I returned from one of these expeditions on the afternoon of the third day, with several large lily-roots, some shelf fungus of a vivid orange, and an unusual moss, together with a live tarantula—carefully trapped in one of the sailor’s stocking caps and held at arm’s length—large and hairy enough to send Lawrence into paroxysms of delight.
When I emerged from the jungle’s edge, I saw that we had reached a new stage of progress; the Artemis was no longer canted on her side, but was slowly regaining an upright position on the sand, assisted by ropes, wedges, and a great deal of shouting.
“It’s nearly finished, then?” I asked Fergus, who was standing near the stern, doing a good bit of the shouting as he instructed his crew in the placement of wedges. He turned to me, grinning and wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“Yes, milady! The caulking is complete. Mr. Warren gives it as his opinion that we may launch the ship near evening, when the day is grown cool, so the tar is hardened.”
“That’s marvelous!” I craned my neck back, looking up at the naked mast that towered high above. “Have we got sails?”
“Oh, yes,” he assured me. “In fact, we have everything except—”
A shout of alarm from MacLeod interrupted whatever he had been about to say. I whirled to look toward the distant road out of the palmettos, where the sun winked off the glint of metal.
“Soldiers!” Fergus reacted faster than anyone, leaping from the scaffolding to land in a thudding spray of sand beside me. “Quick, milady! To the wood! Marsali!” he shouted, looking wildly about for the girl.
He licked sweat from his upper lip, eyes darting from the jungle to the approaching soldiers. “Marsali!” he shouted, once more.
Marsali appeared round the edge of the hull, pale and startled. Fergus grasped her by the arm and shoved her toward me. “Go with milady! Run!”
I snatched Marsali’s hand and ran for the forest, sand spurting beneath our feet. There were shouts from the road behind us, and a shot cracked overhead, followed by another.
Ten steps, five, and then we were in the shadow of the trees. I collapsed behind the shelter of a thorny bush, gasping for breath against the stabbing pain of a stitch in my side. Marsali knelt on the earth beside me, her cheeks streaked with tears.
“What?” she gasped, struggling for breath. “Who are they? What—will they—do? To Fergus. What?”
“I don’t know.” Still breathing heavily, I grasped a cedar sapling and pulled myself to my knees. Peering through the underbrush on all fours, I could see that the soldiers had reached the ship.
It was cool and damp under the trees, but the lining of my mouth was dry as cotton. I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to encourage a little saliva to flow.
“I think it will be all right.” I patted Marsali’s shoulder, trying to be reassuring. “Look, there are only ten of them,” I whispered, counting as the last soldier trotted out of the palmetto grove. “They’re French; the Artemis has French papers. It may be all right.”
And then again, it might not. I was well aware that a ship aground and abandoned was legal salvage. It was a deserted beach. And all that stood between these soldiers and a rich prize were the lives of the Artemis’s crew.
A few of the seamen had pistols to hand; most had knives. But the soldiers were armed to the teeth, each man with musket, sword, and pistols. If it came to a fight, it would be a bloody one, but the odds were heavily on the mounted soldiers.
The men near the ship were silent, grouped close together behind Fergus, who stood out, straight-backed and grim, as the spokesman. I saw him push back his shock of hair with his hook, and plant his feet solidly in the sand, ready for whatever might come. The creak and jingle of harness seemed muted in the damp, hot air, and the horses moved slowly, hooves muffled in the sand.
The soldiers came to a halt ten feet away from the little knot of seamen. A big man who seemed to be in command raised one hand in an order to stay, and swung down from his horse.
I was watching Fergus, rather than the soldiers. I saw his face change, then freeze, white under his tan. I glanced quickly at the soldier coming toward him across the sand, and my own blood froze.
“Silence, mes amis,” said the big man, in a voice of pleasant command. “Silence, et restez, s’il vous plaît.” Silence, my friends, and do not move, if you please.
I would have fallen, were I not already on my knees. I closed my eyes in a wordless prayer of thanksgiving.
Next to me, Marsali gasped. I opened my eyes and clapped a hand over her open mouth.
The commander took off his hat, and shook out a thick mass of sweat-soaked auburn hair. He grinned at Fergus, teeth white and wolfish in a short, curly red beard.
“You are in charge here?” Jamie said in French. “You, come with me. The rest”—he nodded at the crew, several of whom were goggling at him in open amazement—“you stay where you are. Don’t talk,” he added, off-handedly.
Marsali jerked at my arm, and I realized how tightly I had been holding her.
“Sorry,” I whispered, letting go, but not taking my eyes from the beach.
“What is he doing?” Marsali hissed in my ear. Her face was pale with excitement, and the little freckles left by the sun stood out on her nose in contrast. “How did he get here?”
“I don’t know! Be quiet, for God’s sake!”
The crew of the Artemis exchanged glances, waggled their eyebrows, and nudged each other in the ribs, but fortunately also obeyed orders and didn’t speak. I hoped to heaven that their obvious excitement would be construed merely as consternation over their impending fate.
Jamie and Fergus had walked over toward the shore, conferring in low voices. Now they separated, Fergus coming back toward the hull with an expression of grim determination, Jamie calling the soldiers to dismount and gather round him.
I couldn’t tell what Jamie was saying to the soldiers, but Fergus was close enough for us to hear.
“These are soldiers from the garrison at Cap-Haïtien,” he announced to the crew members. “Their commander—Captain Alessandro—” he said, lifting his eyebrows and grimacing hideously to emphasize the name, “says that they will assist us in launching the Artemis.” This announcement was greeted with faint cheers from some of the men, and looks of bewilderment from others.
“But how did Mr. Fraser—” began Royce, a rather slow-witted seaman, his heavy brows drawn together in a puzzled frown. Fergus allowed no time for questions, but plunged into the midst of the crew, putting an arm about Royce’s shoulders and dragging him toward the scaffolding, talking loudly to drown out any untoward remarks.
“Yes, is it not a most fortunate accident?” he said loudly. I could see that he was twisting Royce’s ear with his sound hand. “Most fortunate indeed! Captain Alessandro says that a habitant on his way from his plantation saw the ship aground, and reported it to the garrison. With so much help, we will have the Artemis aswim in no time at all.” He let go of Royce and clapped his hand sharply against his thigh.
“Come, come, let us set to work at once! Manzetti—up you go! MacLeod, MacGregor, seize your hammers! Maitland—” He spotted Maitland, standing on the sand gawking at Jamie. Fergus whirled and clapped the cabin boy on the back hard enough to make him stagger.
“Maitland, mon enfant! Give us a song to speed our efforts!” Looking rather dazed, Maitland began a tentative rendition of “The Nut-Brown Maid.” A few of the seamen began to climb back onto the scaffolding, glancing suspiciously over their shoulders.
“Sing!” Fergus bellowed, glaring up at them. Murphy, who appeared to be finding something extremely funny, mopped his sweating red face and obligingly joined in the song, his wheezing bass reinforcing Maitland’s pure tenor.
Fergus stalked up and down beside the hull, exhorting, directing, urging—and making such a spectacle of himself that few telltale glances went in Jamie’s direction. The uncertain tap of hammers started up again.
Meanwhile, Jamie was giving care
ful directions to his soldiers. I saw more than one Frenchman glance at the Artemis as he talked, with a look of dimly concealed greed that suggested that a selfless desire to help their fellow beings was perhaps not the motive uppermost in the soldiers’ minds, no matter what Fergus had announced.
Still, the soldiers went to work willingly enough, stripping off their leather jerkins and laying aside most of their arms. Three of the soldiers, I noticed, did not join the work party, but remained on guard, fully armed, eyes sharp on the sailors’ every move. Jamie alone remained aloof, watching everything.
“Should we come out?” Marsali murmured in my ear. “It seems safe, now.”
“No,” I said. My eyes were fixed on Jamie. He stood in the shade of a tall palmetto, at ease, but erect. Behind the unfamiliar beard, his expression was unreadable, but I caught the faint movement at his side, as the two stiff fingers flickered once against his thigh.
“No,” I said again. “It isn’t over yet.”
* * *
The work went on through the afternoon. The stack of wooden rollers mounted, cut ends scenting the air with the tang of fresh sap. Fergus’s voice was hoarse, and his shirt clung wetly to his lean torso. The horses, hobbled, wandered slowly under the edge of the forest, browsing. The sailors had given up singing now, and had settled to work, with no more than an occasional glance toward the palmetto where Captain Alessandro stood in the shade, arms folded.
The sentry near the trees paced slowly up and down, musket carried at the ready, a wistful eye on the cool green shadows. He passed close enough on one circuit for me to see the dark, greasy curls dangling down his neck, and the pockmarks on his plump cheeks. He creaked and jingled as he walked. The rowel was missing from one of his spurs. He looked hot, and fairly cross.
It was a long wait, and the inquisitiveness of the forest midges made it longer still. After what seemed forever, though, I saw Jamie give a nod to one of the guards, and come from the beach toward the trees. I signed to Marsali to wait, and ducking under branches, ignoring the thick brush, I dodged madly toward the place where he had disappeared.
I popped breathlessly out from behind a bush, just as he was doing up the laces of his flies. His head jerked up at the sound, his eyes widened, and he let out a yell that would have summoned Arabella the sheep back from the dead, let alone the waiting sentry.
I dodged back into hiding, as crashing boots and shouts of inquiry headed in our direction.
“C’est bien!” Jamie shouted. He sounded a trifle shaken. “Ce n’est qu’un serpent!”
The sentry spoke an odd dialect of French, but appeared to be asking rather nervously whether the serpent was dangerous.
“Non, c’est innocent,” Jamie answered. He waved at the sentry, whose inquiring head I could just see, peering reluctantly over the bush. The sentry, who seemed unenthusiastic about snakes, however innocent, disappeared promptly back to his duty.
Without hesitation, Jamie plunged into the bush.
“Claire!” He crushed me tight against his chest. Then he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, hard.
“Damn you!” he said, in a piercing whisper. “I thought ye were dead for sure! How dare ye do something harebrained like jump off a ship in the middle of the night! Have ye no sense at all?”
“Let go!” I hissed. The shaking had made me bite my lip. “Let go, I say! What do you mean, how dare I do something harebrained? You idiot, what possessed you to follow me?”
His face was darkened by the sun; now a deep red began to darken it further, washing up from the edges of his new beard.
“What possessed me?” he repeated. “You’re my wife, for the Lord’s sake! Of course I would follow ye; why did ye not wait for me? Christ, if I had time, I’d—” The mention of time evidently reminded him that we hadn’t much, and with a noticeable effort, he choked back any further remarks, which was just as well, because I had a number of things to say in that vein myself. I swallowed them, with some difficulty.
“What in bloody hell are you doing here?” I asked instead.
The deep flush subsided slightly, succeeded by the merest hint of a smile amid the unfamiliar foliage.
“I’m the captain,” he said. “Did ye not notice?”
“Yes, I noticed! Captain Alessandro, my foot! What do you mean to do?”
Instead of answering, he gave me a final, gentle shake and divided a glare between me and Marsali, who had poked an inquiring head out.
“Stay here, the both of ye, and dinna stir a foot or I swear I’ll beat ye senseless.”
Without pausing for a response, he whirled and strode back through the trees, toward the beach.
Marsali and I exchanged stares, which were interrupted a second later, when Jamie, breathless, hurtled back into the small clearing. He grabbed me by both arms, and kissed me briefly but thoroughly.
“I forgot. I love you,” he said, giving me another shake for emphasis. “And I’m glad you’re no dead. Dinna do that again!” Letting go, he crashed back into the brush and disappeared.
I felt breathless, myself, and more than a little rattled, but undeniably happy.
Marsali’s eyes were round as saucers.
“What shall we do?” she asked. “What’s Da going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. My cheeks were flushed, and I could still feel the touch of his mouth on mine, and the unfamiliar tingling left by the brush of beard and mustache. My tongue touched the small stinging place where I had bitten my lip. “I don’t know what he’s going to do,” I repeated. “I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”
It was a long wait. I was dozing against the trunk of a huge tree, near dusk, when Marsali’s hand on my shoulder brought me awake.
“They’re launching the ship!” she said in an excited whisper.
They were; under the eyes of the sentries, the remaining soldiers and the crew of the Artemis were all manning the ropes and rollers that would move her down the beach into the waters of the inlet. Even Fergus, Innes, and Murphy joined in the labor, missing limbs notwithstanding.
The sun was going down; its disc shone huge and orange-gold, blinding above a sea gone the purple of whelks. The men were no more than black silhouettes against the light, anonymous as the slaves of an Egyptian wall-painting, tethered by ropes to their massive burden.
The monotonous “Heave!” of the bosun’s shout was succeeded by a weak cheer as the hull slid the last few feet, drawn away from the shore by tow-ropes from the Artemis’s jolly boat and cutter.
I saw the flash of red hair as Jamie moved up the side and swung aboard, then the gleam of metal as one of the soldiers followed him. They stood guard together, red hair and black no more than dots at the head of the rope ladder, as the crew of the Artemis entered the jolly boat, rowed out and came up the ladder, interspersed with the rest of the French soldiers.
The last man disappeared up the ladder. The men in the boats sat on their oars, looking up, tense and alert. Nothing happened.
Next to me, I heard Marsali exhale noisily, and realized I had been holding my own breath much too long.
“What are they doing?” she said, in exasperation.
As though in answer to this, there was one loud, angry shout from the Artemis. The men in the boats jerked up, ready to lunge aboard. No other signal came, though. The Artemis floated serenely on the rising waters of the inlet, perfect as an oil painting.
“I’ve had enough,” I said suddenly to Marsali. “Whatever those bloody men are doing, they’ve done it. Come on.”
I drew in a fresh gulp of the cool evening air, and walked out of the trees, Marsali behind me. As we came down the beach, a slim black figure dropped over the ship’s side and galloped through the shallows, gleaming gouts of green and purple seawater spouting from his footsteps.
“Mo chridhe chèrie!” Fergus ran dripping toward us, face beaming, and seizing Marsali, swung her off her feet with exuberance and whirled her round.
“Done!” he crowed. “D
one without a shot fired! Trussed like geese and packed like salted herrings in the hold!” He kissed Marsali heartily, then set her down on the sand, and turning to me, bowed ceremoniously, with the elaborate flourish of an imaginary hat.
“Milady, the captain of the Artemis desires you will honor him with your company over supper.”
* * *
The new captain of the Artemis was standing in the middle of his cabin, eyes closed and completely naked, blissfully scratching his testicles.
“Er,” I said, confronted with this sight. His eyes popped open and his face lit with joy. The next moment, I was enfolded in his embrace, face pressed against the red-gold curls of his chest.
We didn’t say anything for quite some time. I could hear the thrum of footsteps on the deck overhead, the shouts of the crew, ringing with joy at the imminence of escape, and the creak and flap of sails being rigged. The Artemis was coming back to life around us.
My face was warm, tingling from the rasp of his beard. I felt suddenly strange and shy holding him, he naked as a jay and myself as bare under the remnants of Father Fogden’s tattered robe.
The body that pressed against my own with mounting urgency was the same from the neck down, but the face was a stranger’s, a Viking marauder’s. Besides the beard that transformed his face, he smelled unfamiliar, his own sweat overlaid with rancid cooking oil, spilled beer, and the reek of harsh perfume and unfamiliar spices.
I let go, and took a step back.
“Shouldn’t you dress?” I asked. “Not that I don’t enjoy the scenery,” I added, blushing despite myself. “I—er … I think I like the beard. Maybe,” I added doubtfully, scrutinizing him.
“I don’t,” he said frankly, scratching his jaw. “I’m crawling wi’ lice, and it itches like a fiend.”
“Eew!” While I was entirely familiar with Pediculus humanus, the common body louse, acquaintance had not endeared me. I rubbed a hand nervously through my own hair, already imagining the prickle of feet on my scalp, as tiny sestets gamboled through the thickets of my curls.
The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 287
