She could see that he was relieved. Sometimes women on ships were servants, such as laundresses or maids. Sometimes they served more base needs. Other times they were just part of the work, like the current Lady Catherine.
"I would appreciate it if you could come with me now, Miss, as we have someone who needs attending.”
Not bothering to correct the Miss to a Madam, or worse, to Lady Catherine herself, Kate followed him down to the surgery. A sailor had a splinter in his shoulder the size of a big fat sardine. She remembered the one in her side. Her wound was well healed, but just now it itched.
"How did this happen?" she said. It didn’t really matter, she just wanted him to talk, to keep his mind occupied as she did her work. It would help take his mind from the pain. That, and the dog chewing on the man’s pant leg. The seaman didn’t seem to mind. He smiled bravely and flinched now and then, scratching the dog as it gnawed on his fingers as well.
It went on from there. This was her life on the Elizabeth Regina. The Liza, the crew who already had a healthy fondness for their new vessel called her. Days passed into a week, then more, and Kate decided that it was not a bad life. If she would be jealous of a ship, best to be jealous of this one.
Kate didn’t spend time in the cabin with the other maids. She moved her things down to the surgery right away, and no one seemed to notice or mind.
She learned that the first officer was Mr. Seeley. He was given more to books and learning than he was to battle and the sea. But his father had paid his way to midshipman, and he had flourished well enough until the war came along. Mr. Seeley had trouble with corns on his toes and blisters on his heels from new boots he had gotten in Gibraltar. Though he didn’t allow Kate to administer them, he did take the salve and the advice instead.
She never once mentioned that she thought that his boots were too tight. She didn’t feel she knew him well enough for that. Or maybe it was for the same reason that she never asked Mr. Whayles about his own missing toes. A man needs some sense of privacy, some dominion over some small thing in his life.
Perhaps that’s why he stayed on to chat. He said, “I have most recently been across the equator. Hot, too hot there for me. But better there than here, for I do not like war, though I find I fight rather well."
"How do you find it so?" she said. “I mean the fighting, not the hot ocean.”
He gave her a curious look, but said, "I prefer to see things over and done. My father calls it a knack, but I put it down to dumb luck and unwitting avoidance. My battles have all gone rather quickly and rather well through no fault of my own."
It was the first of many short chats with the man. He was friendly enough, but still rather shy of this command. This larger ship was new to him, and he was very concerned about making a good impression with the new captain.
Mr. Gordon, the bosun, was born on a ship. And on a ship, he insisted, he would die. He had fought in the American Revolution and didn’t particular care for war either—this one, or the last, or the next one to come. But the spoils were good on a frigate, and his poor mother was ailing. Other than that, he had few complaints.
He had no wife, didn’t need to carry on the family name. His brothers were many and so were their children. Most of her contact with Mr. Gordon was when he hauled his ailing sailors down for treatment and conversation. Kate didn't mind that some of the ills were not strictly due to the work on the ship. Some were barely ills at all. She had foul brews, but good ones too, and most decided taking the chance was well worth the cure.
No one noticed that she didn't seem to attend to the Lady Catherine at all. A failing for a maid, but the lady complained about everything. One maid more or less was hardly noticeable in the long list of tirades:
The sea was too rough. Her bunk was too hard. The sun shone too bright in her cabin.
It was smoky inside, but the sea air was stale. The nights were cold and too damp here.
Water from a barrel ruined her complexion; only rainwater would do, collected in a porcelain bowl, if you please.
She should have brought her own cook, she proclaimed, for the food on board was not something she would feed to her dog. It was true the Lady Catherine treated her dog better than her servants. The maids and two footmen were surly to the rest of the crew in response. And the butler didn’t bother to talk to them at all. Kate, like the rest of the crew, learned how to stay clear, which left the servants to turn on one another.
But Kate was lonely. She missed her husband. She missed her family too. And Fiya. How was Fiya faring? Kate wrapped her arms around herself and studied the things she had left: the piccolo, the journals, her mother’s ring, now her own.
“Have things really changed so much?” It made her sigh. I must find something to keep myself busy, she thought.
One morning, as she strolled on the deck with the little dog, the maids of Lady Catherine started shouting at one another. The men working round them gave the women plenty of room, for they didn't quite know what to do. The women started pushing each other, and then one ripped at the other one’s dress.
It seemed they were both French, for the conversation turned a bit native. After avoiding the French language for most of her life, Kate found she could not really say the words properly, but she understood them well enough. She caught only phrases for they were speaking too fast with their struggles. It came down to fighting over a man.
Then the maids turned a bit savage, for it seems that both women were vying for the affections of the butler. Kate only gleaned this for she saw him watching it all from the quarterdeck above. He was smiling.
Suddenly, the dog jumped from Kate’s arms and ran between the legs of the maids. He started nipping at their petticoats, and then gave a sharp cry as a shoe caught him in the side.
Next came the hair and a tugging match began.
The crew started laughing, then the bosun showed up. They quickly got on about their business, but with an eye still on the girl fight. It was hard to tell who was yipping now, for the maids and the dog sounded the same.
Mr. Gordon said, “Here now. Right, well, stop that now.” He was trying to regain order of his deck, but he had never been in a battle like this. “That is no way . . . that is to say . . . really, ladies, I must . . .”
The maids didn’t seem to notice the bosun at all, and definitely did not bow to his authority. Mr. Gordon looked at Kate with no hope in his eyes. She glanced up at the butler who had the grace to blush at her glare. Then she took pity on the bosun, since she was in a bad mood anyway and there was nothing like action to clear the air.
There were men scrubbing the deck nearby, as they often do on a ship. Kate grabbed a bucket of rank washing water and slung the whole mess at the three fighting there: two maids and one now-wet little dog.
For a moment, silence ruled.
Then the women started howling and so did the dog. The crew started laughing again. The dog shook it off, splashing the women once more. The maids ran away together, now friends in commiseration and spewing back the few words in French that Kate understood: the swear words. The butler disappeared soon after.
The bosun turned toward Kate with his mouth open wide.
“Now don’t you start complaining,” she said with her hands on her hips. Then she started looking around for a weapon. A sailor pushed another bucket of wash water closer by and not within her own reach. That was the last word said on the subject.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 47 - Pilgrim
Ambrose Standish had very little choice but to disappear. He had always known that when the real diplomat finally turned up, his options would change. The Spanish would be looking for him on every dockside in the area, and there was no way he could be safe in France.
He stole a cassock from the priest in San de Luz and headed inland instead. Now he was making his way across Spain with great pain and little food. The hardship added to his disguise as a pilgrim, he knew, but he had to convince himself of that again and again.
He walked near towns to preserve the facade, but rode when he could by stealing a mule or horse. His feet were bare when people were near, but he slipped into shoes in between. Still, his feet were cut and bleeding, and now he was sure that the sharp shooting pain must be some kind of bramble bush thorn.
But he had been so hungry, and the berries were the only edible things he could find short of slipping into a hen house once again. In his foraging on farms and the outskirts of villages, he also had a dog bite or two. And he was certain that in the dark, some farmer had shot at him, for there was a small hole in the cassock now, probably from buck shot.
But the berries were right off the road, though fasting was part of his disguise, so it was taking a chance just to eat them as there were still other travelers on the road. In the end, he had decided that his struggles to reach them in the brambles also made him look pathetic. People took pity on a man’s failures if they thought he was trying to better himself. But to continue the disguise at the time, he also had to leave the shoes off his feet.
The berries had been the only food he’d had in a couple of days, and it left him with horrible gas. Kate would know more about foraging, he figured, she knew what trees and the flowers were edible too. She probably did it all of the time, she had never been comfortable in society.
“But not me.”
He took to comfortable living very well, and much preferred a ballroom and buffet to a campfire with a roasting beast that he had to kill and clean himself. That he knew how to do it was disturbing too, but his grandmother had been most insistent. He refused to acknowledge that the old hag had been right.
On his journey, he took great pains to make sure that he stayed in Spain. That meant not only heading east, but also keeping south. It made for a longer journey, and a trip over the mountains as well, but the French did not have the same reverence for holy pilgrimage—especially with their newfound independence lately.
He was quite adept at begging by now, and he could recite a number of saint’s names and prayers in Spanish, French, and even in Latin. Occasionally, someone would toss him a coin for his suffering. He took the money, blessed them, and then bit the coin to make sure it was real after they had passed him.
It took weeks of hot, sweaty days and cold, bug-biting nights, but at least he felt safe from capture in this kind of disguise. Now he was sure the Spanish no longer tracked him, and those French that he had bribed, but had not finished paying to capture Kate a second time were long forgotten by now.
Probably fighting over the coins they did have, he thought, taking a bite at another suspect-coin himself. But it was real silver. It would come in handy, and he hoped soon.
Finally, he reached the coast of the Mediterranean at one of the bays lost between Spain and France. He shunned the costume of pilgrim in the first town that he found with a tailor. He bought a room at an inn, ordered plenty of food and a bathtub. He didn’t leave the room until his new clothes were ready.
He even paid a maid to pull the thorn from his foot.
He was clean, renewed, and a bit of a mystery when he went down to the harbor and booked a passage on the first ship out: The first ship to any place in the opposite direction of Gibraltar, that is. He would need time to recoup and a chance to get more money. He couldn’t do it in small villages, he knew, but needed towns where rich Europeans would fall easy prey to his schemes, which included as his demeanor as an American diplomat.
Greece seemed as good a place as any, he decided, but only because he liked the idea of easily escaping from island to island.
Or Italy, perhaps, but not in the mountains—vineyards appealed to him now. Or even some place farther south. Some place warm with no snow-fed streams to freeze him both inside and out. What was Egypt like? Or Morocco?
He had been lucky in his wanderings in the harbor, for the fisherman he found told him they would soon be shipping out. Their usual courses included a trip out and back, but they could easily take him to a larger port where he could find further passage from there—for a price.
True, he would have to get more money, but he was desperate by now, and didn’t care how. Time was short, and he would have to take desperate means.
Standish looked out to the harbor and asked, “Where is the ship?”
The fisherman pointed to a spit of land jutting out. The vessel hovered near the horizon just beyond. It didn’t look like a fishing boat, it looked more like a French dispatch vessel.
“You speak Spanish, but you speak it like a Frenchman,” Standish said. “Is there something I should know?”
Perhaps they were French Republican operatives. They could just as easily be French Royalist sympathizers. Hepreferred the enemy of his own enemy, but didn’t ask that.
There had been no answer anyway. When Standish turned back, the fisherman was looking intensely at him. The man then shrugged his shoulders and rubbed his fingers together. Standish took it to mean that money talked most around here.
It was a language he could understand. Questions were not welcome by either man. He said, “When do we leave?”
“High tide tonight.”
Tonight. Not much time. Standish said, “Then that’s when you’ll get your money.”
On his way back to the inn, he saw a woman head into an alley. He followed. She went through a passage to a sheltered doorway. The woman was old; she was about to close the door when she bid him come in. He hesitated.
She shrugged and said in French, “Suits me, suit yourself.”
He pushed open the door. “What do you mean?”
She looked very much like his grandmother. She pointed to the wall; it was covered with shelves of little bottles and boxes. In one corner were a small table and three chairs. On top of the table was a crystal ball.
He smirked and said, “You want to tell my fortune.”
She said, “Everyone needs a bit of luck.”
“I prefer to make my own luck.”
She cackled then, which sounded like his grandmother too. “In that case,” she said, and turned with a wide sweep of her hand to the wares on her shelves. “As I said, suit yourself.”
He studied her a moment, and thankfully, the voice of his real grandmother was no longer there in his head. It hadn’t been for some time now, and maybe that was because he made it this far on his wits.
He grabbed her frail skinny arm. She didn’t flinch, but her very dark eyes narrowed as she looked intently at him. He let her go. She really did look like his grandmother then. He whispered, “Who are you?”
She smiled. Her teeth were perfect and white—false. He wondered whose they were, and how she could afford such things. Probably some unfortunate sailor she had tricked with drugs or a false telling of his fortune. But he understood her well enough. It didn’t matter who she was, just that his luck was holding.
He swallowed and said, “How much?”
Standish went back to the inn and stayed in his room until dark. Where to get money was obvious, for today was the Sabbath. He slipped into the church. The tithes collected were kept in the obvious place, for who would steal from a church?
Later, he was rowed out to the fishing boat, and Standish paid the fisherman as he stepped onto the deck. He made sure to display that there was more where that came from, but also that he had a knife.
The fisherman looked at the strange collection of coins for a moment. Standish held his breath, wondering if the man knew where they came from. But then he realized the man had only been counting.
Standish demanded, “Take me to my quarters.”
* * * * *
As usual, he spent the first days of the voyage in bed.
But it didn’t last long after that, for a storm took the vessel and tossed it on some rocks off a part of the coast he didn’t know the name of. He wasn’t even sure which way they were heading when they went down. Someone in the crew had saved him, he couldn’t tell why, but the ship went under quickly.
Perhaps it was because t
heir other cargo was heavier than it should be.
Only three jolly boats came away, though none were full. When the sea had calmed, he realized how little there was left. At least someone in his boat had managed to grab at a few casks partially full of water as some were still bobbing on the surface.
A few small crates were also floating nearby, and the boats all maneuvered to gather what they could, lashing them to the side of the boat along with the water casks. It eventually turned into a desperate effort to get more than the others when they realized that some of the crates contained food.
No one suggested sharing.
“Does anyone know where we are?” he asked.
He said it in English, even though he knew that most in his boat probably didn’t understand him. They all spoke French, and some Spanish too, as well as a few words of German. He spoke French and Spanish too. But as far as he knew, there was no other English or American amongst them.
Strangely, it was one way for him to have some privacy here. Standish took to mumbling to himself, and they left him alone after that.
It took only a couple days to lose track of the first jolly boat. One day later, they started arguing about the food and water for their own. Standish heard a woman’s voice sometimes, just female sounds that came and went on the wind, no words, no harping.
He wondered if the stories of mermaids or sea nymphs were true then. He asked the sailors about it, and they seemed eager enough to share their tales. It filled the time with stories instead of thoughts of dread.
Another few days later, they lost sight of the other boat as well. They were out here drifting on their own. Whether the other boats had gone under, or drifted to safety, or further out to sea, he didn’t know or care. All he knew was that his own boat still hadn’t seen a chance for rescue.
No coast in sight, no ships on the horizon, and only a few oars to help them get to any point in between. Not that any of them knew where they were or which way to go.
The Wilde Flower Saga: A Contrary Wind (Historical Adventure Series) Page 46
