The captain stared at me angrily and seemed to be about to speak again. I found words.
“My father was perfect.” My voice rose. “And frivolous is not a sufficient word for the other.” A wretched sob escaped me. I realized suddenly that my head had drooped and I had made this last retort to the long wooden boards of the deck. Large tears of anger and misery welled in my eyes.
I didn’t bother looking up. There was nothing I wanted more than the deck to swallow me up and bury me in the sea. The captain was similar to my mother; he hated simply for the pleasure he got from hating. For this I need not look up. I knew the familiar sneer of that countenance.
Chapter 4
THE CAPTAIN
I had been angry many times as a captain. And yet I knew that she did not cower in fear of me. I knew when I first saw her that she had no real pride left in her, only a haughty show. And yet this girl, who moments ago had told me everything she disliked about me, was now bent over in a perfect example of awful humility. My own trials seemed like nothing. Although the deaths and hatred in my life had left me hollow and incomplete, it had not, as of yet, reduced me to the pitiful state in which it had left this girl.
When I saw her at the inn she was defiant and proud like her father. Yet she had seemed sleepless, drained, even ill. Her eyes had dark, swollen pockets and her hands shook as if life would be taken from her at any moment. I did not think any being could be so thin and fragile yet so disdainfully arrogant. She had become stronger the further we traveled from England, but now she was back to her destitute state. I had to know what grief, or situations, could overcome a person to make them appear in this strange way.
“What did she do to you?” I asked.
Another tearless sob escaped from her. Her face turned upward to lock eyes with mine. At least now the fire had been extinguished from them. She contemplated her answer for a moment while I waited.
“Perhaps someday I will tell someone the whole of it,” she whispered. The words were uttered in such an earnest and lonely plea that despite my negative feelings toward her, I found myself wishing, against reason, against logic, that if it were possible, she could confide in me and not perish from the burden. Just then, I noticed a change come over her. She straightened her posture suddenly and became rigid. Her eyes became defiant once again as she yelled, “But it sure as hell will not be you!”
She stomped heavily down the starboard side and down into her cabin. I heard her door slam with fervor. It was wildly disconcerting, but somehow, I could not keep my lips from moving into a smile.
“Captain!” Anderson announced himself.
I turned to face him, irritated. “What is it?”
“Murphy has just reported from the riggings, sir,” he stammered.
I braced myself.
“Storm.”
I whirled around to stare into the darkened clouds I had been monitoring for days. They had been following us closely. I had hoped they would pass us by, but in vain.
“Prepare the men,” I instructed and Anderson departed, yelling his orders to the crew. The frenzy of preparation began.
I ignored the instant response his directions brought about. Crew men sprinted and leapt for their positions. I headed to the cabins, however, because my first responsibility was to warn the passengers.
I took the steps down to the lower barracks and stepped directly into Miss Kensington’s cabin without knocking. It irritated me still that she received her own cabin when passengers usually had to share the same space between ten or twenty of them. She was not even aware, I was sure, that she was being treated so well. And all because of her money, which would surely run out soon. My irritation showed as I stepped into her quarters, but she did not see me.
In the corner of her space, she was balled up as tightly as humanly possible. Both hands held the side of her head, intertwined in the short clumps of hair, as she sat perfectly still and silent. Suddenly I felt acutely uncomfortable. I should not have entered.
I had stepped into the lair of a demon.
What could possibly possess a mind to render the body this way? Surely she was exaggerating her troubles in an effort to stand out. There was not enough terror in all of London to force on her this anxious misery. All this I tried to convince myself of, and yet, the logic could not reach my instinct. The demon was screaming inside of her. Perhaps demons afflict many people and the weak scream while the strong stay silent.
The storm was moving. I had to act quickly.
“Miss Kensington, a storm is breaking,” I said.
She responded immediately. Her head rose and she stood at attention.
“A storm?” she asked, almost too quiet to hear. “Is it dangerous?”
“It is if you come out of your cabin,” I said. “You must remain here until I come to fetch you.”
“Oh.” Her small face lowered in an anxious expression. She clasped her hands together and looked around her as if the walls would cave in immediately. I had never seen her afraid before.
“You could ask Missus Livingstone if you might share her space,” I ventured.
Miss Kensington stared at me with widened eyes, then slowly nodded.
“Gather a few things,” I stated. She grabbed only a few items and then followed me out the door. I knocked on Missus Livingstone’s door.
Little Robert opened the door with a terrified look on his face. I was about to inquire after their well-being when Miss Kensington jumped between us. In an instant, her arms were around Robert. I turned my attention from them to peer inside the room. Mrs. Livingstone was as white and worn as old sails. Dysentery. I knew it well. She lunged for a pail and lurched up gruesome contents from her stomach. Her children sat around the cabin with wide, crying eyes, but their mother was unable to comfort them.
Miss Kensington strode into the room with Robert in her arms, as if she weren’t the weakest person aboard the ship. She gathered the children around her and soothed them while pulling back Mrs. Livingstone’s hair with calm, collected hands. She was absolutely bewildering.
“Miss Kensington,” I began. “The storm will be heavy and will come upon us in no less than an hour. You need to prepare yourself and the children. I must, of a necessity, lock this cabin door until the storm has passed. The rocking of the boat will be drastic and it is unsafe for any of you to be outside of this cabin, or up in your cots, until it has passed. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” she spoke clear as day. No sign of her fright remained.
“Stay calm and try to rest,” I said to them all. I nodded to Robert in assurance.
After the door was secure I leapt aboard the deck. Anderson would be commended for his speed and discipline. The ship and crew members were in place and prepared for anything. I took a deep breath of satisfaction.
This is why I had become a captain.
Chapter 5
ANNA
Mary was terribly ill. Robert said that she had been sick for days, but had politely excused herself when it became too much to bear. Now she could barely move. Her eyes stared in the general direction of her children, no doubt wanting to watch after them, but being completely unable to do anything but watch.
I had never cared for the sick before. I had visited the sick with Father but he had never allowed me to minister to them. He said my health was his first priority. Now I had only my instincts to rely on. I prayed they would be enough.
In Mary’s low water basin, I used the fresh water to rinse and apply a cold wash rag to her neck and forehead. I suddenly wished her doctor husband were traveling with us. She had a high fever. The children were frightened at the sight of her.
Soon, the ship began to rock back and forth so fiercely that little Agnes would have surely been thrown off the cot if Robert had not been there to rescue her again and again. I understood now why the captain had warned us to stay off the cots. The rocking could throw a grown man across the room. Our trunks crashed and broke open again and again. I prepared Mary o
n a low, makeshift bed on the floor, surrounded by any padding I could find to keep her still. When I was sure she would not roll from the rocking of the boat, I moved to Agnes and Robert and gave them fierce embraces. As I pulled back and looked into their eyes, I remembered from my depths, a song that might soothe them.
“Shall we sing?” I asked quietly. Robert nodded quickly. I placed him on one knee and Agnes on the other as I sat on the floor near Mary’s head. Robert was perfectly still, except his shoulders shook in tight sobs. It was so tragic how grown up he was expected to be. I reached a hand out and stroked his head while I sang a song from my childhood.
There’s a lady called Victoria
who keeps a little school,
containing many clever boys
and many a little fool.
The school is down in Westminster
an old established one.
The scholars full of business too
and often full of fun.
I sang to the children until my voice was hoarse and I simply whispered the words. They fell asleep in my arms, and I would not lay them down. There was no guarantee of survival, nothing to cling to but hope and each other.
The rocking and pitching of the ship was more extreme than I would have supposed. Constantly during the day I would have to brace us against the close walls of the cabin with my legs to keep us from ending up in one giant mound of sleeping flesh. The storm regularly jerked us from our positions, however, despite my efforts.
What I had not expected was the noise! I had never experienced anything this loud before. Mother had certainly yelled before, and her voice was shrill, piercing even, but it was nothing to the roar of a furious sea.
I wondered what would happen to us if the Madras were to sink. Would we drown? Suffocate? I remembered the captain had locked the door. Suffocate, then. Perhaps it was the merciful way to die. The thought made my heart race. Robert woke and took his head off my chest to look at me in a questioning way. He could sense my panic. I shook my head at him and held him to me. I could remain calm for him. Slowly my heart slowed and I drifted into a fitful sleep …
My worn, and nearly lifeless, frame sat rigid on the front pew of a large cathedral. The bench was hard and uncomfortable to rest on, especially considering I had been there for many hours. Yet I did not move an inch. I had no need to readjust or position myself in an effort to become more comfortable. My body was useless to me now, and my mind wandered as I stared blankly ahead. My spirit had become separated from my body the moment Father had passed away.
A dull, droning voice was giving an elaborate speech of a man I never knew. The man he described was nothing like my father. No one in this tightly packed cathedral knew him above half. They were present because this was the fashionable place to be: the funeral of a duke.
A sharp, familiar elbow lodged between my ribs. I looked around myself. The man had finished talking and my part had come to place the roses on Father’s casket. It had become the latest thing for the daughters to lay flowers on the casket of their fathers. The minds of these people were truly backwards.
Unspeakable agony began its journey in my stomach and climbed slowly up to my heart, crushing it without mercy. My mind was numb as I stood and walked, dazed, toward the wooden box that held all my freedom locked tightly inside. Mother would not allow an open casket.
I have no real recollection of climbing the small steps. Hundreds of mute spectators watched my every move, unfeeling. I placed red and white roses on the black box. My tears created a pattern around the pretty set. I had tied them with a blue ribbon, the color of a land we would never know, in painful irony.
At once, my mind was alert. My eyes opened slowly while my arms remained immovable in their position around the little ones. I turned my gaze slowly to the door. The captain was dominating the small door frame in an effort to assess our situation. His exhausted blue eyes had dark patches underneath them and his shoulders were hunched.
“How is Mrs. Livingstone?” he whispered.
I reached over to feel Mary’s head.
“She has slept most of this time. Her fever is lessened,” I said quietly.
Suddenly I realized it was silent outside.
“The storm has passed,” I said amazed.
“Yes,” the captain replied. “Not more than a half hour ago.”
“What time is it?” I asked
“It is morning. Back to the time I left you. Almost twenty-four hours,” he stated.
Twenty-four hours. I had been singing and sleeping a shorter time than I had thought. Gratitude swelled in my throat.
“Thank you for keeping them safe,” I murmured, breathing a sigh of relief.
The captain gave me a strange look, and then left the cabin without locking the door. I assumed we were free to move about.
As gently as I was able, I laid Agnes and Robert in the family’s cot and departed. I desperately needed to breathe some fresh air. The cabin had become muggy and thick in such a small enclosed space. All I could smell was the evidence of Mary’s illness.
I mounted the deck and surveyed the disaster. Several of the sails had broken down and were laying in piles of disarray on the deck. The sailmaker was working on mending them in a flooded corner. He could not avoid the water at his feet, however. The deck was covered in at least six inches of murky liquid. Most of the crew worked with pails, buckets or anything that would contain the mess to throw it over the side.
The sea was uncommonly still. An uneasy, scared, and restless, feeling had settled upon the crew members. I moved to the mess hall and encountered the crew man who was mostly in control of the supplies.
“Good sir,” I said, “where is the ship’s physician?”
“Physician?” he repeated “There is no doctor on board, Miss. Captain works as ship’s doctor when needed, but he is with First Mate Anderson now.”
“Anderson?” I inquired. “What happened? Is he all right?”
“A beam, thrown by the wind, pommeled him in the stomach,” he described grimly. “We got the beam out all right, but the captain said a large wooden chip remains in his gut.”
Poor, unfortunate Anderson. The effects of the storm had been more severe than I had realized. I recalled my mission.
“Mary Livingstone is sick with dysentery. Do you happen to know something that would help her?”
“Arrowroot,” he replied quickly. “It is in these biscuits. And she’ll also be needing beef tea, which I would be happy to help you with, Miss.” He handed me the arrowroot biscuits and tipped his cap in my direction.
“I would be ever so grateful,” I told him truly. “I shall be back for the tea.”
I rushed to Mary’s cabin and lifted her head onto my lap. Robert was playing a clapping game with his sister. I shook their mother slightly and gave her the biscuit, bit by bit, until it was fully consumed. She rolled back to her former position a little more content, I thought.
Next my attentions turned to the children. They had not eaten for a day, and yet they did not complain. They were warriors among men. I toted them both together with me and we mounted the stairs. I retrieved for them our typical breakfast. As the crewman handed the large bowl of tea for Mary, I did not think it looked like a tea at all, but rather like soup. I left Agnes with Robert as I took it to Mary and awoke her again to spoon-feed the contents to her.
After Mary and the children were all fed, I ventured out onto the ship, past those who were working to fix the sails, and in the direction of the captain’s cabin.
As I slowly stepped toward the captain’s door, inhuman groans caught my ears. I raised my hand to turn the knob when I heard the captain’s frantic voice and Anderson’s terrible sounds.
“More hands to me NOW!”
I pushed the door open.
Blood covered the floor surrounding the captain and his patient. A lantern hung disturbingly still above their heads. Captain had both hands on First Mate Anderson’s stomach as he twisted and turned gruesomel
y. A large block of wood was in Anderson’s mouth to hold in his sounds, but it wasn’t working. His gray hair crumpled back and forth on his sweaty brow as he thrashed his head in an effort to stand the pain. A young lieutenant stood, frozen in shock, his hands holding him upright against the operating table as the captain dug for the foreign object in Anderson’s belly. A fog of nausea swept over me as I braced myself on the doorframe. The captain’s feet slipped in the thickness of the blood on the floor.
“Salt!” he ordered, “we need salt!”
My mind could not unravel these simple words. Salt? In the wound, possibly? I looked around myself, searching for salt.
“Now, man!” the captain hollered as he continued to push on the first mate’s stomach, but the lieutenant stood in silence, seemingly unable to move.
My mind recalled a time when a thin layer of ice had covered the front steps of my mother’s house. A footman had used salt to make the area more easily traversable.
I leapt at a large bag that I hoped would contain what the captain sought. My guess was fortunate. I took large handfuls of salt and threw them at the Captain’s feet and then at the feet of the frozen lieutenant. The pools of blood instantly soaked up the salt during its first few doses, but after a time, the captain could stand without slipping. To cover more space, and because First Mate Anderson’s cries were becoming more desperate, I took the bag by the corners and threw it to the ground with full force. The bag spilled forth its remaining contents and I kicked them around the room. Through all this, the captain’s eyes were focused on something in Anderson’s gut and he had not perceived me. It is my belief, to this day, that this captain originated the phrase “curse like a sailor.” The young lieutenant would not move no matter what threats or warnings were shouted at him from the captain.
I grabbed the arm of the lieutenant and threw him, possibly harder than the situation warranted, into a small sofa against the wall of the cabin. He did not even blink. He would do Anderson no good by being catatonic, so I stood in his place.
In Spite of Lions Page 5
