Little Jane Silver

by Adira Rotstein

  Madsea came up behind her and patted her condescendingly on her scarred cheek. “Whatever you say, Mary. Still, it’s a shame time weren’t kinder to you, me dear.”

  “I wasn’t never your dear,” she hissed, furiously.

  “Oooooooh! A lil’ hellcat ain’t she!” cried one of the sailors, laughing. “You teach ’er, Cap’n!”

  “Leave off!” cried Long John. He turned to try to look at Madsea, who was now standing beside him, but the chains still held him fast. “This is ridiculous! Come, send these fellows away and let us talk like civilized men! Captain to captain. We was like brothers once, Fetz. See reason and listen to me. As your brother, I says we should—”

  CRAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

  There was a sound like the breaking of a cricket bat. Long John crashed to the ground and there he lay, on the grimy floor of the brig, motionless as a fallen oak.

  Long John had seen no warning of what Madsea was about to do and it had all happened so swiftly that Bonnie Mary hadn’t even been able to utter a word.

  As it was, it took her a second just to process exactly what had happened. One second they were all standing there, right as you please, and the next, using the butt end of his rifle Madsea had swiped Long John’s legs out from under him. He now lay prostrate and bleeding, face down on the ground.

  “Jim!” screamed Bonnie Mary.

  At the sound of his name, the stunned pirate stirred a little.

  “Brother!” frothed Madsea in fury and disgust. “How dare you presume to call me brother and sell me down the river to French cut-throats in the same breath? Ye be no brother of mine, Jim Silver!”

  Straining blindly at her chains, Bonnie Mary managed to kneel down beside her husband. Up close she could see he had struck the ground at a bad angle. His peg leg was bent off to the side like a busted wagon spoke, exposing its splintered yellow heart to the world.

  “You slime-sucking beast,” growled Bonnie Mary. “Look what you done!”

  And Madsea looked down upon his works and smiled. “Be thankful it’s just his wooden leg,” he said sweetly. “Next time it’ll be the real one.”

  If Bonnie Mary could have killed with a look, all that would’ve been left of her ex-shipmate would’ve been a black scorch mark on the deck.

  Madsea just laughed. “Ho there, Jesper, roll the louse over!”

  Against Bonnie Mary’s vociferous protestations, one of the sailors turned Long John over with a nudge of his boot, so he was lying face-up.

  The beaten pirate groaned.

  Madsea turned to leave.

  “Wait!” cried Long John, speaking like a man who wasn’t lying in two separate pieces on the floor. “Wait! Fetz — Captain Madsea, please—”

  “What?”

  “Me full apologies!” Gingerly, Long John sat himself up, rising off the shoulder he had not injured in his fall to the floor. “Me full apologies on them past grievances, Captain.”

  Fetz came forward at this, stepping squarely on the bent piece of wood still holding the lower part of Long John’s peg leg to the upper half. Then Madsea listened with an expression of utter peace and contentment as the wood cracked, buckled, and splintered apart as he ground the dratted thing under the pressure of his boot heel until it at last twisted completely free from the upper part.

  “Gaaaa-aaa-aaaaaak,” gasped Long John and his eyes lit with tears, his bronzed face turning as white as a sheet of paper.

  With pain? wondered a bemused Madsea. Why, the fool really does think the bit of wood alive, after all! He favoured Long John with a superior smile.

  “Aye, well, good on you for that,” Long John forged on, still breathing raggedly. “That’s the right way of things! I did you wrong, I’ll take me lumps for it, fair and square. You settle up with me and leave the others out of it! Come now, we both know they ain’t got what yer looking for. Let’s have it out as is right and proper-like, man to man, and leave out me wife and crew.”

  “Your wife, eh?” said Madsea, seizing upon the word. “As much as that? I must say I’m surprised you aren’t still living in sin all these years, but then I suppose when there’s a child in the picture …”

  Madsea’s suspicions were instantly confirmed by the anxious look exchanged by the two captives.

  “Oh, don’t fret so!” he chuckled hoarsely. “Your offspring is safe.”

  “If you’ve done anything to my child, I’ll wring your bleeding neck!” Long John hissed, having given up on trying to reason with Fetz.

  Madsea returned him a scornful smile. “Never fear my dear cook’s apprentice, the boy is safe, and will remain so as long as you co-operate with my wishes.”

  “Boy?” asked Bonnie Mary, puzzled.

  “Oh, don’t be daft, Mary!” cried Fetz. “You can’t start playing dumb with me now! I already know you have a son! You just admitted as much! I mean, honestly, some people are just too dense for words!”

  “We don’t have a son.” Long John laughed up at him from the floor.

  “Ha! As if I’d buy that! Mr. Ronk!” roared Madsea. “Bring in the boy!”

  “Um, actually, Captain …” mumbled Ned Ronk.

  “Yes, what is it? Speak up now!”

  Ned gave a nervous little cough. “I was meanin’ to talk to you about that, sir. Uh, the boy the men’ve been holding, you see, sir, Rufus ain’t the captains’ pup at all, he’s just the cabin boy. It’s actually a girl-child you’ll be wantin’.”

  “What!”

  “Little Jane. The captains’ daughter. Your man Nauset made a mistake. I told Lobster to tell him to get the girl, but—”

  “Nauset made a mistake! Wasn’t it you that was supposed to be supervising the—“

  “Beggin’ your pardon, Captain, but—”

  Ned saw the fist coming. He saw it coming, but did nothing. Captain Madsea was his superior officer now and there was nothing he could do but stiffen and take the blow.

  PPPAAAAAK!

  For such a sickly scarecrow of a man the captain could still pack a pretty vicious punch, thought Ned ruefully as he felt the blood trickling from his nose.

  “Don’t ever interrupt a superior officer again on my ship. Mr. Ronk, you are dismissed. Midshipman Davenport, go fetch Doc Lewiston. My fellow captains here need his ministrations. Can’t have them expiring on us before we make it to the Nameless Isle, eh, fellows? No, I’d say that wouldn’t do at all.”

  With that, Captain Madsea concluded the interview, stepping delicately out of the foul-smelling cell. His underlings clanged the door shut behind him and chained it fast with an iron monstrosity of a lock the size of two men’s fists. Then someone closed the hatch above the ladder, cutting off the last bit of cool breeze. The captives were left alone with their single guard.

  Bonnie Mary and Long John quietly clasped hands, letting their thoughts hang like a spider’s web thread between them, information like beads of dew moving from one mind to another, across the physical divide. It was nothing so revolutionary as telepathy nor so spectacular as the feats the great mentalists of the age purported to perform, but a lifetime’s worth of private jokes and shared adventures had endowed them with a kind of private language of the spirit.

  As they gazed at each other in the encroaching gloom, Long John felt himself transported back to his youth aboard the Pieces, to the first bloom of love in his heart.

  The pain in his shoulder and leg receded with the wash of pleasant memories.

  Hands still bound behind her, Bonnie Mary nuzzled up against him. “The latch,” she murmured in his ear, jolting him back to the present. Her eyes darted to his broken wooden leg and he instantly read her meaning.

  He nodded. As quickly as he could, without drawing the guard’s attention, Long John rubbed his thigh against the floorboards, causing the cuff of his breeches to inch up the remainder of his broken peg leg.

  Hurry, Jim! Bonnie Mary’s glance practically shouted.

  He looked away, focusing all his attention on the difficult task at han
d, stretching with sweaty fingers, twisting his wrists against the iron chains that held them, nearly wrenching his injured shoulder further out of place, just trying to get some purchase on the slippery piece of fabric.

  By the time he had worked the cuff of his breeches up far enough, Bonnie Mary was in position, her back toward him, hands straining against the shackles on her own wrists.

  Though part of it had broken away with Madsea’s final twist, the very top of his peg leg still clung firmly to him with the aid of sturdy leather straps. With an anxious eye for the guard by the ladder, he raised it now to meet Bonnie Mary’s groping fingers. There, just below the cup that held his stumpy knee in place, in a spot usually hidden by his breeches, was a tiny latch of tarnished brass. After several fumbled attempts and some hastily cut-off oaths, Bonnie Mary managed to lift the catch. A narrow rectangular outline, previously unnoticeable amid the multiplicity of artful carvings etched into the surface of the wood, suddenly stood out in high relief. With the aid of her fingernails, Bonnie Mary dug at a corner. At last, the narrow rectangle popped open, bouncing a little on its wire hinges. A tiny door stuck out at a ninety-degree angle like a skinny wooden tongue, revealing a narrow chamber cut into the wood. Inside the now exposed chamber was an object, long and thin like a pencil, wrapped in a scrap of linen. Long John lifted his leg and gave it a shake. The mysterious object landed with a soft “ping” on the floor.

  Bonnie Mary turned to face the guard. The man’s eyes flicked over them for an instant, alerted by the scuffling noises they had tried to keep to a minimum. A sound like the rushing of a mighty river swept past Bonnie Mary’s frightened ears, but in the shadowy brig such a little object as the thing she had extracted from the secret chamber was easily obscured.

  As the eyelids of the exhausted guard began to descend to the half-mast of semi-sleep, Long John bent down to the floor and picked the object up in his teeth.

  With this act only just accomplished, they heard the sound of footsteps on the ladder. The doctor! Without a moment to lose, Long John dropped the object down the open back of Bonnie Mary’s shirt. She grunted and shifted the folds of the fabric to hide the miniscule weapon.

  The doctor stepped down onto the floor of the brig.

  Jim, the latch, her eyes said to him. It’s still open. He’s crossing the room now. HURRY. Please!

  Not caring if he woke the soldier now, Long John smacked the top half of his peg leg sharply against the floorboards. A jet of pain shot up from his wounded knee to his thigh, but a quick cursory glance showed the latch was back in place again, the tiny chamber door, by all rights hidden. His knee sang with pain, and bright lights pulsed in his vision.

  The young doctor appeared at the bars. The guard reluctantly pulled out the keys and unlocked the cell to let him in.

  Doc Lewiston entered, black medical bag in hand. Long John shrank into the back of the cell and the surgeon’s eyes lit up with professional curiosity. “What’s wrong with your leg?”

  “Old injury, nothing important.”

  “But there’s blood on it!” Doc Lewiston exclaimed.

  “Oh, is there then?” replied Long John casually, hoping he didn’t look as faint as he suddenly felt. Stupid, malformed thing, he cursed. In contemptuous reply his knee began to throb even worse than before. He could feel the blood trickling down into his best silk breeches.

  “Please, sir, if you’d take a look at my wife first,” Long John said, dipping his head. “I think the smoke got her something awful in the eyes.”

  “Very well. ’Scuse me, lad.” Lewiston motioned to the guard. “You might want to remove these shackles. Can’t examine them like this, you know.”

  Grumbling, the guard did as he was told and with a simple twist of a key Long John was free. He stretched out luxuriously.

  “And the lady, too,” ordered Doc Lewiston. “Honestly, it’s a crying shame to chain one of the fairer sex so! By Jove, what would your wife say?”

  “Don’t got one, sir,” mumbled the guard, shamefaced.

  “I shouldn’t wonder, treating women like that!”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t apologize to me, you dolt! Apologize to her!”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” sighed Bonnie Mary as she rubbed her chafed wrists. “Lord keep and bless ye!”

  “Tut tut,” replied Lewiston, patting her coarse hand. “’Tis nothing. Now, my dear, what seems to be the trouble?”

  Bonnie Mary brushed her matted braids away from her face, and, anticipating the man’s reaction, lowered her mismatched eyes. “It’s an old wound, too, I’m afraid,” she said shyly. “Most everything’s ancient about us. Ain’t nothin’ for it. Don’t see many stay this long in the game without a few nicks and scratches here and there to pay for it.”

  The doctor wiped the gathering gunk away from her tear duct with a clean cloth and nodded with unexpected sympathy.

  “Me old man, he were a mariner, too,” said the doctor and the two pirate captains stared dumbfounded to hear this common sailor’s argot from the tongue of the richly dressed Scottish medical man. “Got rich smuggling tea out of Hong Kong to Britain,” Lewiston said with a wink. He favoured them with a sad smile. “Bought my medical education with his life, he did.”

  Mulling over Lewiston’s father’s sad fate in relation to their own future and that of Little Jane, the two pirates sat in gloomy silence. At last, the doctor finished his examination of Bonnie Mary’s eyes.

  “Whatever damage the smoke did to you, looks like it’s clearing up quick, though it wouldn’t hurt to wash both eyes out with clean water at least twice a day to ensure they stay healthy. Make sure to use a fresh cloth for it. I’ll make sure the guard brings some for you. As for the rest,” he said ruefully, “it’s as you say, an old wound. Nothing for it I can do.”

  “Thank ye, Doctor.” Bonnie Mary bowed her head in acknowledgement and Doc Lewiston turned briskly to her husband.

  “Now then, I’d like to have a look at your shoulder if you don’t mind. I do say, are you absolutely certain that leg of yours is all right? It appears to be bleeding clear through to the floor!”

  “Is it now?” replied Long John, his voice cracking through the upper registers despite his best efforts to appear unconcerned. “Well, if you happen to have a bit of laudanum on you, why don’t you just top me off and you can be on your way.”

  However, now Lewiston was growing really interested. “I say, mind if I take a look? Do you know the name of the doctor who amputated you? I just love seeing other fellows’ workmanship! I’ve only done fifty-three and a half such surgeries myself, but I’m always looking to improve.”

  “Fifty-three and a half?” asked Bonnie Mary, unable to restrain her curiosity, despite the fact that Long John’s face was growing more chalk-like in colour by the moment.

  “One of the poor sods kicked the bucket when I was just halfway through,” replied Doc Lewiston ruefully. He returned his attention to the pirate. “Oh, drat, I think he’s fainted.”

  “Jim,” cried Bonnie Mary, shaking her husband. “Jim, wake up.”

  Long John blinked and sat up.

  “You passed out.”

  “Nonsense, I’m just exhausted,” replied Long John. “Go ahead, prod away.”

  “All the same, perhaps I ought to start at the shoulder,” muttered the doctor cautiously. Satisfied that nothing other than the skin was broken, he pulled out a bottle of alcohol and began to liberally douse the cuts and bruises.

  Bonnie Mary looked on in amazement.

  “Now don’t look at me like I’m daft or somesuch!” Doc Lewiston smiled. “Dr. Belani, a brilliant fellow I trained with in India absolutely swore by it. You’d never guess, but a little spirited beverage works wonders in preventing infection.”

  “Really? Jonesy would love that.” Bonnie Mary smiled.

  Soon Long John smelled like he’d taken a swim in a distillery. Not that he minded. It certainly banished the stench of the nearby toilet.

&nbs
p; Then Doc Lewiston busied himself removing the remains of Long John’s wooden leg, and Long John busied himself trying not to wiggle out of the doctor’s reach. Finally, the wood casing and straps were all removed. Doc Lewiston unwound the silk cloth Long John kept around his stumpy knee to keep it from chafing against the leg’s wooden housing. It was difficult not to notice that the wrapper was speckled with a dark red stain that had not been there when he’d put it on that morning.

  “It don’t look right, Jim,” Bonnie Mary said flatly.

  “Ha, twenty years of marriage and she finally notices,” laughed Long John, weakly. In truth he’d never felt less like laughing. Few people ever saw his truncated leg, and certainly none, including himself, had ever seen it in this state. He felt horribly naked and exposed.

  Fascinated, Doc Lewiston prodded the swollen, mishapen knee and cleaned the skin lacerations with more alcohol. Long John tried not to squirm.

  Finally, Doc Lewiston wiped his spectacles on his vest before announcing, “I do believe you’ve broken your kneecap.”

  Long John groaned.

  “But it’s not a bad break. You’ve got that in your favour. No nasty boney bits sticking out or any such. Providing it remains free from infection, I seriously doubt we’ll have to cut any of the rest of it off,” Doc Lewiston opined cheerfully.

  “Gaaaak!” choked Long John in response.

  “I’ll splint it up and you’ll have to stay off it for a few months or so, as long as it mends all right, you’ll be left no worse off than you are now. Come, come, my good fellow. You should be pleased. I’m sure it’ll heal up just fine.”

  Miserably, Long John submitted to Doc Lewiston’s splinting without a word. He tried to think of a joke or two, but they died before they reached his tongue. All he really wanted to do was crawl into the corner of the cell and hide. How had they conspired to take everything away from him so quickly? Little Jane. The Pieces. His crew. Their freedom. All stolen from under his very eyes in less than a day. And how could he get them all back now? How, if he couldn’t even walk properly? And what if his leg didn’t heal right after all? The idea of the surgeon cutting into him made him feel like throwing up.