by Carla Kelly
He nodded, wishing she were still bending over him. She smelled faintly of roses, not a fragrance he chanced upon much, but far more appealing than tar, bilge and gunpowder.
He looked at her again. “Miss Massie, could you prop up these pillows? I’d hate to dribble porridge across my chest like a hospital pensioner, since you’re so determined I am to eat in bed.”
She did as he asked, plumping up the pillows behind him, then getting out another from the lower drawer of the clothespress. As she put that one behind his head, her arm brushed his temple. He was in heaven.
Then it was Pete Carter’s turn. As Nana stepped back, the old sailor set down a vile-looking compound on the bedside table. “For what ails you, Captain Worthy,” he said. “Drink all of that after you finish breakfast.”
Oliver eyed it suspiciously, wishing that Pete did not look so pleased with himself at the punishment he was inflicting. “All of it? Shouldn’t I spread it out over the day?”
“All of it, sir,” Pete insisted. “And when you’re done, I’ll bring up more.” He smiled then. “It’ll work, Captain. It always does. I guarantee the remedy.”
For one disconcerting moment, Oliver felt that he had returned to his midshipmen days, under the scrutiny of a sailing master. You old rascal, he thought to himself, as the former sailor whisked away the chamber pot, not giving Oliver a single moment to feel embarrassed.
He was struck with a moment of shyness after Pete left his chamber, then reminded himself of the business at hand. Even the Tireless could wait; Nana Massie was going to eat more.
“Miss Massie, have you had breakfast yet?”
He could tell his curt question came at her out of the blue. She blinked her eyes, and then thought about an answer. Oliver leveled her with a stare generally reserved for midshipmen contemplating prevarication.
“You promised me last night you would tell the truth,” he reminded her as he picked up his spoon.
“That was for last night,” she said quickly, then laughed at his expression. “Aye, sir, I did promise,” she amended. “The answer is no.”
He set down the spoon. “I’ll wait until you come back with a bowl and spoon. If there’s porridge left…”
“There is,” she said hurriedly, interrupting him. “We kept it back in case you wanted more.”
“I don’t.” Oliver looked down at the tray in his lap. “This is quite enough. Please take what you want from the pot and come back.”
Without a word, she left the room, closing the door behind her. He stared down at the porridge, certain he had offended her and wondering if his next step now was to dress and go in search of her. To apologize? To bully her further? He asked himself why it was suddenly his problem.
The porridge tasted like ambrosia. It was sugared precisely right and needed no more. It even went down smoothly, causing his raw throat no further indignity. Too bad he wasn’t enjoying it, feeling sorry for himself and pining for company.
To his relief, she came back into his room with a full bowl and spoon. She pulled up a chair to the bed and helped herself to the sugar in the bowl on his tray. “All the sugar is up here,” she explained.
He smiled into his porridge, surprised at how much better it tasted. He glanced at Nana, who was spooning down a mouthful, a beatific expression on her face. He looked away quickly, so she wouldn’t think he was spying on her. I probably dare not do this with every meal, but I can try, he told himself.
When he finished, he eyed Pete Carter’s concoction.
“Do you know this elixir?” he asked, his voice cautious.
“I’ve had it a time or two myself,” she said. “I recommend you drink it first, and then follow it with the applesauce.”
“Does it work?”
“You’re stalling, Captain,” she teased, and he knew she wasn’t angry with him about the porridge.
“I am indeed. Facing the French fleet is one thing.” He picked up the glass. “This is quite another.”
“Cowardice will land you onshore permanently, and at half pay.”
Well, Miss Massie, you seem to know something of the navy, he thought. “So you are appealing to my patriotism now?” he asked, then took a deep breath and drank down the brew, reasoning it couldn’t be any more vile than old water in rotten kegs.
It was more pleasant than he had any reason to hope, with a strong aftertaste of molasses and just a hint of rum. There were other ingredients he could not name, and had no desire to find out. Following it with applesauce proved to be good advice, and so he told Nana. She beamed with pleasure.
“I’ll bring you another pitcher of water,” she said, rising to leave.
“Bring a tablet and pencil when you return,” he ordered. “What time is it?”
“Half-past seven, Captain.”
He rubbed his hands together and lay back against the pillows again as she picked up the tray. “I intend to be dockside staring up at the Tireless by two bells in the forenoon watch. Oh. Nine o’clock.” She began to protest, but he overrode it. “I need to prepare some lists before I go. Will you help me?”
“I suppose,” she said, her expressive eyes a little wary.
He watched her face, noting her wariness, and put it down to reluctance to spend more time in his chamber. So that’s how it is? he thought. Gran must have warned you about officers, too. Well, good for Gran, if bad for me.
“I must establish a list of priorities,” he told her. “If my number one—my first mate—were here, I would order him to help me. He, alas for me, is in the arms of his wife of less than a year. Although my men will tell you I am a hard task-master, I am not without feeling. Miss Massie, plain and simple—will you help me?”
That was blunt enough, he thought, observing the blush that rose to her cheeks, rendering her even sweeter to look at than before. “I would ask Pete Carter, but I doubt he can write,” he continued.
“His name only,” she said. “He didn’t need anything else in the fleet.” She looked at him, as if weighing the matter against her usual duties. “I can help,” she told him.
“Good! Have Pete summon me a hackney for half-past eight o’clock.”
“You should stay in bed,” she said, but without much conviction in her voice.
“I should, but I can’t,” he told her, trying to sound reasonable and less like a captain. “Boney doesn’t much care about my putrid throat, and probably less about my ears.”
She didn’t seem to have an argument prepared for Napoleon. “Especially your ears,” she echoed, as she closed the door behind her.
Nana went down the stairs quietly. She had gone upstairs, mostly afraid of Captain Worthy, and come down with a revised opinion. He was blunt and plainspoken, but surely no more than any other seaman she had encountered in the years since her return to Plymouth. His apparent concern for her was a surprise; she did not know why he should feel any obligation to make sure she had something to eat.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she whispered, looking back up the stairs.
She passed into the sitting room at the foot of the stairs, and then to the equally small dining room that adjoined it. Gran had told her to prepare a table setting for Captain Worthy—one table among eight. It looked faintly ludicrous in the empty room. She sat down, thinking of their only other tenant at the inn, who had died last spring.
Miss Edgar—Nana never knew her Christian name—had been a governess, a lady somewhat down on her luck whose last position had been with the harbormaster’s family. When the two daughters had outgrown Miss Edgar’s services, she had not the funds to relocate anywhere else, nor the energy, at her advanced age, to try for another post. It seemed no one was interested in hiring an old lady whose French was getting rusty, and who had difficulty remembering the capitals of Europe.
She had come to the Mulberry because it was cheap and clean, and stayed there five years before her money ran out. From Nana’s fifteenth birthday on, when she visited Plymouth during holidays, she had o
bserved Miss Edgar sitting by herself in the otherwise empty dining room, and spending her evenings alone in the sitting room.
Gran had tried to get Miss Edgar to join them in their own tidy quarters through the green baize door into the back of the inn. “All I ever wanted to do was invite her to share our company,” Gran had told Nana, and there was no disguising the hurt in her voice. “She won’t hear of it. We’re not quality.”
After Miss Edgar outlived all her savings, there was nowhere to go but the street. When she returned to Plymouth for good, Nana had been surprised to see Miss Edgar still in residence.
“I couldn’t throw her out,” Gran had told Nana later, after Miss Edgar had gone upstairs to her room. “She has never spoken of the fact that her money is gone, and she still refuses to share our low society, even while she eats our food and lives here for free.”
Nana gathered up the place setting meant for Captain Worthy, but she did not get up. Two months ago, Gran had nursed Miss Edgar through her final illness, closed the woman’s eyes in death and prepared the body for the grave before summoning the parish cemetery society, which ushered paupers into pine boxes and unmarked graves.
Together they had cleaned out Miss Edgar’s room, finding nothing of any value beyond yards of tatting, a few old books and a handful of letters. Nana was cleaning out the clothespress and its threadbare garments when Gran suddenly took her by the arm. “Miss Edgar and I could have been friends!” she had lamented, as her eyes filled with tears. “What’s even worse, I had thought your stay at Miss Pym’s would prepare you for a career such as hers.”
Nana had kissed Gran then, not telling her that Miss Pym had delicately informed her several years before that she would never be able to get such a position, because no family would countenance a governess with questionable parentage. But Gran didn’t need to know that. She had assured Gran she had no plans to ever leave the Mulberry.
Nana sat for a few more moments in the empty dining room. The rain drummed down outside as she contemplated class, rank and general stupidity. She wondered if Captain Worthy preferred an empty dining room to low company at the back of the inn.
Pete was out, but Gran and the scullery maid, Sal, were finishing the last of the porridge. “Captain Worthy wants me to take some dictation.” She found a tablet and pencil in the drawer where Gran kept her records. “He wants more drinking water.” She smiled at Sal. “If you would bring up some shaving water after a while, he means to visit the dry docks.”
“I doubt he can stand up,” Gran said.
“But he will,” Nana replied.
She thought Gran might offer an objection to her returning upstairs, but she did not. Muttering something about “catching his death in this rain,” Gran reached for the rest of the wheat, prepared to make a new poultice.
Tucking the pencil in her hair, the tablet under one arm and the pitcher in the other, Nana went back to Captain Worthy’s chamber. She tapped softly on the door. There was no answer. She tapped again, no louder, then looked inside the room.
He was asleep. She thought about going downstairs, but remembered what he had said about going to the dry docks. She set down the pitcher quietly and sat again beside his bed.
She was struck by the way he slept—directly in the middle of the bed, with his hands folded across his stomach. She couldn’t help but think of a man in a coffin, and the notion sent a ripple down her spine. She considered the man, and understood. Flailing about in a hammock or sleeping cot would probably have meant a quick trip to the deck below.
I wonder, does he ever turn over? she asked herself, curious. No matter. He was sleeping peacefully, his face probably as relaxed as it ever got. Captain Worthy had a sharp and straight nose set above thin lips. His hair was dark brown, with wisps of gray in it by his temples, as well as a faint, curved scar, circling below his cheekbone and nearly touching his right nostril. Pirates on the Barbary Coast? she thought. Or a grappling hook swung by a desperate Frenchman?
He shouldn’t be so concerned about her own paucity of meals, she decided, considering that he was on the thin side himself. His hands, so peacefully folded, were deeply veined. Her eyes went back to his face, toasted by coastal Spanish sun to a pleasant mahogany that probably turned sallow during the winter. Nothing would change the weather lines around his eyes. She had lived enough of her life in Plymouth to know the mark of a deep water man.
He coughed, then tried to swallow, which marred his repose as he flinched from the pain in his throat, and uttered some small protest. Then he opened his eyes, looking directly overhead for a long moment, until he seemed to recall where he was.
He must have sensed her presence, because he addressed her, even as he continued to stare overhead.
“It’s like this, Miss Massie. When I wake up, I always look at the compass over my head first. Maybe you would induce more captains to visit the Mulberry if you hung compasses on the overhead deck beam.”
“I think you have been too long at sea, Captain,” she replied, laughing.
“Doubtless.”
“It is probably safe enough to turn on your side, sir,” she continued, feeling bold enough to tease him. “We may not be on the first tier of elegance here, but no bed at the Mulberry will pitch you onto the floor.”
“Old habits are nigh impossible to break,” he told her, then turned onto his side and faced her. “Before we begin, go to the clothespress, please, and take out the tar bag.”
That was what she had been smelling in the room. She did as he said.
“The log’s in there, but I’m looking for the ship roster. It’s rolled and tied with twine. Open it. Read the names, and mark a number in the margin where I say.”
She found the roster, removed the twine and unrolled it. Before she started to read, she poured him a drink of water, which he downed immediately, and then another.
He handed back the cup, and lay back with his hands behind his head, as though he felt he could relax in her presence. The gesture touched her, even as she was amused at the slow, careful way he moved his hands.
She knew he had business to attend to, and soon, but she couldn’t help asking, “Captain, I was wondering about that scar on your face.”
He smiled. “Looks like a grappling hook from pirates on the Spanish Main, doesn’t it?”
She sucked in her breath, her eyes wide.
“Sorry to disappoint you. I fell out of a tree when I was a little boy and came in contact with a diabolical branch at a vicarage in Eastbourne.”
She tried not to look disappointed, but he must have caught her expression. “The grappling-hook scar is under my left armpit,” he told her in mock seriousness. He winked. “Right beside the bullet hole.”
“You’re quizzing me,” she accused him.
“Never! Now where were we?”
I don’t know where you are, sir, but I must inhabit another realm, Nana thought, as she spread the roster on her lap. What an ordinary life I lead. She looked over at the captain, who, to her surprise, appeared almost to be memorizing her face.
“Captain, may I ask you a question?”
“Aye.”
“Are you ever afraid?” She regretted the question the moment she asked it. He’ll think I am an idiot, she thought, her face red.
“I am afraid all the time, Miss Massie,” he told her, after a long pause. “I fear for my ship, I fear for my men, I fear for myself.” He looked at the ceiling again. “I suppose it’s in about that order, too.”
“I…I should never have asked such a stupid question,” she stammered.
“It’s an honest one, and I gave you an honest answer,” he told her, then looked her directly in the eyes. “Ships like mine are the only thing standing between England and ruin. I know times are hard here, but they are infinitely worse on the blockade. And in Spain and Portugal? I doubt Oporto will hold out much longer against the French, damn Boney and Marshal Soult to hell. If Sir John Moore’s army survives to fight another day, I will be amaze
d. Yes, I am afraid, Miss Massie. Don’t cross me when I say I need to be at the dockyards at two bells in the forenoon watch, even if I have one foot in the grave. I do.”
Nana stared at him, shocked. He stared back, just as surprised, as though amazed at what just came out of his mouth. She watched him in silence, watched as the astonishment on his own face changed into irritation, and then mellowed into a rueful expression she couldn’t quite fathom. Maybe it was chagrin.
When he spoke, he sounded apologetic. “Miss Massie, I…I almost don’t know what to say. I just told you things no one knows except officials at Admiralty House.”
“Maybe you needed to tell someone,” she said, after a long pause of her own, remembering the great relief she had felt after she finally confessed to Gran the terrible future her own father had planned for her. “Sometimes it feels better to share bad news.” She lowered her voice. “Are things as bad as all that?”
“They are worse.” He put his hand over his eyes. “I have to go to the dock now, listen to the master shipwright tell me he needs at least two months for repairs and then bully him into doing it in three weeks. Then I must cajole the victuallers to move really fast to resupply my ship.”
“I wish I could help you.”
She knew there was nothing she could do, no strings she could pull, no advice she could give. If there was a more powerless person in all of Great Britain, she had no idea who it would be.
Perhaps the captain saw it differently, although she couldn’t think why. He looked at her again, that same, searching look. “You already have,” he said simply. “You are listening.”
“Anyone would,” she assured him.
“No, they would not. I have observed that when most people are afraid or bewildered, they just change the subject.” He took a deep breath. “People at the highest levels of our government do it.”
She had nothing to say to that. This man would never lie to me, she told herself. I suppose it doesn’t matter, because when he finally realizes life is more comfortable at Drake’s Inn, he will be gone and I will never see him again. I can at least be as honest.
