough to listen to me. But I am thinking He’s taken everything else, why not my daughter too?”
“Oh, Rafe.” Phoebe’s throat closed. She swallowed. “I’ve been praying for a miracle. Your ability to perform the operation just might be the answer.”
“I have not practiced in over nine years, my dear.” He lifted his hand from her shoulder and held it in the faint light of phosphorescence off the sea. “Once upon a time, I thought naught of having the blood of my patients on this hand. I helped in difficult births using the forceps, I removed growths, and I sewed up gashes that nigh on severed limbs. It was all for the good, you ken. Most of the time my patients lived to thank me.” He gave her a tight-lipped smile. “And pay me. Once I even performed the trepanning on a man struck in the head by a runaway horse. He woke up in a day and ended up as right as ever. Oh, aye, the pride I had. I was lauded the best young physician in Edinburgh. The best besides my father. But I could not heal my wife from the consumption. Nor save her from the pirates. And now my hand is covered with the blood of Frenchmen only trying to survive like anyone during a war. So how can I heal my daughter from the concussion?”
“Davina had consumption?”
“’Tis why we were in the Mediterranean. She needed sunshine and dry air, both in short supply in Edinburgh. But it was of no use. She was getting worse. I could not help her.”
“You’re not to blame for that. No one knows how to heal consumption, Rafe.” She caught hold of his hand and cherished it between both of hers. “And trepanning is extremely dangerous, especially aboard a ship, I’d think, but you know as well as I—perhaps better than I—that her likelihood of staying alive is nearly nothing without some kind of help.”
“An
d you have not been praying?” His tone held a blend of sarcasm and surprise. “No angels are coming down to rescue my lass?”
“Oh, I expect they will.” Phoebe spoke through gritted teeth. “But to take her to heaven, not relieve the pressure on her brain.”
Rafe flinched.
“Rafe, she hasn’t moved a bit in twelve hours. I’ve seen this once before. He died in twenty-four hours.”
“That does not have to be my lass. Some people wake up.”
“Some, yes. How many do you know?”
“I’ve read of a few. A miner in Northumberland woke up after a month.”
“A miner.” Phoebe growled. “A big, strapping man, no doubt. Mel is a child, and a small one at that.”
“She’s in fine health.”
“The healthy die. You know that as well as I.”
Rafe jerked his hand free from hers, nearly sending her off balance. “I can do naught till morning. Let me think on it. ’Tis all I can promise.”
“It’s enough.” Phoebe kissed his whisker-rough cheek and left him to ponder.
When she was a dozen feet away, he called after her, “The Davina is a brig, not a ship.”
Phoebe laughed, her heart lightening. If he could tease her like that, he would make the right decision, maybe the miracle God intended.
Not until she reached the cabin to find Belinda sitting on the edge of the bunk, holding both of Mel’s hands, did Phoebe pause long enough to think about Rafe being a physician. He’d been young to hold such a reputation. Not surprising with a father also a physician, a man with more training and education than a surgeon. Well, she held more medical training than most surgeons. But Rafe had been a true healer, a man with deep knowledge of the human body and how it worked and how to heal it.
Rafe was a healer.
She merely nodded at Belinda, too overwhelmed to speak. Seated on the bench below the stern windows, she clasped her hands beneath her chin and stared into a future she hadn’t allowed herself to consider once in her four years as a widow—life with another man, life as a wife. With Rafe restored to his medical practice instead of his current mission—
She snapped herself to the present. His current mission lay in the opposite direction of healing. His soul lay in the opposite direction of the Lord. He’d rejected his training and vows and rejected his faith. She couldn’t have him under any circumstances like those, even if he were inclined in her direction.
Oh, he cared about her. If nothing else, he wanted her. But he couldn’t forgive those who had killed his wife. He couldn’t turn his heart away from that great love of his youth.
Phoebe rose. “What happened to Jordy? I thought we were to go down to the galley to eat.”
“He hadn’t eaten either, so I told him to go.” Belinda raised red-rimmed eyes to Phoebe. “I can’t bear to leave her for long. How can her father stay away?”
“Besides still having a ship to run, he’s suffering, Bel. She’s all he has left.”
Belinda jutted her chin forward. “Then he should be here.”
“He’s coming.”
Footfalls on the companionway ladder told Phoebe of Rafe’s approach. She recognized his stride, long, firm steps carrying him with speed and grace.
He opened the door and stepped over the coaming, then paused, fixing his gray eyes on the bed, on his daughter, without blinking for several moments, then he strode to her side and knelt beside the bunk. “Do not die on me, hinnie.”
He seemed not to notice Belinda beside him or Phoebe a few feet away. He didn’t acknowledge their presence as he continued to murmur to Mel.
Phoebe signaled to Belinda to follow her out of the cabin. Neither of them spoke until they reached the deck.
“He’s a really bad man,” Belinda said, “but we should pray for him too, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes.” Phoebe took Belinda’s arm and led her to the forward hatch. “But I don’t think he’s a really bad man. He’s misguided. His soul is troubled, but there’s so much goodness in him, I—I—”
“Do you love him?” Belinda stopped walking and stared at Phoebe by the light of a lantern.
Phoebe said nothing.
Belinda’s lips whitened. “How could you? How could you love a man like him after a man like my brother?”
Phoebe clamped her teeth down on the one-word response. “Easily.”
“He—he’s scum compared to Gideon.” Belinda’s voice went shrill.
“Quiet,” Phoebe commanded. “He’s not—”
“My brother attended William and Mary College and read the classics. He knew how to run a plantation.”
“And how to drink himself senseless every night.” The words slipped out before Phoebe could stop herself from saying them, nor from plunging on. “I’ve never seen Rafe Docherty take so much as a sip of spirits, nor allow it on this vessel, and he finished his schooling at a far more important institution of learning than that unimportant school in Williamsburg.”
“Why, you—you—you murderess.”
Although Belinda bunched her hands into fists, she didn’t strike Phoebe. She didn’t need to. Her epithet struck harder than her chubby little fists could. Phoebe staggered back, fetched up against the rail, and clung to the damp wood in an effort to stop the tremors shuddering through her.
“I—I’m sorry.” Belinda reached out her hand, palm up. “I didn’t mean to say that. Of course you didn’t kill Gideon.”
“It’s just what everyone says.” Phoebe spun around. She would have been sick except she hadn’t eaten all day. “Go on down to the galley to get your supper. I’m not hungry.”
“Phoebe, please.”
“Leave me alone, Bel. You’ve said quite enough for one night.”
“But—”
Phoebe hunched her shoulders against her sister-in-law.
With a sigh, Belinda trudged away.
Phoebe took several deep breaths of the crisp, briny air, then turned aft again. She wanted to be with Rafe more than she wanted to eat. Rafe, more of a kindred spirit aboard this brig than anyone knew, including Belinda Lee Chapman.
14
Rafe set the chest on his bunk, the only place in his makeshift cabin large enough for the oblong wooden box. He hadn’t touched it in months, not since their last battle with the protective frigate of a French merchantman, which had forced him to apply his medical skills for some musket ball extractions and even less pleasant uses of saws and scalpels. Those lay on the top tray, ready to handle. Below nestled his most useful medical books. Even deeper into the chest lay instruments he hoped to never use again, instruments that resembled something more like what the Spanish Inquisition might have employed to torture infidels than tools of healing.
Or death.
A shudder ran through Rafe as he lifted the trepanning saw out of its nest of silk. If he turned the handle a fraction too hard, if the saw blade guard slipped, he could kill his daughter in an instant. He would destroy her brain more profoundly than the blow possibly already had. Yet he must try. He knew the signs better than Phoebe, and her diagnosis demonstrated a measure of medical training beyond that of most midwives he’d met, a testimony to Dominick Cherrett’s wife.
If Mel didn’t wake up by morning, she was likely to not wake up at all. Already her breathing was shallow, her heartbeats thready. The water, tea, and broth they’d spooned into her mouth ran out again. She was too deep into her coma to so much as swallow involuntarily. A bad sign. A terrible sign. No one could survive long if she didn’t swallow water at the least.
“God, how could You take my daughter too?” He murmured the query, though he wanted to shout it at the sky. “She’s all I have left. I’d rather You killed me for punishment than her. Regardless of what I’ve done, please don’t take my daughter.”
He held the trepanning saw up to the light of the lantern swinging from a deck beam. A few spots of rust marred the gleaming Toledo steel of the teeth. He must scrub those off. The blade must be spotlessly clean, sha
rp enough to nearly cut glass.
He removed a whetstone from the instrument case and began to polish. He polished until the blade shone like pure silver. He then rinsed the blade in fresh seawater to remove any lingering flakes of rust and wrapped it in a fresh square of silk. Then he removed it again and tested the lock on the blade guard. No matter how much pressure he placed on the handle, the guard held.
Knowing this was the only preparation he could make, he returned the trepanning saw to its nest and left his cabin. He should sleep, but he wouldn’t, not the night before he drilled a hole into his daughter’s skull.
He opened the stern cabin door to see if Mel had made any change in the hour he’d been gone. Belinda sat beside her again reading in her sweet, rather childlike voice. Reading Psalms. Rafe hadn’t opened a Bible in years, but he recognized the words for what they were.
“He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” Belinda continued to read as though he didn’t stand in the doorway, until she concluded the chapter. “Remember, Lord, the reproach of Thy servants; how I do bear in my bosom the reproach of all the mighty people; wherewith Thine enemies have reproached, O Lord; wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of Thine anointed. Blessed be the Lord for evermore. Amen, and amen.”
Mel didn’t move. Rafe didn’t move.
Belinda closed the Bible and smiled up at him. “The eighty-ninth Psalm. It always brings me comfort.”
“Thank you for your care of my lass.” Rafe swallowed against a tightness in his throat. “She thinks a great deal of you.”
The only person on the brig who did. But then, Belinda Chapman treated Mel differently, as lovingly as a fond older sister or even a mother. That Belinda loved Mel lay in no doubt. Her devotion to his daughter since the accident brought a constriction to Rafe’s chest, a lump to his throat.
“I’ve been praying for her and reading the Psalms to her for hours.” Belinda rose and rubbed her lower back. “I don’t mind in the least if it helps.”
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