The old Scottish cook raised his woeful face from his hands, wiped at his whiskery cheeks, and reluctantly met Captain Austen’s stare. “Canna help me sobbin’, sir. Ya see, I lost me stove, me old reliable Brodie stove. She be keepin’ comp’ny with a pod o’ queer sea monsters by now, no doubt.”
“Brighten yourself up and tell me what provisions we have amongst us.”
“Why, none, sir, none at all. No food, no water. Ya see – there weren’t no time, sir.”
Fly clenched his fists to fight the gnawing thirst and hunger that caused him more agony than his back. He didn’t want to have to think, let alone lead men. He would gladly lie back down in the cold water that slithered up and down in the cutter’s belly if only he could sleep and forget.
Morgan and a few of the others who were still alert looked up expectantly at Fly. They waited. At last Fly took a deep breath and stepped up onto the cutter’s bench, balancing himself on his weary legs.
“Men! We must work together. We must stay occupied. These boats … each one of them should be fitted with sailing gear.” He forced an injection of fervour into his strained voice. “If there is mast and canvas to be found – raise them! If oars – lower them! And for goodness sakes, find something with which to bail this infernal seawater! If we can pull together, our reward just may be a hot breakfast.” He peered at the approaching ships through the rain that now fell harder, and to himself added, “so long as, this time, Providence is on our side.”
11
Friday, June 18
9:00 p.m.
Sunset at Sea
WITH HIS RED SCARF tied around his bandaged head, a shirtless Magpie grunted as he lifted the oars from the calm waters and laid them to rest with a heavy thump on the gunwales. He then pulled his bare feet up onto the skiff’s middle bench and sat cross-legged to watch the sun fall from the western sky. Under normal circumstances, he loved to watch the burning orb as it gradually disappeared, leaving in its wake an afterglow of pearl and rosy pinks, but now he was relieved to see the last of it. This day had been harsh. The sun’s penetrating rays had been relentless and had burned his skin. There had been no water to drink, the contents of the wineskin given him by Biscuit long gone. The last two days, though stormy and frightening, had afforded drops of water from the low-hanging clouds. He had eagerly caught them on his tongue, and in his hands to give to Gus. But today there had been nothing.
The air already felt cooler. Soon it would be dark. Magpie didn’t like to think of it. There were such strange sounds heard at night. Throughout the past two, he had slept uneasily next to Gus, under a tent of canvas he’d fashioned from the boat’s stowed sail, fancying he heard shouting voices and the creaking timbers of ships passing by. Again and again he had bolted upright, his heart pounding with anticipation, hoping to see the Isabelle and his buddies hailing him with their swinging lanterns as they stood lined along the rail. It was never the Isabelle. It was never anything at all. Worst were the sounds – real or imagined – that he could not identify: cries and groans, murmurs and gurgles that caused his shaking body to break out into gooseflesh. Frightening, fanciful images had whirled about in his head like a waterspout. But as the sky had been without stars or light of any kind, the black-cloaked night had refused to share her eerie secrets.
“Is there anything left to eat?” Gus whispered from under his blanket.
“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Magpie said cheerfully, reaching for his duffle bag and rummaging about inside. “I’ll find us some biscuit.”
Yesterday they had been lucky. Gus had suddenly remembered the breakfast Dr. Braden had brought to him on the mizzenmast platform the morning of the Isabelle’s last day. Luckily he’d never gotten around to eating it and it was still there in his pocket. Seawater had annihilated the two biscuits, but the fat square of cheese was still edible.
Magpie felt Gus’s hopeful gaze on him as he pretended to search for food. Wrapped in a blanket under the canvas tent, Gus had both arms dressed in crude splints that Magpie had created using strips of cloth from his own linen shirt and the ribs of a crushed barrel he had located wedged under the skiff’s aft bench. Being certain that Gus also had a broken right leg, he had applied a longer splint to it, with the aid of a boarding pike found fastened to the innards of the boat’s larboard side.
“How many days has it been?” Gus asked, the light having left his eyes when Magpie’s search proved fruitless.
Old Bailey Beck had once told Magpie about stranded sailors who carved X’s on the tree trunks of their uninhabited islands to keep track of time. He well knew how many days it had been, but he’d scratched time markers anyway on one of the skiff’s planks just in case.
“Four.”
Gus tried lifting his head. “And can you see land?”
“Please don’t try gittin’ up, Mr. Walby. Ya’ll heal quicker if ya stay put.”
“Are there any boats to be seen, then?”
Magpie peered into the gathering gloom on the horizons. Yesterday he thought he’d seen thousands of sails in the whitecaps on the rough sea. Now all was calm and flat and the distances were frighteningly empty. His hesitation in replying was answer enough for Gus. When he spoke again there was a note of anxiety in his voice.
“Can we raise a sail, then, Magpie?”
“There’s no mast to be had, Mr. Walby. I kin only row, but I ain’t very strong.”
“Which way are the winds blowing?”
“From the north.”
“And the currents – which way do they flow?”
“Can’t rightly tell, Mr. Walby, on account of me bein’ a sail maker, not a sailin’ master. Mr. Harding, though, could tell us, if he were here.”
“But he’s not here!” Gus turned his head away. “I don’t know – I don’t know if I can hang on much longer.”
“Oh, but ya gotta, Mr. Walby. Ya just gotta hang on.”
Gus stared blankly at the canvas walls of his shelter; his voice was hollow. “Was it all just a dream then, Magpie? The two ships I saw through the glass? What – what of them? You never said.”
Magpie’s weary mind raced. What could he answer? He had lost sight of the Amethyst and her sister ship the night the Isabelle had been burned. He laughed nervously. “Oh, no, sir. They be on their way fer us still, I’m sure. Tell ya what, if ya just sleep now I’ll … why, I’ll try catchin’ us a fish fer supper.”
There was a disquieting cast in Gus’s watery eyes as he fixed them on Magpie, but he nodded and soon drifted off. The moment Magpie heard his even breathing, he seized the spyglass that lay against his bare left foot and stared through it, long and hard, trying to will a ship to come into view. There was no sight of land or sail, marine life or bird, anywhere, but he kept on staring through the glass anyway, until the sky’s colours had completely faded and a rolling fog appeared, creeping silently over the water like a phantom flotilla. Magpie was about to crawl into the open-ended tent alongside Gus when he heard a low thud at the skiff’s stern, as if something had struck it.
For a moment, he sat paralyzed, trying to think what it might be: a big fish, a bottle with a message inside, a sea creature intent on making him his supper, perhaps? Whatever it was wouldn’t go away. It continued to knock insistently against the stern the way a sailor used to knock on his sail room door on the Isabelle. Quietly and carefully, Magpie made his way aft so as not to disturb Gus’s slumber or upset the boat, and when he had kneeled down upon the backbench he peeked over the side.
What he found there caused his stomach to heave. He covered his mouth to stifle his shrieks and his one eye began streaming from the stench, but he could not look away. It was a dead sailor, come to meet his own kind. His face was burned beyond recognition and it appeared something in the sea had been gnawing it. His body was horribly bloated, his clothes taut and torn, and astoundingly, his hat was
still on his head, sitting low on the thick waves of his chestnut hair. Across the front of the black felt hat, embroidered on a faded blue ribbon, were the words “HMS Isabelle.”
Magpie had seen his ship burning from afar and guessed the outcome. This sailor had come, like a human dispatch, to confirm the worst. With a terrible fascination, Magpie stared at the mangled body until his fear subsided and his insides settled enough for him to fetch his flute from the pocket of his trousers. He put the instrument to his sunburned lips and began piping a tune that the Duke of Clarence had taught him to play – a piece called “Grazing Sheep” (or something like it), composed, he’d been told, by a man named Bach a long time ago. Its beautiful notes calmed him. When the tune was done, he reached down into the dark water, lifted the hat from the dead man’s head, and, despite the stench and dampness, placed it on his own. Then, putting his fist to the hat’s brim in a final salute, he gently nudged the unknown sailor away from the skiff, back into the waves.
Midnight
(First Watch, Eight Bells)
Aboard the USS Serendipity
“WITH RESPECT, DR. BRADEN, you look very tired, sir.”
Leander was sitting at the small table in the surgeon’s cockpit, updating medical notes in the journal that had belonged to the Serendipity’s former physician. He took off his spectacles and raised his sore eyes to find his assistant standing over him. The young man’s forehead, partially hidden by wisps of fine, black hair, was furrowed with lines of concern. Leander wondered if the lad had seen eighteen years.
“I am, thank you, Mr. Norlan. Are you off, then?”
“I wondered, sir, if you might like to accompany me above deck for some fresh air. I know it’s late, but the air down here is particularly stagnant, and I believe … I believe Captain Trevelyan said it was quite all right for you to go up after dark.”
Aye, being the nocturnal beast that I have become, thought Leander, standing up to stretch his muscles, which had not been exercised in days. His entire body hurt, the result of having assumed a permanently hunched-over position on this American ship where, around the clock, it seemed, he had performed amputations, extracted grapeshot, examined throats, set broken limbs, and mixed tonics for this foreign crew. The low beams of the orlop deck suited the man who stood less than five feet; it was hellish for one who stood over six.
Leander looked at Joe Norlan, whose features at times reminded him of someone he once knew, though he could not say whom. He spoke like an Englishman and there was often a certain expression in his hazel eyes, as if he were communicating some secret code he hoped Leander would soon crack. If a second opportunity were afforded, he would gladly exchange conversation with the young man. Not tonight, though. Tonight he longed to be alone.
“Perhaps another time. I need you well rested and alert in the morning.”
There was a hint of disappointment in Joe’s voice as he said, “Good night then, sir,” and left the cockpit.
Leander closed the medical journal and picked up a lantern to take a last peek at his patients as they slept on their flat wooden cots, and gave a few instructions to the loblolly boy whose duty it was to stay the night with them. Then, wearily he climbed the ladder to the lower deck where his light cast long shadows across the congested field of hammocks that stretched before him, each filled with the rounded form of a snoring sailor. He headed aft, towards the two rows of tiny cabins that lined both sides of the ship, and stopped before his own door, the very last one on the starboard side. Despite his fatigue, he knew sleep would not come, and suddenly he wished he’d taken Joe Norlan up on his invitation.
With a change of heart, Leander retraced his steps and trudged up a second ladder, which brought him to the gun deck. Gazing ahead into the gloom, he caught sight of a group of idlers, playing cards and swilling mugs of what was most likely grog at a lowered table between two large guns that had last seen action against the Isabelle. The scene reminded him of Bailey Beck and Morgan Evans and their penchant for late-night gaming. Surprised, the men paused in their play to watch him. Leander greeted them with a nod of his head. Uncertain whether they should speak or salute in reply, the men raised their mugs to him instead. As Leander slipped away into the shadows of the deck, he heard one of them say, “Never seen the like afore! Why, he stitched me up and took care o’ me like I were one o’ his kind!”
His companions laughed.
“Did ya figure he’d bleed ya dry and drink yer blood, then?”
They returned to their game, while Leander, hidden from their prying eyes, paused beside the steps that led above deck and leaned his auburn head against a post to gaze upon the warren of cabins belonging to Captain Trevelyan. Earlier today he had overheard one of his patients whisper, “The cap’n keeps ’er locked up next to him, and he don’t allow no one to talk to ’er.” She was somewhere before him, then, only a few feet away. Leander imagined he could hear the soft rise and fall of her breathing, and he lingered there until the ship’s bell announced midnight and the beginning of the Middle Watch. The card players snarled as they threw down their cards, and scraped their benches and boxes along the floorboards as they rose to head out to their stations. Nearby, a door opened, and Leander, though he knew he should push on, stood transfixed, imagining – hoping – it might be Emily who emerged. His hopes were dashed when the glow of his lantern revealed the last person he expected to see.
“Well, well! If it isn’t the good doctor!” said Octavius Lindsay, a slow grin suffusing his pimply face.
Leander’s glance flickered over Octavius’s new uniform. He wore the coat and carried the hat of an American naval lieutenant. Leander was tempted to reply, “I see you have very quickly been raised in the world, Mr. Lindsay,” but decided against it.
“Tell me, Doctor – how is life in the bowels of the Serendipity?”
“I have a bed, food, and a young assistant who learns quickly. I have no complaints.”
“That is good news indeed! Of course, if you did, Captain Trevelyan would hear none of it.” He lifted his chin and pushed past him to take the first step of the ladder up, and having gained it, sneered down upon him. “You’d like to know where she is, wouldn’t you?”
Leander shoved his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat and unflinchingly met the younger man’s cold stare, noting with satisfaction that the lieutenant was the first one to look away. With a dismissive snort, Octavius hurried up the ladder, closely followed by the gang of gaming sailors. Leander stepped aside to let them pass, and when he was alone again, gazed sadly upon the captain’s silent quarters. He began the journey back to his own cabin, opting for the stagnant air on the lower deck rather than subjecting himself to the repugnant air that now certainly wafted above.
12
Sunday, June 20
8:00 a.m.
(Morning Watch, Eight Bells)
EMILY FROZE. Was that someone knocking at her door? Surely whoever it was had mistaken her cabin for that of the captain; unless it was Trevelyan himself, come to root her out of her dark hole. She moved away from the open gunport, where she’d been standing since dawn, and turned to stare at her door, as if expecting it to be suddenly kicked in. In the five days of her captivity, no one – not even Trevelyan – had come for her, or spoken to her. Her meals of soggy biscuits, jellied soup, and cold coffee had all been shoved under the door, and her only visitors were the occasional cockroach and the waves that crashed against the ship’s hull. Were it not for the shouts and laughter and activity of the men, the striking of the bell, and the incoherent whisperings next door in the captain’s cabin, she would swear she was alone on this floating prison.
Much to her surprise, her door creaked open, but rather than the expected Trevelyan or threatening gang of musket-brandishing marines come to order her about, a teenaged boy sidled in. With one curious, darting glance he absorbed the contents of her room –
including herself – and finished with a lengthy stare at the silver-buckled leather shoes she now had on her feet. He was dressed in a grey shirt and loose-fitting trousers, and his tea-coloured hair fell about his shoulders and into his large, round eyes. His mouth hung open, most likely because there were too many protruding teeth inside, and the nose above it was long and bumpy. He was painfully thin and, from the scarlet stains on his cheeks, Emily guessed he was also painfully shy.
“Sorry to disturb ya, Miss. I’m – I’m just gonna bring in yer basin fer washin’ in.”
“Who are you?”
“The cap’n’s faithful servant, Miss.”
“And are you faithful?”
“I do me best, Miss.”
“Where is Mr. Lind?”
“Oh, Mr. Lind was ripped up pretty good by flyin’ glass that day a ways back when ya leapt from the cap’n’s windows durin’ the battlin’. We couldn’t do nothin’ for him, so we pitched him over the side.”
“While he was still alive?”
“Cap’n Trevelyan says it was the merciful thing to do.”
Emily, looking aghast, shook her head to banish that image. “Do you have a name?”
“If ya wants, Miss, it’s Charlie, though ya might hear the men call me Fish.”
There was no need for Emily to ponder the origins of his nickname. She made no remark, having no interest in introducing herself to this strange boy.
“The cap’n told me I weren’t to speak to ya none, Miss. I was just to bring in yer wash basin and a bit o’ soap.” He disappeared out the door, but soon returned, dragging a basin of green water that gobbled up her entire floor space. “The men will soon be attendin’ church service on deck, Miss, so no one’ll be peekin’ in at ya.”
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