Quintspinner

by Dianne Greenlay

  “Where’s Eduardo, hmmm? Wha’ have you done with him?” he asked as he brought her hand up to his lips. Too late, Tess realized the gesture exposed her rings; their gems sparkled fiercely in the early morning sun. Carlos stared at her hand and grasped it hard, holding it close to his face. “Ah, Eduardo adorns you ver’ nicely I see. It’s a good thing for you, I think, that you are already spoken for by him, or ….” He shrugged and the corner of his mouth lifted in a lecherous sneer. Even as his voice gave out, his unspoken intent was plain. Tess fervently hoped Carlos had loyalty enough to the Brethren’s code that her rings would be safe from theft by any aboard. He did declare ‘no stealing’, and he thinks I’m Edward’s possession ….

  A horrible realization swept over Tess, that her unintentional protector lay quietly bleeding to death in the cabin across from where they stood. Without him, without his influence, these human predators would show her no mercy. Of that, she was certain. And in that moment, her triage of the wounded suddenly rearranged in order of importance. Not to save their lives, but to save her own.

  William wasn’t sure which of his senses brought him back to the brink of consciousness first–the fecal smell of hot bowels and blood, the dissonance of the cries of the still-conscious wounded, the burning thirst in his throat, or the firm and warm pressure of someone’s hands over his lower rib cage.

  His eyelids were sticky and dry, and they fluttered as he attempted to open them. He blinked to clear his vision and a familiar face swam into view, hovering over him, with sweet lips moving in an almost inaudible murmur.

  Tess!

  A spreading, pleasant warmth was moving through him, emanating from her hands which she had placed front to back on his lower chest wall. William struggled to remember what had happened. The brutal recollection of the battle and of his attempted rescue of Tommy came back in broken bits of detail. He lifted his head and attempted to locate the young boy. He recalled having dragged the unconscious youngster alongside him, wedging the small boy’s body between the ship’s wall and his own, intending to shield him from being trod upon by those moving about in such a packed space. William turned to look at the wall.

  The spot beside him was empty.

  Feeling both confusion and panic rising in him, he attempted to sit up. Another pair of hands at his shoulders held him firmly in place.

  “There, there now, Mr. Taylor. Lay there, still as a mouse fer a wee bit longer, won’cha?” Mrs. Hanley’s voice was less soothing than he supposed she meant for it to sound, as the extra volume to be heard over the background noises gave her words a harsh edge. “The wee lad’s alright, don’cha know? He’s been sittin’ back in the corner waitin’ fer ya’ to wake. Fell asleep himself, waitin’ fer ya’, and it’s best he be left awhile. Now hold yerself still so’s Tess can finish her work on ya’.”

  Having tended to William’s chest wound, Tess offered a weak smile to him and moved on to the next moaning form. Mrs. Hanley placed a moist poultice over his torn chest wall, and a wispy sweet scent of the crushed leaves of Agrimony drifted over William’s face. She bent close to him as she dressed his wound with strips of linen and whispered, “I was savin’ this and the Comfrey in case of the rat-bite fever but it seems that ya’ might not have lived on long enough to be needin’ it fer that.” She shrugged and then continued, “I hated to think that it would be there in my trunk, all tucked in nice an’ cozy with the cinnamon an’ dried spices, with me maybe gone yonder to meet me husband an’ daughter, an’ it endin’ up bein’ used an’ wasted on the likes of these scum!” She scowled and her thick brows knitted together as she chatted aloud.

  “I don’t know what’s come over my Tess,” she said shaking her head, “that she saw fit to tend to the wounds of that scoundrel, Mr. Edward, an’ that–that ogre what calls himself captain now. Not with decent men like yerself needin’ the help. Lord knows, there’s no shortage of ya’ in here.” She moved down to his knee and sponged the wound there reasonably clear of blood, then picked out remnants of the imbedded grapeshot.

  “What’s become of my Da’ and Captain Crowell and Smith and–”

  “Easy now, they’re all up on the main deck–none of them worse fer wear neither. Your Da’s a mighty man, talk or no talk, an’ even pirates understand how valuable a man like that can be. Already he’s been forced into helpin’ make repairs to the railings an’ decks an’ such. Mr. Lancaster, bein’ the fine carpenter that he is, was spared as well, once they found out his abilities at boat buildin’, an’ yer friend, Mr. Smith, well, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you, but ….” She breathed in and out deeply before continuing. “But, he was one of the first to sign on as a new recruit fer these damned pirates.”

  William took in this news in astonished silence. He had known his friend to be one who judged things in life with a calm acceptance, but Smith had shown himself to be a loyal ally on many occasions. To even consider that he would so easily change sides was unthinkable.

  “I need some fresh air,” he announced, intending to find out Smith’s whereabouts for himself.

  “You’d be safer stayin’ put,” Mrs. Hanley admonished, and then looking around her at the grim collection of the wounded men, most in various stages of dying, she reconsidered. “But maybe some air up top would do us all some good.” She handed William a long piece of wood to use as a makeshift crutch. “Best ya’ try them stairs while the laudanum an’ lard in them poultices is still workin’ good.”

  Gritting his teeth against the residual pain, William struggled to his feet and hopped towards the ladder’s base. Slowly, one rung at a time, he hauled himself up and out of the sickbay hellhole and slithered out of the hatch onto the deck above. Although the Mary Jane prisoners were already hard at work scrubbing with holy stones and rinsing the wooden planking with buckets of sea water, the deck was still slippery with the bodily wreckage spilled during the battle. William blinked in the sunlight and searched for familiar faces. The pirates seemed to be lounging in supervisory capacities while the captured sailors were doing the cleaning up and starting to repair the battle’s damage to the Mary Jane.

  Smith was nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Hanley had been telling the truth, then.

  William leaned on his crutch, confused as to what to do. He was breathing hard from his exertion in exiting the deck below, and his chest ached, as did his knee. He would not be able to kneel with the others, cleaning the scum and plugging holes in the floorboards.

  “Can ya’ sit?” a familiar voice asked him quietly from behind. “ ‘Course ya’ can. Just plunk yer arse down on this crate an’ use yer knife to carve somethin’ out of this broken piece of mast here.”

  William swung his head around in the direction of Mr. Lancaster’s voice. “What–what should I carve?” he asked bewildered.

  Mr. Lancaster shrugged. “Somethin’ that sorta’ looks like a yard arm, I be thinkin’. Anythin’ to make them freebootin’ vermin think yer doin’ somethin’ worthwhile.”

  As the morning sun climbed overhead, so too, did the air temperature rise. Tess overheard snippets of conversations between the seasoned sailors, complaints that the ships were caught in the doldrums alley.

  “Tis a common thing of it, fer the winds of these West Indies to abandon both good ships an’ bad, fer hours an’ even days. We’re stranded, an’ at the mercy of the ocean’s pull.”

  Hearing this, Tess groaned. Today of all days, there would be no refreshing wind to carry the battle stench away from any of the ships’ decks.

  The air in sick bay was thick with the heavy odor of ripe flesh wounds and body fluids already undergoing early rot. She had set all three of the rings to spinning, and had felt an immediate warmth flush through her hand. The strange but mild heat sensation had continued to crawl up her arm and across her torso into her other arm and hand.

  As she had done with Edward’s first injury, she closed her eyes and palpated the areas around the wounds, visualizing them as being healed, while repeating such whi
spered commands as Stop bleeding! Pain be gone. Restore and heal. After a few minutes of such attention, she and Mrs. Hanley set about to washing, stitching and dressing the wounds. Those requiring amputations were moved apart, to the far side of the room, the bleeding from their crushed and torn limbs controlled for the moment, with tourniquets fashioned from dirty strips of cloth and frayed lengths of hemp.

  By the time she had tended to the dozens of injuries, the sun had passed its zenith and Tess was dizzy with exhaustion. An angry growl from her stomach reminded her that she had not eaten since supper the night before, and slim pickings that meal had been. Distantly she wondered if anyone had thought to prepare any food at all. Wondered if any of the pirates could even cook. It wouldn’t have surprised her to have learned that they ate and drank nearly nothing else besides salted pork and copious amounts of grog, except when they came across food supplies on any captured ships under their control. Unfortunately, this ship’s inhabitants had already been at near starvation rations, due to the doubling up of people and the loss of the Argus’s stores. Their own food supplies were scant.

  Ignoring her body’s demand for sustenance, she wearily climbed back up to the main deck and squinted in the searing brightness of the clear day. With some trepidation, she entered Edward’s cabin.

  Here is where she had elected to have Edward stay for treatment, and at Carlos’s own insistence, she had treated the pirate captain in here as well. There was no doubt that these two men would not have been pleased to have been placed among the other wounded crew. Tess glanced around the room, her eyes slowly adjusting to the relative dimness of the cabin’s interior.

  Carlos had appeared only slight surprised upon his discovery of Edward’s frame lying face down on the cabin’s floor, and had looked even more perplexed after crew members had lifted Edward onto the bunk, to see that the front of Edward’s shirt and trousers were soggy and dark with blood.

  However, Tess supposed, living life as Carlos and all other pirates did, conferred a sort of immunity to any shock at encountering severe injuries or episodes of a violent nature. Sickness and death were constant companions. Seeing only a simple shrug of his shoulders, Tess felt a wash of hope. She had been spared having to give any immediate explanation, as Carlos’s curiosity about Edward’s plight had apparently already taken second place to his concern regarding his own injuries and his impatience to have them tended to.

  Carlos was no longer in the cabin. Tess presumed he had left to resume his control over the two ships. Only Edward remained, lying completely still on his bunk. Tess had mixed emotions as she watched his chest rise and fall with a steady, even rhythm.

  Her smoldering anger burst to the surface first, stripping her thoughts of all civility. Looks like the bastard won’t be dying after all!

  And then calmer logic settled over her like a cool cloth. I’m safe from the others while he lives … but what will he say, when he wakes up? How much will he tell of how he became wounded? Perhaps it would be better if he remained unconscious. Tess formulated a plan in her head–she had access to medical tinctures and powders to accomplish just that.

  Seeing that Edward was much as she had left him before going to tend to the others in sick bay, Tess stumbled back out into the blinding brilliance of the afternoon sun, frantically scanning the deck for Cassie. She was nowhere to be seen.

  All around Tess men worked at clearing and repairing the battle’s damage to the ship. Although the pirate’s respect for human life was almost negligible, in comparison, the value they placed on material goods was almost unbelievable to Tess. All scraps of wood, cloth and iron were salvaged and sorted into piles according to size.

  Standing a head above the rest of the men, John Robert had been assigned to handle and sort the largest and heavier pieces. Sweat glistened on his torso but such glands upon his head and neck had long ago been damaged in the Argus fire. Still, the giant of a man toiled as ably as any of the others. The captive men’s ongoing participation was being reinforced by the liberal use of a cat-o-nine-tails by yet another pirate who applied his weapon indiscriminately to the prisoners’ backs and shoulders.

  A frightened bleat pierced the air and John Robert froze in mid stance, clutching a large piece of broken mast to his chest. The voice of a Bloodhorn crew member cackled with glee.

  “Looky here, mates! A wee kid–she’ll make as tender a’ stew as you buggers could hope fer!” and he held Gerta in the air suspended by her two front legs, her body dangling and her hind limbs furiously kicking in mid air. “Someone give me a hanger to skin her with, quick, afore she kicks the shit outta’ me!” he laughed as he lowered his arms to waist level, allowing her back legs to touch the deck.

  The attack happened with lightening speed.

  The jagged piece of mast tore through the air as straight and true as if it had been a giant arrow released from a powerful bow. The barbed tip buried itself deep into the intended target of Gerta’s tormentor, impaling him through his midsection and narrowly missing the kid’s head. Suddenly free, Gerta charged towards the only safety she knew, skidding into John Robert’s shins before standing perfectly still at his feet, as though sensing that the grave danger for her was not yet over.

  Picking Gerta up and tucking her securely under one arm, John Robert advanced on the dying pirate. Gently setting the small goat down, he squatted beside the body. Gathering the man up in his arms, in one fluid motion, John Robert stood up, heaved the body over the side rail, and bent back down tenderly scooping Gerta up in his arms.

  The whip wielding buffer lurched toward John Robert, fury blazing in his eyes.

  “Ya’ stupid, deformed godfersaken sonofabitch!” he cursed. “While Carlos is on the Bloodhorn, I’m bloody well in charge here! An’ if ya’ ever, ever wastes so much as another sliver of salvage wood again, I’ll whip the very skin off yer back an’ then I’ll send ya’ overboard to retrieve it! Do ya’ understand that, ya’ big dumb shit?” He wound the strands of his whip up in his hands and shook it menacingly at John Robert.

  To the pirate’s shock, John Robert’s hand shot out, enclosing the buffer’s own fist. There was a sickening crunch of bone and the man shrieked with blinding pain, as his knuckles fractured under the pressure of John Robert’s viselike grip. Pulling him closer, John Robert stared intently into the pirate’s eyes, as though passing an unspoken warning of his own back to the man.

  “Ya …,” John Robert nodded toward Gerta. “Yo-o-o unnerstan’?” he slurred.

  “The damned goat is yers! I get it!” the man gasped in pain, sinking to his knees.

  “Ya!” John Robert exclaimed, his lopsided grin sealing the agreement, as he released his grip. Turning around, his eyes opened wide in surprise.

  “Wee-um!” and his grin broadened as he sighted his son. Only a few paces away, William had propped himself upright on the crutch with one hand, his knife poised to throw with the other.

  “Ooh-ah!” John Robert exhaled softly, holding out a fist which he opened and closed with each syllable.

  Smiling in spite of the tension in the men around him, William repeated the gesture, uttering the same strange word. “Ooh-ah!”

  Throughout this struggle, Tess had watched, standing frozen to the spot as the scene had played out before them all. Momentarily distracted from her quest to find Cassie, she watched in amazement as William and his father appeared to communicate in an eccentric mixture of sounds and subtle hand gestures.

  The open-close movement of their fists. It looks like … a miniature hug … yes! That’s it! The unspoken gesture was in fact, she could see, loaded with meaning for the father and son.

  The details of the brutal deaths of her own parents suddenly crashed into her thoughts and, caught off guard, Tess could no longer ignore the fierce pain in her chest as the belated terror of it all ripped through her. Deep grief locked tightly away until now broke free, as caustic to her innards as fire on raw skin. Struggling to control her gasping cries and feeling as though she
might suffocate in doing so, Tess heard a strangled sob burst from her throat and she collapsed onto her knees, not having the strength to stand any longer. No longer caring about anything, she curled into a protective ball, sobbing uncontrollably, as the men nearest to her looked on in surprise.

  She was barely aware of being lifted and carried back to her parents’ former cabin where she grieved until the tears would flow no more. Utterly exhausted, she sank into a deep dreamless sleep.

  It was ever so faint but the delicious aroma of garlic and onions drifted past her nose and Tess reflexively inhaled. Sorely roused, her empty guts growled and sloshed about in protest. Slowly she surfaced from the security of sleep

  My parents’ cabin.

  She had returned to the waking nightmare of the ship. She tried to sink back into blissful unconsciousness but gnawing hunger tugged at her, insisting that she waken and be present.

  “Tess?” A voice hissed from somewhere in the semidarkness.

  At once Tess’s heart hammered in her chest, putting her on full alert. She blinked hard, focusing on the voice, and fought to clear the grogginess from her sleep-filled mind. She groped frantically along her leg, searching for the familiar dirk handle. It was there, lying warm and smooth along her calf. She withdrew it from its sheath and held her breath as a shadow appeared across the doorway.

  Someone had let themselves into the cabin.

  He stood halfway in the doorway and whispered her name again.

  “Tess?”

  Tess peered at the silhouette and tightened her grip on the knife. Her palm was clammy and the handle felt slippery in her grasp. Frightened as she was, there was something familiar about the voice.

  “–William?” she inquired. Neither of them had given much thought to the familiarity they had both fallen into, their mere acquaintance status having been accelerated by the force of the tension of their situation.