The Madmans Daughter

by Megan Shepherd

Page 9

  Author: Megan Shepherd

  I peered at him uneasily. His words had the ring of commandments, but none I’d ever heard. “What are you talking about, Balthasar?”

  “Thou shalt not kill other men,” he said, rocking harder. The ship dipped suddenly and I grabbed the wall for support. Balthasar no longer seemed aware of the storm. He rocked faster, eyes glassy.

  “Who told you all this?” I asked. “My father?” His recitation had the feel of Father’s commanding influence all over it.

  “Stop saying these things,” I said. “Please. Calm down. ” My thoughts raced. Did the natives see my father as some sort of supreme ruler? Father had scorned religion, so I couldn’t imagine he would permit such ridiculous chanting. I wanted to ask Balthasar more, but he leapt to his feet and hurried from the room without another word.

  THE STORM LASTED THROUGH the night and into the morning. When the Curitiba returned to its normal rocking, I stumbled above deck to gasp fresh air and feel warm sunlight. The foremast boom had buckled under the weight of the canvas sail, which now cracked and whipped in the heavy breeze. The dogs sprawled in their cages, quiet for once, under a waterlogged canvas tarpaulin. They didn’t lift their heads as I passed. Only their eyes followed me.

  Montgomery and Balthasar stood on the quarterdeck, peering into the rigging.

  “Is the ship still seaworthy?” I asked.

  Montgomery jerked his chin toward the sailors, who fought to tame the sail under the captain’s slurred curses. “We won’t sink, but we won’t go far if they don’t fix the sail. Anyway, we have our own problems. ” He looked back into the rigging. On the top spar, a dozen yards above us, was the monkey. “His cage shattered in the storm. ”

  “Can’t one of the crew climb up to fetch him?”

  Montgomery glanced at the foresail. “They won’t bother themselves for an animal. ”

  I studied the complicated puzzle of rigging, spars, and sails, looking for a solution. But wherever a man might cut off the monkey’s passage horizontally, it could always move vertically.

  “You’ll have to wait for him to come down,” I concluded.

  “Not possible. Captain’s given me no choice. ” His face went serious and he made a gesture to Balthasar, who shuffled to a stack of crates and came back with a rifle. He handed it to Montgomery.

  The blood drained from my face. “Don’t you dare shoot it!” I said.

  He shook his head a little too forcefully. “Captain says the added weight can affect the sails. ”

  “That’s not true. It’s basic physics. You know that, Montgomery. ”

  “Very scientific of you, but it won’t make a difference to the captain. ” He split the barrel and checked inside. “Balthasar, go belowdecks for a few minutes. ” Balthasar nodded, grinning naively, and shuffled off to the forecastle hatch. Montgomery clicked the barrel back into place. “You should go as well, Miss Moreau. ”

  “I shan’t. I’ll talk some sense into the captain. ” I pointed at the rifle. “And don’t even think about using that. ”

  “Miss Moreau, wait. ” His voice begged. “Juliet!”

  I ignored him and crossed the deck. While trying to tame the loose sail, the men had torn a gash down its center, and the captain cursed something furious.

  “Captain Claggan, a word, please. ”

  He whirled on me with bloodshot eyes and breath like a tannery. His nose and cheeks were splotched with broken blood vessels that made him look like the devil himself. “What do you want?” he bellowed.

  I took a step back. The deckhands glanced my way, their faces hardened. I’d find no support there.

  “I asked you what the devil you want!”

  “The monkey,” I said, getting irritated. “It weighs too little to do any damage. The laws of physics—”

  “Physics! Devil take you, lass! I’ll shoot the wretch down myself. And you, too, if you don’t mind your own business!”

  I wasn’t used to being threatened by a bony drunkard, and it didn’t sit well with me. Anger stirred deep in my bones. At just sixteen, I had already had a lifetime’s experience with men like him. The last one ended up without use of his hand. The river of anger flowed from my capillaries into veins and straight to my heart, lodging there like a hardened bit of glass. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d brought my palm across his face.

  The crew went silent. The captain touched his cheek, blinked twice, then stumbled toward me with black rage. Suddenly Montgomery was beside me. He snatched my hand and tucked the rifle under his arm.

  “Is there a problem, Captain?” he growled. In an instant Montgomery had turned into a hulking animal, powerful and dangerous.

  The captain’s bloodshot eyes steadied on the rifle. Montgomery casually adjusted it so it pointed at his gut. The captain hesitated, then spit a thin mess of tobacco a few inches from Montgomery’s feet. “Keep your little bobtail below where she belongs. ”

  I gasped at the insult, but Montgomery squeezed my hand so hard I couldn’t think of anything else. “Our apologies for the disruption,” he said, his blue eyes cold. “It won’t happen again. ” He pulled me to the side, where I leaned against the rail, shaking with anger.

  “Did you hear what he called me?” I said, face burning.

  “He’s a liar and a drunk, so what he says is of no consequence to us. ” His hand tightened over mine. “I’m less concerned with your reputation than your safety. Men like him are dangerous. He may be checked by Balthasar’s size and by my rifle, but he could do anything to us out here, Juliet, and no one would know. ”

  His large fingers swallowed my own. He could have let go, for we were quite safe now.

  But he did not.

  I cleared my throat. His presence had a way of making my anger dissipate, but in return it set loose a swell of other feelings. “I should thank you, then. ” I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself. What to say.

  He still didn’t let go of my hand. He took a step closer, interlacing his fingers in my own. I swallowed the nervous jitters rising in my throat.

  “I suppose I’ve made this voyage very difficult for you,” I said. My voice shook, but the thought of silence was more frightening.

  “As I said, I’m glad you came. ” His eyes held mine, leaving little doubt as to his meaning. Montgomery wasn’t one for games.

  My corset felt even more constricting than usual. I wanted to rip the stays apart and fill my burning lungs with air. His touch was thrilling. His whispered words, I’m glad you came, turned my insides molten. Emotions were a puzzle, something to be studied and fitted together carefully. But the edges of this puzzle didn’t fit within the lines I knew. I focused on the loose white thread on his cuff rather than on our intertwined hands.

  “I’ve thought of you over the years, Juliet,” he said, his voice low as he brushed a blowing strand of hair out of my face. “More than I should. ”

  Juliet, he’d called me. He’d dropped the pretense of using my surname. I studied the waves beyond our hands, trying to work out the equation of my emotions. Since I’d seen him again, in that room at the Blue Boar Inn, there’d been a tightness inside my chest whenever he was around, like string lashed round my heart. I felt it tug at his little gestures that brought me back to our childhood. I felt it at his kindness to Balthasar. At the way circumstances had forced him to grown up too quickly. At the way he made me feel safe, for the first time in years, and yet passionately alive. It was something I could never have felt with Adam or any of those silly boys.

  The waves’ caps blurred into a dizzying blue mass. I felt myself swaying and gripped the rail. My corset was bound too tightly. Blood wasn’t flowing to my brain. I didn’t know how to process these feelings. Safety. Warmth. Affection—God, I wasn’t a little girl anymore—maybe it was more than just affection.

  I pressed my fingers against my eyes and looked back at the waves. A strange sight: a da
rk mass against the sea. I blinked to clear my head.

  A hundred feet away from us a battered dinghy bobbed, half sunk. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Juliet, are you all right? Did you hear what I said?”

  But when I opened my eyes again, I saw that the dinghy was real.

  So was the hunched body inside.

  Eight

  “CAPTAIN! THERE’S A MAN adrift,” Montgomery yelled. I dug my fingers into the chipped rail. The dinghy was quickly taking on water, sinking lower and lower.

  “Could he be alive?” I gasped.

  “Doubtful. Must have been drifting for days. We’ve been at sea nine weeks and haven’t seen another ship. ”

  The captain shuffled over, cursing loudly, and shoved me aside as he peered over the rail. “Bloody devil,” he muttered, and signaled to the first mate. “Turn us alongside her!”

  A red-nosed young deckhand helped Montgomery lower some line, hand over hand, so fast that watching made me dizzy. As the ship swung to aft, the sinking dinghy drew closer until it knocked against the hull. The waterlogged body lay curled in the bottom, a hideous display. The tatters of a coat, bleached and salt-stained, covered his upper half. Torn trousers ended midcalf over bare feet that were scarcely more than bones. What would we find under the clothes? A bloated corpse? Bleached bones scoured clean by salt and sand? I found myself leaning dangerously far over the rail.

  “Larsen, you’re lightest,” Montgomery said. The deckhand swung a leg over the side and disappeared. I waited tensely with the group of sailors. Even the monkey watched. A cloud passed overhead, stealing our sunlight. A few fat raindrops fell on my face.

  Suddenly, a rough hand took my wrist and pulled me away. Balthasar. He led me to the sheepdog’s cage, where we could watch from a distance, sheltering us from the coming rain with a canvas cloth.

  “Thank you,” I muttered, hugging my arms, though I still wanted to be watching from up close.

  “Montgomery says a lady must be protected. ”

  I looked at him askance. If Montgomery and Balthasar thought I’d never seen a gruesome image before, they were mistaken. I wasn’t that kind of lady. I started to say as much, but Balthasar seemed proud, as if he was protecting a proper young woman, so I kept my mouth shut.

  A murmur spread through the men like spring rain, and I strained to hear. I caught only one word, but it was enough.

  Alive.

  I itched to move closer, but knew I should stay with Balthasar. Another sailor climbed over the side. The line jerked wildly, held fast by the second mate and his watch crew. At Montgomery’s signal, they pulled. Several feet of line came up. The sailors hoisted up Larsen along with the castaway. The unconscious body fell upon the deck, dripping with seawater. The crew swarmed closer.

  Unable to resist, I tore away from Balthasar. He called after me not to look, but I felt compelled to, dragged forward by an invisible hand. I slipped quietly among the sailors, catching glimpses between their swarthy frames.

  Montgomery rolled the body carefully to its back. It was a young man, a little older than me, unconscious and so battered and beaten by the sea that I couldn’t believe he had survived. His hand clutched a tattered photograph as though, in his last hours of consciousness, the image was all he’d had left to cling to.

  I blinked, paralyzed by the image of that bruised hand holding a photograph. A coldness stole my breath. I had been drawn by morbid curiosity like a vulture to carnage. But this wasn’t some lifeless corpse—it was a person, with a heart and a hope. Alive.

  I drifted among the sailors, keeping my distance, almost afraid that if I stepped closer my curiosity would once again take control of my limbs. I glimpsed a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his leg. I imagined him alone and desperate in the dinghy, tending to his wound and wondering if he was going to die out there.