The birds.
Those ruddy, fornicating, outrageous birds, the ones the waisters had picked up during their stopover in Recife last cruise. Bad enough, listening to the little pepperpots when only men were aboard, but now—
If he could have finagled an excuse to turn back, leaving the berth deck uninspected, he'd have swiveled on his heel in a heartbeat. But if he wanted her to be truly considered a member of the crew, she had to fulfill the job. And the crew was watching, oh yes, they were watching. He had no choice. Fleming steeled himself and soldiered on, ignoring Lady Clara's puzzled glance.
A quick look about the berth deck showed everything to be shipshape and Bristol-fashion, not that he'd expected anything less. Mess tables and benches had been cleaned, chests wiped and polished, and the deckboards swept spotless, as proved by the brilliant squares of sunlight falling through the hatchways and checkered by the gratings. Nothing was out of place, everything looked tidy and innocent.
And as if they'd been conjured by the thought, there they were, atop Hardwick's sea chest: three green parrots.
At first glance they seemed triplets. It needed a second, longer look to notice that one wore red spectacles about its beady, evil little eyes; another hid behind a red-and-yellow mask; and the third blushed, not a wholesome red, but a strange light blue on its cheeks. They squatted in an insolent line, staring avidly, opening and closing their wicked beaks without making a sound, and for one brief moment Fleming dared hope they would stay that way. But no, at sight of Lady Clara, the one with blue cheeks squawked, "Ladies."
She hesitated at the word, rocking back on her heels as she glanced about. Then she spotted the trio of twisted avian conspirators and gasped, a delighted smile spreading across her naive face.
Fleming felt no such cheer.
Red Spectacles took up the chant. "Ladies. Ladies."
Blue Cheeks and Mask joined in like a Greek chorus. "Ladies. Ladies. Ladies."
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
Not that song.
A shiver of dread coursed through him. But they weren't watching. Nor listening.
Again Blue Cheeks led the way. "Ladies of lubricity."
Lady Clara's face blanked out in puzzlement. Her eyebrows drew together and her expression turned inward, as if she sought to comprehend the meaning of the phrase.
Spectacles and Mask added a sing-song note. "La-dies of lu-BRI-ci-ty. La-dies. La-a-dies."
Blue Cheeks filled in the background harmony. "Oh la-dies. Oh yes."
An awareness began deep in Lady Clara's dark, dark eyes. Not a pleasant awareness, either. Fleming gritted his teeth and wondered how parrot stew tasted.
All three chirped together at full volume. "Oh la-dies of lu-BRI-CI-TY."
Mask started the next line. "Who dwell." The other two chimed in. "Who dwell. Who dwell." Spectacles bobbed his despicable head in time to the chant. "Who dwell in the bor-DEL-lo."
Broiled, maybe. Or grilled on sticks.
The parrots stood straight, flapping their wings for balance, and crowed out the rest, their words tumbling over each other, perfectly and horribly clear. "Ha ha, hee hee (tee-hee!), for I am, I am, I am, that kind of FEL-LOW!"
Stone. Her face could have been carved from outraged stone. But the curve, the tiny, infinitesimal curl at the utmost edges of her lips, gave her dead away. Abbot looked as if he'd choked on his tongue.
If he threw all three of them into a sack with a cannonball and tossed them overboard some dark night, would anyone even notice?
Who was he hoping to fool? The grass-combing twaddle-heads belonged to the waisters; if the parrots vanished, they'd be indignant at best.
Fleming stamped a foot, the sudden sound echoing through the berth deck. The parrots squawked and scattered, wings flailing. Mask vanished up the aft ladder. He'd only go to the upper rigging, more's the pity.
Fleming managed a smile for Lady Clara. It felt closer to a dying grimace. "The crew like to keep pets. They had a sort of spider monkey for a while, until it began drinking spirits, but birds are always popular. And of course it's an entertaining challenge for them, training them and— and so on." And keeping them alive once they'd earned the captain's ire.
Her look at him held something of wonder. Did she wish to know why he wasn't laughing or why he wasn't crawling away in humiliation? He'd burn in the nether regions before he asked.
"A very liberal policy, I'm sure." Her voice sounded rather like the parrots' squawks, more shrill and breathy than normal. Pink invaded her face and she lowered her head, loading the pen and preparing to write. "Have you any notes for the — the berth deck, Captain?"
Only to stay out of it during all future inspections, until she was off his ship. And to have a word with his cook, too. "No, this seems fine. Shall we carry on to the gun deck?"
Fleming led the way up a level and they checked to ensure all the accoutrements were in place for each cannon. But that ridiculous song kept going around and around in his thoughts and like a stone inside his shoe, he couldn't shake it loose. Everything around him took on new and, well, lubricious meanings — the long, hard lines of the cannons, the curves of the powder horns, the rhythmic slap slap slap of the water along the ship's sides.
He would not look at Lady Clara. He refused to look at Lady Clara for the remainder of the inspection. Whatever her expression said, he didn't need to know it. Nor did he trust himself, not one sinful inch.
And when they again mounted to the quarterdeck, he took his accustomed place behind a pulpit created by standing two sea chests on edge and draping them with the blue peter signal flag. He slapped the Bible closed, astonished, astonished that it didn't scorch his guilty hand, and instead pulled forward the Articles of War, so much more suitable for his current temper. The Navy Board required they be read aloud by the captain commanding each warship at least once per month. Might as well start now.
Chapter Fourteen
"Thar she blows!"
Clara glanced up from Staunton's journal into the brilliant sunlight. But the mainmast lookout on the crosstrees, high above, was hidden behind the layers of stays'ls, the mizzen tops'l, and the spanker, which she'd come to regard as her own personal canopy. It was too bad the sailors occasionally rearranged it to suit themselves.
"That's rather an odd cry."
On the other side of her little table, Staunton swiped the heel of his hand across his chalked-in sum for the tenth time. "I will get this. You see if I don't." He tossed the slate down beside her crochet bag and straightened. "Old Mosey's off a whaler, and he often forgets that he's not there any longer. Even when it's a finner rather than a right whale, he calls out every time, lets the whole crew know."
Ten days she'd been at sea, ten exquisite, study-her-eyes-out days, and still there seemed so much to learn. Something new, such as the whaler's call, surprised her at least once per day. While the Topaze's progress across the Bay of Biscay seemed to please Captain Fleming and Mr. Abbot, her own stumbling progress with navigation, and Staunton's with conical trigonometry, left her rather less satisfied. As marks of her nautical education, however, her duties as captain's clerk now felt like comfortable old slippers; she could bring the sun down to the horizon if there was a horizon to be found, and only rarely did she jump at the cannons' thundering report. That counted for progress.
Over by the binnacle, with its little chimney and its checkerboard sides of polished oak and glass, Chandler muttered something to the compass, something lost beneath the ocean's splashing and the ship's creaking.
The wheelmen, who were closest and who surely heard him, didn't so much as blink. But Staunton, evidently close enough, scowled. "That's the captain's decision to make, not yours. So shut your face."
She hadn't heard his actual words, but the obvious challenge to her could not be allowed to stand unchallenged in its turn. Clara closed the journal and set it aside. "If you're speaking of me, Mr. Chandler, do please have the courtesy to address me to my face. I assure you, I'
m more capable of returning an intelligible answer than the compass."
Both midshipmen reddened, as if abruptly sunburned. Whatever Chandler's words proved to be, the underlying argument seemed to have a longer history. Nearby, someone exhaled, a long, fluttering sound that ended beneath another, louder splash.
"Go on, then," Staunton said. "Tell her."
Chandler flushed more deeply. But he straightened, tugged down his jacket, and his chin firmed. "You're not a member of this crew." His uncertain tenor wavered at the start, but, like his jacket, straightened at the sentence's end.
It hurt like a slap. She'd begun to feel so at home, so secure and comfortable among the Topazes. True, some of them still seemed not to like her much, but until now none had showed her any open unkindness. For one of them, any of them, to assault her with cutting words, felt like a betrayal. Even worse, she'd no idea what to say.
Still the wheelmen showed no response. But one's shoulders were relaxed, swaying with the lift and roll of the waves, while the other held himself stiffly. Did one of them agree with Chandler's sneering appraisal, one disagree? Or did neither wish to become involved in the argument sure to ensue, and did they merely have different ways of restraining themselves?
The hot blood drained from Staunton's cheeks, leaving him white and cold. "Told you before, you awkward lout, tell you again." He stalked close and shoved his pugnacious face into Chandler's. "That's the captain's decision. Not yours."
The elder midshipman towered over the younger by a good head, and the overall effect was of a small spaniel yapping in a mastiff's face. But it was Chandler, lips thinning, who stepped back.
"It's not a decision but a fact. She's a woman, not a member of this crew. And it's disgraceful and indecent for her to pretend otherwise."
"Is something wrong, gentlemen?"
Captain Fleming's voice, that was, and the hat rising up the gangway ladder to the bridge covered his golden curls. The two near-combatants fell apart.
For one awful moment, it seemed Staunton would continue the fight. But he shot her a glance across the quarterdeck and she shook her head.
She needed to sort this out for herself. Somehow, she had to find a way.
"Nothing, sir." Surely only loyalty forced the words from Staunton. His twisted scowl showed how he yearned to give the captain an earful. But he'd not become a snitch on her behalf.
Chandler pursed his lips. "Nothing, sir." He doffed his stovepipe hat to the captain, descended the gangway ladder, and sloped away for'ard. The quarterdeck's tension trailed behind him.
If only she could forget his diminishing words as quickly.
"Now, Lady Clara." Captain Fleming touched his scraper and joined her in the spanker's shade as Staunton also scuttled away, the wretch. "You won't tell me such a bare-faced fib, will you? What's upset you?"
Something had to be said to cover her distress. "Oh—" But no, it wasn't that hot. What had been going on before the contretemps? "Didn't someone say there was a whale in the vicinity? I was hoping to see Leviathan."
His expression sharpened, the folded smile about his lips smoothing away; she hadn't fooled him, and the painful knot in her chest tightened further. As she'd insinuated to Staunton, this wasn't something she wanted the captain to settle, but as a member of his crew, if he ordered, she'd be obliged to 'fess up. But suddenly he laughed and waved to the pinrail. Not twenty feet away, a rising billow of mixed air, water, and mist spewed above the ship's side and drifted away sternward. And again, that long, fluttering exhale, far too long to be human.
Good — gracious. Clara leaped up, scrambled from behind the little table, and raced to the rail.
A long, dark shape, more than half the ship's length and shining grey in the Bay's aqueous blue, lay parallel to Topaze. Or it seemed to be lying there, motionless and passive; but of course the frigate was moving through the water and the whale had to be matching their speed, although it seemed impossible anything so massive could move so fast—
"Captain, what's our speed?"
He checked the slate. "Ten knots, one fathom."
"Gra-cious." An inadequate expression for such an amazing creature. But Lady Clara could think of no word sufficiently grand. How odd, that two beings so diametrically opposed — massive Leviathan and scrawny Chandler — could both reduce her to inadequacy.
A shadow flashed beyond the whale, dark beneath the water's surface. Without thinking, she pointed. "There's another!" Two of them — two huge, astonishing beasts, swimming without effort as fast as Topaze sailed. Her numbed mind simply could not contain the thought.
Captain Fleming laughed again. "Look up, Lady Clara."
Another rippling underwater shadow, another massive, sleek back: whales surrounded the ship, ahead, astern, surely on the port side, as well. Five of them, ten, a dozen, a score, and she lost count even as waterspouts erupted beyond her last mark, all of them keeping pace with Topaze without seeming to try.
The first whale exhaled again and the column of mist and water blasted upward, higher than her head. Finally it drifted away sternward, leaving the whale's heart-shaped blowholes fluttering atop its back's glistening curve. She couldn't look away from those surprisingly dexterous blowholes as the whale opened then closed them, like the unfurling wings of a butterfly. Just behind them, lighter stripes formed pale chevrons, pointing forward, flashing in the sunlight as the whale's muscles extended and contracted. It blew again and the mist drifted across her face. She gasped, laughing with delight.
All of them were breathing, these beautiful creatures, waterspouts blasting at every prospect — just imagine how huge must be their lungs — all of them exhaling prolonged streams of mist that sparkled with rainbows in the sun's rays. Without warning, a hundred yards away one leapt as if for sheer joy, rising and rising until she could not, could not believe the evidence of her eyes, only its tail remaining in the water, and then graceful as a fleeing deer, Leviathan twisted over and crashed side-first into the Bay's rollers, sending a spray as massive as itself in all directions. Another leapt from the sea, and another, great smacking crashes of sound and flying water—
"What if one of them comes down on the ship?"
Captain Fleming leaned on the pinrail beside her, his hand not an inch from hers. His relaxed smile spoke of confidence and when he glanced aside at her, his eyes sparkled. "They won't."
The same wonder lit his face from within, the same exhilaration. Her delight ratcheted another impossible degree higher. It was as if in that moment, they shared not only an emotion, not only an opinion, but the heart that felt it and the mind that considered it. As if the world had contrived to bring them together through a series of momentous events so they could share this moment, and now that it had occurred, the emotion and opinion, the heart and the mind, would last forever.
Which of course was ridiculous.
The frigate jolted, not enough to inconvenience her balance, but unmistakably. It shattered the moment like ice. She gasped; Topaze sailed on, undisturbed.
The first, closest whale rolled sideways in the water, revealing the long, ungainly length of his mouth, his wedge-shaped head, and a surprising white underbelly. Was it her imagination, or did he watch her with that single, lazy-lidded eye? Her chest tightened, some emotion between fear and fascination locking her in place. The whale stared on, unabashed.
Then he slid below and out of sight. His little dorsal fin cut the water's surface for a heartbeat, his tail flipped as if waving goodbye, and all of them vanished within seconds, leaving disturbed rollers and a rocking sea behind.
"'Oh, wonder!'" Something had happened to her voice, choking it off in her throat.
But Captain Fleming smiled and completed the quote for her. "'How many goodly creatures are there here!'"
* * * *
She fell to her knees in front of the stern locker in the great cabin's corner, pushed aside the cushion, and lifted the lid. Titus Ferry's stationer's supplies formed neat stacks in the rear corner. L
eaning over, she fumbled through packets of quills, pushed aside bags of sand, reached past a sheaf of foolscap, and pulled forth a box that rattled as it came. The first bottle contained more of the fine black oak gall ink; so did the second and third. But the final bottle, although made of dark glass, held a brilliant red liquid that could only be Brazilwood ink.
Clara replaced everything and settled on the stern locker with the ledger. Nothing less colorful could possibly express the inexpressible emotions of the day. Thankfully Titus Ferry had understood the impulse and laid aside the proper ink for it.
She owed so much to that excellent man.
* * * *
"Now, Mister Staunton."
She'd caught him barreling down the port-side accommodation ladder, where he couldn't squeeze past and where a whispered conversation might not be overheard. He glanced up, missed his footing, and she helped catch him indeed. No sense being concerned; at his age, pests were indestructible.
"Crickets, you startled me." He retrieved his stovepipe hat from beneath the line of belaying pins, dusted it, and resettled it atop his black curls. "You shouldn't sneak up on a fellow, you know."
"If you can't keep your eyes open — then tell me why Mr. Chandler is so rude to us." She slid a belaying pin from the pinrail and hefted it. Twenty-one inches of hickory wood and shaped like an Indian club, solid and weighty; a line of them protruded from the pinrail, most of them securing the rigging lines to the ship.
He doffed the hat again, fumbled with it, put it back on, without ever raising his gaze. "Oh, you know—"
"If I don't understand the problem, then I've no chance of solving it." When he finally glanced up from beneath lowered, disbelieving eyebrows, she practiced her most wheedling smile. "Please."
Staunton huffed and stared out into the Bay. They'd been lucky in their crossing, Captain Fleming had told her; they hadn't smashed bowsprit-first into one of the Bay's savage storms. The rollers stretched long and even to the horizon, splashing against the frigate's starboard side behind them, and plowed past toward the distant Portuguese coastline. Not a single sleek back remained in sight, nor a disturbed wave. It was as if the whale pod had never been, and the thought left Clara feeling hollow, now that her red-ink celebration had been concluded.
A Different Sort of Perfect Page 11