by Eli Brown
“Then you’re familiar with the immodesty of grief.” She spoke so slowly and softly that I was obliged to kneel at the side of the bed with my ear close to her mouth. “Tell me, Wedge, is Leighton … How was he left?”
“He is here, Mabbot. We’ve put his body in a hogshead of Madeira to preserve it until you should wake. Mr. Apples has posted a guard.”
She seemed relieved, and I thought she’d fallen asleep again, but she said, “I’ll take him to America, find a cottage there, like the one in the Canaries where I nursed him. They’re not hunting me in the Americas; they too hate the Pendleton Company … maybe I’ll stay there. My sails are slack.”
I let her rest and rushed to the galley to prepare some broth. To heal, one needs a soup of real marrow bones. I used what we had—salted babirusa and dried fish—and cursed as I cooked. I added molasses for her blood, wishing I had even the lamb knees Ramsey used to throw to his hounds.
When I returned to her cabin, though, Mabbot had lapsed into a coma and would not wake. I pushed the liquid into her mouth, mopped it where it dribbled out, and hoped some of it made its way to her belly.
Friday, Later
She has been in and out of consciousness, and to my rising alarm, the infection and fever have grown worse. The surgeon’s visits are impotent and insulting. She has lost so much already, I will not let him bleed her, and he mumbles that nothing more can be done. Today as he leaned his drunken frame over her, I couldn’t hide my outrage.
“Have you considered amputating her head, good Doctor?”
“I can hear you, Wedge,” Mabbot said softly.
“The fever must break,” the doctor said. “There is nothing for it.”
Bai prepares the bitter medicine and comes to assist with her toilets, but otherwise he sits upon the deck looking out at the horizon day and night.
“Lonely as moonlight on a spoon, that one,” Mr. Apples remarked.
While I was busy nursing Mabbot, Bai had set Feng’s body upon the sea in a bier of lashed planks and watched the spot on the horizon where it had disappeared as if he could still see it.
Tonight, as the sun set, I mounted the deck to offer my condolences to Bai, but the rigging stopped me. Even to my untrained eyes, it was clear that the ship was severely disordered. The yardarms were topped at opposite angles, and the topgallant sails were set on the mizzen while the sheets sagged loose and lazy; a ship in this state could have caught the winds only in a strange dream. It looked as if a great hand had reached down and tousled the ship. I asked Mr. Apples, “Is this the discipline you keep? Captain Mabbot indisposed for a few days and we’ve come to this?”
“We’ve scandalized the ship out of respect for Feng,” Mr. Apples said. “Don’t fret, in an few hours we’ll clean her back up. I never took you for a bosun.”
I found Bai at his vigil and sat beside him. I had misunderstood and maligned him. There was no denying it—the man had spared no effort in saving my life. I made an attempt to reach him in his grief. I said, “I’ve had this pain. To tell you it will go away would be a lie. It will never go away. But, if you live long enough, it will cease to torture and will instead flavor you. As we rely on the bitterness of strong tea to wake us, this too will become something you can use.”
For his stoniness he may not have heard me at all.
Saturday, November 13
Mabbot’s wound has suppurated. I watched, worried, as the surgeon lanced it, and, when he left, I dressed it with the grey tree moss the twins had used on my injuries.
Later in the afternoon Mr. Apples came to Mabbot’s cabin and stood looking worried over her for many minutes, so I said, “Tell them that she is healing.”
He nodded gratefully.
“Tell them that I am cooking for her, that in a few days she will be her terrible self again.”
23
BROKEN BREAD
In which a sacrifice is accepted
Monday, November 15
I feed the rabbit oats and dried alfalfa. I feed Mabbot broth and, when she can chew, rice gruel and crushed garlic to fight the infection. I have pleaded with Mr. Apples to let us go to land to get some fresh meat, but we have set out for safer regions and are days from any port.
These are the details of my hands and eyes. I haven’t yet tried to write of the strange doings of my heart, for I am shocked by them and perplexed. Mabbot’s infirmity has filled me with horror. I long to see her fortified, lifted, and healed until she can mock me with that ferocious tongue—until she can rage into the wind. I putter about her, washing sheets, wetting her brow, petting her head when she is restless, and humming the tune Father Sonora sang while he worked, the only comforting song I know. But for hours at a time there is nothing to be done, and so I allow myself to look, just to look at her as I have never looked at another human being—her cheekbones and full lips, cracked now by thirst, the eyebrows that were thunder’s cousins now loose and elegant arches. The hand I hold, with its calluses and muscles and freckles, is unlike any other.
I long for her vigor to return, and yet I cherish these moments of quiet with her. Even Kerfuffle gnawing at my peg is tolerable.
In short, I am disastrously in love.
Tuesday, November 16
Some men have set up an altar and burn sandalwood outside her door. There are always a few lingering there, waiting for news. I try to give them encouraging words.
Of course, I worry what heaven and my lost Elizabeth see when they look down, but I have given up trying to accommodate them. I feel quite unable to make good with the celestial host when there is such imperative in front of me. God, in His infinite knowledge, has given me precious little and has allowed much calamity.
As for Elizabeth, if she knows anything, she knows that she lives in the purest parts of my heart. But she must also see that I am no longer the man she wed, that I have lived lifetimes since then, and that, if I am not yet to be called into the clouds, I must contend with the stains of this world, the blood and the sweat and the love.
Mabbot, for her part, seems grateful to find me near when she wakes, and once, fatigued by the effort of eating as I propped her up, she dropped her head upon my shoulder and rested her hot brow against my neck. We sat there pressed against each other for some time.
I do not know if, in her delirium, Mabbot has understood about Feng’s loss, but she has not asked for her, and so I must assume she has.
I’ve taken to reading to her, and though she sleeps through most of it, it calms both of us.
Wednesday, November 17
In her sleep she calls out to Leighton. Today, from her pillow, she told me of his birth. Though I tried to convince her to conserve her energy, I also hoped that speaking the story might serve as a purgative, for it has become clear to me that her fever is fueled as much by grief as by infection.
“I needed a safe place,” she said. “I was young and getting so heavy. The crew had disbanded, Ramsey hanged so many of them. I took my silver and bought a small house in the Canaries. Chickens in the backyard, a creek that ran straight to the sea. I had Leighton there, by myself. One minute I was screaming alone, and the next moment there were two of us—he filled the world. A woman came to clean and cook a few times a week, but I didn’t let her touch him. Such a bright light in his eyes, from the very first.”
Here I forced her to eat some rice gruel with salted pork and sauerkraut, coarse fare but the most nutritious thing I could give her. It hurt her to chew and so I mashed it well.
“This woman heard about the price on my head in some tavern, and she turned me in. She was remorseful enough to warn me before the men arrived. Well, you may imagine, one cannot run with an infant. I left him with the nuns in Ireland. Don’t hate me, Wedge, I had no choice. If they caught us, we would have rotted, both of us, in a cell. I didn’t know Ramsey would find him. I came for him as soon as he was old enough to sail, my ten-year-old prince.”
“I know, Hannah,” I said, trying to calm her. “You worked so h
ard to keep him from becoming like Ramsey. I understand why you had to find him again.”
She said nothing, and for a moment I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she said, “Let him be as cruel as his father, I don’t care, only let him live! I hunted him because I feared he was going to get himself killed. I may be a terrible mother, but I am a mother yet. I bungled it all. My Leighton! Whose shot killed him, Wedge? Did you see?”
I hadn’t. Mabbot’s tears were as fierce as her anger, each sob like a dagger in the gut. It was too much for me to bear and I pressed my hand to her cheek. “He drank from my body,” she said, and finally slept. I went to fetch Bai for more medicine. The bottle of tincture is nearly empty.
Thursday, November 18
Mabbot’s fever has worsened. I wrap her in blankets and still she shakes and cries out for warmth. She has been delirious all night. It will not relent and she twists, fighting phantom battles, clawing at her own skin until I am forced to hold her wrists.
The swelling about her scar has abated, but the fever is deep within her, and though I spooned the last of the medicine into her, I doubt she will survive. This cannot go on.
To make things worse, there is a storm bearing down upon us and no hope of outrunning it.
Friday, November 19
The ship rolled and lurched as if swung on a pendulum. Mabbot’s bed is nailed to the floor, and I had taken a prayerful position clutching one of its posts as the stuffed chair and the dining table slipped from their notches and became lambs hopping about the cabin. I reached to keep Mabbot from slipping out of the bed and felt, with alarm, that her breathing was very light.
I had no idea what to do. I shook her, but she did not rouse.
“Mabbot,” I said, and again louder, “Mabbot!” But she was limp as a rag.
I put my lips to her ear and shouted, “Hannah!”
“Mmm?”
“Where are you off to? You mustn’t leave us without a captain. Can you hear me? Hannah, I would not have you die.”
“Wedge,” she groaned, “you daisy.”
“Only hold on. Who will give Pendleton hell?”
“I’ve cheated death a dozen times. Now he is come with an army.”
“Pendleton will be victorious, vindicated—”
“You’re trying to inflame me. Let me sleep, Wedge, I’m so cold.”
Her teeth clattered like horses’ hooves. I used rugs and ripped the tiger pelts from the door to lay over her, yet she shook as if buried in snow.
Then I got into the bed with her.
I took off my shirt to offer my warm skin and held her there trembling against my chest as our vessel spun in the darkness.
I must have slept too, for when the waves had calmed, she woke me with a soft laugh. Her hair was wet around her ears, but her face was clean and open. She was through the fever.
“Hello, Mr. Wedgwood.” She laughed again, her arm encircling my waist.
“Forgive the presumption,” I mumbled. “It was to keep you warm.”
“Oh yes, my chills,” she mocked me.
I rushed to rise from the bed, but she held my arm and said, “But I’m still a little cold.”
“I didn’t think you’d make it. Apparently, bullets can’t kill you,” I said.
“God favors the beautiful,” she answered, and then slept.
Mabbot’s jibes filled me with hope. She needed only this little help, this one spoonful of soup at a time. I stayed and held her, the soft tufts of her shorn hair against my chin. She slept and I lay awake, in wonder and, for the first time in years, happy. I was deep in unknown waters, but I was home. Mabbot had fought her way into me, and she was stronger than I. Now that she was in, there was nothing for me to do but love her.
When she woke again, I went to fetch water. She drank an entire carafe. When I went to fetch more, I found a full pitcher waiting just outside the door—Mr. Apples had seen us together.
Saturday, November 20
I spent the night holding her while she slept.
In the morning Mabbot noticed Kerfuffle first. As she said, nothing on the ship is hidden from her, for she seemed to sense the rabbit was gone. The heavy chair lay on its side against the bookshelf, and by the angle of the rabbit’s leg underneath, it was clear the animal had been crushed.
Mabbot groaned. “Is she not breathing?”
I righted the chair and replaced the heavy logs that had fallen during the storm. The beast was still, already stiffening as I lifted it.
“A windfall for your pot,” Mabbot said, turning her back to me as she pulled the covers tightly around her.
“You’re joking.”
“Do you imagine that I don’t know where meat comes from?”
It was the most lucid I had seen her in days. I would have balked if not for the glare she gave me over her shoulder, which was a taste of the old Mabbot.
Knowing she needed proper nourishment, and as there was no other fresh meat, I dressed and went to the galley, holding Kerfuffle under my arm.
I thought I would take pleasure in skinning that watchful rabbit, but now that it was still, it engendered in me a tenderness for all fragile flesh. I sharpened a knife until it shone, then skinned and cleaned the rabbit, trying to make each cut a gesture of respect. Loath to waste any part of the animal, I set brains and hide aside for tanning.
As I progressed deeper into the body, I felt a mystery revealing itself to me and began to pray, not with words but with simple cooking, a prayer not for the soul of the rabbit exactly but for the generous blending of its life with Mabbot’s. She had fed and loved it, and now its flesh would become hers and mine, and in this way I understood that all beings lived only to feed one another as even the lion lies down for the worm. In the striations of the rabbit’s muscle, I saw eons of breath and death.
This was God’s grace, without which all bodies would fall to ash. I had been cooking my entire life and had never understood the sanctity of my duties. For all of my kitchen philosophies were nothing compared to the truth that now opened me to the bone: that I was, myself, food.
This inspiration sent me looking for Asher, to join me in the galley. He had given up trying to emulate Bai’s stoic mourning and succumbed to rum and wailing. I talked at him and fed him spoonfuls as I cooked. It is meager comfort, but it is the only kindness I have to offer and, over time, it is a good cure for many ills.
The bowl of rabbit broth I carried to Mabbot’s cabin was a forgiveness and a plea for forgiveness, an acknowledgment that this blood is shared universally. With this meal I surrendered to the mystery of my days and vowed never to look askance at love of any kind, nor to defy it. For the world is a far more expansive and mystifying place than can be said.
Sunday, November 21
A ship makes its way on ruin and repair. Despite Mr. Apples’s handling, the Rose lost the fore topsail in the storm and cordage was generally fouled throughout the ship. All watches were on deck bracing and knotting, painting and sealing.
I feel though that the most important mending was happening in Mabbot’s chambers. She was sitting up in bed and not quite herself, for she was being so gentle. “How could I have known when I took you aboard how much I would come to rely on our little meals, on your grumbling? In stubbornness you’re almost a match for me,” she said. “And now you’ve seduced me back to this world with your sips and nibbles.”
I spent the night feeding her, massaging and kissing the constellations of freckles that decorate her warm back. She shared her returning strength.
Here, propriety censors me.
I may say, though, that I am happy. Once baked, the bread cannot return to flour.
24
GOLD FOR CORNMEAL
In which I discover the saboteur
Monday, November 22
Today Mabbot retook control of her ship. But not before she summoned Mr. Apples to her cabin. She was sitting in her stuffed chair smoking her ivory pipe while I was at the table, reading her copy of The Inferno, on
e of the few books she had saved.
When Mr. Apples arrived, Mabbot announced without preamble: “We’ve got to go back. We’re going to blow the Pendleton warehouses to hell.”
I was dumbfounded, but it was impossible to surprise Mr. Apples; he had already considered the idea. “Won’t work—it’s the Pearl River, packed arse to nuts with navy ships. And, may I say, Captain, that you still look about as healthy as a frog in a pickle barrel.”
“Braga says the entrance to the caves is a few miles north of the mouth of the river,” said Mabbot. “We’ll dash in and be back out before they know we’re there. Leighton primed and loaded it; we need only strike the fuse.”
“There are ships of the line patrolling the entire coast,” said Mr. Apples. “We may get in, but we’ll never get out. Besides, there’s not a shilling to be had in it.”
“The Pendleton Company is a blight. Everything they touch rots from the inside.”
I was used to hearing fire in her voice when she spoke about them, but now I heard only sadness. She was not commanding; she was pleading for Mr. Apples to understand.
“They ruined my son. Turned him into another baron wheedling for his cut of the profits. Fighting the Pendleton Company is the only good I do, Mr. Apples. It is the only good I’ve ever done.”
Mr. Apples rubbed the back of his head as he considered it. “With the officers and records gone, with the warehouses wrecked, it could ruin their monopoly for a time. The jackals will come pick over the remains,” he admitted. “Smugglers, the Fox’s scattered army, hell, even the Portuguese will try to set up shop. Might even be enough to force the opium issue into the papers. Hard to say what China would do.”
“If China did anything at all, it would be an improvement,” Mabbot said. “It could take Pendleton years to recover. How can we not try?”
“Captain, I know when you’ve fixed on a plan there’s not a thing that will keep you from it. And you know where I stand, I’ll never leave this deck. But we ain’t the only ones on this ship. The boys have a right to know what we’re sailing into.”