The Emerald Tartan

by Patricia McGrew

  Lydia plopped herself down in the chair and crossed her arms at her chest. “All right. I’m here. Now what more is there to discuss? I’m sorry about the smoke and the flue. I’ll remember the next time.” Lydia turned to look at Ian, who was at her back. “If you want to speak with me, the least you can do is come around in front of me so that I can see you.”

  Just as Lydia spoke her last couple of words, she finally realized what Ian had in his hands – a rope. He threw it over her head and anchored the rope firmly around her arms and body. “Ian! Stop this nonsense! What do you think you are doing? You cannot tie me up. This is silly! Ian!”

  “Nay, lass. It is not silly. It’s quite serious I am. Like I said a few minutes ago, I cannot trust you. I have a lot of work to do today, and I cannot be worried in spite of your good intentions to help out, you’ll do something foolish to endanger my men, the ship, or yourself. The weather here can change in the blink of an eye as you have already seen. It seems the only way I can control your behavior, is to make sure you cannot do anything to get into trouble. Tied to this chair, I will know I have control of your actions. I’ll have Master Billy bring your lunch and feed it to you. I’ll drop by shortly thereafter to untie you in case you need to have some private time. In short, for the rest of the day, this is your fate until we set sail tonight. I’m sorry, Lydia. But this is for your own good –and the good of my ship.”

  At first, she sat there unmoving and completely incredulous this could be happening to her. Then her own temper, so long under control, broke. “No! No!” she raged. “I am not a child to be locked away for misbehavior. I am a grown woman in case you hadn’t noticed. You cannot do this to me Ian!”

  Lydia’s hands clawed as best they could at the bindings that held her fast to the chair. Her wrists quickly turned red and raw from her struggles. Tears filled her eyes from the shame and anger at being viewed as such a detriment to the welfare of the ship, and the only remedy was for her to be tied up. Sobs poured out. “Ian. Please. I have only tried to be helpful.”

  Ian frowned. He paused at the doorway, then walked out, closing the door behind him.

  The tears continued to roll down her cheeks and the frustration, fears, and disappointments of the entire voyage came out unimpeded. The anguish Lydia had felt so for so many years under the control of her father, and now under the control of this man, ravaged her heart and mind. The tears poured out of her eyes, as though from a bottomless well. Her adventure, so anticipated and hopeful, completely disintegrated. Nothing she could do or try to do was successful in Ian’s eyes. She sobbed and hiccupped for a long time. Total emotional exhaustion rocked her to sleep.

  A rolling sensation awakened her. The ship pitched back and forth. The fire still burned in the stove, but hovered on the cusp of being extinguished. She craned her neck to look out the porthole. The weather apparently had changed while she was asleep. The sky appeared darker and snowflakes pasted themselves up against the porthole glass.

  Feeling more rested and rational, Lydia thought about Ian’s comments on her behavior. Perhaps her enthusiasm did get in the way of her actions. Maybe she did act before thinking. But, no more. There was no reason for him to tie her up. She began to understand his concern about her emotional responses to events.

  A new beginning. That was what she needed. She was going to show him she could be an asset and not a jinx.

  A scuffling noise erupted outside the cabin door. It must be master Billy with her lunch she thought. She was hungry. “Come in, Billy. It’s all right.”

  Grunts and ughs emanated from the doorway, but no one walked in. The hair on the back of Lydia’s neck bristled. Something wasn’t right. But, before she would yell and create another unintended scene, she would wait. Her days of acting before thinking were over. The wind had picked up again, and maybe this was nothing more than the wind blowing around the ship and making the usual racket.

  The cabin door creaked again. But this time, it opened. The lighting in the cabin was dark, but Lydia could see the outline of a very muscular man. A short, strange looking man. In fact, it was no one from the ship. This time Lydia’s hesitation to scream for help did her in. She recognized the man as one of the Indians who spoke with Ian earlier that day. She saw him raise his arm. An odor, like old, dead fish filled the cabin. The rank smell was offensive. His arm came down on her head.

  CHAPTER 12

  The putrid odor of rot overwhelmed Lydia’s senses as she tried to open her eyes. Her body refused to cooperate at all. Her eyes would not open, she could not feel her arms or legs, and each breath burned her lungs. The one reflex Lydia hoped would stay in control, threatened to take over – she began to gag. Her head bobbed from side to side in even, steady beats. She struggled to open one eye, but the site was not appealing, and she wished she had kept her one eye shut. The ground continued to roll past her. It was dark and gray with bits of plants here and there sticking up through patches of a thin coating of snow. Her sense of sound gradually revived, and she could hear the clomp, clomp of footsteps crunching over the ground. She opened her eye again. The footsteps were not hers. She realized she was hanging upside down and looking at a man’s feet as he trudged over the frozen land. No hair covered the man’s legs, but his calf muscles bulged and looked like short tree stumps. Flaps of sealskin secured around his ankle with leather twine made up his shoes. Lydia tried to turn her head to look to her side, but the pain reverberated throughout her body like an echo. Her eyes snapped tightly shut to keep her from blacking out again.

  Sensation gradually crept back into her toes and fingers. She tried to move her hands, and found that her hands were tied behind her back. Something stiff, but furry, and very smelly covered her from head to toes. The urge to gag overwhelmed her again. Lydia could no longer hold back the contents of her stomach, and vomit dribbled down the back of the man’s legs. She moaned with the pain that rippled through her awakening lambs. The man’s forward movement stopped, and the ground rose up to meet her with a thud.

  A grunting noise bellowed back in response to her moan. Still, Lydia could see nothing. More grunting and strange words she did not recognize followed. The phrases sounded disgusted and angry. Someone gave a hard yank to the fur wrapped around her. She rolled out onto the rocks and dirt, clad only in her men’s trousers, a shirt, and woolen socks. The ground, although hard and cold, was also damp from the freezing snow against the warmth of her body. The man approached and roughly pulled Lydia to her feet, but her legs collapsed underneath her. She looked up for the first time and saw her assailant. He was short, with black hair cut bluntly across his forehead and just below his ears, all the way around his head. His flattened facial features held dark and beady eyes, and he wore no beard. His nostrils flared, and he grunted out, “Go. Go, woman. Woman walk.”

  She recognized the man from the ship earlier that day when she had gone above deck. The man’s voice held no sympathy or tenderness, so Lydia tried to comply with his order. Each time she tried to stand up, her head throbbed like a pounding hammer, and blackness threatened to overtake her.

  She kept thinking she needed to get herself together and to be strong. The memory of a conversation she had had with her mother flashed through her mind. She told her mother she wanted some adventure in her life. Well, this was apparently it. She didn’t know what this man wanted, but she knew enough to be quiet and cooperate, so Ian would have a chance to find her.

  No amount of self-direction helped her to overcome the ache in her head. She wanted to wipe her brow, yet her hands had not yet been freed.

  The man looked down at Lydia and smiled. His teeth were white, and his smile was lopsided. A scar ran from his left ear to just over the top of his upper lip, and that side of his face did not smile. Again, he urged her to get up.

  Thoughts of survival gripped her. She wished she had listened more carefully to Ian’s admonitions. Don’t show fear. Cooperate. Buy time. The thoughts swirled around her brain.

  She tried to s
tand up. This time, she met with a little more success. She got as far as her knees before she wobbled over to her side. The grunts from the man sounded slightly more pleased. He stepped closer to Lydia to help her. Yet, the obnoxious odor of something unclean seeped into her nostrils. She realized the smell was coming from him. I must get up, and quickly, or he will try to carry me again.

  As she had already deduced, the man reached down for her. She pulled back, and shook her head. “No. No. I can do this myself. Just give me a minute.”

  He stepped back, grinned and nodded his head in approval. In a slow, deliberate motion, without moving or bending her head, Lydia stood up. This time she didn’t waver. A blast of cold air whipped around her, and she shivered. The man picked up the patchwork of sealskin skin in which she had been wrapped and thrust it at her. She hesitated. She was cold, but the smell of whatever was embedded into the skins was overbearing. On the other hand, without the skins she would freeze to death. With the skins, she might regurgitate from time to time. That was to be the better prospect, given the circumstances.

  Reluctantly, she reached out for the skins and wrapped them around her body. The warmth and protection from the cold blasts of wind made the smelly seal skins feel like a fur coat. The man pointed inland, toward a dark hillside, “Go. Woman go.”

  Lydia trudged onward toward the hillside, carefully keeping the seal skins wrapped around her tightly so her warmth would not be dissipated by the swirling blasts of wind. The shivering subsided as she built up body heat through activity.

  As they headed inland, she noticed the land, although frozen, appeared to be marshy. There was much more plant life visible as they worked their way away from the rocky volcanic shoreline which held barely any vegetation at all. Snowflakes began to dot the horizon once again. A wisp of smoke blew upward from the ground near an opening in the hillside. Squinting, Lydia could see the outline of a cave in the distance. In addition to the cave, she could see a couple of people standing by its entrance, looking back at her, as though they were expecting her arrival.

  This stumpy, ugly man beside her shouted strange phrases to the figures at the cave in the distance. There was a single, cheering response. The hair on the back of Lydia’s neck bristled, and she sensed her safety might soon be ending. She turned around to look back out toward the sea. Just as she started to turn, she felt a strong, hard slap across her cheek bone. She stumbled to the ground from the shock of it.

  “No! Woman, go.” She raised her head to see the man frowning and pointing up towards the cave. He picked up a rock and waved it menacingly at her.

  “All right. All right. I’m going!” said Lydia. With as much dignity as she could muster, she picked herself up and plodded up the hillside toward the cave. The people standing by the cave entrance began to walk down the hillside to meet them.

  The man walked closer to Lydia now. His actions were almost proprietary in nature. The idea this man might have some vested interest in her made her want to retch. But she didn’t want to risk being cuffed by him again, so she marched forward, with as brave a front as her meager life experience would give her.

  Two people walked out to greet Lydia and the man walking beside her. One was a woman who appeared to be slightly crippled – one leg was shorter than the other, which resulted in her walking with a limp. Her skin was brown and her black hair was also cut bluntly at the forehead and just below the ears. She, however, did not smile at Lydia – but rather she stared without saying a word. The woman’s dark eyes held no pleasure at Lydia’s arrival; that much was clear. She was dressed in a sealskin. It was tied at the shoulder and fell just below her buttocks, similar to Lydia’s abductor. She also wore sealskin boots, tied at the ankle with leather twine. When she opened her mouth to grumble a few words to no one in particular, Lydia saw she was missing most of her upper and two lower front teeth. Although the teeth she did have, were white.

  A man stood beside the woman. Although he appeared to be physically of the same background, his dress and manner were different. He smiled and shouted a few words of greeting. Her abductor grinned and push her forward.

  “Greetings, woman. My name Jemmy, Jemmy Button. I speak some English. I went to school for a short while in England. Captain Fitzroy was my friend there.” He pushed the crippled woman forward by way of introduction. “This woman called Elda. She cousin to Kurok.”

  Lydia was stunned. Dressed in old, well-worn English-style clothing, the man’s trousers and jacket, were made up of many mismatched patches of cloth sewn in a crude manner to his clothing. The man stood erect and with a distinctive sense of pride in himself. However, his shoes were also seal skins tied at his ankles. He was certainly not as ugly as her kidnapper or the woman, though. He still had most of his teeth.

  “H… Hello,” mumbled Lydia. “Can you please help me? I’ve been taken from the ship in the harbor, the Emerald Tartan.”

  Jemmy shook his head from side to side. “No. You are to be wife of Kurok, there.” He pointed to the man who had kidnapped her.

  The thought of any close personal contact with the man known as Kurok made Lydia feel a fear she had never experienced in her life. Her body felt as though there were a thousand pins and needles prickling her body. Her stomach almost revolted again. She shook without control and hoped these people would attribute it to the cold and not to fear.

  “Mister Button, there must be some mistake. I cannot be Kurok’s wife. I… I… am already wed to the Captain of the ship.” How much could a little lie hurt? If it made her look undesirable, it would have the desired effect.

  Jemmy looked surprised and said a few words to Kurok. A twinkle appeared in Kurok’s eyes, as he looked at Lydia with what appeared to be new respect. Thank God. Her hope to be returned to the ship soared.

  Kurok said a few words to Jemmy, and he, in turn, responded to Kurok. Kurok shouted back at Jemmy and became angry. His face turned red and there was no longer any gleam in his eyes.

  “No. Kurok’s woman.”

  Lydia looked questioningly at Jemmy.

  “Kurok is pleased you married. That way he won’t have to break you in. He expects you to already know the rules of being a wife. We must go back to the cave now. Food prepared. At breakfast tomorrow, you become Kurok’s wife.”

  This was not the response Lydia expected to hear.

  “No! Wait. There must be some mistake. I cannot be a wife to two men at once.”

  “You are no longer wife to man on ship,” said Jemmy. “Once Kurok take you and make you his wife, you are his woman.”

  “This cannot be.”

  “Sorry, miss. Life different here. A man take wife wherever and whenever he find one – whether she married already or not. Man who has possession, he the owner. That the way of Kurok.”

  “But, I’m not a possession. I am a person. This is wrong. I refuse to be his wife.”

  “You will see.” Jemmy said no more.

  The cave entrance was quite high and wide. Lydia stumbled in and was greeted by a small, but warm fire, over which some type of bird appeared to be roasting. Sealskins thrown on the ground kept the cold of the earth from seeping through her feet. It did not look like home sweet home, but then she decided values in this part of the world depended more upon survival than creature comforts. Most likely, she mused, to these Indians in the cave probably felt that sealskins covering the floor and a bird roasting over an open fire were akin to a castle and the ugly stumpy man, its King.

  Kurok gave Lydia a shove, and she found herself propelled to the ground on top of a large stack of seal skins. Sudden movements had a decidedly negative affect on Lydia’s senses, so she fought to maintain consciousness, afraid of what Kurok might do to her in an in an unconscious state. Elda, the frowning woman, looked down at Lydia’s form laid out on the skins and sneered.

  Lydia looked up at Jemmy and asked, “Who is that woman? She appears to dislike me already – and I’ve only been here a few minutes!”

  “Oh. Her. No talk her.
She not Kurok’s woman now. She no get children. She kin to Kurok, so stay here with you. She mad. Not get sex from Kurok now that you here. She lose her high position.”

  “But I don’t want Kurok. Tell her that. She can have him.”

  “No. You will be Kurok’s wife. That law.”

  Just as Jemmy finished speaking, Elda walked up to Kurok and slid her hand under his sealskin. She appeared to make an appeal to Kurok’s baser instincts. He paused and looked at Elda. Then, he turned to look at Lydia. He smiled at Lydia, and pulled back his sealskin to show her his lengthening member. It had become swollen with Elda’s attentions. He pointed to Lydia and then lovingly massaged his hardened extremity. He turned rapidly, lifted Elda’s sealskin, and thrust her up against the wall of the cave. He grasped the hardness in his hand and said in English to Lydia, “Look. You wife soon. You watch. Learn.” With that he bent over Elda, plunged his fingers into her inner core several times, and then crammed himself into her opening, while pumping furiously.

  It all happened so quickly that by the time Lydia understood what was going to happen, he was already thrusting himself into the other woman. He grabbed Elda’s hair and pulled her head back as he groaned his release over her body and massaged her breasts savagely. The woman turned around and looked at Lydia with a self-satisfied grin on her face.

  Lydia wanted to cry, but refused to show any fear or distress. She kept thinking, something had to happen soon, or she would be defiled by this man. She knew she could never be a part of it. He was too disgusting. She decided to stay awake all night in the hopes there would be some opportunity for her to escape. Without warning, her stomach began to revolt. Both Elda and Kurok shrieked at her in unison, but it was too late. Lydia could not control her gagging and vomited into the earth beside her sealskin.

  This time it was Jemmy who came to her aid and helped her away from the small circle of liquid in front of her. He went to the back of the cave and brought forth a sealskin full of dirt and threw the dirt over the putrid pile. Kurok and Elda were too exhausted from their brief, but violent sexual efforts to deal with Lydia’s mess.