“That’s what I’m wondering,” he said. “I couldna see a great deal in the darkness, but she was the right size, wi’ that wide Spanish beam.”
“Well, the pirate that was after me spoke—” I started, but the sound of voices in the corridor made me stop.
Fergus edged in, shy of interrupting, but obviously bursting with excitement. He held something shiny and jingling in one hand.
“Milord,” he said, “Maitland has found a dead pirate on the forward deck.”
Jamie’s red brows went up, and he looked from Fergus to me.
“Dead?”
“Very dead, milord,” said Fergus, with a small shudder. Maitland was peeking over his shoulder, anxious to claim his share of the glory. “Oh, yes, sir,” he assured Jamie earnestly. “Dead as a doornail; his poor head’s bashed in something shocking!”
All three men turned and stared at me. I gave them a modest little smile.
Jamie rubbed a hand over his face. His eyes were bloodshot, and a trickle of blood had dried in front of his ear.
“Sassenach,” he began, in measured tones.
“I tried to tell you,” I said virtuously. Between shock, brandy, acupuncture, and the dawning realization of survival, I was beginning to feel quite pleasantly light-headed. I scarcely noticed Mr. Willoughby’s final efforts.
“He was wearing this, milord.” Fergus stepped forward and laid the pirate’s necklace on the table in front of us. It had the silver buttons from a military uniform, polished kona nuts, several large shark’s teeth, pieces of polished abalone shell and chunks of mother of pearl, and a large number of jingling coins, all pierced for stringing on a leather thong.
“I thought you should see this at once, milord,” Fergus continued. He reached out a hand and lifted one of the shimmering coins. It was silver, untarnished, and through the gathering brandy haze, I could see on its face the twin heads of Alexander. A tetradrachm, of the fourth century B.C. Mint condition.
* * *
Thoroughly worn out by the events of the afternoon, I had fallen asleep at once, the pain in my arm dulled by brandy. Now it was full dark, and the brandy had worn off. My arm seemed to swell and throb with each beat of my heart, and any small movement sent tiny jabs of a sharper pain whipping through my arm, like warning flicks of a scorpion’s tail.
The moon was three-quarters full, a huge lopsided shape like a golden teardrop, hanging just above the horizon. The ship heeled slightly, and the moon slid slowly out of sight, the Man in the Moon leering rather unpleasantly as he went. I was hot, and possibly a trifle feverish.
There was a jug of water in the cupboard on the far side of the cabin. I felt weak and giddy as I swung my feet over the edge of the berth, and my arm registered a strong protest against being disturbed. I must have made some sound, for the darkness on the floor of the cabin stirred suddenly, and Jamie’s voice came drowsily from the region of my feet.
“Are ye hurting, Sassenach?”
“A little,” I said, not wanting to be dramatic about it. I set my lips and rose unsteadily to my feet, cradling my right elbow in my left hand.
“That’s good,” he said.
“That’s good?” I said, my voice rising indignantly.
There was a soft chuckle from the darkness, and he sat up, his head popping suddenly into sight as it rose above the shadows into the moonlight.
“Aye, it is,” he said. “When a wound begins to hurt ye, it means it’s healing. Ye didna feel it when it happened, did you?”
“No,” I admitted. I certainly felt it now. The air was a good deal cooler out on the open sea, and the salt wind coming through the window felt good on my face. I was damp and sticky with sweat, and the thin chemise clung to my breasts.
“I could see ye didn’t. That’s what frightened me. Ye never feel a fatal wound, Sassenach,” he said softly.
I laughed shortly, but cut it off as the movement jarred my arm.
“And how do you know that?” I asked, fumbling left-handed to pour water into a cup. “Not the sort of thing you’d learn firsthand, I mean.”
“Murtagh told me.”
The water seemed to purl soundlessly into the cup, the sound of its pouring lost in the hiss of the bow-wave outside. I set down the jug and lifted the cup, the surface of the water black in the moonlight. Jamie had never mentioned Murtagh to me, in the months of our reunion. I had asked Fergus, who told me that the wiry little Scot had died at Culloden, but he knew no more than the bare fact.
“At Culloden.” Jamie’s voice was barely loud enough to be heard above the creak of timber and the whirring of the wind that bore us along. “Did ye ken they burnt the bodies there? I wondered, listening to them do it—what it would be like inside the fire when it came my turn.” I could hear him swallow, above the creaking of the ship. “I found that out, this morning.”
The moonlight robbed his face of depth and color; he looked like a skull, with the broad, clean planes of cheek and jawbone white and his eyes black empty pits.
“I went to Culloden meaning to die,” he said, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. “Not the rest of them. I should have been happy to stop a musket ball at once, and yet I cut my way across the field and halfway back, while men on either side o’ me were blown to bloody bits.” He stood up, then, looking down at me.
“Why?” he said. “Why, Claire? Why am I alive, and they are not?”
“I don’t know,” I said softly. “For your sister, and your family, maybe? For me?”
“They had families,” he said. “Wives, and sweethearts; children to mourn them. And yet they are gone. And I am still here.”
“I don’t know, Jamie,” I said at last. I touched his cheek, already roughened by newly sprouting beard, irrepressible evidence of life. “You aren’t ever going to know.”
He sighed, his cheekbone pressed against my palm for a moment.
“Aye, I ken that well enough. But I canna help the asking, when I think of them—especially Murtagh.” He turned restlessly away, his eyes empty shadows, and I knew he walked Drumossie Moor again, with the ghosts.
“We should have gone sooner; the men had been standing for hours, starved and half-frozen. But they waited for His Highness to give the order to charge.”
And Charles Stuart, perched safely on a rock, well behind the line of battle, having seized personal command of his troops for the first time, had dithered and delayed. And the English cannon had had time to bear squarely on the lines of ragged Highlanders, and opened fire.
“It was a relief, I think,” Jamie said softly. “Every man on the field knew the cause was lost, and we were dead. And still we stood there, watching the English guns come up, and the cannon mouths open black before us. No one spoke. I couldna hear anything but the wind, and the English soldiers shouting, on the other side of the field.”
And then the guns had roared, and men had fallen, and those still standing, rallied by a late and ragged order, had seized their swords and charged the enemy, the sound of their Gaelic shrieking drowned by the guns, lost in the wind.
“The smoke was so thick, I couldna see more than a few feet before me. I kicked off my shoon and ran into it, shouting.” The bloodless line of his lips turned up slightly.
“I was happy,” he said, sounding a bit surprised. “Not scairt at all. I meant to die, after all; there was nothing to fear except that I might be wounded and not die at once. But I would die, and then it would be all over, and I would find ye again, and it would be all right.”
I moved closer to him, and his hand rose up from the shadows to take mine.
“Men fell to either side of me, and I could hear the grapeshot and the musket balls hum past my head like bumblebees. But I wasna touched.”
He had reached the British lines unscathed, one of very few Highlanders to have completed the charge across Culloden Moor. An English gun crew looked up, startled, at the tall Highlander who burst from the smoke like a demon, the blade of his broadsword gleaming with rain and t
hen dull with blood.
“There was a small part of my mind that asked why I should be killin’ them,” he said reflectively. “For surely I knew that we were lost; there was no gain to it. But there is a lust to killing—you’ll know that?” His fingers tightened on mine, questioning, and I squeezed back in affirmation.
“I couldna stop—or I would not.” His voice was quiet, without bitterness or recrimination. “It’s a verra old feeling, I think; the wish to take an enemy with ye to the grave. I could feel it there, a hot red thing in my chest and belly, and…I gave myself to it,” he ended simply.
There were four men tending the cannon, none armed with more than a pistol and knife, none expecting attack at such close quarters. They stood helpless against the berserk strength of his despair, and he killed them all.
“The ground shook under my feet,” he said, “and I was near deafened by the noise. I couldna think. And then it came to me that I was behind the English guns.” A soft chuckle came from below. “A verra poor place to try to be killed, no?”
So he had started back across the moor, to join the Highland dead.
“He was sitting against a tussock near the middle of the field—Murtagh. He’d been struck a dozen times at least, and there was a dreadful wound in his head—I knew he was dead.”
He hadn’t been, though; when Jamie had fallen to his knees beside his godfather and taken the small body in his arms, Murtagh’s eyes had opened. “He saw me. And he smiled.” And then the older man’s hand had touched his cheek briefly. “Dinna be afraid, a bhalaich,” Murtagh had said, using the endearment for a small, beloved boy. “It doesna hurt a bit to die.”
I stood quietly for a long time, holding Jamie’s hand. Then he sighed, and his other hand closed very, very gently about my wounded arm.
“Too many folk have died, Sassenach, because they knew me—or suffered for the knowing. I would give my own body to save ye a moment’s pain—and yet I could wish to close my hand just now, that I might hear ye cry out and know for sure that I havena killed you, too.”
I leaned forward, pressing a kiss on the skin of his chest. He slept naked in the heat.
“You haven’t killed me. You didn’t kill Murtagh. And we’ll find Ian. Take me back to bed, Jamie.”
Sometime later, as I drowsed on the edge of sleep, he spoke from the floor beside my bed.
“Ye know, I seldom wanted to go home to Laoghaire,” he said contemplatively. “And yet, at least when I did, I’d find her where I’d left her.”
I turned my head to the side, where his soft breathing came from the darkened floor. “Oh? And is that the kind of wife you want? The sort who stays put?”
He made a small sound between a chuckle and a cough, but didn’t answer, and after a few moments, the sound of his breathing changed to a soft, rhythmic snore.
55
ISHMAEL
I slept restlessly, and woke up late and feverish, with a throbbing headache just behind my eyes. I felt ill enough not to protest when Marsali insisted on bathing my forehead, but relaxed gratefully, eyes closed, enjoying the cool touch of the vinegar-soaked cloth on my pounding temples.
It was so soothing, in fact, that I drifted off to sleep again after she left. I was dreaming uneasily of dark mine shafts and the chalk of charred bones, when I was suddenly roused by a crash that brought me bolt upright and sent a shaft of pure white pain ripping through my head.
“What?” I exclaimed, clutching my head in both hands, as though this might prevent it falling off. “What is it?” The window had been covered to keep the light from disturbing me, and it took a moment for my stunned vision to adapt to the dimness.
On the opposite side of the cabin, a large figure was mimicking me, clutching its own head in apparent agony. Then it spoke, releasing a volley of very bad language, in a mixture of Chinese, French, and Gaelic.
“Damn!” it said, the exclamations tapering off into milder English. “Goddamn it to hell!” Jamie staggered to the window, still rubbing the head he had smashed on the edge of my cupboard. He shoved aside the covering and pushed the window open, bringing a welcome draft of fresh air in along with a dazzle of light.
“What in the name of bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, with considerable asperity. The light jabbed my tender eyeballs like needles, and the movement involved in clutching my head had done the stitches in my arm no good at all.
“I was looking for your medicine box,” he replied, wincing as he felt the crown of his head. “Damn, I’ve caved in my skull. Look at that!” He thrust two fingers, slightly smeared with blood, under my nose. I dropped the vinegar-soaked cloth over the fingers and collapsed back on my pillow.
“Why do you need the medicine box, and why didn’t you ask me in the first place, instead of bumping around like a bee in a bottle?” I said irritably.
“I didna want to wake ye from your sleep,” he said, sheepishly enough that I laughed, despite the various throbbings going on in my anatomy.
“That’s all right; I wasn’t enjoying it,” I assured him. “Why do you need the box? Is someone hurt?”
“Aye. I am,” he said, dabbing gingerly at the top of his head with the cloth and scowling at the result. “Ye dinna want to look at my head?”
The answer to this was “Not especially,” but I obligingly motioned to him to bend over, presenting the top of his head for inspection. There was a reasonably impressive lump under the thick hair, with a small cut from the edge of the shelf, but the damage seemed a bit short of concussion.
“It’s not fractured,” I assured him. “You have the thickest skull I’ve ever seen.” Moved by an instinct as old as motherhood, I leaned forward and kissed the bump gently. He lifted his head, eyes wide with surprise.
“That’s supposed to make it feel better,” I explained. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh. Well, then.” He bent down and gently kissed the bandage on my wounded arm.
“Better?” he inquired, straightening up.
“Lots.”
He laughed, and reaching for the decanter, poured out a tot of whisky, which he handed to me.
“I wanted that stuff ye use to wash out scrapes and such,” he explained, pouring another for himself.
“Hawthorn lotion. I haven’t got any ready-made, because it doesn’t keep,” I said, pushing myself upright. “If it’s urgent, though, I can brew some; it doesn’t take long.” The thought of getting up and walking to the galley was daunting, but perhaps I’d feel better once I was moving.
“Not urgent,” he assured me. “It’s only there’s a prisoner in the hold who’s a bit bashed about.”
I lowered my cup, blinking at him.
“A prisoner? Where did we get a prisoner?”
“From the pirate ship.” He frowned at his whisky. “Though I dinna think he’s a pirate.”
“What is he?”
He tossed off the whisky neatly, in one gulp, and shook his head.
“Damned if I know. From the scars on his back, likely a runaway slave, but in that case, I canna think why he did what he did.”
“What did he do?”
“Dived off the Bruja into the sea. MacGregor saw him go, and then after the Bruja made sail, he saw the man bobbing about in the waves and threw him a rope.”
“Well, that is funny; why should he do that?” I asked. I was becoming interested, and the throbbing in my head seemed to be lessening as I sipped my whisky.
Jamie ran his fingers through his hair, and stopped, wincing.
“I dinna ken, Sassenach,” he said, gingerly smoothing the hair on his crown flat. “It wouldna be likely for a crew like ours to try to board the pirate—any merchant would just fight them off; there’s no reason to try to take them. But if he didna mean to escape from us—perhaps he meant to escape from them, aye?”
The last golden drops of the whisky ran down my throat. It was Jared’s special blend, the next-to-last bottle, and thoroughly justified the name he h
ad given it—Ceò Gheasacach. “Magic Mist.” Feeling somewhat restored, I pushed myself upright.
“If he’s hurt, perhaps I should take a look at him,” I suggested, swinging my feet out of the berth.
Given Jamie’s behavior of the day before, I fully expected him to press me flat and call for Marsali to come and sit on my chest. Instead, he looked at me thoughtfully, and nodded.
“Aye, well. If ye’re sure ye can stand, Sassenach?”
I wasn’t all that sure, but gave it a try. The room tilted when I stood up, and black and yellow spots danced before my eyes, but I stayed upright, clinging to Jamie’s arm. After a moment, a small amount of blood reluctantly consented to reenter my head, and the spots went away, showing Jamie’s face looking anxiously down at me.
“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Carry on.”
The prisoner was below in what the crew called the orlop, a lower-deck space full of miscellaneous cargo. There was a small timbered area, walled off at the bow of the ship, that sometimes housed drunk or unruly seamen, and here he had been secured.
It was dark and airless down in the bowels of the ship, and I felt myself becoming dizzy again as I made my way slowly along the companionway behind Jamie and the glow of his lantern.
When he unlocked the door, at first I saw nothing at all in the makeshift brig. Then, as Jamie stooped to enter with his lantern, the shine of the man’s eyes betrayed his presence. “Black as the ace of spades” was the first thought that popped into my slightly addled mind, as the edges of face and form took shape against the darkness of the timbers.
No wonder Jamie had thought him a runaway slave. The man looked African, not island-born. Besides the deep red-black of his skin, his demeanor wasn’t that of a man raised as a slave. He was sitting on a cask, hands bound behind his back and feet tied together, but I saw his head rise and his shoulders straighten as Jamie ducked under the lintel of the tiny space. He was very thin, but very muscular, clad in nothing but a ragged pair of trousers. The lines of his body were clear; he was tensed for attack or defense, but not submission.
Jamie saw it, too, and motioned me to stay well back against the wall. He placed the lantern on a cask, and squatted down before the captive, at eye-level.
“Amiki,” he said, spreading out his empty hands, palm up. “Amiki. Bene-bene.” Friend. Is good. It was taki-taki, the all-purpose pidgin polyglot that the traders from Barbados to Trinidad spoke in the ports.
The man stared impassively at Jamie for a moment, eyes still as tide pools. Then one eyebrow flicked up and he extended his bound feet before him.
“Bene-bene, amiki?” he said, with an ironic intonation that couldn’t be missed, whatever the language. Is good, friend?
Jamie snorted briefly, amused, and rubbed a finger under his nose.
“It’s a point,” he said in English.
“Does he speak English, or French?” I moved a little closer. The captive’s eyes rested on me for a moment, then passed away, indifferent.
“If he does, he’ll no admit it. Picard and Fergus tried talking to him last night. He willna say a word, just stares at them. What he just said is the first he’s spoken since he came aboard. ÀHabla Español?” he said suddenly to the prisoner. There was no response. The man didn’t even look at Jamie; just went on staring impassively at the square of open doorway behind me.
“Er, sprechen sie Deutsche?” I said tentatively. He didn’t answer, which was just as well, as the question had exhausted my own supply of German. “Nicht Hollander, either, I don’t suppose.”
Jamie shot me a sardonic look. “I canna tell much about him, Sassenach, but I’m fairly sure he’s no a Dutchman.”
“They have slaves on Eleuthera, don’t they? That’s a Dutch island,” I said irritably. “Or St. Croix—that’s Danish, isn’t it?” Slowly as my mind was working this morning, it hadn’t escaped me that the captive was our only clue to the pirates’ whereabouts—and the only frail link to Ian. “Do you know enough taki-taki to ask him about Ian?”
Jamie shook his head, eyes intent on the prisoner. “No. Besides what I said to him already, I ken how to say ‘not good,’ ‘how much?’ ‘give it to me,’ and ‘drop that, ye bastard,’ none of which seems a great deal to the point at present.”
Stymied for the moment, we stared at the prisoner, who stared impassively back.
“To hell with it,” Jamie said suddenly. He drew the dirk from his belt, went behind the cask, and sawed through the thongs around the prisoner’s wrists.
He cut the ankle bindings as well, then sat back on his heels, the knife laid across his thigh.
“Friend,” he said firmly in taki-taki. “Is good?”
The prisoner didn’t say anything, but after a moment, he nodded slightly, his expression warily quizzical.
“There’s a chamber pot in the corner,” Jamie said in English, rising and sheathing his dirk. “Use it, and then my wife will tend your wounds.”
A very faint flicker of amusement crossed the man’s face. He nodded once more, this time in acceptance of defeat. He rose slowly from the cask and turned, stiff hands fumbling at his trousers. I looked askance at Jamie.
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