by Sara Donati
It was not the worst solution. Over the mizzenmast the stars turned in endless wheels, and Elizabeth could raise her head to look for the glimmer of sails on the horizon. It was something she did quite often, for even tightly bound the throbbing in her breasts was bad enough to keep her from a real sleep. Nathaniel was not better off; she could hear him constantly turning and shifting.
The hammocks were narrow and would never hold the both of them, but what she wanted, what she needed, was to sleep beside him, tucked into his side with his arm around her. With the sound of Nathaniel’s heartbeat in her ear she might be able to find some peace for a few hours. But Elizabeth found that more than her children had been taken from her: she no longer knew how to talk to her husband. How could she speak of her own discomfort when all of this was her fault? And if she said that to him, if she put the truth out in a line of words, one after the other, what would he do? She tasted salt on her skin and could not tell if it was sea spray, or her own tears.
“Boots,” he called softly.
“Yes?”
His feet thumped on the deck, and then he was leaning over her. She could not make out his expression in the dark, but she could feel the sweet warmth of him.
“If you don’t get some sleep you’ll fall ill.”
“You’re not sleeping either, Nathaniel.”
“I would if I could hold you.”
What help was there for her then? She collapsed slowly inward, sorrow raking through the last of her self-control. The hammock shook with her sobs so that she could hardly breathe, aware only dimly of the milk that flowed from her breasts now, finally, as she wept. And then Nathaniel simply tipped the canvas sling toward him and she slid into the cradle of his arms.
He took the full force of her misery without protest, although there was a trembling in him. With her face pressed to his neck she wept herself into a quieter, duller place, and then Nathaniel turned and walked with her to the longboat that took up the center of the main deck. He set her on her feet to throw back the canvas cover and then he climbed in, and reached down to lift her over the side.
The cover made a cave of the boat once it was pulled back over their heads. Inside it was damp and close and it smelled of mildew and spilled ale, but it was quiet out of the wind and there was a tarpaulin to serve as a makeshift mattress and blanket both. There was just enough room between two benches to lie in a half-recline, side by side. Elizabeth settled against him carefully. Her whole body felt hollow and distant, a poor quaking thing, but Nathaniel was solid and warm and immediately comforting. Last summer on the run in the endless forests they had slept like this sometimes, under an outcropping of cliff.
“A year ago,” she said out loud.
“I been thinking about that too,” Nathaniel said. “Solid ground under our feet and Richard Todd on our tails. And the day Joe died.” His fingers traced the side of her face. “On the island, do you remember?”
Elizabeth rubbed her face on the rough linen of his shirt. “If I live to be a hundred I will remember that island.”
“I suppose a woman likes to think of the day she gets with child for the first time.”
Elizabeth jerked a little in surprise.
“You can’t know that. It could have happened any time, we were … quite busy with each other.”
Nathaniel pressed his mouth to the top of her head; she could feel him trying to smile.
“You’ve forgot your words,” he said. “And I went to such trouble to teach them to you.”
Elizabeth shook him lightly. “Don’t change the subject, you know I can’t be distracted so easily. Why are you so sure that I fell pregnant at that particular time?”
He shrugged. “Because I know. Because I felt it happen. And you did too, if you’ll think about it and trust your gut.”
“It is very strange how these conversations always come down to my inner workings,” Elizabeth said, and she heard the tone of her voice, and regretted it. She wound her fingers in Nathaniel’s shirt and squeezed his arm as hard as she could. “I trust you, that is enough. Right now, it’s all that I have.”
He whispered into her hair, his tone solemn now and nothing of teasing in him. “The world will be right again, Boots. Tomorrow or the day after we’ll catch up with the Isis, but now we’ll sleep. Sleep’s the thing.” He shifted her slightly against him and the pain in her over filled breasts flared hot, so that she had to stifle a cry against his chest.
Nathaniel jerked up, holding her so that he could peer into her face. “You’re hurting,” he said, his cool hands on her skin under the borrowed homespun shirt, full wet with tears and lost milk. “I didn’t know it was that bad. Can I help you?”
“No,” she said, trying to turn away in the narrow space, mortified and undone. “There are some hurts that even you cannot mend, Nathaniel.”
“And some I can. Let me help you.” His voice broke, and with it her resolve. And so she let him have his way, let him take what was meant for her children—their children—and tried not to imagine their sweet faces at a strange woman’s breast as she wound her fingers in Nathaniel’s hair hard enough to make him gasp. In time he brought her to a place where she could offer him some comfort in turn, and then she fell away shuddering still with his touch, and this newest burden of relief.
They woke to the sound of raised voices as the larboard watch came on deck, just as the first of the sun found its way through the seams on the canvas cover. Elizabeth blinked and rubbed her eyes, and then she heard the whisper she had missed at first: Robbie, standing at the side of the longboat.
“Are ye awake?”
Nathaniel stretched and reached out to toss back the cover. “We are.”
Elizabeth stood, wobbling a little in her disorientation. Robbie sent her a sidelong glance, and she marveled that in all the time they had spent with this man, he still blushed furiously at the sight of her, whether she was in her finest gown or at her worst, as she was now. Her hair was a tangled mass and her face still swollen with weeping; Granny Stoker’s borrowed shirt and breeches were too large and hung awkwardly, cinched at the waist with a rope that served as a makeshift belt. And she itched, so that she could barely keep from scratching.
Robbie held out his arm and she took it, landing on deck with a thump. With both hands she swiped at herself in an attempt to dislodge the grit of the longboat, but her gaze moved out over the sea. It was a beautiful morning, and she had slept deeply. Nothing could lessen the ache and anger at the heart of this journey, and she was still in considerable—and renewed—discomfort, but she was heartened by the sun and the hum of the winds in the sails; her resolve was still firm, but despair had loosened its grip.
“Today,” she said to Robbie. And saw what she had not thought to notice, that he was in need of a kind word, too.
He nodded. “It canna be too soon.”
Nathaniel clapped Robbie on the back. “I’ll bet you’ve already been down to the galley.”
Robbie grimaced slightly. “Aye, that I have. But I wadna recommend it for Elizabeth—it’s a wee rough. I’ll bring ye what there is tae eat, but first there’s word.”
Elizabeth and Nathaniel turned to him in one movement.
“Hawkeye and Stoker are waitin’ for the baith o’ ye on the quarterdeck.”
Elizabeth would have started off in that direction immediately, but Nathaniel caught her by the arm. “What’s this about, Rab?”
“The Osiris.”
“What of the Osiris?” asked Elizabeth, seeing how Nathaniel’s expression darkened. He seemed as angry about Moncrieff’s arrangements for them to be chaperoned to Scotland on the Osiris as he was about the kidnapping itself.
“She’s been sighted, five miles off,” said Robbie. He looked toward the western horizon, where Elizabeth could see only a smudge of haze. She thought of climbing the rigging, and put the idea reluctantly aside, as light-headed as she was.
“The Osiris is following us?”
Nathaniel grunted so
ftly. “Her captain can’t much like the idea of explaining to Carryck why we aren’t on board.”
Her disquiet growing rapidly, Elizabeth said, “The Osiris must outgun us.”
“Aye, that she does,” said Robbie. “I saw her in Québec. Thirty-two guns, and near two hundred men. The equal o’ the Isis, I’d say.”
Elizabeth took in this information in silence. Throughout her girlhood she had been fed facts about the Royal Navy with her breakfast, for her uncle Merriweather had always wanted to go to sea, and lived the life vicariously—and volubly—with the aid of newspaper reports. She knew very well what it meant for the Osiris to carry thirty-two guns. With four twelve-pounder carronades to a side, the Jackdaw was better armed than most schooners of her size, but she was undercrewed and in a battle she would never prevail. She wasn’t made to fight, but to run: that’s what smugglers did.
She squared her shoulders and met Nathaniel’s eyes. “Moncrieff wants you and Hawkeye, after all. The Osiris wouldn’t take the risk of firing on us.”
“I suppose that’s true enough, Boots,” said Nathaniel quietly.
“What is it that you fear, then? Do you think she might try to board us?”
The men exchanged glances over her head.
“It wadna be easy for her tae get alangside a schooner,” said Rob. “But I expect she’ll try, and then she’ll see us come on board, at the end of a muzzle, if necessary.”
With a glance around them to make sure that they could not be overheard, Elizabeth said, “Does it not strike you as odd that the Earl of Carryck should risk two valuable merchantmen in this pursuit? To have them cross the Atlantic without the protection of a convoy—it is remarkable to the extreme. I think we are missing something in all of this, and it may be quite important.”
In a disgusted tone, Robbie said, “Carryck’s naucht but a bluidy stubborn man, wha’ will ha’ his way, and gin it means he must strangle the heavens for it.”
“No,” said Elizabeth, her gaze still focused on Nathaniel. “It is more than tenacity. It is desperation.”
All day they ran before the wind, with the Osiris behind them like a knot in the tail of a kite. Elizabeth borrowed a spyglass to have a look at her now and then, but she could make out nothing but the fact that the ship seemed to have a great many sails unfurled. Too many, according to Connor, Stoker’s first mate, who stood at the wheel muttering loudly. “And they call us reckless. She’ll snap a mast and then we’ll laugh, won’t we.”
“Not if they catch us up first,” Elizabeth said. It was a mistake, for he refused to lend her the spyglass again.
With each passing hour the tension on deck grew. Stoker alternated between climbing the rigging to hang there for long periods, conferring with Connor about speed and sails, and pacing the deck. He would not be drawn into conversation with his passengers, although Robbie tried more than once.
Finally Robbie gave up and settled down near the longboat where the Bonners had claimed a spot for themselves out of the crew’s way. For a while they watched a pod of whales that was running along with them in great leaping dives, as sleek and fast and mysterious as lightning in a darkening sky. But none of them could concentrate on the sight for long, as beautiful as it was.
The Bonners had too little experience on board a ship the size of the Jackdaw to be of any real help, and so they found other things to occupy themselves. Nathaniel cleaned the muskets and the rifle while Hawkeye sharpened their knives with a whetstone borrowed from the galley. Robbie had found the sailmaker’s kit and set himself to mending a rent in his shirt, while Elizabeth sorted through the few belongings that the men had had with them when they came so unexpectedly on board.
She was put in mind of her aunt Merriweather, who never traveled with less than six trunks, no matter how short the journey. They were four and they had among them a single carry sack with the gown and cape she had been wearing yesterday, two extra shirts and one pair of breeches, a half-horn of powder, some shot and a patch box, the bag of silver coin they had taken away from the Isis (Hawkeye wore both sacks of gold on leather thongs slung across his chest), a straight razor, and more curiously, a deck of cards and a few thick tallow candles wrapped in a piece of homespun.
She held one up, surprised at its weight although she knew very well that it held a blade at its center.
“From your friend the pig farmer in Montréal?”
Hawkeye inclined his head. “You never know when you’ll have need of a little light.” His gaze scanned the horizon; Elizabeth knew what he was looking for.
“Hawkeye,” she said. “Do you intend to kill Moncrieff?”
She felt Nathaniel’s eyes on her, but she kept her gaze on her father-in-law. She had not often seen Hawkeye openly angry, and even now she could not call the expression she saw in his face so much anger as resolve.
“I intend to get my grandchildren back safe and sound,” he said. “If no harm has come to them, and if nobody stands in my way, why then, nobody will get hurt. Unless you’re wanting to see the man dead, that is. I could find my way to oblige you without too much trouble.”
Elizabeth pulled her folded legs up and pressed her forehead to her knees, rocking slightly. She did not like this razor-sharp edge of herself: all emotion, and no reason at all. For she would gladly see Moncrieff dead; even to think his name filled her mouth with a bitterness she could barely swallow. And these three good men would take a life to appease the burning inside her. They were capable of that, for all their kindness and care; and so was she, now. A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green. She might have said it aloud; she feared she had, for she felt Nathaniel’s hand on her back.
“I want my children back,” she said, able now to raise her head and meet his gaze. “Whatever the cost.”
“Christ on the cross, ye useless bilge rat!” Stoker’s voice carried the length of the ship, so that they turned just in time to see young Jacques scoot out of the way of his captain’s swinging arm. Elizabeth drew in a sharp breath, but Stoker had already given up the chase, and the boy was safe.
“There’s a mannie in a black mood,” said Robbie.
Hawkeye nodded. “His reputation has caught up with him. He never thought they’d give chase, and now he’s got to show us what he’s worth.” He looked at Elizabeth, his gaze narrowed and thoughtful. “The Osiris is gaining on us, anybody can see that plain. If push comes to shove, then you go belowdecks and sit tight.”
“But we cannot take on a ship the size of the Osiris. That would be madness.” Elizabeth looked at each of them, and got only dark expressions in return.
“It ain’t up to us,” said Nathaniel, wiping down the barrel of the musket. “It’s Stoker’s ship.”
“Maybe not,” said Hawkeye, and he pointed with his chin.
The first mate had appeared on deck carrying Granny Stoker in his arms. In the bright afternoon sunlight the old lady’s complexion was a papery yellow and she seemed as frail as dried grass, but her voice could still carry.
“You useless sons o’ whores,” she screeched. “Standin’ about wit’ your thumbs up your sorry arses! Connor, you damn idiot, put me down or I’ll skin your ugly back me-self, and wit’ a dull knife.”
The first mate did as she asked with a stony face, settling her into a sling chair hung from an arm low on the foremast.
Stoker came marching down the deck, his expression enough to make Elizabeth draw back into the circle of her menfolk.
“Mac, have you gone blind as well as daft?” His grandmother waved her cane in Stoker’s direction as if she would gladly box his ears with it. “More sail, boyo, more sail! Put some muscle in it!”
Stoker bent his dark head down to hers and bellowed, “I’m the captain of this ship, you stinkin’ old trout, and I’ll sail her as I see fit!”
“Old trout, is it? And have ye had a sniff at your high-and-mighty self lately?” She swiped at him with the cane and he sidestepped.
“Go back to your hidey-hole, G
ranny. I’ve no need of you here.”
“Is that so? And did I sign over this beauty of a ship to you to see her mishandled? She needs more sail to do her work, unless you’re after havin’ a great bloody merchantman slide up your skinny arse.”
Elizabeth drew in a hiccup of surprise, but the men grinned into their hands.
“If I was a betting man, I’d put some coin on the old woman,” said Hawkeye.
“I havena heard sic language since I left the army,” said Robbie, his color rising a shade with every exchange between Stoker and his grandmother.
Elizabeth knew that she should be shocked, but at the moment she was more interested in what the argument revealed about their fate.
“Anne Bonney,” said Hawkeye, studying the old woman with one eye squeezed shut against the sun. “I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Elizabeth said, “I wonder that I have never heard of her before, as she is known to all of you.”
Robbie threw her a sidelong glance. “I expect the tales canna be tolt in polite company. Most folks believe she hung long ago, doon Jamaica way. A bonnie lass, wi’ the heart o’ a lion and the habits o’ a crow—she’d snatch up any shiny bauble tha’ took her eye. And in a battle, when things turned tae the worse and men began tae flee for their lives, she cursed them aa for cowards, and foucht on. So goes the tale o’ the pirate Anne Bonney.”
“Pirate?” Elizabeth’s head came up in surprise.
“Och, aye,” said Robbie. “A marauder o’ the first rank, was Anne Bonney. Ye’ll nivver see anither like her.”
“Let’s hope not,” grunted Hawkeye.