by Laura Frantz
“Of course, it could be the ague, a malarial fever that’s rampant in certain southern ports, particularly British America.” At her wince, he added, “Like as not, ’tis a simple shipboard fever.”
She shared what remedies she knew, adding, “Rest and plenty to drink—and I dinna mean spirits. Fresh water will do.”
He nodded, brow creased in concentration. “Our water stores will soon turn brackish and we’ll all be drinking bumboo.”
“Bumboo?”
“Rum water mixed with sugar and a bit of nutmeg.”
“Sounds little better than brackish.” She reached for a jar of something she couldn’t place, uncorked the lid, and sniffed. “As for the master’s mate, is he unable to perform his duties?”
“Aye, though he’s hardly missed. Magnus MacLeish is more than capable of accomplishing anything the captain gives him. Moodie is in no hurry to lift the quarantine, I assure you.”
Though she smiled at his wry humor, she was cast back to the castle with a pang. Magnus had ever been a hand with accounts and ledgers. In his study, he seemed the king of Kerrera, at least in her eyes.
“You seem fond of MacLeish.” He passed her the mortar and pestle. “Rather, he seems fond of you.”
She paused, added another ingredient, and ground the herbs with renewed vigor. “No more than a laird can be with a simple Scots lass.”
“The MacDougalls have rich roots. Noble roots, aye?”
“Once upon a time, mayhap. But I am proof of how far they have fallen,” she replied with little emotion. “What of the Lowlander Blackburn?”
“We’ve no Brooch of Lorn to boast about.”
She shrugged off her melancholy. It came at odd times, when she least expected it. ’Twas particularly thick now with the sights and scents of her former life swirling around her here in this makeshift apothecary. “Some sort of binding oil is needed next.”
“Beeswax pastilles?” Sitting on his haunches, he began rummaging beneath the table. The pastilles appeared and she mixed them with the crushed herbs.
Cocooned in his sling, Larkin began mewling like a kitten, a reminder he’d soon need feeding. She worked quickly, praying the salve would be a comfort to the convict women, body and soul.
“We must try it first,” he said once she was done mixing. “Give me your hand.”
She offered him her left, her right hand busy patting Larkin’s backside. Into her palm the ship’s surgeon placed a dab of salve, massaging it in slow circles. She nearly sighed as he worked his way to her fingers and the sunburnt skin on the back of her hand, his touch sure yet gentle as befitting a physic. After a fussy night with Larkin, she was nearly lulled to sleep.
Her lashes came down and her eyes closed. The sore-handed women would be helped.
At the brush of Blackburn’s lips on her extended fingers, her eyes flew open.
He let go slowly, his voice as dulcet as his touch. “A lady’s hands, aye?”
Hardly. She had no illusions about that, sun-speckled and callused as she was. Avoiding his eyes, she shunned his words, his nearness. Her gaze cut to the open door leading to his sleeping quarters. The dangling hammock adorned with a land-worthy coverlet. Full bookcases. A fetching painting of a lighthouse. Her comfort-starved heart craved a closer look.
And then Larkin howled, breaking the spell.
“I must go.” She took a step back.
Blackburn was rubbing some of the salve into his own hands now, releasing another fragrant wave that marked this defining moment. Something had changed between them. Some thawing. Some door cracked open, some invitation issued. Or was she woolgathering?
“Leave the salve to set here where it’s cooler till you’re ready to dispense it.”
“Thank ye.” Turning on her heel, she hurriedly left the cabin as Larkin’s cries reached fever pitch.
21
He threatens many that hath injured one.
Ben Jonson
“So yer aboard. I could hardly believe my eyes when I first saw Lark and now ye.”
Facing Rory MacPherson across a mountainous coil of rope, Magnus nodded, struck by the odd irony of it all. Not long ago he’d confronted the captain of the Merry Lass in the Thistle, warning him against involving Lark in any free trading, and yet ’twas through his own and Isla’s tangled circumstance that brought Lark low. A humbling moment, to be sure. He nearly squirmed as it came clear.
The former captain was looking at him as though fully realizing this too, his hardened expression adding another layer to Magnus’s angst.
“Three unfortunate souls we are,” Magnus finally said. “Though Providence might say otherwise, working all things together for our good, aye?”
“I’ve long stopped believing in Providence,” MacPherson spat back, reseating his hat after raking a hand through his windblown hair. “More the devil.”
“Yer indentured to Richard Osbourne now?”
“Osbourne and Virginia Colony, aye, though I’ll make my way soon as I can to the Scots strongholds in North Carolina. And ye?”
“The West Indies.”
MacPherson’s stubbled jaw seemed to clench. “I’m most concerned about Lark, but I canna speak with her, me confined to the forecastle and her keeping to the quarterdeck like some officer’s mistress.”
“She’s no man’s mistress,” Magnus said.
“’Tis clear the Lowlander Blackburn fancies her.”
This Magnus couldn’t deny. “Their work brings them together.”
“Watching o’er the plants and the like? Such a hapless endeavor. What’s to happen come a gale?”
What indeed. Every pot would be moved below deck, likely. Magnus crossed his arms. “Yer at home here at least, be it fair or foul.”
MacPherson gave a heave of his shoulders, looking past Magnus. A look over his own shoulder centered on Lark, at work in the plant cabin once again. She seemed a bit bow-shouldered of late, as if the weight of the babe was too much for her, thin as she’d become.
“The bairn will ne’er see landfall,” MacPherson muttered.
Magnus almost scoffed. He’d never seen so robust an infant. Despite the babe’s somewhat burdensome beginnings, he was thriving. Content. That Lark doted on him was plain to see.
“And I’ve heard the master’s mate is some better, but the first lieutenant is nigh dead of the ague.”
True enough. Surgeon Blackburn bemoaned that no remedy helped him. He wasted away in the sick bay while Magnus quietly assumed his duties too.
“No time to blether.” With that, MacPherson snorted and strode away.
Magnus stepped onto the raised quarterdeck. For once, Lark was alone in the plant cabin. Other than sitting beside each other at the captain’s table, they rarely crossed paths. While the other officers had made mates of the women invited to dine and dance by the second evening, there had been no such pairing for Lark and Blackburn.
His prayers for her, no more than a breath betimes, seemed unceasing. And as he breathed those prayers, he’d decided to continue playing the besotted suitor, at least in Blackburn’s presence, matching the surgeon look for look, word for word. Clearly lovelorn, the Lowlander had begun to send a few barbed glances his way.
To her credit, Lark held maddeningly aloof yet was thoroughly charming.
How much longer would they play this game before Blackburn tired of it and chose another? Wearied of waiting, Magnus longed for the surgeon’s hopes to have an end. Granted, the fairest of the women were taken, appearing for supper around the captain’s table bedecked with some new bauble or trinket in return for their keep, while Lark continued to wear the colorful necklace of coral beads.
A gift from whom? Not Blackburn, surely.
Magnus had a gift of his own for Larkin. In one hand was the miniature box bed he’d asked the ship’s carpenter to make, with its cleverly sewn awning from an old sail, its mattress filled with downy goose feathers. No longer could he stand by as Lark grew more stoop-shouldered while trying to
manage the task Osbourne assigned her, tailor made as it was. But Magnus feared something more weighted her than the babe, some grief unspoken that extended beyond her loss of kin and country.
She startled slightly when she saw him, and he heard the babe’s fretting. “What have ye there?” Her face brightened. “Something for wee Larkin?”
“Who else could fit in so small a space?”
The tiny bed was a well-constructed marvel, each end crowned with a wooden finial fashioned into a removable toy. A thistle. A unicorn. A soldier and eagle.
Magnus positioned the bed in a patch of shade out of harm’s way, reached for Larkin, and extricated him from the sling, a great many sailors looking on aloft. Kneeling, Magnus sat him square in the middle of the box bed while a smiling Lark dug the coral rattle from her pocket. Her quiet delight was Magnus’s own. He’d not seen her so pleased since the night of the tenants’ ball when they’d feasted and danced to their hearts’ content.
As for Larkin, he blinked and looked down, surveying his new territory with surprised interest. The small awning that shaded him was well beyond his reach, but he wasted no time in wresting the toy unicorn from its perch and gumming it gustily.
“Fit for a prince,” Lark said, stooping so that her linen skirts swirled around her. She lay the coral rattle down beside Larkin, then smoothed a curl of red atop his head. She must have forgotten his cap below.
Having little or no experience with infants, Magnus studied the bairn like the extraordinary specimen he was. “Does he eat much?”
“A great quantity of milk. But lately that seems not to fill him up, so I share my porridge and raisins.”
“Try the hardtack.”
“The ship’s biscuits? I doubt even a babe would take to that.”
“He’ll soon grow into the hammock Archie is fashioning to hang from a crossbeam.”
“The ship’s carpenter? A wee hammock?”
“Best keep that a secret. No cause to spoil an auld man’s surprise.”
The sun beat down on a remarkably calm sea, warming their backs and Larkin’s canvas awning. For once he did not reach for Lark but seemed content with his new arrangement.
“What have we here?” Surgeon Blackburn was behind them, eyes on the miniature box bed.
Magnus stood to his full height while Lark began removing Larkin’s sling from around her neck.
“The ship’s carpenter is quite clever,” Magnus replied. “And Miss MacDougall’s back is spared.”
“Indeed.”
Lark got to her feet, gaze swinging from the babe to Blackburn, whose expression seemed unusually grave.
He rubbed his jaw. “I regret to tell you that the master’s mate is dead of a fever. Captain Moodie asks that the laird perform the burial at sea.”
“Of course,” Magnus replied without hesitation while Lark murmured condolences. Hadn’t the poor man been on the mend?
“Once the women have finished sewing him into sailcloth, we’ll have the service,” Blackburn told them before walking away.
How strange that even the weather shifted, the sky now clad in somber shades of gray. A black pennant was flown on the main mast and the sails adjusted so that the ship was motionless for a time. Everyone to a man stood on deck. Even Larkin, back in his sling, stayed quiet as Magnus read from the Psalms.
“Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever.”
A prayer was said, and the body, stitched into sailcloth, was sent into the sea.
Lark shivered more from the surrounding pall of melancholy than the weather. Sailors were notoriously superstitious. Even Surgeon Blackburn seemed agitated. She could only guess the gist of the crew’s thoughts. Would that it had been one of the convicts and not so important a personage as the master’s mate.
Immediately the captain called for a meeting with Magnus. Watching, she prayed rather than stewed as the men went below. Slowly the great ship resumed its routine—Rory aloft, Lark tending to the plant cabin, the “unchosen few,” as they were called derisively, back to their tasks. The most unfortunate resumed picking oakum on the forecastle, their task no easier despite the salve that would only be of benefit if they were allowed a rest. But Surgeon Blackburn’s request on Lark’s behalf had fallen on deaf ears.
Unable to stand the women’s predicament any longer, Lark finished watering the plants, placed Larkin in his box bed close at hand, and joined them. A sailor who’d neglected his watch was among them, spared the cat-o’-nine-tails but sentenced to this. His callused hands were soon bleeding.
The women stared listlessly as Lark took a seat on a crate without a word and picked up some frayed rope. ’Twas old. Stiff. Soiled with grease and rust. She began picking at it with her fingernails, trying to separate the strands. The fibers bit into her skin, burning and itching after a mere quarter of an hour.
“Yer one of the chosen few,” the woman to her right said through blackened teeth. “Why stoop so low?”
“If I canna help ye with the salve, I shall try to lighten the load this way,” Lark replied, already wanting to abandon it.
“’Tis no’ just my bloody fingers,” another said, holding up her red-stained hands for all to see. “’Tis the ague settlin’ in and swellin’ me joints, makin’ them stiff as a ship’s timbers.”
The sailor glowered at his wad of picked rope. “I’d as soon suffer a whipping.”
Larkin cooed beneath his awning, waving his toy unicorn about. Lark focused on the endearing sound, not her reddened fingers, determined to pick her share of the tarred rope.
The sun shifted, drenching them in yellow heat. Beads of sweat stood out on her brow, trickled down her neck, and stained her bodice. She kept to her task, only looking up when the sun hid behind a cloud. Nay, a man.
Surgeon Blackburn stood over her, blocking the melting warmth. “You’re needed on the quarterdeck, Miss MacDougall.” Though his voice stayed smooth, she sensed his surprise, his consternation, at finding her thus employed.
She finished picking apart the piece she was working on before getting to her feet then fetching Larkin from the box bed. Balancing the babe on one hip, she followed Blackburn across the smooth deck and up the steps to the plant cabin.
He turned and faced her beneath the main mast, well away from the officer of the watch. “Lark . . . your hands.”
She looked down. Already they were beginning to crack and bleed.
“Why would you do such a thing?”
She nearly sighed. “Have ye not seen someone suffer and want to relieve it? Is it not in the heart of a physic—a surgeon—to do just that?”
“Aye, ’tis the nature of my calling—and yours. But it grieves me to see you doing so when there is no reason for it.”
“There is a call, beyond our work. ‘And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.’”
“Your fellow oakum pickers have little appreciation of it.”
“That, too, is no matter. ‘Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.’”
He rubbed his jaw. “And will you continue to preach to me instead of having an honest conversation?”
“Scripture is nothing if not honest. ’Tis truth.”
He crossed his arms. “As a vicar’s son, I was raised on it. And like youth, I’ve left it all behind.” He regarded Larkin with studied intent, the disgust she’d sensed thrusting to the surface. “No doubt you have a ready Scripture for your charge, who is said to be no more than the son of a common harlot.”
Stung, she smoothed Larkin’s flame of hair where it tufted on top. “That he may be, through no fault of his own. ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.’”
They regarded each other in a sort of deadlocked exasperation. Why did she sense this tiny tempest was about more than oakum and Larkin? Frustration and longing roiled
beneath Blackburn’s heated words much like the sea roiled against the ship’s immense frame.
“No doubt your Scripture-spouting laird agrees with you.” The words were tinted a jealous green. “Somehow he always manages to bend things in his favor, including you.”
She dropped her gaze to Larkin gnawing on his toy, his chin shiny with drool. “Please, Alick.” If he found her disagreeable, might he make trouble for Magnus? Even separate her from the babe? “I dinna mean to rile ye. Ye are my friend and fellow physic, are ye not?”
“I would be more, Lark . . .” He moved nearer, his voice so low it was nearly lost beneath the rush of wind and sea. “If you were willing.”
Nay. Double nay. Prickles of heat climbed to her face. She tucked a few wayward wisps into her Quaker cap only to have them pull free again. Larkin dropped his toy and she was only too glad to retrieve it. By the time she’d straightened, Blackburn had moved away, disappearing through the hatch leading to his quarters. But the ill feeling remained.
22
Honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.
Ben Jonson
Dinner round the captain’s table was becoming . . . tedious. A gauntlet of innuendo and romantic tension that bordered on bawdy. Magnus stayed quiet unless questioned, acutely aware of both Lark and the surgeon. Sparse with her smiles, she kept her eyes down demurely, taking tiny bites and avoiding a second glass of spirits. Tonight her mood seemed pensive, even reflective, candlelight flickering over her face and catching every emotion.
They’d been at sea a fortnight. Six weeks remained of their journey—if they stayed on course and escaped any storms, enemy warships, or privateers.
“Hurricane season is upon us,” Captain Moodie said, eyes on the cabin boy replenishing his glass. The captain lifted his goblet with the slight tremor of his hand that Magnus was becoming familiar with.
“August and September are dismal seasons at sea,” Mrs. Ravenhill lamented. “I pray we are soon safely in port.”