I turned, meaning to come back later, but in moving, brushed against the locker, where a stack of books was precariously balanced amid a rubble of papers, navigational instruments, and half-rolled charts. The top volume fell with a thump to the deck.
The sound was scarcely audible above the general sounds of creaking, flapping, whining rigging, and shouting that made up the background of life on shipboard, but it brought him awake, blinking and looking startled.
“Mrs. Fra—Mrs. Malcolm!” he said. He rubbed a hand over his face, and shook his head quickly, trying to wake himself. “What—that is—you required something?”
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I said. “But I do need more alcohol—if necessary, I can use straight rum—and you really must speak to the hands, to see if there is some way of stopping them trying to drink the distilled alcohol. We’ve had another that’s poisoned himself today. And if there’s any way of bringing more fresh air down to the sickbay …” I stopped, seeing that I was overwhelming him.
He blinked and scratched, slowly pulling his thoughts into order. The buttons on his sleeve had left two round red imprints on his cheek, and his hair was flattened on that side.
“I see,” he said, rather stupidly. Then, as he began to wake, his expression cleared. “Yes. Of course. I will give orders to have a windsail rigged, to bring more air below. As for the alcohol—I must beg leave to consult the purser, as I do not myself know our present capacities in that regard.” He turned and took a breath, as though to shout, but then remembered that his steward was no longer within earshot, being now below in the sickbay. Just then, the ting of the ship’s bell came faintly from above.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Malcolm,” he said, politeness recovered. “It is nearly noon; I must go and take our position. I will send the purser to you, should you care to remain here for a moment.”
“Thank you.” I sat down in the chair he had just vacated. He turned to go, making an attempt to straighten the too-large braided coat over his shoulders.
“Captain Leonard?” I said, moved by a sudden impulse. He turned back, questioning.
“If you don’t mind my asking—how old are you?”
He blinked and his face tightened, but he answered me.
“I am nineteen, ma’am. Your servant, ma’am.” And with that, he vanished through the door. I could hear him in the companionway, calling out in a voice half-cracked with fatigue.
Nineteen! I sat quite still, paralyzed with shock. I had thought him very young, but not nearly that young. His face weathered from exposure and lined with strain and sleeplessness, he had looked to be at least in his mid-twenties. My God! I thought, appalled. He’s no more than a baby!
Nineteen. Just Brianna’s age. And to be suddenly thrust into command not only of a ship—and not just a ship, but an English man-of-war—and not merely a man-of-war, but one with a plague aboard that had deprived her suddenly of a quarter of her crew and virtually all her command—I felt the fright and fury that had bubbled inside me for the last few days begin to ebb, as I realized that the high-handedness that had led him to kidnap me was in fact not arrogance or ill-judgment, but the result of sheer desperation.
He had to have help, he had said. Well, he was right, and I was it. I took a deep breath, visualizing the mess I had left behind in the sickbay. That was mine, and mine alone, to do the best I could with.
Captain Leonard had left the logbook open on the desk, his entry half-complete. There was a small damp spot on the page; he had drooled slightly in his sleep. In a spasm of irritated pity, I flipped over the page, wishing to hide this further evidence of his vulnerability.
My eye caught a word on the new page, and I stopped, a chill snaking down from the nape of my neck as I remembered something. When I had wakened him unexpectedly, the captain had started up, seen me, and said, “Mrs. Fra—” before catching himself. And the name on the page before me, the word that had caught my attention, was “Fraser.” He knew who I was—and who Jamie was.
I rose quickly and shut the door, dropping the bolt. At least I would have warning if anyone came. Then I sat down at the captain’s desk, pressed flat the pages, and began to read.
I flipped back to find the record of the meeting with the Artemis, three days before. Captain Leonard’s entries were distinct from those of his predecessor, and mostly quite brief—not surprising, considering how much he had had to deal with of late. Most entries contained only the usual navigational information, with a brief note of the names of those men who had died since the previous day. The meeting with the Artemis was noted, though, and my own presence.
3 February, 1767. Met near eight bells with Artemis, a small two-masted brig under French colors. Hailed her and requested the assistance of her surgeon, C. Malcolm, who was taken on board and remains with us to assist with the sick.
C. Malcolm, eh? No mention of my being a woman; perhaps he thought it irrelevant, or wished to avoid any inquiries over the propriety of his actions. I went on to the next entry.
4 February 1767. I have rec’d information this day from Harry Tompkins, able seaman, that the supercargo of the brig Artemis is known to him as a criminal by the name of James Fraser, known also by the names of Jamie Roy and of Alexander Malcolm. This Fraser is a seditionist, and a notorious smuggler, for whose capture a substantial reward is offered by the King’s Customs. Information was received from Tompkins after we had parted company with Artemis; I thought it not expeditious to pursue Artemis, as we are ordered with all possible dispatch for Jamaica, because of our passenger. However, as I have promised to return the Artemis’s surgeon to them there, Fraser may be arrested at that time.
Two men dead of the plague—which the Artemis’s surgeon informs me is the Typhoide. Jno. Jaspers, able seaman, DD, Harty Kepple, cook’s mate, DD.
That was all; the next day’s entry was confined entirely to navigation and the recording of the death of six men, all with “DD” written beside their names. I wondered what it meant, but was too distracted to worry about it.
I heard steps coming down the passageway, and barely got the bolt lifted before the purser’s knock sounded on the door. I scarcely heard Mr. Overholt’s apologies; my mind was too busy trying to make sense of this new revelation.
Who in blinking, bloody hell was this man Tompkins? No one I had ever seen or heard about, I was sure, and yet he obviously knew a dangerous amount about Jamie’s activities. Which led to two questions: How had an English seaman come by such information—and who else knew it?
“ … cut the grog rations further, to give you an additional cask of rum,” Mr. Overholt was saying dubiously. “The hands won’t like it, but we might manage; we’re only two weeks out of Jamaica now.”
“Whether they like it or not, I need the alcohol more than they need grog,” I answered brusquely. “If they complain too much, tell them if I don’t have the rum, none of them may make it to Jamaica.”
Mr. Overholt sighed, and wiped small beads of sweat from his shiny brow.
“I’ll tell them, ma’am,” he said, too beaten down to object.
“Fine. Oh, Mr. Overholt?” He turned back, questioning. “What does the legend ‘DD’ mean? I saw the Captain write it in his log.”
A small flicker of humor lighted in the purser’s deep-sunk eyes.
“It means ‘Discharged, Dead,’ ma’am,” he replied. “The only sure way for most of us, of leaving His Majesty’s Navy.”
* * *
As I oversaw the bathing of bodies and the constant infusions of sweetened water and boiled milk, my mind continued to work on the problem of the unknown Tompkins.
I knew nothing of the man, save his voice. He might be one of the faceless horde overhead, the silhouettes that I saw in the rigging when I came up on deck for air, or one of the hurrying anonymous bodies, hurtling up and down the decks in a vain effort to do the work of three men.
I would meet him, of course, if he became infected; I knew the names of each patient in the sickb
ay. But I could hardly allow the matter to wait, in the rather ghoulish hope that Tompkins would contract typhoid. At last I made up my mind to ask; the man presumably knew who I was, anyway. Even if he found out that I had been asking about him, it was unlikely to do any harm.
Elias was the natural place to begin. I waited until the end of the day to ask, trusting to fatigue to dull his natural curiosity.
“Tompkins?” The boy’s round face drew together in a brief frown, then cleared. “Oh, yes, ma’am. One o’ the forecastle hands.”
“Where did he come aboard, do you know?” There was no good way of accounting for this sudden interest in a man I had never met, but luckily, Elias was much too tired to wonder about it.
“Oh,” he said vaguely, “at Spithead, I think. Or—no! I remember now, ’twas Edinburgh.” He rubbed his knuckles under his nose to stifle a yawn. “That’s it, Edinburgh. I wouldn’ remember, only he was a pressed man, and a unholy fuss he made about it, claimin’ as how they couldn’ press him, he was protected, account of he worked for Sir Percival Turner, in the Customs.” The yawn got the better of him and he gaped widely, then subsided. “But he didn’ have no written protection from Sir Percival,” he concluded, blinking, “so there wasn’ nothing to be done.”
“A Customs agent, was he?” That went quite some way toward explaining things, all right.
“Mm-hm. Yes, mum, I mean.” Elias was trying manfully to stay awake, but his glazing eyes were fixed on the swaying lantern at the end of the sickbay, and he was swaying with it.
“You go on to bed, Elias,” I said, taking pity on him. “I’ll finish here.”
He shook his head quickly, trying to shake off sleep.
“Oh, no, ma’am! I ain’t sleepy, not a bit!” He reached clumsily for the cup and bottle I held. “You give me that, mum, and go to rest yourself.” He would not be moved, but stubbornly insisted on helping to administer the last round of water before staggering off to his cot.
I was nearly as tired as Elias by the time we finished, but sleep would not come. I lay in the dead surgeon’s cabin, staring up at the shadowy beam above my head, listening to the creak and rumble of the ship about me, wondering.
So Tompkins worked for Sir Percival. And Sir Percival assuredly knew that Jamie was a smuggler. But was there more to it than that? Tompkins knew Jamie by sight. How? And if Sir Percival had been willing to tolerate Jamie’s clandestine activities in return for bribes, then—well, perhaps none of those bribes had made it to Tompkins’s pockets. But in that case … and what about the ambush at Arbroath cove? Was there a traitor among the smugglers? And if so …
My thoughts were losing coherence, spinning in circles like the revolutions of a dying top. The powdered white face of Sir Percival faded into the purple mask of the hanged Customs agent on the Arbroath road, and the gold and red flames of an exploding lantern lit the crevices of my mind. I rolled onto my stomach, clutching the pillow to my chest, the last thought in my mind that I must find Tompkins.
* * *
As it was, Tompkins found me. For more than two days, the situation in the sickbay was too pressing for me to leave for more than the barest space of time. On the third day, though, matters seemed easier, and I retired to the surgeon’s cabin, intending to wash myself and rest briefly before the midday drum beat for the noon meal.
I was lying on the cot, a cool cloth over my tired eyes, when I heard the sound of bumping and voices in the passage outside my door. A tentative knock sounded on my door, and an unfamiliar voice said, “Mrs. Malcolm? There’s been a h’accident, if you please, ma’am.”
I swung open the door to find two seamen supporting a third, who stood storklike on one leg, his face white with shock and pain.
It took no more than a single glance for me to know whom I was looking at. The man’s face was ridged down one side with the livid scars of a bad burn, and the twisted eyelid on that side exposed the milky lens of a blind eye, had I needed any further confirmation that here stood the one-eyed seaman Young Ian had thought he’d killed, lank brown hair grew back from a balding brow to a scrawny pigtail that drooped over one shoulder, exposing a pair of large, transparent ears.
“Mr. Tompkins,” I said with certainty, and his remaining eye widened in surprise. “Put him down over there, please.”
The men deposited Tompkins on a stool by the wall, and went back to their work; the ship was too shorthanded to allow for distraction. Heart beating heavily, I knelt down to examine the wounded leg.
He knew who I was, all right; I had seen it in his face when I opened the door. There was a great deal of tension in the leg under my hand. The injury was gory, but not serious, given suitable care; a deep gash scored down the calf of the leg. It had bled substantially, but there were no deep arteries cut; it had been well-wrapped with a piece of someone’s shirt, and the bleeding had nearly stopped when I unwound the homemade bandage.
“How did you do this, Mr. Tompkins?” I asked, standing up and reaching for the bottle of alcohol. He glanced up, his single eye alert and wary.
“Splinter wound, ma’am,” he answered, in the nasal tones I had heard once before. “A spar broke as I was a-standing on it.” The tip of his tongue stole out, furtively wetting his lower lip.
“I see.” I turned and flipped open the lid of my empty medicine box, pretending to survey the available remedies. I studied him out of the corner of one eye, while I tried to think how best to approach him. He was on his guard; tricking him into revelations or winning his trust were clearly out of the question.
My eyes flicked over the tabletop, seeking inspiration. And found it. With a mental apology to the shade of Aesculapius the physician, I picked up the late surgeon’s bone-saw, a wicked thing some eighteen inches long, a rust-flecked steel. I looked at this thoughtfully, turned, and laid the toothed edge of the instrument gently against the injured leg, just above the knee. I smiled charmingly into the seaman’s terrified single eye.
“Mr. Tompkins,” I said, “let us talk frankly.”
* * *
An hour later, able-bodied seaman Tompkins had been restored to his hammock, stitched and bandaged, shaking in every limb, but able-bodied still. For my part, I felt a little shaky as well.
Tompkins was, as he had insisted to the press-gang in Edinburgh, an agent of Sir Percival Turner. In that capacity, he went about the docks and warehouses of all the shipping ports in the Firth of Forth, from Culross and Donibristle to Restalrig and Musselburgh, picking up gossip and keeping his beady eye sharp-peeled to catch any evidence of unlawful activity.
The attitude of Scots toward English tax laws being what it was, there was no lack of such activity to report. What was done with such reports, though, varied. Small smugglers, caught red-handed with a bottle or two of unbonded rum or whisky, might be summarily arrested, tried and convicted, and sentenced to anything from penal servitude to transportation, with forfeiture of all their property to the Crown.
The bigger fish, though, were reserved to Sir Percival’s private judgment. In other words, allowed to pay substantial bribes for the privilege of continuing their operations under the blind eye (here Tompkins laughed sardonically, touching the ruined side of his face) of the King’s agents.
“Sir Percival’s got ambitions, see?” While not noticeably relaxed, Tompkins had at least unbent enough to lean forward, one eye narrowing as he gestured in explanation. “He’s in with Dundas and all them. Everything goes right, and he might have a peerage, not just a knighthood, eh? But that’ll take more than money.”
One thing that could help was some spectacular demonstration of competence and service to the Crown.
“As in the sort of arrest that might make ’em sit up and take notice, eh? Ooh! That smarts, missus. You sure of what you’re a-doing of, there?” Tompkins squinted dubiously downward, to where I was sponging the site of the injury with dilute alcohol.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Go on, then. I suppose a simple smuggler wouldn’t have been good enoug
h, no matter how big?”
Evidently not. However, when word had reached Sir Percival that there might just possibly be a major political criminal within his grasp, the old gentleman had nearly blown a gasket with excitement.
“But sedition’s a harder thing to prove than smuggling, eh? You catch one of the little fish with the goods, and they’re saying not a thing will lead you further on. Idealists, them seditionists,” Tompkins said, shaking his head with disgust. “Never rat on each other, they don’t.”
“So you didn’t know who you were looking for?” I stood and took one of my cat-gut sutures from its jar, threading it through a needle. I caught Tompkins’s apprehensive look, but did nothing to allay his anxiety. I wanted him anxious—and voluble.
“No, we didn’t know who the big fish was—not until another of Sir Percival’s agents had the luck to tumble to one of Fraser’s associates, what gave ’em the tip he was Malcolm the printer, and told his real name. Then it all come clear, o’ course.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“Who was the associate?” I asked. The names and faces of the six smugglers darted through my mind—little fish. Not idealists, any of them. But to which of them was loyalty no bar?
“I don’t know. No, it’s true, missus, I swear! Ow!” he said frantically as I jabbed the needle under the skin.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” I assured him, in as false a voice as I could muster. “I have to stitch the wound, though.”
“Oh! Ow! I don’t know, to be sure I don’t! I’d tell, if I did, as God’s my witness!”
“I’m sure you would,” I said, intent on my stitching.
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