Whether it was out of nervous habit or because her belief in the rings grew stronger the more that she focused on them, Tess spun the rings and listened to the thoughts filling her head. Confidence in the accuracy of her assessment of this situation flowed through her.
Cassie had had access to neither of those flavorings and had apparently washed the dried herbs down with only a few mouthfuls of rancid wine. The frailty of a newly pregnant woman’s constitution had tipped the scale in favor of Cassie’s survival. Not all of the herbs had been absorbed, Tess grimly noted. She fervently hoped that little enough had been digested to be ineffective at starting a life threatening uterine bleed.
From the time that Tess had entered his cabin, Carlos had not shown any interest in her assessment of Cassie. In fact, he had not entered the cabin at all, refusing to show, in front of his crew, any further concern for his captive. Smith, however, had remained hovering in the cabin’s doorway, and at Tess’s beckoning, he rushed in at once, and knelt at Cassie’s side. His jaw was clenched hard with tension and he searched Tess’s face for answers to his unspoken questions.
“She is pregnant. With Carlos’s child.” Tess’s words sounded harsh, even to her.
Smith’s work-worn fingers balled up into tight fists of fury and he turned his face towards Tess “I couldn’t protect her …” he moaned softly before his voice faded away.
Tess stared. His own face was desperately stricken, with lines deeply drawn by a mixture of frustrated anger and grief.
It was the face of a young man about to lose someone most precious.
In a moment of startling clarity, Tess understood his motivation.
He loves her! He ‘joined’ the crew to be here on this ship, to be near her! His actions were so plain! How could we have not figured that out?
“Is she–is she dead, then?” he stumbled.
“No,” Tess replied quickly, wanting to reassure him, to reassure herself. “She tried to rid herself of his child, and she has taken herbs to that effect, I think.”
Confusion spread across his brow and a low breath escaped his lips. “She’ll live?”
“I’m not sure how much she took–” Tess’s words died in her throat as she stared at the thin tunic that Cassie wore. A small but bright red patch had seeped into the material at the junction of Cassie’s legs.
Oh dear God!
It had started.
The antidote! While still aboard the Mary Jane, Tess had followed her hunch and had filled a medicine bag with anticipated needs–needle, sutures, packing–and had grabbed several pouches containing dried products known to staunch bleeding, as well as a pouch containing a small amount of clean water with which to mix them. There was no time now to properly prepare and steep the tea–she would have to rouse Cassie as best she could and spoon the cold mixture down her throat.
“Help me sit her up,” she instructed Smith. As the young sailor held Cassie steady against his own chest, Tess spooned the watery mixture past Cassie’s lips, firmly stroking her sister’s throat to bring on reflexive swallowing. When she was satisfied that enough of the medicinal liquid had been ingested, Tess sat back and looked at Smith. The effectiveness of her antidote preparation would become apparent shortly.
“That’s it. Now we wait.” Tess saw that Smith nodded nearly imperceptibly at her words. He had seen Tess’s treatment of the sick before and seemed to have full confidence in her regimens. Tess saw no reason to burden him now with her nagging fear.
There was one more item missing from the trunk, besides the Pennyroyal and Blue Cohosh. What has Cassie done with it? Where is the Monkshood? Hurriedly she reviewed what she knew of it.
The root of the deadly Monkshood plant was by far, the most potent to be found in any pharmacological collection. Many exotic cultures used the root’s juices as a powerful and fatal arrow poison. The mere contact of abraded flesh with the juice, she had been told, could bring on death due to a paralytic action on the respiratory centre. Nevertheless, physicians cautiously used it in drastically minute quantities for its therapeutic effects of producing pain-relieving numbness and its ability to slow the pulse in those suffering heart palpitations.
Where is it, damn it! Tess scanned the room; its contents were few and rather stark. Surely she hasn’t swallowed that fatal preparation as well?
“I am doomed” she had said ….
Tess felt Cassie’s throat.
The pulse there was sluggish and faint. Not nearly as fast as she would have expected nor as strong as she would have liked.
Tess’s own heart hammered in her chest. If Cassie had taken even a relatively small amount of the Monkshood, there would be no saving her. On the other hand, a slow pulse produced from any other reason would mean less bleeding ….
If only I knew for sure! Tess realized that her uncertainty would have no effect on her actions either way. She had done all that she could to counteract the effect of the Pennyroyal and Blue Cohosh, and there was no antidote at all for Monkshood.
Wait! There was one thing more ….
The healing emeralds would have to do the rest. And the ruby spinner–supposedly able to influence people’s actions–would it be able to influence desired outcomes? Tess started the rings in motion, and laying one hand on the crown of Cassie’s head and the other on her sister’s abdomen, she began to focus on Cassie’s face, quietly intoning her words of healing, while trying to ignore her own building feelings of despair.
The shouts from the deck of the Bloodhorn blasted Tess out of her meditation at Cassie’s side. The cabin’s door flew open as a pirate burst through. The man was as intimidating as any of the crew but Tess detected a strip of fear in his voice as he grabbed for her, shouting, “You! Healer! Get out here now! It’s Carlos!”
Caught in his grip, with no choice but to stumble out after him, Tess realized that she was trembling herself. Not knowing if the man’s fear was because of Carlos or for Carlos, she panicked for several heartbeats, confused as to why she had been summoned.
What has happened?
She was unable to see past the grime encrusted backs of the unwashed men in front of her, but realized that they had gathered around something. Or someone. Lying on the deck.
Carlos?
“Make way, ya’ dung-souled buggers!” Tess’s escort bellowed as he pushed his way through, dragging her along behind him. The crowd of sailors parted and stepped back, giving Tess a first glimpse of a body lying crumpled on the deck. Warily she stepped forward and peered at the man lying at her feet. Tess gasped a sharp intake of breath as the shock of what she was seeing coursed through her.
Carlos lay face up, still and helpless, his body paralyzed.
Monkshood! That is the only explanation! But how could he have been exposed to it?
His respirations failing, Carlos struggled as each breath became slower and shallower. Tess could only watch as the paralytic effects of the Monkshood quickly and surely ravaged his central nervous system.
Hers eyes drifted over Carlos’s torso and riveted on the dozens of fresh and deep scratches crisscrossing his chest. The memory of Cassie’s blood-stained fingernails slammed back into Tess’s head.
That’s it! Cassie had used them as the only weapons she had available. A certainty of the events flooded Tess’s thoughts. Cassie had tipped her fingernails with the powdered monkshood root, probably having reconstituted it with a few drops of wine, and the poisonous chemicals had quickly entered Carlos’s system, starting their deadly work at the moment of the very first tearing of his skin with her nails.
Cassie had to have been exposed to the chemicals as well then! And yet she had shown no respiratory difficulties when Tess had been with her in the cabin.
Satisfaction washed over Tess as she realized that the horror of a death by Monkshood poisoning was that the person’s thought centre remained totally unaffected by the plant’s chemicals, with consciousness and intelligence remaining normal until the victim’s last breath.
&nbs
p; Tess bent forward and pretended to be examining Carlos’s breath and pulse. She whispered to him, “Has revenge ever been so sweet to you as it is to me?”
Eyes of madness, glowing like embers in a fire and glittering with hatred stared back at her. Tess met the malevolent glare, and watched without fear, as evil in human form took its last breath. Carlos’s chest rose slightly, fell one last time, and then rose no more. The eyes, once so full of malice, slowly glazed over and stared sightlessly out of their sockets.
“He is dead,” Tess announced simply. “I need to return to my other patient.”
“Why should we keep either one of you alive now?” snarled one of the pirates, lunging forward. He pointed the tip of his cutlass at Tess’s breast.
Weary and once again emotionally drained from the ferocity of the change in circumstances that her life had taken, Tess drew herself up as tall as she could and, slowly spinning the rings once more, she glared unflinchingly back at the man. At once she knew what she had to say to make him believe. Holding him steadily in her gaze, her tone scathing and sounding as threateningly as she could manage, she replied, “You need me to keep you alive. I am the only healer here. And Cassie carries Carlos’s child. Without me, they will both die as well. It may already be too late as you have kept me far too long from her.” Stepping confidently towards the cabin, she turned and played further on the superstitions of these men of the sea.
“In fact, if she and the child do die,” she barked in a voice that carried to the ears of every man there, “the same curse that killed Carlos will fall onto the heads of the rest of you.” There was a loud murmur among them but none barred her way as she hurried back into the cabin.
There, much as she had left them, were Cassie, her head now cradled in Smith’s lap, and Samuel Smith, his hand tenderly stroking her cheeks. Cassie’s chest moved rhythmically with shallow but even breaths.
How could she have escaped the effects of the Monkshood?
Examining Cassie’s fingers more closely, Tess discovered her answer. Cassie’s fingertips, waxy and pale, really were waxy and pale.
Clever! Tess smiled in spite of her worry.
Her sister had dipped her fingertips into molten candle wax, before applying the powdered sludge to them, in a desperate gamble. She had depended on the wax to provide her with enough of a protective barrier to the fatal preparation’s effects.
It had worked.
Unfortunately not even their fear of rousing the wrath of a witchy woman would bring the pirate crew to the agreement to have Cassie transferred back to the Mary Jane. Cassie had soon regained consciousness and the best that Tess could demand for her was that Cassie be allowed to recover for a few days in the confines of Carlos’s cabin, while the crew decided what to do with her and her unborn child, following Carlos’s demise.
New and more pressing business–the choice of a new captain was to be voted on by the pirates before any other decisions could be made–had bought Cassie only forty-eight hours of precious time. As such, Tess was to be allowed to be rowed over from the Mary Jane for only one more visit.
“We have to devise an escape plan!” Tess pleaded to her grandmother upon returning to the Mary Jane.
Her grandmother’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Escape to where? To the open waters? To the shorelines of these unknown lands? How can that be any better than stayin’ put?”
“They will kill us all eventually. I feel it.” Under the pressure of her grandmother’s continued stare, she added, “My ring tells me this” She paused for a moment. “It’s true we don’t know what islands we’re sailing past, but if we could reach one, surely we could get help. Officials in Port Royal were expecting our family.” She saw her grandmother’s features soften and her head nodded ever so slightly at Tess’s reasoning.
“I’ll have to take the details back in two days’ time. It’s the only chance we’ll have to get a message to Cassie!” Tess continued. “Gram, what are we going to do?” She fell silent as her grandmother pursed her lips together in grim thought, staring off into space as she considered Tess’s plea.
“There are so many of them … there’ll be only one chance for escape.” Her grandmother’s voice trailed away as they both shuddered to think of what fate awaited them if they were to fail in their attempt. “We need to change the odds in our favor … but how and when?” Her grandmother’s brows knitted together in deep thought.
A nighttime escape under the cover of darkness seemed to be their best choice. Lookouts would be less likely to see them and musket balls would be less likely to find their targets in the dark. Confronting the sailors on the evening watch would be out of the question, however. Stealth and absolute secrecy seemed to be their only option. But how to escape from a ship where there was virtually no privacy? In the warm air of these West Indies, the men frequently slept shoulder to shoulder on the open deck, preferring its hard surface to the dank air of the quarters below.
It was improbable that the women would survive in the open sea–swimming skills were questionable–so the need for items to keep them afloat was without question. They would be needing casks, barrels or a boat. That detail was paramount to the success of such an attempt. And any of these items would require the cooperation of a man–one at least–to help hoist them overboard into the sea. Mrs. Hanley shook her head as the problematic details piled up, reducing the probability of escape to nearly impossible.
“We’ll probably die, if we try to leave … you know that, darlin’, don’cha’?” Her grandmother’s voice was soft and sad as she took Tess’s face between her hands and gently tilted it to meet her gaze.
“Gram, being without Cassie, and living in fear for our lives like we do now, without even trying for freedom, is already a kind of death of its own ….” Tess blinked back the hot tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. She was filled with a cold sense of hopelessness as her grandmother slowly looked around at the filth that caked everything. The stench of rot and mold was persistent everywhere.
Her grandmother slowly exhaled and as she shifted her weight, her bare heel crunched and slid on the rodent scat that seemed to be underfoot everywhere. She brushed the revolting gritty particles off the soles of her feet, then sucked in a large determined breath and suddenly smiled at Tess.
“I believe I’ve stumbled onto an idea,” she beamed.
Two days later, Tess filled her medicine satchel with the necessary supplies and climbed down the hempen ladder into the waiting jolly boat that bobbed alongside the Mary Jane. The short trip between the two ships passed without incident, although Tess was stiff with tension in anticipation of seeing Cassie.
Her sister lay quietly upon the narrow cot, and a small sickly smile tugged upwards at the corners of Cassie’s mouth as Tess entered the cabin.
“Cassie.” The word hung heavily in the air between them and for a moment, Tess did not know if she was welcome or not. She had foiled Cassie’s plans, had undone the effects of the stolen herbs, and even though Cassie’s life had been spared, so too, had the unborn child’s.
Carlos’s child.
“Tess!” Cassie sobbed the name and held out her arms. Tess rushed into them and clasped Cassie to her. For several long moments, they clung to one another, neither knowing what to say.
“I still carry his child ….” Cassie’s face was tightly drawn and she searched Tess’s eyes, searching for something–whether it was for confirmation of her statement or for forgiveness or even acceptance of her actions, Tess was not sure. Her eyes never left Cassie’s face.
“You’re still with child,” she nodded, “but it’s your child now. Yours alone. Only yours,” she emphasized.
“Carlos–”
“Is dead,” Tess confirmed.
Upon hearing this, Cassie’s eyes filled with tears but she too nodded, and as they spilled down her cheeks, relief spread in a silent slip of a smile across her lips.
Realizing that no one had informed Cassie about the chain of events tha
t had come to pass over the past two days, Tess read the lingering fear in Cassie’s eyes, as she spoke to her about the choosing by the crew of a new pirate leader and of the pirates’ insistence that this be Tess’s last visit.
“But we have a plan,” Tess rushed on. “I am going to see if they will let Tommy in here for a moment.” She crossed quickly to the door of the cabin and summoned the nearest sailor.
“I need assistance in here,” she stated. “As it concerns womanly things for Carlos’s captive, it would be appropriate that I be assisted by the young child, Tommy, rather than defile both her modesty and your captain’s memory, by the presence of any grownup gentleman.” Tess hoped respect for Carlos was still strong enough to influence the sailor. To her surprise and relief, he raised no objection, and quickly returned with a frightened looking Tommy in tow.
“Tommy, I’m glad that you were available.” Tess hoped her tone was reassuring to the boy as well as to the sailor. “I need your help only for a moment,” and she ushered the boy into the cabin before following him in and closing the door tightly behind her.
“What duties did I summon you from?” Tess inquired, her voice as casual as she could make it.
“Pumpin’ the bilge,” the small boy mumbled. His eyes were downcast but shot furtive glances at both Cassie and the closed door of the cabin.
“Ah! Well, that is a very important duty indeed,” Tess affirmed, now noticing the ripe smell of the putrefying fluids which sloshed around in the belly of the ship. The odor was wafting off the tattered slips of cloth that passed for the stained breeches cinched up around Tommy’s tiny waist. “You are keeping this ship afloat then.”
Tommy glanced at Tess, unsure if she was complimenting him or accusing him of assisting the enemy.
“You are a brave young man,” she continued, “to be put in charge of such a thing. Is it horrible? Down in the bottom, I mean?”
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