Dawn on a Distant Shore

by Sara Donati

  “She ain’t in a flirting kind of mood,” observed Curiosity.

  “But she is hungry,” said the Hakim. He murmured to the baby in his own language and her brow creased, whether in fear or at the novelty of it, they could not tell. On Hannah’s lap, Daniel fidgeted and yanked at her plaits.

  Curiosity said, “Let’s see, then.” She dipped her finger in the warm gruel and touched Lily’s full lower lip with it. Lily took the finger after a moment, sucked once, and her face crumpled in dismay. She let out a squeak.

  “Try again,” said Hannah, shifting Daniel. He was watching the whole undertaking closely as he mouthed his fists.

  This time Lily took Curiosity’s finger with less hesitation, and her expression turned from dismay to cautious interest.

  “I have added a very little cooked honey and a bit of weak fennel water,” said Hakim Ibrahim. “To quiet them and help them digest.”

  “My grandmother would give them a little tea of parsnip root, and maybe blueberry.” Hannah was watching him out of the corner of her eye.

  Hakim Ibrahim smiled. “I hope you will tell me more of your grandmother’s medicines.”

  “Now you in for it,” muttered Curiosity, but she hid a smile against the crown of Lily’s head.

  With a small flattish spoon Curiosity began to feed Lily, and to Hannah’s surprise the baby was swallowing most of what she took in. As if to remind them all that he also had an empty stomach, Daniel thumped Hannah’s chest, his expression darkening rapidly. She blew air gently into his face and he stopped, looking both hopeful and confused, for this was something Elizabeth did to get his attention when he was out of sorts.

  “Try some of this, little brother,” Hannah said to him in Kahnyen’kehàka, dipping her finger in the gruel.

  He sucked hard enough to make her wince. Then his mouth popped open in invitation for more.

  “Look!” Hannah felt herself flush with relief and pleasure.

  “Hunger is the best sauce, so they say.” Curiosity sniffed a little. “Thank the Lord.”

  There was a scratching at the door.

  “That will be Mrs. MacKay,” said Hakim Ibrahim.

  “I don’t think we’ll need her anymore. Not as long as those goats don’t decide to go for a swim,” said Curiosity.

  Hannah did not particularly want to see Mrs. MacKay again and so she kept her attention on Daniel, who clasped her wrist with both hands as if to guide the spoon toward his mouth. But she could still hear the rise and fall of Hakim Ibrahim’s voice, and Mrs. MacKay’s response: soft, hesitant, and in a tone that wavered between defiance and breaking. Hannah looked at Curiosity, who only raised a brow in surprise.

  The Hakim came back into the room but went straight to his medicine cabinet, where he plucked a small bottle out of an intricate carved stand. Hannah watched him take a bit of some soft material from a jar, and then he spoke a word to Mrs. MacKay.

  She closed the door behind her but stood looking past them as if they did not exist. Her eyes were red rimmed and her color was very bad, even for a white woman. There were wet spots on her bodice, and for the first time it occurred to Hannah that Elizabeth was in much the same situation. Except Elizabeth would get her children back—Hannah knew in her heart that this was true—and this woman had no hope of such a reunion. She might have said something to Mrs. MacKay, a word of thanks or even apology, but the Scotswoman refused to meet her gaze.

  The Hakim said, “Tilt your head to the left, please.”

  With a turn of his wrist he touched the material to the lip of the small bottle and a new scent flooded the room, sharp but not unpleasant. Then Hakim Ibrahim touched the soaked cloth to the inner shell of Mrs. MacKay’s exposed right ear and held it there for a moment, murmuring something under his breath that Hannah could not quite make out. Finally he stepped back and bowed from the shoulders.

  Mrs. MacKay said, “I’ve a few shillings.” But she seemed relieved when the Hakim would not take her money, and slipped away without another glance in their direction.

  Hannah said, “What did you give her?”

  “There is no medicine for grief,” said Hakim Ibrahim, taking up his mortar and pestle again. “But sandalwood oil will quiet her womb.”

  Curiosity pushed out a sigh. “There’s women who never get over a stillbirth.”

  Hannah had heard this before. Listening to birthing stories was a chore a girl couldn’t escape: the spinning and the washing and the garden hoe would always be there, and so would the idea that someday she would find herself in childbed and have to struggle to come out of it alive. Once you had started down the road you could no more walk away from your fate than they could walk away from this ship on foot.

  Her own mother had failed at it. When Hannah closed her eyes she could see her still. In death one corner of her mouth had turned down a little as it often did when she was irritated. She left the world angry, but at whom? The women who failed to stop her bleeding? Maybe it was the waxen-faced child they had folded so lovingly into the cold cradle of her arms. Or maybe she had been angry with herself, and her failure. Hannah had often wondered at it.

  Daniel yanked hard at her plait and she roused herself out of her daydream to scoop more gruel into his mouth. She said, “I wish I had been kinder to her.”

  With a hushing sound Curiosity said, “There’s enough on your shoulders, child. You cain’t take on the woes of the world, too.”

  But the Hakim said nothing, and only looked at her with a thoughtful expression.

  By midday Hannah could hardly contain her need to be up on the quarterdeck, where she could scan the horizon for sails that might mean a quick rescue. But Curiosity would not go where she might see Moncrieff, and Hannah was not so desperate that she would leave her alone with the babies. Work might have distracted her, but there was little to do: every possible need was attended to. The cabin boy had even taken away a basket of dirty swaddling clothes to wash.

  “Don’ look so surprised,” said Curiosity. “I suppose a little poop ain’t the worst of what those boys have to put up with.” She had found the bundle that Runs-from-Bears brought from the voyageurs’ camp, and now she stood over the Hakim’s table where she had spread out the deerskin. Sewing would have been a distraction, if Hannah could only make herself concentrate.

  The cabin boy preoccupied her. His name was Charlie, and he seemed to her a very ordinary sort of boy, a little younger than Liam but older than she was. She knew nothing about him except that he was from Scotland, had been at sea for three years already, and that his hands—red knuckled and work hardened—were cleaner than her own. When he brought fresh water she asked him about this.

  “The Hakim says that the devil hides beneath the fingernails, miss.” Hannah could hear him trying to swallow his Scots and sound like the doctor. It made her curious about him, even though she knew that it would not be a good idea to be too friendly; he might be reporting everything to Moncrieff or the captain. And still she was inclined to like him, for his competence and quickness, and perhaps just because they had too few allies on the Isis to take him for granted.

  “I ain’t sure it’s the best idea for you to be up on deck anyway,” said Curiosity, angling borrowed scissors down the length of the deerskin, her brow creased in concentration. “What you need is sleep.”

  Hannah nodded, because she could not find the energy to disagree.

  In the drowsy confusion of a warm, dim place, Hannah woke disoriented and with an aching head. For a moment she lay listening to the counterpoint of the babies’ quiet breathing interwoven with women’s voices: Curiosity and Elizabeth together at the hearth, waiting for her to join them and take up her part of the work and the conversation.

  Then all around her the timber box that was the ship creaked and shifted, and she knew where she was—but the voices were there still. Hannah sat up with a little cry, rolled out of her hammock, and was at the door in two steps.

  But it wasn’t Elizabeth who looked around at h
er. Nor was it Mrs. MacKay, who might have come back in the end for the company of her own kind. Across from Curiosity sat Miss Giselle Somerville.

  She seemed to have sprouted up out of the earthy colors of the surgery. Her gown glowed in the pale green of new grass, touched here and there with a pattern of winding roses; in the sunlight her hair was the gold of old cornsilk. This close Hannah could see the softening line of her jaw and the web of soft lines at the corners of her eyes that gave away her age, but she held herself like a much younger woman. For a long moment Hannah stared at Giselle Somerville and she looked back, neither smiling nor frowning. As if it were the most normal thing in the world for her to be here, come to call to pass the long afternoon with old friends. Hannah felt herself flushing with surprise and something else that made her fingers twitch.

  “Come and say good day.” Curiosity’s voice had an unfamiliar tone: guarded, and grating faintly with the effort. Hannah might have turned back to the other cabin, to stay there in the warm dark where her little brother and sister slept. But Curiosity’s expression said that she wanted Hannah here, and Hannah could not disobey her; she would not shame her before this woman.

  Giselle Somerville said, “I suppose you have heard of me from your father. He and I were once good friends.” Her tone was not warm, but there was a hidden kind of eagerness in her eyes.

  She wants to win me over, thought Hannah. I am nothing more than another prize to her.

  Hannah swallowed. “I don’t think you could have ever been my father’s friend.”

  Curiosity blinked, but Miss Somerville smiled.

  “It was a long time ago. We were both very young.”

  It was a peace offering of a kind, but Hannah was not in the mood for peace. “You kept my uncle Otter in Montréal so that my grandfather had to come after him,” she said. “If it weren’t for you, none of this would have happened and we would be at home where we belong.” She flushed with the power of speaking the truth to this white woman, and saw from the corner of her eye how Curiosity’s back had straightened, whether in pride or alarm she could not tell.

  But Giselle Somerville only raised one thin eyebrow in a surprised arch.

  “I see little of your father in your face, but you are very much like him.”

  “She ain’t much of a one for games, that’s true,” said Curiosity. “Maybe you better just tell us what you got on your mind.”

  “Very well.” Giselle inspected an embroidered rose on her sleeve. When she raised her head she was all cool determination again. “I intend to slip away. If you like, you can join me.”

  In her surprise, Hannah looked to Curiosity, but the older woman’s attention was focused on Giselle Somerville.

  “Well, now,” she said. “If you know Nathaniel Bonner as well as you say you do, then you’ll know that he ain’t far behind us—and his father and wife with him. No need for us to run off on our own.”

  A smile slid across the even features and then was gone. “Nathaniel and his father—yes, I suppose they will try to follow. And his wife, of course. What is the name that Otter had for her? Bone-in-Her-Back, I believe. From what I saw of her, a very determined type if not very pretty.”

  Curiosity put a cool hand on Hannah’s wrist, as if to steady her, or quiet her. Hannah bit down hard and willed herself to stay calm.

  Giselle smiled. “But there is little chance of it, after all. They have no ship and no prospects of finding one for such a long journey.”

  Because she could not stop herself, Hannah said, “Moncrieff says they are on their way.”

  Giselle had a way of blinking that put Hannah in mind of the white owl that sat in the rafters of the barn at Lake in the Clouds, always watching for those small creatures who put hunger or curiosity above caution. “Moncrieff is devious, is he not? Any lie to meet his end. But surely you must realize that his only task is to deliver an heir to Carryck. The child will be less trouble, and the same end will be achieved—the title and the estate will be safe from the Campbells and the Crown. That is all any of them care about—they are Scots, after all, and cannot be trusted to be reasonable. If the Bonners are alive at all, it is certain that they are not on the Osiris.”

  Curiosity’s hand on Hannah’s arm tightened like a vise. She smiled, quite broadly. “Ain’t nobody said a word about the Osiris.”

  There was a slight tensing around Giselle’s mouth, and it made Hannah’s breath come easier to see this, the first sign that she could not stand up to Curiosity. Few women could, after all, but for a moment she had been worried that this one with her jewels and silks and a knife blade of a smile might be as dangerous as she wanted to seem.

  “It only makes sense that Moncrieff would have promised such a thing,” Giselle said, utterly calm now. “What else might he say to keep you in your place, and acquiescent? You are, after all, nothing to him but a way to keep the boy in good health until he can turn him over to the earl. And of course Moncrieff likes to think of himself as irresistible.”

  “He ain’t alone in that, now is he?” said Curiosity.

  Giselle rose suddenly, her bracelets tinkling. “I was offering you a way to save these children from being delivered to Carryck. I see my concern is not welcome. I will bid you good day.”

  Curiosity held out her hand, fingers curling in an easy invitation. “Now hold on. You ain’t afraid of a little straight talk, are you?”

  Giselle slitted her eyes, but she sat again. Her back was as straight as a rifle, her head cocked at an angle.

  They watched each other for a moment, and then Curiosity leaned forward as if she had a secret to tell. “You don’ talk much to womenfolk, do you? Don’ like dealing with your own kind if you can avoid it. Well, never mind, we won’ keep you long. Now, this is what I see. Your daddy marrying you off to the captain to get shut of you. You just as glad to get away from him, and so off you go to Scotland. Ain’t nothing unusual in any of it—women been trading one man for another as long as we been putting children in this world. But the captain don’ suit you—maybe he ain’t pretty enough, or maybe he too tame for you, or maybe you just don’ want the vexation. So you set to run off from him before he can tie you down, legal like. Seen that happen before, too, and not so long ago. Sometimes women got to take things in they own hands, after all. Now, I can see you ain’t slow-witted, so I expect you got a plan.”

  She paused, and because the younger woman did not correct her, she continued.

  “I imagine you got some men bribed to look the other way when the time come. A boat, or a horse, or some way to put some distance betwixt yourself and the captain. Got your valuables tied up in a sack, ready to go, and you’ll leave the rest behind, travel light and fast. Now, why would you want to drag a contentious old black woman and three little ones along when you on the run, and so much at stake? We cain’t travel fast, and if you’re interested in layin’ low, why, we’ll stick out like that old sore thumb folks always talking about. So I’m asking myself here, are you offering something, or are you looking for something?”

  “How very clever of you,” said Giselle Somerville in a chilly tone. “And what is your conclusion?”

  Curiosity shrugged. “Money come to mind first. There’s some gold around here someplace, and you’ll have heard tell about that. Gold might be useful to you, even if we ain’t.”

  Giselle smiled thinly. “As perceptive as you seem to be, you must have recognized already that money is of little concern to me.”

  Curiosity shrugged. “You ain’t never been hungry, neither. But that day could come, and you don’t seem the kind to jump without looking. And then agin maybe you don’ care so much about gold as you do about gettin’ your way when it comes to men. Showin’ them for the fools they can be. Ain’ that so?”

  There was a glimmer of something in Giselle’s eyes: satisfaction, or disdain. Curiosity nodded as though she had spoken out loud.

  “I know, truly I do. Now, maybe it’s just your daddy you want to get even with�
�but I’m wondering if there’s something else. Maybe you got an eye on Nathaniel, ready to make him pay for what went on all those years ago. Maybe Otter was a part of that plan, and maybe this a part of it, too. Revenge is right tasty cold, after all.

  “So you tell me, Miss Somerville, if I’m just a stupid old woman too scairt to think straight, or if you ain’t tolt us the real story yet.”

  Giselle Somerville’s gaze flickered toward Hannah and back again to Curiosity, even as she rose with a graceful swing of her skirt. “I have some things to consider before we continue our conversation,” she said. “I bid you good day.”

  When she had closed the door behind herself, Curiosity turned to Hannah to grasp her hard by both hands. “Was the Osiris the ship that Moncrieff told you about?”

  Hannah jerked in surprise. “Yes. I’m sure it was.”

  Curiosity smiled grimly. “And did Elizabeth take the gold with her when she went to see the governor?”

  “One of the sacks, yes. She took it from the carry basket at the last minute.”

  “And the other sack? When did you see that last?”

  Curiosity’s expression was almost more upsetting to Hannah than Giselle Somerville’s claims, but she tried to gather her thoughts.

  “My grandfather had it. Why?”

  Curiosity rose to pace the cabin, her arms crossed hard under her breasts and her chin tucked down in concentration. Then she stopped, and looked Hannah in the eye. “We ain’t got nothing more than a little silver, then. But listen to me, child, we got to let her think that we got the gold here with us. Do you hear me?”

  Hannah nodded, confused and distracted. “You don’t believe her, do you? You don’t think that Moncrieff—” She hesitated, because she could not say out loud what she feared might be true, that they might be alone not just on this wide sea, but that her father and grandfather and Elizabeth were nowhere to be found in the world at all.

  Curiosity shook her head hard. “No. I don’ believe her. That old earl wanted Hawkeye, and Moncrieff will deliver him if he can. But she’s after something else, and I ain’t sure what, yet. She gave away the game, you see, telling us that she’s going to bolt.”