"Yes, that would be an extremely bad idea," Wil agreed. "Meat buried on an island doesn't stay buried for long, and the disease may be able to jump from species to species. We don't want to infect the boar population and have it decimate the ecosystem."
"So we'll burn it," Harry said. "How are we gonna burn a ship that size? The fire will need to be big enough to consume the whole thing, where it sits in the water. Difficult trick, that."
"We can use Greek fire," Miss Euphemia said, cresting the small dune separating the main camp from the nursing tent. "I've a book with the recipe somewhere. Harriet, Agnessa's brother is awake. He's not entirely cogent—he's convinced he's either dreaming or in Heaven—but he's speaking in sentences."
*~*~*
A strained male voice was audible as they approached. The words were in Swedish, a language Harry had never picked up, so she didn't understand the exact words. But the tone was one she recognized. It was the weak, fearful pleading of a broken child, and it made all of Harry's dormant maternal instincts stand up and scream.
"Agnessa, you really need to get some sleep," Harry said, sitting down beside her; the strained vigil she had held all night had weighed so heavily on her shoulders that her back was bent with it. "Hello, Alvar, it's lovely to finally meet you. I've heard a lot about you. I'm Harry."
The face that stared up at her was so like Agnessa's. The same nose and eyes and chestnut hair, though his had been cut just below the ears. The only stark differences marking Alvar as the masculine half of the pair were his squarer, bearded jaw, prominent Adam's apple, and thinner lips. There were bruised hollows beneath his eyes and the gaunt lines and loose skin that only extreme deprivation can cause.
And then there was the stare. It was a look Harry had seen many times before, on the faces of slaves and beaten women, on survivors of terrible shipwrecks and soldiers broken by war. 'A thousand-league stare', Jo called it, a description she'd picked up from her mother, and it told the world this was someone who was too well-acquainted with death.
"Harry Roberts?" he said, wonderingly. "Captain Roberts?"
"The one and only. Are they talking about me even in Africa?"
"Yes. I had a penny dreadful about you," he said. There was a distant, almost dreamy quality to his voice now. "A yellow pamphlet, with an etching of you on the front, looking like Mary Read with your shirt torn open. You were holding a severed head."
"Severed heads make poor trophies; I just leave them where they fall. And I hardly ever go into battle half-naked. And the cheek! To publish something like that and not even pay me a commission. If they'd only asked, I would've been happy to grant them an interview. The truth of my exploits is probably more interesting than whatever dreck they concocted."
Agnessa looked at her captain and found she could smile.
"Is there anything I can bring you, Mr. Gärd? A particular fruit, or a book? You'd probably be surprised at the size and quality of our library. Our scribe, Miss Euphemia, has put a lot of work into it."
"You've a scribe? Pirates with a scribe?"
"Of course—most of us don't have the patience for long words, so it pays to have someone on hand who can read the really interesting wanted posters to us."
The boy was beginning to relax in slow increments; Harry would gladly sit there and play the wit all day if it would dispel some of the shadows of horror that still clung to him.
"Or would you prefer a musical interlude? I seem to remember Nessa telling me that you played the violin—we haven't a fine instrument like that on board, but Miss Euphemia does have a fiddle. Only slightly warped from that time we spilled half a bottle of rum on it."
"A fiddle. I haven't touched strings in months..."
"I'll just pop out and fetch it then, shall I?" said Miss Euphemia cheerfully, bustling away as if she was nothing more than a society dame in a nice manor house rather than a weathered lady in a ragged petticoat with sand in her white hair.
"And why don't we have a cup of tea?" Harry suggested. "Nessa, could you put the kettle on? Which do you prefer, Mr. Gärd: black or green? I hope you don't take yours with cream or milk, because we're fresh out of cows or goats at the moment. We've got a lizard, but it would be difficult to milk him, seeing as he's a he."
"I—I'm really awake?" Alvar said, putting a hand to his temple.
He must have been the last that Silence healed, Harry realized. He still had a faint sunburn darkening his forehead and cheeks, and a large crack across his bottom lip.
"Yes, you're awake."
"You brought me here from the Ilsa?"
"Yes. And your mates."
He turned his head to look at the three other men laid out in the tent, still deeply unconscious, but breathing easily. "I thought I was the only one..." he murmured. "Only one still alive. I thought everyone in the hold was dead. I hadn't the strength to climb down the ladder again. I knew if I did that, I'd never come back out again. And... And I wanted to die where I could see the sun and smell the sea. Dying on deck seemed better."
"Mr. Gärd—"
"No. Please. I'm Alvar. Call me Alvar. Mr. Gärd is my father, and I'd rather not think about him now."
"Alright," Harry relented easily. "Alvar, you don't have to think about what happened on your ship, and you don't have to talk about it. At the moment, I'd rather you put your energy into your recovery. That'd be best for you and your sister. Until you're back on your feet and looking healthier, Nessa will fret herself sick, and we can't have that."
"No. No, we can't. But Captain Roberts—"
"If I'm to call you Alvar, I'd like you to call me Harry. Everyone does. Everyone who's worth more than ten pounds, anyway."
"Harry, I need to know," he said urgently, reaching out to grab her arm. His hand was little more than bone. He could barely lift himself up from his blankets. But his grip was like an iron manacle. "You're going to destroy the ship? You're not going to try to salvage anything from it?"
"No, we aren't setting foot on that deck again. We only came aboard to look for survivors. All that we took away from that blighted craft were you and your mates."
He released her with a sigh of relief. "Good. I was afraid... You are pirates. And there is gold locked in the chests of the commander's cabin. Weapons and bolts of cloth. But it's all tainted now. It has to be. None of that is worth your lives. Worth my sister..."
"This is cool enough to drink now," Agnessa said, ducking back into the tent with a pair of cups. "I put in three sugars already."
"I take my tea plain," Alvar started to say.
"No, you don't," replied his twin firmly. "You only started doing that when we were twelve and your friend Søren teased you something awful. Said that men always take their tea unsweetened. I know you like it better with sugar, so I put the sugar in. There's no room for mannish conventions out here, Alvar. It's stupid to affect such airs."
"I'd listen to your sister," Harry advised.
"This is what comes of being the youngest," Alvar said. "I'm always mollycoddled."
"Youngest?" asked Harry.
"By fourteen minutes," clarified Agnessa.
"Aggie always was in a hurry to go places," said her brother as she helped him sit and sip his tea.
*~*~*
It was late afternoon and wavering music was echoing down the black beach. Alvar was coaxing a melody from Miss Euphemia's fiddle that was bringing tears to eyes, a plaintive song that made Zora think of home, of the traveling men in big red wagons pulled by hardy ponies, men with wild beards and dark eyes and gold coins dangling from their belts. Franky, too, remembered passing tinkers with huge packs on their backs, who would whistle and sing such tunes as they tramped from village to village.
"Where did he learn a piece like that?" Zora wondered aloud.
"How is something that beautiful coming out of Miss Euphemia's fiddle?" said Maddie. "It was missing a string last time I looked."
"Someone who can play like that was wasted at sea," said Marcella, the most mus
ically-minded of the crew. "He should be performing on a stage, for nobs who paid a year's wages for the privilege."
"Mads, how are you feeling?" Wil demanded, limping up with opened journal and charcoal pencil in hand.
Maddie paused to give herself a once over. "Alright, I think. No sneezing, no coughing, no itching, no headache. I don't feel hot like from a fever, and I'm not sweating more than usual."
"Good," Wil said, making a note on her page. "Zora?"
"Same."
"Franky?"
"Likewise."
"Marcella?"
"I've got a tickle in the back of my throat, but I think that's more from Hope's holy smoke," she said. "Either that or it's sheer nerves. When you're sitting around waiting to develop a terrible sickness, your body starts to play tricks on you, doesn't it?"
"Yes, and that's why we need to keep ourselves occupied," Wil said. "If you focus on a task, your imagination won't have the time to concoct false symptoms. So, I suggest we all work on making this camp more comfortable. Let's act as if this is going to be a new operational post, even if it means overdoing things. Better that than developing false positives."
"I like Wil," Marcella said as she stomped away to confer with the others. "But I swear, I don't understand half the things that come out of her mouth."
"I'm gonna go gather more wood," announced Franky, standing and brushing sand off his backside. "Build up the pile."
"I'll help," said Maddie, popping up.
"I remember gathering wood at that age," Zora said as the pair loped into the trees. "Her name was Nina and she had eyes like jet."
"Those two make me feel old," said Marcella. "Old and boring. I'm going to go meet that brother of Agnessa's. I haven't had a good conversation about music in donkey's years."
Down near the tide line, a very odd conversation was happening. Silence stood with a long stick in hand, listening intently to Miss Euphemia's questions, before sketching out her responses in the damp sand. Harry, Kai, and Wilhelmina looked on thoughtfully.
SOMETHING BAD IN BLOOD, the siren wrote.
"So it's a blood-borne illness," said Wil, making a note. "Meaning it could be passed on through biting insects. Hmm..."
THREE MEN SICK, Silence went on. LAST NOT.
"You mean the first three you healed had the disease, but the fourth didn't? Agnessa's brother wasn't sick?" asked Harry.
NO. NO WATER. NO FOOD.
"So he was dying of dehydration and starvation, not from whatever killed the others," said Harry. "Well, that would make sense, considering he was in the best shape of the survivors and seems to be recovering more quickly. He must've been nursing the others until he collapsed on deck."
"It might also explain how they sailed this far," said Kai. "If they were supposed to be many, many leagues away. As the steersman, Alvar could have sailed the boat off-course."
"Either on purpose or because he was hallucinating and unable to maintain a steady heading," added Wil. "Silence, can you, hmm, how to phrase this, can you feel that sickness in anyone else? Do you think any of us are infected?"
Silence looked at her for a long moment, puzzling out the meaning of her words. She knew what the rot of the sickness smelled like, the way the air around the men had pricked at her skin. She hadn't smelled or felt that again—yet.
A sudden touch on her foot made her look down sharply. It was the scaly creature, the mo'o, Wil's near-constant companion. He had laid one of his many-toed front limbs over her bare foot; his flesh was dry and rough and very warm. He looked up at her, throat pulsing hypnotically. And then he withdrew, scampering to Wil with his swinging, undulating gait, tail whipping back and forth.
"I see, I know," he hissed and burbled. "I go and check."
"...All right?" Wil said, confused.
"What did he say?" Harry demanded.
"That he was going to go check everyone," said Kai. "Apparently, he knows what he's looking for."
"How?" Wil asked.
"I do not feel it is my place to say," Kai said mysteriously. "I'm going to check the nets."
"I find it intriguing that Alvar did not succumb," Wil said after a moment, her mind, as always, focusing on the greatest mystery. "Perhaps he has some natural immunity..."
"Wilhelmina," Harry said in her firmest captain voice. "You are not to poke, prod, experiment on, or interrogate that boy until he is completely recovered. Am I clear?"
"Yes, Harry."
*~*~*
Junia had nodded off with a sword in her hand. Just as she was about to roll over onto it, she was startled awake by the caress of a wet tongue over her nose.
Her shriek brought Lizzie and Katherine running. They found her sitting in her tent with a hand clasped to her heaving chest and Tazu at her knee, looking amused.
How a lizard could look amused was beyond Lizzie, but there was no denying that expression. His yellow, draconic eyes were half-lidded, his mouth slightly open, and he was hissing in a way that was very clearly laughter.
"What is it?" Katherine demanded.
"I was taking a nap and Tazu just licked me," Junia spluttered.
The big lizard croaked something, turned, and trotted out of the tent. The three just stared after him, utterly unenlightened. If they'd had Wil's gift for languages, they would've known he'd said, "You are not sick," but they didn't—and so, they were left to wonder why the iguana had abruptly decided to act like a dog.
*~*~*
The next day, while Miss Euphemia and Silence were occupied with feeding three men broth and small mouthfuls of boiled fish, Agnessa helped Alvar take a short walk to the water's edge. She had an arm around his waist—so narrow, so much thinner than hers—and a hand at his elbow. She half-believed that it was only her grip that kept him from being blown away by the wind. Her brother was practically a skeleton beside her, and she had almost bitten through her lip.
When his legs could go no further, they sat on the sand and stared out at the waves. The ill-fated Ilsa was just visible to the left, near the line of the horizon, but The Sappho dominated the scene, swaying gently and tethered by her anchor line.
"There aren't many black beaches in Africa," Alvar said when he'd recaptured his breath. "Just the normal gold and yellow."
"According to the merfolk, black beaches are holy places," Agnessa said. "They're places to journey to when you know death is near. When Kai was very young, one of the wisest of his matrons left his pod to come to a place like this. She wanted to die somewhere sacred."
"Fitting, then, that we ended up here," Alvar said. "Why didn't you ever write to me?"
"I turned pirate, Alv," she said. "I didn't think it was smart for a good sailor in the Royal Navy to get letters from a known pirate. It would have gotten you into trouble."
"Do you think I cared about trouble? I cared about you. When I left, I worried so much about what would happen to you. I knew Father wanted to marry you off to that old brute, the one who'd already buried two wives, and I knew you wanted no part in it. I didn't sleep for two weeks—and then Father wrote to me. Told me you had walked out of the house with only a single bag and had disappeared. That you'd disgraced the family. Do you know what that news did to me? I almost deserted and came home to look for you."
"I'm sorry," Agnessa said. "I'm sorry, you're right. I should've written to you then, to tell you where I was going. I was just so angry and so afraid and so determined to escape, I didn't think. My head was just screaming to run."
"It was months later, when we had stopped at a town and I had three days of shore leave, when I finally heard you'd joined up with Captain Roberts. There was a man in a pub, I can't recall his name, who was talking about The Sappho's new helmswoman. 'Pretty little thing only yea high,' he said. 'Used to be some fancy noble lady. Swedish, I think, or maybe Dutch. And you'd never believe it till you saw it, but she can haul that big ship around as if it were nothing more than a tiny dog on a leash.' I knew it was you—how could it be anyone else?"
Al
var shook his head. "I couldn't stop thinking of how many dangers you had to be facing. Murderers and typhoons and thieves and krakens. But I never thought of sickness—isn't that funny? I never worried you'd catch some tropical plague."
"I'm a hardy woman," she said. "We're both of us made of strong stuff."
"Has it been worth it?" he asked. "Living like this? Are you happy?"
"Yes, I am. Happier than I ever would've been as some lord's wife. At the very least, I haven't followed in poor Agathe's footsteps."
"Yes. That is true," Alvar said heavily. The hissing of the waves as they crashed onto the beach, their white foam swirling and displacing tiny blue crabs, was so soothing. A far cry from the horrors of the past weeks.
He started to speak like one in a dream, remote and calm. "One of the botanists brought it on board. The sickness. We'd stopped in a remote bay to refill the water tank. He wandered off to explore, as they always did when we landed, and found a strange animal he didn't recognize, dead, and he lead the naturalists to it to examine it. They did a dissection and talked excitedly about its unusual anatomy. When they came back to camp that night, they were all infected. Within a day or two, they were coughing badly. It seems to strike the lungs first. Fills them with water until it's almost impossible to breathe. Then the fever and headache sets in, until the afflicted are bashing their heads against things. I watched a lieutenant crack his own skull open: he was that desperate to relieve the pressure. Blood and brain matter everywhere..."
Alvar paused, swallowing convulsively. He reached over blindly, eyes still on the ocean, and grabbed her hand. The touch steadied him and he continued.
"Then the blisters. Everyone was moaning about the itching, how their skin was too tight, and they started to scratch themselves raw. At that point, it was only me and a handful of others still on our feet. We tried to bandage up everyone's hands so they'd be unable to scratch. The commander was dead by then, and most of the lieutenants, and I was in charge. Me. I've only ever been good at taking orders, not giving them. You know that."
"You headed out for open sea, rather than land somewhere," Agnessa said. "Because you didn't want to spread it to anyone else. Rather than look for help and start an epidemic, you did the honorable thing and tried to quarantine the ship."
The Search for Aveline Page 16