Blackwell's Homecoming (Blackwell's Adventures Book 3)

by V. E. Ulett

  “Were you very thirsty, my love?”

  “Parched.”

  “You shall have all you want now. Shall you take a little more?”

  Aloka groaned and twisted away from her, rubbing his hands over his head, which appeared to pain him much.

  “What has happened to my hair? Oh Emma, forgive me, I am no use to man or beast. No kind of fit man for you, no use to Captain Verson and the ship, and I have ruined your chances for a suitable match at home.”

  He had periods of lucidity when he would speak to her like this, full of anxiety, perfectly aware of his circumstances and surroundings.

  “Only be well again, my dearest, dearest love.”

  He flushed and began to take panting breaths. Emma leaned forward and bathed Aloka’s face and neck with a wet towel.

  “I don’t care for hairy women. Too great a chore to battle through all that hair to get to the tender parts.”

  Now it was Emma who flushed. She hoped he would not talk so when the carpenter and his mates came in to construct the second berth, she would have to leave the cabin if he did. Emma could not admit it even to herself, but she feared he would slip away while she wasn’t with him. What then would she do, with a great hole in her life and her heart?

  Aloka was her entire reason for being on that ship, for having left behind everything familiar in England, to journey to an unknown and savage land. Yet Captain Verson had called her sensible. If to be so meant fighting to keep Aloka with her, she would continue to nurse him round the clock. Had these been Mercedes’ feelings too once—if they were so much alike—love, devotion, self-interest, and a certain amount of desperation?

  Aloka’s body was lifted unnaturally up, suspended, suspended, and then crashed back down into the berth. He was alternately sweating and hot, or freezing with his teeth fairly clacking in his head. He heard a female voice. “He casts off his blankets, and then he is nearly blue with cold when I can finally crawl down to cover him.” It was Emma tending him! He wished she would come into his cot and cover him; cover him with her cool hands and her warm body. There was bitterness too, that she was seeing him in his present state. Bald, growing thinner, weak, and dependent. The violent motion of the ship continued unabated.

  He slipped away, and imagined Emma was Mercedes, caring for him when he’d been dreadfully sick as a boy aboard his father’s ship. Aloka was vaguely ashamed she should be trickling water into his mouth from a sponge, and massaging his feet. He tried to speak his gratitude, and apologies for causing her so much trouble. She always had a gentle caress for him, murmuring assurances he was to get better. Aloka felt this woman was holding him in the world, and would not let him set his feet on the rainbow.

  Thoughts of his ancestors, who passed over a rainbow to the dwelling place of the dead, swam in his mind along with symbols of waves and the sea, and an old man performing an even older dance. Aloka heard the pounding of drums, the rhythmic stamping of feet, and saw images of lit torches, and lithely moving bodies. He glimpsed his father, furiously paddling a native canoe, weariness and strain upon his face. He himself was crouched, cold and wet, in the bows.

  Ugly images began to flash before him like a phantasmagoria. Carvings of warriors holding severed heads, real warriors and actual heads with lolling distended tongues. Heavy war canoes rolling over live, shrieking bodies, a young boy swung by his ankles and bashed against the prow of a canoe. Suddenly a woman’s face filled his whole field of vision. A very wide and bloated face, the eyes almost closed from the puffiness of the surrounding flesh. Aloka knew at once this was his mother. He was afraid, for this woman was intimately connected in his mind with that violent, dark side of his heritage.

  Aloka woke with a start and a lingering feeling of dread and anxiety. He lay in his berth, listening to the sounds of the ship. The decks were being cleaned with holystones over his head, the Blonde was no longer in heavy seas. She moved with an easy surging motion, like a galloping horse. Pacific waters. Just as he was beginning to relax, drifting off to sleep, a woman’s moan and whimper from above caused him another tremendous start.

  He was lying in the lower of two fixed berths. A ladder of just a few rungs had been constructed at the foot, connecting the berths like a miniature companion way. Aloka sat up, planting bare feet on the wooden planks, and ran his hands over the white nightshirt he was wearing. The nightshirt was clean, but it was not a garment he should have chosen, much preferring to lie naked to sleep. Another little whimper recalled the reason he was dressed so, and, very carefully, Aloka stood up.

  He had a bad moment when it occurred to him Emma might have sickened with the fever. But as soon as he peered at her in the upper berth, that fear was dispelled. Her lovely face had a normal rosy hue. She slept profoundly, bracing herself in the cot by custom of long usage, and whimpering from time to time. Aloka was weak and unsteady, but instinct was strong in him, and he leaned in to kiss her.

  He caught sight of himself in a little square mirror over her berth as he did. Gone was the long hair any seaman, any warrior, might be proud of. Aloka’s pate was covered by a half-inch thick fuzz of dark hair. His face was thin, more yellow than brown, there were bruise-like patches beneath his eyes, and his lips were cracked. He was no fit object, altogether unsuitable for this treasure of a woman.

  In sleep she looked like an angel, or a very young child. Aloka backed away from her, bringing his hand up to rub his face. Someone had been shaving him, he would otherwise have a beard like Methuselah. He sat down again on his berth to rest, and discovered his sea chest had been brought into the coach and was just at hand. As quietly as he could he rose, and took out his shaving things and clothes.

  “Bear a hand there, Crosley, goddamn your eyes!” the bosun bawled out, quite near at hand.

  Aloka was pulling the nightshirt over his head, and naked he jerked round to see if Emma had wakened. She slept on, the poor soul, exhausted by the trouble and care he’d caused her.

  Nine

  Blackwell came back into his sleeping cabin aboard Albion just as the holystoning started up. The hands disliked their captain to remain on his quarterdeck when the decks were being scrubbed. Blackwell commanded the yacht like a Royal Navy vessel, and he’d never been one to balk the custom of the service. He stripped off his clothes and climbed under the bedclothes with Mercedes.

  Albion had come in to the port of Valparaiso the previous week, where she was anchored and awaiting the Blonde.

  “Any sign of her?”

  Mercedes was anxious for her children and the Blonde’s people, the other ship had not been in sight since the doldrums.

  “Not yet, no. Two frigates are coming in, the Lautaro and the O’Higgins. Part of Lord Cochrane’s fleet, or I should say the Chilean Navy.”

  Word had reached Albion that Lord Cochrane had been hired by the fledgling nation to command a naval force in its fight for independence from Spain. At home Admiral Gambier had been acquitted at his court martial, while one of his most vocal critics, Lord Cochrane, was in disgrace over a stock market scandal. For the moment his lordship was struck from the Navy list, had even had his military honors stripped and his banner kicked down the steps of Westminster Abbey. It was rumored the South Americans were still paying him a princely sum. The flamboyant Cochrane had already reconnoitered the port of Callao and taken two of the Don’s treasure ships.

  “I expect we shall see Blonde within the fortnight, you are not to worry,” Blackwell said. She would be concerned for her kin, not for Lord Cochrane and his exploits. “I trust she will not be too knocked about. What do you think of this tiny ship now?”

  Blackwell was proud of the little vessel Mercedes had once maligned for her size. Albion had weathered the Horn just as well as could be expected. He had repairs to complete that would not take upwards of two weeks.

  “She is a good, weatherly sea-boat,” Mercedes said, in a gentle, mocking tone. “And fast. Very fast, if she is well handled.”

  “I’ll handle you,
Miss.”

  He was propped on an elbow, leaning over her, preparing to kiss her thoroughly. She returned his kisses, but he felt her discomfort. She kept that one arm hugged to her chest.

  “Mercy, sweetheart, close your eyes. And put your arms over your head.”

  “Oh no! Then it would be you who needs to keep your eyes shut.”

  They stared at one another. Blackwell gently grasped her left wrist. “Are you going to obey me?”

  She moved her arms over her head, a protest still on her lips, until Blackwell grasped both her wrists in a firm grip. She surrendered, turning her face into their outstretched arms, and shut her eyes. Blackwell kissed her lids, and her lips, and along her jaw. He put one large hand over the scarred flesh of her chest, and Mercedes fetched a deep sigh.

  He kissed a line down her throat and collarbone, to the middle of her chest, and then took her nipple in his mouth. Blackwell was alternately gentle and aggressive, licking and sucking. She gasped, and that pleased him. At last he moved away, and lifting his hand he put a tender kiss on her scarred flesh, then looked up at her.

  Mercedes’ eyes were tightly shut, and from the corners tears leaked out. Blackwell was frightened, if he had distressed and offended her, made her cry, he didn’t know what he would do. Go away and shoot himself, probably. He let go her wrists, hastening to push himself off her.

  “Wait,” she said, opening her eyes. Her arms came about his shoulders, and she clutched him between her thighs. “Aren’t you going to finish what you started?”

  It was probably the sweetest phrase he’d ever heard. He told her she was his dearest life, his greatest love, and he dove into her flesh. She arched up to meet him, allowing her wounded chest to rub against his. Mercedes clung to him, making him feel like he had at twenty.

  “I won’t break, I promise you.”

  At fifty-seven Blackwell was a long way past the vigor of youth, but he had a great deal of will and determination. Her words, the heavenly feel of her, her love and acceptance, brought forth his best efforts. He fancied he did please her, by the strength of her contractions against his body, and the way she nearly bit his shoulder when stifling her cries.

  He held her a moment, and then started for the second time to shift his weight from her.

  “Must you leave me so soon? I never have liked it, and now there is no need...”

  He looked down at her a little dubious. “I shall collapse on you in a moment, you have worn me out so.” Yet he would do anything she wished. “Handsomely, now.”

  She flattened one leg against the cot, he rolled in that direction, and clasping her against him, he brought her uppermost. Where would he be if she had reacted differently, cried and cursed him? He hugged Mercedes to his chest, pushing inside her again, as though they’d just become lovers.

  “You are a very commanding woman of late. Have you noticed?”

  This earned him a smile.

  “Thank you, darling. For commanding me. And making me feel whole again, or at least that it does not matter to you that I am not.”

  Blackwell was too stunned by her perception to speak and he only held her, for a brief and precious time.

  Almost immediately after anchoring, the Blonde sent a boat across to Albion to request Doctor Sparrman come aboard at his earliest convenience to consult with Mr. McNeath. When Captain Blackwell asked Mr. Whittemore whether it would be inconvenient if he and Mrs. Blackwell were to attend, the midshipman answered, “Not in the least inconvenient, sir, I should think.”

  Captain Blackwell’s gig was lowered into the water a short while later, with Doctor Sparrman and his medical accoutrement, and great bundles of fresh provisions Mercedes insisted on giving to the Blonde’s gunroom. They were all anxious for who might require the doctor, but Captain Blackwell would never have questioned Mr. Whittemore. “I don’t believe he should have answered so casual if it had to do with your children,” he privately reassured Mercedes.

  They were welcomed about the Blonde by mostly smiling, though worn, thin, and pale faces. Captain Blackwell stopped with Captain Verson on the weather side of the quarterdeck, while Mercedes, after greeting the officers, moved off to the taffrail where Aloka and Emma stood together.

  “What is that red rash upon Mama’s face?” Emma said very low, as she approached.

  Aloka made a little ahem sound. “Father’s beard.”

  “Oh!”

  Emma said nothing more, though she looked disapproving. And then she could not contain herself, she gave a little skip and met Mercedes and fell into her arms.

  After kissing Aloka on both cheeks, Mercedes said, “You have been unwell, my dear?”

  Aloka was not in uniform, he had not been officially admitted back to duty, and his hair resembled that of a hedge-pig.

  “A fever, dear Ma’am. The doctor believes it was a contagion I must have picked up in that filthy cell. You are not to be concerned, however, for your daughter saved me.”

  This was said in a cheerful tone but Mercedes, gazing from Aloka to Emma, was not deceived. Tears filled her eyes.

  “I hope Doctor Sparrman’s being sent for did not make you uneasy, Mama. It is poor, dear old Kapihe.”

  “He has a stomach complaint,” Aloka said.

  “Yes, and because of that, and for the sake of the King’s people, and so Aloka might recuperate, we are thinking of taking lodgings ashore. What do you suppose Papa shall say to it?”

  An honest answer would have been, he should say they were the pair of them both demanding and commanding women. Mercedes only remarked that she would speak to Captain Blackwell.

  “A peculiar case, is it not colleague? A very peculiar, I should even say curious case.”

  The surgeon Mr. McNeath said this to Doctor Sparrman after a great many glasses of wine, while they sat apart from the rest of the company on the patio of the Blackwell’s shore residence. There had been a grand supper, with many of Blonde’s and Albion’s officers in attendance, all four Blackwells, of course, and Lord Cochrane with his new wife, and several of his officers.

  “Indeed, one hesitates to identify the complaint as typhus, with only the one sufferer.” Doctor Sparrman tapped his cigar so the long train of ash clinging to it fell to the dirt floor. “For which we may give our thanks to the Almighty.”

  Doctor Sparrman had confirmed Mr. McNeath’s diagnosis of Kapihe, much to the surgeon’s relief. The chief suffered a bilious complaint and needed to be tapped, it was not typhus.

  “Captain Blackwell told me Mr. Blackwell discarded his filthy clothing on the beach before the fortress of Santa Cruz,” Doctor Sparrman said, “and later washed in the waters of the bay. Perhaps, colleague, we must reconsider how the disease is transmitted. Were it by tainted airs, that young woman should have long since perished.” Doctor Sparrman made the faintest nod toward where Emma sat with Aloka, and Lord and Lady Cochrane.

  “And the patient himself recovers well.” In a very low voice Mr. McNeath added, “They have a reputation for brute resistance.”

  “Black savages.” Doctor Sparrman nodded, a note of relish in his accented English. The old doctor harbored a respect for warriors, his ancestors having been of the Viking caste. “Let us hope Mr. Kapihe is similarly constituted, that he may withstand his operation. The Polynesians believe the soul, the center of life, resides in the stomach rather than the heart. Imagine the poor man’s horror to have his soul tapped, as we mean to do.”

  “Thank you for your most generous offer,” Aloka said to Lord Cochrane, in another corner of the patio. “I shall communicate it to Captain and Mrs. Blackwell.”

  “Please do,” Lord Cochrane said.

  Aloka and his lordship were behaving as if they had not been on the point of landing one another facers at their last meeting. Everyone was being decidedly civil, though Aloka could tell by Emma’s stiff posture some of the company did not please her. He wondered how she’d taken Lord Cochrane’s invitation to visit his country estate, a gift from the Chilean gov
ernment. Aloka doubted less what her reaction to the offer of employment would be, that he’d received privately from the new admiral, for a command of his own in Chile’s Navy.

  “I much doubt my father, or any of us, shall move before Kapihe’s operation though, sir.”

  “Oh, certainly.” Lord Cochrane bowed.

  There was nothing of shame or consciousness in his face, for his intrusion after that other surgery in the Blackwell’s London residence. Aloka believed Lord Cochrane wouldn’t have bothered with any of them, had it not been for the Chilean Navy’s great need.

  Emma and Aloka were alone on the deserted patio. In the mild Valparaiso evening, with the smell of lemon blossoms in the air from a grove of trees bordering the cottage, Emma sat, discontented, alongside Aloka. She had found the two houses in the port village, one occupied by the Hawaiians and the other by her family, and done the negotiation of terms with the land holder. Her father had judged it too taxing an effort for Mercedes to undertake, and had given Emma to understand if she wished for a shore residence, she’d best arrange it herself. She did know the Spanish, after all.

  In spite of all this, and what she’d lived through on the Blonde with Aloka, Emma found she was still looked upon as just a girl. Katherine Cochrane, with her great bovine eyes, who was exactly Emma’s own age was accorded more respect than she: apparently because of that particular bond between man and wife. Emma very much doubted Katherine had been more intimate with her ginger whiskered admiral than she had been with Aloka. She reached out and took Aloka’s hand.

  The flock of guests had long since departed, and her parents had retired. Emma pretended she hadn’t seen Captain Blackwell lift Mercedes’ hand to his lips, and the melting look he gave her as he steered her into their bedchamber. She would have thought, by their age, and with the operation Mercedes had endured, all that would be over. But it seemed her father was as importunate as ever. It never occurred to Emma to set any blame or criticism at Mercedes’ door. There were certain things she could not see; any fault in her mother was one, nor the resemblance between father and son that struck everyone else so strongly.