by Sara Donati
“So you come all the way from India to get yourself one of these machines.” Curiosity lifted Daniel to smell his bottom, and then wrinkled her nose.
“That is how my association with Captain Pickering began, fifteen years ago,” he said. “The best instruments were to be had in Europe, you see. I would be happy to show you the microscope itself, if you like. I have some specimens that might interest you.”
Taken by surprise, Hannah had a hard time controlling her expression. It was a generous offer, and one she thought the Hakim would not make to many. But Hannah thought too of the Osiris, perhaps within sight now, and of Giselle Somerville. They might be gone from this ship in just a few hours; she hoped that they would be, if it would mean she would never see Mr. MacKay again. But the microscope was a sore temptation.
Curiosity cleared her throat. “First the child needs some sun,” she said. “Then there’s time for your microscope machine.”
But a fine misting rain met them, and skies the color of old pewter. Hannah helped Hakim Ibrahim with the trees, which were watered from the rain barrels on deck. And all the time she kept an eye out for Mr. MacKay, and studied the horizon.
There was no sign of another ship like the Isis. After this first disappointment a truth showed itself to her as she stood at the rail: she would like the sea if she had come to it of her own accord. In the sharp salt air something deep inside her fluttered open as surely as pennants and flags fluttered overhead. Hannah drew in all the air that she could hold, and felt her skin rise with the pleasure of it.
It was very still; the winds had come to rest to suit the Isis drifting so aimlessly in the smoky green-gray sea. The sky was full of birds: black-backed gulls, skuas calling to each other in scratchy voices, ha! ha! ha!, others that the Hakim did not recognize, all of them coasting broad-winged on the scant wind. She envied the birds, who would see the topsails of the Osiris first, even before the lookout high in his perch above their heads. She thought of climbing the rigging herself. It would not be very hard: the cliffs on the north face of Hidden Wolf were higher, with less to hold on to.
But the captain was watching her from the quarterdeck, so Hannah turned her attention out over the sea to the north where a small ship sat hove-to with dories scattered around it in an arc.
“Cod fishermen,” the Hakim explained.
There were four dories, narrowly built and sharply pointed at either end, just big enough for two fishermen and their catch between them. Over the water came the faint sound of singing from the dory nearest the Isis, in a language Hannah could not name by its rhythms. She watched as the two men stood, one after the other, the dory tipping up to flash its red-painted underside. They began to haul in a line, one of them flipping cod onto the growing mound with a back-handed jerk while the other coiled the emptied line into a great round tub. Hannah thought of her home waters where full-grown men wrestled with sturgeon and sometimes lost, waters full of wily trout and catfish with fins that could slice a finger to the bone. These saltwater cod had no fight in them, lining up to take the hook like schoolchildren waiting patiently to have their palms caned.
A voice behind them, and Hannah jumped in alarm. But it was Captain Pickering this time, and his expression was one of real concern.
“You would be more comfortable in the roundhouse,” he said. “Out of the rain.” He stood in the posture of all the officers, with his hands clasped at his back and his misshapen head tilted to one side, trying not to look at her clothing, the fringed overdress and close-fitting leggings, the new moccasins, all darkening now in the rain. His own face was shadowed by his tricorn. The Hakim moved farther along the deck, checking to make sure that each tree was still securely tied. Hannah wished he would come back.
“I like the rain,” she said.
The captain was the strangest kind of O’seronni, one of those who pretended not to see what was plain to see, as if to look at her and know her for who she was might cause them both to disappear. Elizabeth had tried to explain it to her many times: it was how they kept distance from one another in a world that had become too crowded, this seeing but not seeing.
He cleared his throat, once and then again. She knew very well that he was looking for some way to apologize to her.
Hannah said, “How long do you think it will be before the Osiris catches us up?” And waited to see if he could lie to her when she looked him in the eye.
The captain drew in his huge lower lip and let it out again. “I would expect her anytime. Midday, at the latest.”
Unless something has gone wrong. He did not say it, but she saw it in his expression. Hannah studied his ruined face. Of course it was hard for him to look at the world, because the world did not like to look at him. She wondered if he would be surprised when Giselle Somerville left him. Some of her anger slipped away, although she did not want to let it go.
“Miss Somerville thinks Moncrieff will not allow my people to come on board the Isis.”
“What a strange thing to say.” He blinked his surprise. “I am the captain of this vessel, after all.”
He did have a spine, then. “So they are on the Osiris, and you will allow them on board?”
He shifted his weight back on his heels, and then rocked forward again. “That was the intention, yes. I believe that is still the plan.”
Not much of a spine, Hannah corrected herself. “I wonder what Miss Somerville meant.”
The captain flushed. “I am afraid you will have to ask her yourself, but you must be patient. She does not rise before eleven and it is not even eight of the clock now.”
Hannah might have pushed a little harder, but a ship had appeared in the distance. For a moment she watched it over the captain’s shoulder as it bobbed in and out of sight on the gently heaving back of the horizon. A fisherman, perhaps; perhaps something more. She knew she should look away, but she could not, and the captain turned to follow her line of sight.
“Mr. Smythe, sir!” he called in a booming voice toward the quarterdeck. “What have we there off the stern quarter? A schooner, as I see it.”
“Aye, Captain. Don’t recognize her, but she’s flying American colors, and coming on fast. Perhaps a packet out of Boston. She’s just hoisted the white flag, sir!”
A small shiver ran up Hannah’s back, traveled down her arms to blossom in her fingertips. She sent the captain a sidelong glance.
“Ah, then,” he said lightly. “Nothing to be concerned about.” And still there was a worry line etched faintly between his brows; Hannah saw it, and she saw more: behind the captain’s back Giselle Somerville came up on deck in a blaze of green silk with a parasol tilted at a pretty angle over her dark blond head.
The drizzle picked up, enough to send Hannah back to the surgeon’s cabin to fetch a shawl and to tell Curiosity the little she knew: a ship was approaching, but it was not the Osiris. Whether or not it was the ship Giselle was waiting for was another matter.
“Maybe I should come up on deck,” Curiosity said.
Hannah shook her head. “There’s a cold rain.”
Curiosity flicked her fingers. “I ain’t lived through forty winters in the great north woods for nothing. A little wet won’ hurt me.” And she shooed Hannah away.
In the few minutes that Hannah had been away the sky had lowered still further and now a steady rain washed over the yellow planks of the deck to soak her new moccasins. Other things had changed, too: Mr. MacKay and Moncrieff were on the bridge with the captain. Hannah’s belly twisted at the sight of them, and for the first time she truly understood what she had heard her grandmother Falling-Day say many times, that true anger lives not in the mind or the heart, but in the gut. She wondered if Runs-from-Bears and Robbie would be with her father and grandfather. Hannah could imagine them around her, a circle of trees, a magic ring, a hoop of fire, and MacKay would have to pass through them.
He and the captain stood side by side, both with long glasses trained on the approaching schooner, just a few miles away
now.
Hannah felt disdain, that they should have eyes so weak. She was proud of her own eyesight, as sharp as her father’s or grandfather’s. Even with the rain in her face she could see a lot about this schooner that had all their attention: it had triangular sails rather than square ones like the Isis, which turned out to be more than a matter of fashion.
Standing at the rail with her, Hakim Ibrahim explained it: men had to be sent up into the rigging to set or trim square sails, but those on the other schooner could be managed from the deck, and with fewer men. It had less of everything, it seemed to Hannah. Fewer sails, guns, decks, and none of the intricate paintwork and gilded decorations that sparkled on every surface of the Isis. It did not carry a figurehead before it, and the name on the hull was too faded for even Hannah’s eyes to make out. The most obvious thing about the schooner was that she moved fast under full sail even in such quiet conditions. The Jackdaw came at them like a bullet at a target. Hannah shifted a little with the thought.
At the other end of the Isis a warm yellow lantern light radiated out of the round-house, the little room that stuck up from the quarterdeck like a silly hat. Through the window in the door Giselle’s green cloak flashed peacock-bright. She stood watching. Maybe this schooner was the ship she was waiting for, after all.
Hannah pulled the shawl tighter over her head and around her shoulders, but it could not keep out the damp cold and she shivered.
“Perhaps you should go below,” said Hakim Ibrahim.
But the hatch clattered, and Curiosity appeared, blinking in the rain. From the depths of her great cloak of boiled wool four round eyes peeked out, sea green and blue. Daniel let out a shout at the sight of her, and wiggled a hand free of his swaddling to flap in his excitement. He was glad to be on deck, too, while Lily scowled out at the world.
Curiosity did not look very happy, either. Her face was a knot of concentration as she stared out at the schooner. “What ship is it? Can you make out her name?”
“It’s nothing, just a packet,” Hannah said, knowing this was not the whole truth but wary of saying too much in front of the Hakim. “You might as well go back where it’s dry.”
A muffled boom! stepped in on her last word. And before she could say another, a stuttering of guns: boom boom boom.
“Nothing, all right,” Curiosity said dryly. “A whole lot of it, too.”
All around them the sleepy Isis came to life like an anthill carelessly kicked. But the sailors were not running to the gunports, as Hannah thought they would.
“Signal shots,” said the Hakim. “She has some message for us.”
“By God!” thundered Pickering suddenly. “That’s Mac Stoker. The impudent puppy. I’ll show him to come running at me!”
But Mr. Smythe’s voice rose, cutting off his captain. “Sir! The Jackdaw signals that she brings news from the Osiris—and an injured survivor.”
Hannah felt Curiosity jerk as that single word—survivor—echoed down the length of the ship. In her own belly a fist closed hard, and forced its way into her throat. She looked for Moncrieff, but he had turned his back to them.
“How shall I respond, sir?”
“Tell her to come alongside,” said the captain. And then, raising his voice: “Mr. MacKay! Fenders, and be quick about it!”
Just then Giselle came out of the round-house, her hood up over her face so that Hannah could not see her expression. With one gloved hand she pushed her hood back and she turned, the line of her neck very long and white, to look at them. Her color was high, as if she had a fever.
Giselle met Hannah’s gaze and inclined her head slightly as if to say, You see how easily men are made to dance. Hannah might have approached her, but the crew had erupted into a commotion of movement. Some of the men were heaving large bags of sand over the side, where they came to rest with a series of heavy thumps.
Curiosity frowned. “The fool won’t run clean into us, will he?”
The Hakim narrowed his eyes at the schooner. “Not many would try it, and fewer would manage it. Let us hope this Mr. Stoker is the sailor he thinks he is. Hold fast.”
Hannah’s heart was galloping faster than she could think. She sidled closer to Curiosity as they watched the schooner come on. A tall man stood on the deck, straddle legged with his hands on his hips.
“Stoker!” roared the captain, leaning over the rail. “What is the meaning of this!”
The tall man touched his cap. “News of the Osiris and a wounded lad that belongs to you!”
“By God, man, that’s why you want to heave-to alongside? This is an outrage!”
As if he had not heard the captain, Stoker turned and gave a quick series of orders. There was a great deal of shouting from the Isis—Mr. Smythe was very red in the face, and Mr. MacKay had leaned so far over the rail that Hannah thought he might fall—but the other ship simply came on, her crew stepping up to the rail with grappling hooks like long crooked fingers.
When the Jackdaw was so close that Hannah began to really fear a collision, all the sails dropped at once as if somewhere a thread had been cut. The schooner changed direction slightly and then bumped up smartly against them once, and then again. Hakim Ibrahim steadied Curiosity as the Isis rocked hard.
Stoker was running toward them with something slung over his shoulder—a boy, struggling a little. From this angle they could see his face, rough boned and blond. A dirty bandage wrapped around his head and trailed down Stoker’s back.
Hakim Ibrahim’s face went slack with surprise and he drew in a sharp breath.
“Now what’s this?” Curiosity asked sharply. “Do you know that boy?”
“He is called Mungo,” said the Hakim. “Charlie’s brother.”
Hannah started. “Our Charlie? What would Charlie’s brother be doing on that ship?”
The Hakim wiped the rain from his eyes. “He is cabin boy to the captain of the Osiris,” he said. “I fear something has gone far wrong.”
Elizabeth crouched in the shadows below the open hatch and wondered to herself if a person could feel themselves go mad. If there would be any warning, some soft sound from the heart, a sigh as reason folded in on itself and went away, never to come back.
Perhaps she made this sound she imagined out loud, because Nathaniel squeezed her hand hard enough to grind the bones of her fingers; she could feel how every nerve in his body hummed. She forced herself to open her eyes.
“Soon,” he whispered. He was hunched forward, balanced on the balls of his feet. His breath touched her face and his gun was not five inches from her face; it seemed to be staring at her with its single eye.
Just behind her, Elizabeth could sense Robbie just as calm and still, crouched down with muskets crossed casually on his chest. He had spent all morning cleaning and checking them, again and again. When she turned to him she saw that his face was raised to the misting rain that came through the hatch. In that gentle light Robbie suddenly seemed his age, and more. There were deep circles under his eyes and a slackness to the flesh of his jaw, and it hurt her to see this evidence of Robbie’s fallibility and weariness.
Overhead men moved in the dance that would bring the ship to a standstill. Mac Stoker’s voice roared like a cannon and she shuddered with the sound.
“News of the Osiris and a wounded lad that belongs to you!”
From far above their heads came men’s voices in reply. Nathaniel blinked at her. Yes. This was right, this was good. If only Stoker could strike the right tone with the captain and put him at ease. Pickering might be weak and under Moncrieff’s control, but neither was he a fool, and he would remember Stoker from the dock at Sorel.
Voices back and forth; she strained to make them out but could not; the sea and the wind whipped them away too quickly. Only Stoker had a voice big enough to be heard distinctly.
Sails snapped and fluttered and came to rest. They thumped up against the Isis once, and again, and Elizabeth steadied herself by stemming her hand against the wall. The shoutin
g above them was too confused to make out.
“The lad is in poor shape! Where is your surgeon?”
The boy. His name was Mungo; he had had a blow to the head and he was confused, still. Elizabeth had spent the morning with him and he didn’t seem to understand what had happened to him or his ship. No matter how many times he was told he could not remember that the Osiris had gone down. It was hard to credit, although Elizabeth had seen it happen herself. Mac Stoker had called that last and miscalculated volley of cannonfire a lucky shot and meant just the opposite: the French were better marksmen than they meant to be, and had destroyed what they meant to steal. The whole event had put Granny in a foul mood; she did not like it when her predictions went wrong and she had retired to her cabin like a spider to a dusty web. She was there now, chewing on her pipe stem and scowling into the shadows over the waste of the Osiris.
But the Isis was untouched. Nathaniel had roused Elizabeth at first light and handed her the long glass, and there she was: unharmed and whole and idling in fishing waters as if it were the safest place in the world and not a busy shipping lane, home to mercenaries and pirates and the displaced French Navy. The sight of her had filled Elizabeth with a terrible joy and a new flush of anger. That Moncrieff should take such chances with the lives of her children—it was another sin to lay at his doorstep.
From the corner of her eye Elizabeth saw Nathaniel’s hand curled tight around the musket, the line of tension running up his arm to his shoulder so that his whole frame hummed with it. She thought that if she touched him he might shatter. She knew that she was about to.
A long, unhappy cry from above them and Elizabeth clutched her arms to her throbbing breasts. Nathaniel grabbed her with his free arm. “A gull,” he whispered against her ear. “Just a gull.”
As if she would not know that sound anywhere on earth, or in hell itself. Her children were on that deck, and crying for her.
Mac Stoker’s dark head appeared over the rail as sleekly wet as a newborn’s. Hannah watched this strange, upward birthing and held her breath. They all did: the sailors, Moncrieff, the captain, even Miss Somerville, who stood completely still, one hand held to her throat as if to keep herself from speaking. Giselle’s expression might have been carved from stone, but the man who came up the rope net had the kind of face that told stories. His black eyes chased the length of the ship, skimmed over Hannah and Curiosity, and skidded back again to come to rest on Mr. Smythe, who stood next to the captain with a musket aimed and cocked.
