by Laura Frantz
“We’ll be in several ports after Virginia.” Moodie sent a look Magnus’s direction. “Osbourne’s Jamaican plantation is truly a sight to behold. Sugarcane as far as the eye can see, literally from one end of the island to the other. Rum and molasses abound though sugar is currently king.”
“Glad I am of it,” another woman said. “We simply must have sugar to sweeten our tea and cake.”
“Sugar has surpassed grain as the most valuable European import,” the second mate remarked. “More Africans are needed, which is why more sailors are captaining Guineamen in future.”
“Guineamen?” Lark asked.
“Indeed. The Guineamen are among the handsomest ships, modeled after the frigates and rather more ornamented.”
“But not the slave cargo. That comes with no fine trappings.” Magnus stood, looking down at Lark. “Would ye care to take a turn with me on deck, Miss MacDougall? Yer quite pale.”
She pushed away from the table. “Some fresh air will do me good.” The fine fabric of her borrowed dress made a little rustle as she thanked the captain for his hospitality and moved toward the door ahead of Magnus.
Once on deck, Lark took a long breath, clearing her senses of spirits and smoke. Her sorest hand clutched the ship’s rail while the other rested on her stomach as the wind rolled over and around her, stirring her skirts and unraveling her carefully pinned hair.
Beside her, Magnus rested his hands on the railing, staring out at the sea like she’d seen him do so many times on Kerrera’s ragged shore. Moonlight turned him just as craggy, calling out every line, few though there were in the silvery light. Bereft of all merriment, he looked ages old. After all he’d lost, would he ever smile again? It tugged hard at her, his somberness. They were hurtling toward the unknown without a clue as to it being a bane or a blessing. Soon they’d be separated, mayhap for good.
Her eyes smarted. Her arms felt empty without Larkin. The old woman, Jane, was keeping him again. It seemed to please her to be trusted with Lark’s treasure. In Lark’s pocket was a bun and sweetmeat from the captain’s table, a small way of thanking her.
Swallowing, near tears for a tangle of reasons, she ironed out the wrinkles in her voice. “’Twas bold of ye to leave the captain’s table like ye did.”
“And take ye with me, ye mean.” He turned and leaned his back against the rail, arms crossed. “I’ve just made an enemy of Blackburn, no doubt.”
Lord, let there be no trouble between them.
“He’s not a bad man,” she said quietly.
“Nay. Skilled. Smitten. And very married.”
Her stomach dropped. “What?”
“To a Bristol lass. He’s also a father to half a dozen, so the captain tells me, not all of them at home.” He looked up at the crow’s nest. “I’m sorry to bring such sore news, especially if yer fond of him.”
Fond? “I counted him a fellow healer. No more.” Now Surgeon Blackburn seemed a deceitful stranger. She felt a trifle betrayed yet relieved all the same. “I’m weary of the captain’s table. All the crass talk, the spirits and the smoke . . .”
“We could eat here, on deck. Most do, barring foul weather. Ye, me, and Larkin.”
“Let’s,” she said softly, already picturing it. A picnic, like of old, on some sunny spot of ground when all was in flower. “I’ve almost forgotten what month it is. Here, on the sea, everything is the same. There are no seasons.”
“’Tis almost time for the blooming haeddre.”
“Once I found some white heather when I rowed to Lismore. It covered a cove like snow, then turned a coppery gold on the glens and hills.”
“Ye ken what’s said about it? ’Tis lucky, white heather.”
“Mayhap I should have picked some, but I thought it too lovely. Too sacred. If I’d done so, mayhap we’d be spared of all this.”
“Nay, Lark.” His tone was one she knew too well. No superstitious talk. No looking back.
“I wonder if heather grows in America.”
“There’s some in yer plant cabin, aye?”
“Two pots.” She nearly sighed. “Neither are blooming.”
“Homesick for native soil, like us.”
“So yer homesick too?” She searched his face for some sign of it.
“I’ll not lie. Some things I miss. Others, nay.”
What didn’t he miss? She could think of nothing but the tax men, the Philistines, the wrenching poverty and want across the island in late winter. “I worry about Granny. If I’ll ever see her again.”
He ran a hand across the railing. “Even the chest of specie I gave her canna replace yer company nor grant her another three years till yer free.”
A chest of coin? So he’d done what he could. Granny would not starve. But who would care for Granny when she grew ill and bed bound?
As if sensing her angst, he said quietly, eyes on the sea, “Scripture speaks to every situation we find ourselves in. Here’s a verse to cling to, one to keep ye afloat when worry swamps ye: ‘And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.’”
She nodded. Only lately had she begun to measure every circumstance in the light of Scripture. It helped anchor her, helped hedge out the rootlessness she felt so keenly. “Listening to ye I feel I’m back in kirk.”
“Mayhap in the new world I’ll become a preacher.” He smiled, lifting the gloom. “A man can be what he wants there, aye?”
She studied him, trying to grasp all that he was or had been. Laird. Jacobite. Barrister. Indenture. ’Twas too much for her head and heart to hold.
“I’m missing Larkin,” she said suddenly, hoping he didn’t mind her abruptness or her honesty. Betimes the babe solaced her like nothing else could. Even their cramped berth seemed a haven of sorts, away from the prying eyes and ears of the ship.
Taking her elbow, Magnus walked her to the hatch. She took a last look about, spying the shadowed form of who she thought was Rory before going below to the tween deck and her quarters.
Her wee man was waiting for her, as wide-eyed and smiling as if it was morn. He gave a little shriek from his bunk as the door shut, rousing a sleeping Jane in the chair beside him. She quickly made off to the forecastle with her treats.
Dropping to one knee, Lark knelt at eye level to her charge, nose pressed to his. His throaty chuckle melted her, as did his soft hands that fingered her face. She kissed his dimpled cheek and chin, then drew a surprise from her pocket. She held it within easy reach, smiling as he took the stick of black treacle. He turned it over in his plump hands.
“’Tis hardened molasses,” she told him, grateful to the cabin boy for the offering.
Larkin mouthed it, expression shifting from curiosity to delight. She rested her head upon the linen bedding beside him. His outstretched legs were tangled in his nightshirt, bare feet peeking out, his milky, sugary scent a solace.
Her thoughts spun to the married surgeon before circling back to Kerrera and Magnus, then veering yet again to the floating bees and heather in pots that refused to flower.
Granny. The castle stillroom. Isla’s passing. The past filled her thoughts to the brim. Was there a Scripture for that? For bittersweet memories? Or only a verse for the future?
Take no thought for the morrow.
23
The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
It was laundry day on deck, the few hours save the Sabbath that the convict women were spared picking oakum. Fires smoked across the waist of the ship, overriding the stench of the ballast—countless boiling kettles overseen by all but Mrs. Ravenhill, who had other more refined tasks like mending and patching officers’ clothes.
By noon the deck bore a slippery, soapy sheen, the rails and rigging adorned with drying garments. Lark washed Larkin’s clouts in salt water while he napped in his box bed in the shade. Glad she was he’d not be walking till they landed. Wo
uld Osbourne’s plantation be fit for a baby? Would Larkin be counted an indenture same as she?
She went to the quarterdeck to judge the state of the bees, dismayed to find a few already dead or dying. Some flew about as if dazed, a worrisome sign. A dozen or so flowering pots from the plant cabin had been cloistered around the straw skeps. Was that even necessary? One skep seemed almost idle, another furiously active. Though they’d surely perish by too much handling and mismanagement, she wondered if they might be better below deck.
She replenished their water, unsure if doing so mattered, before returning to a sleeping Larkin and the plants. Surgeon Blackburn was there, writing in his journal. She’d not seen him since leaving the captain’s table abruptly with the laird the night before.
“Good day, Miss MacDougall.”
“Good day, sir.”
Avoiding his gaze, she checked on Larkin again and found him sweating beneath his awning, so she removed his cap. He dreamed on, his damp hair a riot of ginger wisps in the heat.
“Feels like the merciless Virginia sun,” he remarked, looking decidedly overwarm in his uniform.
She’d pushed back her own sleeves, her Quaker cap doing little to shield sunburn. The sea was blue glass, the sails mostly idle, little wind to cool them. Would they soon encounter the doldrums so hated by sailors, their ship becalmed for days, even weeks?
She felt Blackburn’s eyes on her, following her as she moved among the plants. A few needling words begged saying.
Tell me, sir, about yer wife and bairns.
Biting her tongue, she maneuvered around him, watering, pruning, even praying.
He looked up from his scribbling. “One of the tea trees is listless.”
“So I see,” she replied. And not only the tea tree. One too many plants bore curled or limp leaves and brown edges. Some seemed nearly scorched on deck after the cooler Scottish climate. The sweet gale was long past hope, so she tossed the deadened stalks overboard, saving the precious pot and dirt. Amid all the water, her whole being hungered for solid ground, much like these long-suffering plants.
“There’s a storm coming.”
She ceased watering, eyes on the flat sea.
“Ring around the sun, rain before day is done.”
“Ring around the moon, rain before noon.” She well knew a halo around the moon bespoke a storm. “Moonbroch.”
“Aye.” His perennially serious expression of late grew pained. “We’ll be in the teeth of a gale by dusk.”
Lark looked up and spied the sun’s strange ring. A shiver shot through her. No sooner had she finished her morning round of watering and tending than the wind began to pick up, blowing her skirts sideways.
The afternoon wore on, the wind keener, and the sailors all around her grew more watchful, even wary.
“Trim the sails!” The boatswain gave the order and several sailors began furling the canvas, Rory among them, one hundred feet high in the rigging.
“Take the plants below.” At Blackburn’s stern order, several seamen obeyed with alarming haste, removing the pots around her and hauling them out of sight to a more secure location.
What of Osbourne’s precious bees? These were removed with more care, even hardened seamen chary of being stung. She let go a breath of relief.
In rough seas, if the water sloshed into the ship, the straw skeps would fall to pieces with no clooming or waterproofing—not even a hackle, the humblest of straw roofs. Below they might survive.
Mrs. Ravenhill appeared, helping the women gather the partially dried laundry. Lark went to Larkin, who was awake now as if stirred by the activity all around them. He reached for her, expression pensive as a pelting rain began to slash sideways, borne on the surly wind.
Magnus and the captain were at the stern. Magnus’s very presence bolstered her, yet it couldn’t allay her rising queasiness. Reared on Kerrera, she knew the sea’s many moods and she’d learned to respect them, safely ashore with her stomach settled.
But here in the midst of so much angry water . . .
She’d seen storms break a ship apart, dashing it to pieces on Kerrera’s coast while she stood by helplessly from her croft’s rain-spattered window. Many a ship stayed afloat but were caught in the deep trough between waves, the hulls slammed mercilessly by walls of water till the storm’s end.
Mrs. Ravenhill touched her arm. “Being London reared, I know little of the sea.” Her cultured voice belied her convict status. “You’re an islander, born and bred to the coast. What does this storm mean?”
Shifting Larkin to her other hip, Lark weighed her answer. The bald truth? “Best go below to yer hammock. Keep to the stern where there’s less rolling.” This she knew from Rory and the Merry Lass. “Mayhap the captain’s quarters.”
“With a bucket, I fear.” Her fair skin, mottled by smallpox scars and the sun, paled even as Lark’s own stomach somersaulted.
Lark fixed her gaze on the waves, no longer blue but an unpolished pewter. “Pray.”
A thin smile. “Prayer has never been my forte.”
“It may well be, come the storm’s clearing.”
Mrs. Ravenhill moved away as the deck tilted, her feet taking little dance-like steps to keep her upright.
Lark looked to Larkin who gnawed on his fist, his other hand clutching her bodice. She nearly missed Magnus’s sudden appearance to her left, Larkin’s box bed in hand.
“Go below, Lark. To yer hammock. Pay no mind to the plants and bees lest ye be knocked about.” His voice was snatched by the wind, and together they sought the hatch, his hand on her elbow to steady her. “I’ll be in the captain’s quarters. He feels we’ll likely be swept off course.”
He opened the door to her cabin and placed the box bed in a corner, tied it down, and moved a candlestick and a few other belongings for safekeeping into a chest. The hammock swung invitingly, and Larkin gave a yawn.
“Remember,” Magnus said at the last with a reassuring smile, “that even the wind and the waves obey Him.”
Somehow she slept, Larkin wedged into the hammock with her along with the extra blanket Blackburn had given her early on. All around them roared the chaos of the sea, the terrible straining of the ship’s timbers. Every creak and groan brought a wince. And then came the rush of moving water, an odd sound as it cascaded down the hatch and companionway, sliding beneath her door to slosh against the cabin wall.
Lord, have mercy.
She shifted, legs cramped from lying too long. Larkin’s cheek rounded like an orchard apple against her linen-clad breast, his lashes a sweep of ginger fringe. Perched above the water, hammock swinging but slightly, she eyed the pouch hanging from a peg near the door. In it she’d stored ship’s biscuits and molasses sticks, beset with the ongoing quest to feed him. If he awoke hungry, there’d be no goat’s milk. For all she knew the livestock would wash overboard. Even the crew secured themselves with ropes on deck to guard against the storm, but the helpless animals . . . She shivered again in the dampness, struck by a darker thought.
What if the ship foundered and they all drowned?
Overcome, she squeezed her eyes shut. Lost at sea. Kerrera’s kirkyard held bodies washed ashore, unknown and unmourned. Magnus bore the cost of burial. Here, in the uncharted Atlantic, countless miles from land, they’d simply succumb to the deep. And the deep would deny her many a hope. A husband. A home. Babes of her own. Yet mightn’t the depths also be kind? Spare her a strange land with its strange ways and servitude?
Larkin grew blurred. She turned her face to the hammock to catch her tears before they dampened him. The ship rolled anew and she drew in a quick breath, expecting the violent motion to swing the hammock toward the wall like a pendulum and spill them out. She clutched Larkin tighter, riveted by the rush of pouring water, the force of it flinging open the door.
On its heels came Magnus, wind whipped. His black hair was torn from its usual tie and plastered to his corded neck, shirt and breeches soaked. Shoeless. Hatless. She’d never seen
him so unkempt.
One hand closed over the knotted end of her hammock where it hung from the ceiling. His other hand held a small lantern aloft, its flame flickering. He hung it from a beam as the ship pitched the other way, nearly flinging him into the wall.
Larkin awoke with a sharp cry. Water trickled from the ceiling, spattering her as she tried to shield him. To no avail.
“D’ye need to be lashed in?” Magnus shouted.
“Nay.” Lashed in to the hammock and likely drowned? She smoothed Larkin’s damp hair with a trembling hand as he squirmed uncomfortably. “Have ye been on deck?”
“Aye, bailing. All but the captain and some of the women.” He ran a hand over his dripping features. “One man overboard. And the stern’s sprung a leak.”
She mulled the loss and the implications of leak, and her mind lurched along with the struggling ship. Larkin cried louder, and she gestured to the pouch and flask along the wall, miraculously still dangling.
Magnus brought them with some effort. Hanging onto the hammock, he watched as she fumbled in the pouch for both a biscuit and a sweet. Larkin finally quieted when she gave each into his hands.
“I’d milk the goat if I could,” he told her wryly.
She nearly smiled. Another groan of the timbers erupted and they tipped sideways again.
Magnus stared at the dripping ceiling. “Pray the waves dinna pitchpoll her.”
End over end? If so, the Bonaventure would capsize and all would be lost. But at the moment, Larkin’s clout had simply overflowed, wetting her lap. Yet it hardly mattered, damp as they were. Shutting her eyes, she uttered another silent, prayerful plea.
“Lark, listen to me.” Magnus had worked his way to the head of the hammock, his mouth near her ear as he strove to be heard above the storm’s fury. “Ye need to ken I’ll make this right with ye. In time. ’Twas my fault, what happened with Isla. I shouldna have wed her.” His face contorted as a rivulet of water from above spattered him. He shook it off before leaning in to her again. “Ye were my choice. From the first. I told my father so, long before battle. Before Culloden. But he naysayed the match.”