The unsettling appearance of the large group of men sweeping through the plaza apparently had affected Sergeant Claridge as well as Willa.
“Right. Young Charles, let’s pack these baskets of fruit onto the carriers on yon beasts. And no dawdling.”
The marine officer and the ship’s boy made quick work of the bundles, and within minutes they were setting a brisk pace back to the mole along with the balky, heavily laden creatures and their handler.
Evidence of the British Army was everywhere on Gibraltar, as well as sailors and marines from the Royal Navy ships in the bay. All the same, she knew there had been civil uprisings in Spain, and that country loomed close at the edge of Gibraltar’s official border. She’d be glad to be back aboard the Arethusa.
The marine guard who had remained aboard the shore boat with the coxswain noticed their fast return and met them a bit up the walkway along the mole. He and Sergeant Claridge exchanged looks and commenced a fast unpacking and stowing of their purchases.
Willa, young Charles, and the cook’s mate clambered back aboard the shore boat. She could not explain her unsettled feelings, but she was ready for a dull, uneventful afternoon in the surgery helping Cullen. Captain Still was waiting for her when she climbed the rope ladder up to the main deck, and the grim set of his mouth did not bode well.
“Isn’t Dr. MacCloud with you?”
His sharp demand without any explanation stopped her mid-inhale. “He was here when I left. He was going to spend this afternoon in sick bay with our patients.”
“He left the ship about two hours ago, saying he had to meet someone in Gibraltar before it was too late. I assured him you were perfectly safe with Sergeant Claridge, but he insisted on being taken ashore anyway. He wouldn’t give any further explanation.”
“And you let him go? Knowing I was perfectly fine with Sergeant Claridge?” Willa tried to keep the panic out of her voice.
The beginning of a wry smile quirked at the captain’s lips. “You of all people know your husband cannot be budged once he gets a notion in his head. Especially if he thought you were in danger.”
Willa nodded her head slowly, but she wondered silently if her safety was the real reason Cullen had raced into Gibraltar. “Of course. Once he gets an idea in his stubborn, thick head, no one can move him from his intention.” Her eyes smarted and she blinked hard. She would not fall apart in front of all the sailors and marines on deck. They were like a bunch of sharks in the water, waiting for the first sign of a prey’s weakness. She refused to satisfy their needs.
At a bump from behind, she felt Sergeant Claridge’s hand on her arm. “After I escort Mrs. MacCloud to the surgery, I’ll take a shore party of marines back to find Dr. MacCloud.” Once he’d hurried her below to the sick bay on the orlop deck, he turned to leave.
“Wait.” Willa plucked at his sleeve. “Where will you look? How will you know how to find him?”
“We’ll report to the Governor’s mansion at the Convent first to see if there’s been any…” He paused in his explanation, a look of pity on his face.
Willa was horrified at the thought of what he must think of her now tear-stained face. She hated to let him see her frustration and weakness. “There’s something you should know about Madame de Santis and Monsieur Duvall. She tried to kill the doctor in Algiers four years ago.” She smarted with embarrassment at having to reveal her husband’s betrayal by the harpy who, for all Willa knew, could have tried to kill him again.
“We know. The captain filled us in.”
“They weren’t really diplomatic passengers.”
He brushed his hand over hers. “We know.” And with that he was gone.
Willa stared after him for a few moments and then grabbed a bag of supplies they kept in the surgery for emergencies - strips of linen to stanch blood flow and her special calendula salve. She pounded up the steps to the upper deck and raced to Captain Still’s side. “You have to let me return to Gibraltar with the marines.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You do remember I’m the captain of this ship? I’m the one who has the final say, because I’m the one who’s responsible for the three hundred souls aboard the Arethusa.” When Willa opened her mouth to protest, he continued. “Nor would I want to face the wrath of Dr. MacCloud if I were to send you into a dangerous situation.”
Behind her, Surgeon’s Mate Parker gently took the bag from her hand and slipped over the side down the ladder to the boat with the waiting marine shore party.
Cullen backed against the wall of a courtyard somewhere near Gibraltar’s north city gates. The geranium hedge blocking the view of the Spanish walled garden from the street gave off a seductively sweet fragrance. But the dense greenery and bright red blooms were not too sweet to offer a convenient screen for the eight ruffians who were doing their best to beat him senseless.
He’d made way with six of the burly men but when he tackled the seventh, Number Eight took him out from behind with a heavy piece of crockery. His last sense was of his sight blurring and wondering how many head injuries this would be in his long career of carousing and fighting in the Royal Navy.
Willa tried to stay busy in the sick bay, taking up the duties Surgeon’s Mate Parker would be tending to if he weren’t with the marines looking for her missing husband. There were a large number of men being treated for rat bites which was why Cullen had been in charge of a crew of sailors cleaning and fumigating the lower decks when she’d left earlier in the day.
She blamed herself for selfishly wanting to spend some time away from the ship before the long voyage down to St. Helena. She and Cullen had actually discussed taking turns getting off the ship for a short while. The Arethusa would surely stop at Madeira on the way out into the Atlantic to take on crates of the popular wine for the captain and officers of the ward room. Cullen had teased her that taking his turn when they stoppped for provisioning wine would be a better cause than her expedition to Gibraltar for lemons and limes.
And now her stubborn, secretive husband was lost on Gibraltar. What if he was injured? What if Madame de Santis had convinced him to abandon his commission to follow her? What if…? She ceased indulging in unhelpful flights of conjecture and gathered up soiled linens from the surgery. A strenuous session of tending to laundry would push all the negative thoughts away. Hours later she was exhausted but still couldn’t shake the feeling that something horrible had happened.
She was folding bandages and clean patient linens when she looked up to see Lieutenant Dalton leaning against the entrance to the sick bay. The other surgeon’s mate had left to join his fellow mess mates for supper, and she was alone.
“Is there something wrong?” Willa said the first thing that popped into her head, because, frankly, crew members rarely darkened the door of sick bay unless they were ailing.
“Why does there have to be something wrong? Why can’t I come down here to see you?”
Willa was pretty sure she was not a vision of beautiful, blushing female pulchritude. Her hair frizzed in unkempt curls falling down over her eyes after the hours spent in the damp, steamy ship’s laundry. Huge blotches of water stained her skirts from all the pounding and rinsing she’d engaged in washing the sick bay’s dirty linens.
“Why are you here?” Since they were alone, she felt no need to engage him in polite conversation.
He was suddenly at her side, grasping her by the shoulders and turning her around so that he faced her back. He leaned down and whispered harshly in her ear. “I know what you’re hiding in your sea chest.”
Chapter Sixteen
With the shrill notes of the bo’sun’s whistle floating down to the surgery, Lieutenant Dalton gave Willa a rough turn and pushed his face close to hers. “Time to find out whether your loving husband has returned. But don’t forget, I know what you’re trying to hide.”
“What? What do you mean? Have you been sneaking through my things in our cabin?”
“The locket. Doesn’t matter how I know. Don’t be coy with me. You’
re in this spy affair up to your pretty neck. You and Mrs. de Santis share more than just your husband.”
When she reflexively tried to jerk away from his hot, onion laden breath, he laughed and released her. “Or maybe he decided to follow his old love back to the Continent.” And just as mysteriously as he’d appeared, he left, clattering away from the sick bay through the orlop deck and on up to the top deck.
She couldn’t decide whether to retch or run back to her sea chest to make sure the locket with the miniature of Ariadne’s aunt was still there. Unfortunately, she could do neither. She had to deal with whatever the marines had discovered on Gibraltar.
When Willa raced to the top deck and out into the late afternoon Mediterranean sun, she felt a small presence beside her. Young Charles had slid next to her for a moment and squeezed her hand before returning to his duties on the tops.
The sight of her husband on the litter the marines had rigged to bring him back to the ship made her reach for a nearby rail. She’d lost her sense of balance. She could not see Cullen’s face for the thick winding of linen strips covering his head with only slit openings for his eyes. The strips were soaked with blood.
“Down to the cockpit with the doc,” Surgeon’s Mate Parker intoned. “We need to take a look and clean him up.”
Willa seemed to have temporarily lost the power of speech. She knew she should take charge, but she couldn’t. All she could manage was to follow Mr. Parker and the marines as they carried her unresponsive husband below. Cullen was strangely silent, his huge frame seeming to shrink on the litter. For one mad moment she wondered if this was truly Cullen MacCloud, the big, blustering Scot who had bullied her into marrying him, infuriated her at every turn of their short marriage, and then made sweet love to her every night in the dark of their tiny cabin.
The tears that had threatened earlier on deck when she’d pleaded to go along with the shore party - they’d deserted her. Only cold determination remained. She could not let this man die. Everything she’d learned from her father, Dr. Andrew Morton, over the last ten years, everything she’d been through with the men of multiple ships in battle and everyday shipboard life - had brought her to this place. She knew what she had to do…and how to do it.
Once the marines had deposited Cullen on the long table in the surgery, Willa immediately began the process of unwinding the bloodied linens from his head and noting the damage as she went. She’d at first been afraid that Surgeon’s Mate Parker would insist on taking the lead in caring for her husband since it should be his place to be in charge of the surgery until Dr. MacCloud recovered sufficiently to resume his duties. She was relieved to note her racing mind had chosen “until” instead of “if.”
She paused in the unwinding process to lock gazes with Mr. Parker. The marines had left, and the two of them were alone in the open surgery area. “Thank you for letting me see to my husband.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked simply. “You are a very competent physician’s assistant. You trained with the finest physician I’ve ever known, and now you work side-by-side with the second finest I’ve known.”
She stared back, her mouth dropping open in an “O” of confusion. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He simply gave her a broad smile and turned to retrieve a basin from a low cabinet beneath a bulkhead. “I’m going to go beg some boiled water from Cook in the galley.” With that, he gave her the abbreviated knuckled salute the men gave shipboard officers and disappeared into the darkness below decks outside the surgery.
She turned back to Cullen’s battered face and for the first time that day let herself weep. She wept for the man who shared her own fierce devotion to the health of the sailors of the Arethusa. She also wept for the man who had taken her to wife and loved her in spite of her own stubborn resistance. She forced herself to stop weeping abruptly because she refused to weep for the life they might not have, the children they might never have.
What needed doing lay in front of her. While she unwound the bandages, she made a quick inventory: Nose probably broken; a deep gash and indent above his right brow; lips too swollen to determine damage and cuts; several teeth missing, fortunately toward the back of his lower left jaw; heavy bleeding, bruising, and swelling around the eyes. She used her fingers to gently probe around his scalp and the back of his head. Head wounds bled so profusely that she probably would not be able to know the extent of the damage until she and Mr. Parker had had a chance to clean the scalp area and measure the width of the gashes. Of course, the most troubling problem was Cullen remained unresponsive. There was virtually nothing she, or any physician, could do at this point except to keep him comfortable, tend his wounds, and wait.
When Mr. Parker returned with the basin of boiled water, they set to work wiping away the dried blood and re-wrapping dry linens to stanch the continuing flow from the multiple head injuries. Only then did they check the rest of his body. After a quick palpation of his arms and legs, it looked as if the worst damage had been done to his hands, fingers and knuckles. She cleaned and wrapped those as well before they settled him, with the help of two of the sailors from the early morning fumigation detail, into one of the wide, reinforced hammocks used in the sick bay.
Willa wondered how the other men in the obviously fierce fight on Gibraltar had fared. She would not want to have to treat their injuries, based on the state of Cullen’s fists.
Much later, she left the surgery and made her way to the marine officers’ mess to seek out Sergeant Claridge. She meant to demand every last detail of what had happened to Cullen…and where they’d found him.
Marine Sergeant Claridge raised his head at the sound of Willa walking toward the table he shared with the other officers in their mess. They’d apparently recently finished a hasty supper, their dirty plates and cups still stacked at the end of the table.
Her voice came out sounding too small in the large gunners’ part of the lower deck. The cannons were rolled back and latched down, the gun ports dark with their hinged coverings closed. The officers’ mess routinely ate off a table hinged between two guns and pulled down only for meals or card games. Absolutely everything on a Royal Navy ship was temporary so that the decks could literally be cleared for action. Even the small cabins of lower officers, including hers and Cullen’s, would have the partitions removed and stowed. Only the guns mattered during battle.
When there were lots of casualties, the whole cockpit area on the lower deck would be cleared to receive wounded men for amputations and bone-setting when possible.
Willa repeated her request, more loudly this time. “Who can tell me what happened today? Where did you find Dr. MacCloud? And does anyone know how he came to be beaten?” Finally, she sat down hard on a bench and buried her head in her hands. “Do we know who did this or why?”
“I do not have the authority to tell you without the permission of my captain and the ship’s captain.” Sergeant Claridge rose and came to her side, helped her to her feet and escorted her toward the top deck. Before they left, he motioned to one of his fellow officers to have their leader join them in Captain Still’s cabin.
Once they were clear of the lower deck and ascending toward the hatch opening, she turned to him and grasped one of his lapels. “Please, if you know, I must know before we go before the captain.”
“Mrs. MacCloud, you put me in a difficult place.” He stopped abruptly and lowered his head as if to muffle their conversation.
“I have to know. Was he…was he with Mrs. de Santis when you found him?”
The sergeant gave her an incredulous and then pitying look in the half light of the passageway. “I can assure you he was not. I can also tell you as a man who loves his wife and recognizes that same regard in another man, be content in the knowledge that you alone hold your husband’s regard.”
They stopped outside Captain Still’s cabin, and he tapped on the door. In spite of Sergeant Claridge’s kind assurances, bitter doubt still niggled at Willa’s senses and slid
down her throat like a foul-tasting tonic.
Captain Still opened the door in his shirtsleeves. She could see several candles glowing on a side table and a book lying face-down on a comfortable, stuffed chair.
“I’m sorry, sir, to interrupt your evening, but Mrs. MacCloud is unsettled about the details of her husband’s attack.”
“Of course.” He motioned them in to the large table where charts were neatly stacked. Once they were seated, there was another tap at the door to the quarters. “Come.” Captain Still urged the newcomer to join them.
Sergeant Claridge’s commanding officer, Marine Captain John Woodall, ducked his head and came through the entryway.
Once they all sat at the table, there was a long, awkward silence. Willa suddenly felt more alone than in all her time with the Royal Navy. She didn’t want their pity, she wanted the truth, but she knew they probably would not give it to her. She was a woman. A sudden vision of Wills’ clothes neatly folded in her sea chest gave her courage and made her smile.
Captain Still extended a hand toward Marine Captain Woodall in a signal to begin the story.
“My men went to the governor’s house to see if anyone had information on where Dr. MacCloud might be. But when they got there, the lieutenant in charge of the garrison told us they’d found a naval officer assaulted and left at the cemetery outside the north city gates. They were about to send out messengers to the ships anchored in the bay to see if anyone had a missing officer.”
Captain Still interrupted Woodall. “I’m sorry, Mrs. MacCloud, but we’ve not been able to find anyone who knows what happened to your husband. And we have to set sail with the tide in the morning. Has the doctor awakened yet?”
“No.” Willa bowed her head before snapping back up to address the three men. “I cannot believe a man could endure such a vicious attack without anyone hearing or seeing anything. The island is not that big. Surely someone knows something.”
Pride of Duty (Men of the Squadron Book 2) Page 13