by Sara Donati
“The first mate?” Nathaniel asked, his voice sounding high and far away. “Adam MacKay?”
She nodded. “Mrs. MacKay watches and watches, and I’m worried that he might try to take them to save their souls. And to save her.”
Later, when Hannah had gone off to bed, Curiosity said what they had all been thinking.
“Strong willed, but she comes from a line of strong women, and it will serve her well, in the end.” She said this with a tired smile, and with a steady gaze in Elizabeth’s direction. “There’s worse faults for a woman.”
“Curiosity,” said Nathaniel. “Don’t back down now. You were right.”
Elizabeth sat up very straight, and put down her book. “Right about what, Nathaniel? Has someone been bothering Hannah?”
He told them, and watched their faces transform from surprise to anger.
“That black-hearted bastard,” said Curiosity. “Using God to scare a child. There ain’t nothing worse.”
Elizabeth was pale. “I should have paid more attention.”
Curiosity waved a hand in dismissal. “Never mind about that now. Go on and figure out what needs to get done to put things right.”
In the sky above the Isis, the constellations were as clear as Elizabeth had ever seen: Dragon and Plough, and to the east Cygnus, Lyra, and the Scorpion were rising. The very same stars they would sleep under on hot summer nights at Lake in the Clouds. How strange that they could be so far from home and still watch the same stars rise and set, night by night; how little comfort they provided.
Nathaniel put an arm around her. “What’re you looking for up there?”
“Some sense of order, I suppose. Something to explain Adam MacKay.”
The anger in him hummed; she could feel it in his arm, in his whole body.
“Can you let me take care of it?”
The truth was, she did not especially care what Adam MacKay’s fate might turn out to be at Nathaniel’s hands.
“I’m afraid I’m not quite so enlightened and rational as I once was,” she said. “You will do what you must.”
“And so will you.”
“Of course.”
She thought he would be angry at her refusal to agree to stay out of this trouble, but he slipped his arms around her from the back and kissed her jaw. His breath was warm at her ear, and deep in her belly there was a quick blossoming of nerves. She turned in his arms, and he came up tight against her.
“What have I done to bring this on so suddenly?”
His lips at her ear, and a shudder of gooseflesh rushed up along her spine.
“I like it when you bare your teeth and get ready to fight,” he said. “And then of course you’re breathing. That always does the trick, too.”
Elizabeth laughed, and he cut her off with a rough kiss, deep and immediate, his tongue touching hers. When he broke away she put her hands on his shoulders.
“I’m sure the bosun will find this all very enlightening, but—”
He pulled her into the shadows and kissed her again. Elizabeth felt all her objections slipping away when his hand grazed her breast. Then he stopped, and his eyes seemed very large to her, and his expression suddenly guarded.
“The watch.”
She hadn’t heard the footsteps, but the marine was upon them already. He walked on as if they were invisible; enough time for Elizabeth to gather her wits. She went back to the rail, and Nathaniel followed.
“So much uncertainty and trouble, and still you can make me lose my head. It is most unprincipled of me, given the circumstances.” She said it aloud—a confession of sorts, and one that sounded silly to her own ears.
Nathaniel laughed, a dry laugh without conviction. “Only you can feel guilty about not feeling miserable, Boots.”
She was not miserable, it was true. She had her children and her husband and Curiosity nearby, all in good health. Now that they knew what was bothering Hannah, that could be made right. There was every reason to believe that Hawkeye and Robbie were also well, if not as comfortable on the Jackdaw in the company of Giselle Somerville and Granny Stoker.
She was not miserable, because she knew with complete certainty that there was some way for them to get home, and Nathaniel would find it. She knew too that there was no way to say this to him. She might find some peace in the here and now, but Nathaniel would not be satisfied until he could act.
She put her cheek against his shoulder. “Do you remember The Tempest? We read it aloud last winter. One line stays with me these days: ‘Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.’”
“Ah,” he said. “I know you’re feeling yourself when you start quoting.”
She pushed him playfully. “You once appreciated my quotes.”
“I still do, Boots.” There was something of his old teasing tone in his voice, something keen edged and welcome and she knew that he wanted to pick up where they had left off just a few minutes ago, but the hatch opened and he stepped away.
A shaggy blond head appeared above bony shoulders.
“Mungo,” said Elizabeth, letting out a small hiccup of relief. “Why are you up so late?”
The boy hesitated, looking around himself as if he expected the quartermaster to jump out and box his ears. When he was sure there was no danger he sought out Nathaniel’s gaze, as if to ask permission to come closer.
“Did you want to talk?” Nathaniel asked.
The boy nodded and came toward them, studying his feet with great interest. Mungo would go to great lengths to be in Elizabeth’s company—it was not the first time he had sought them out so late at night. He had attached himself to her when they took him aboard the Jackdaw.
“I’ve got a wee somethin’ for ye,” he said, and brought out his hand from behind his back. Elizabeth drew back in surprise, for he held some kind of blade there, dark of color, long and slender.
“The neb o’ a swordfish,” said Mungo, touching his own upturned nose to illustrate. “It’s gey sharp, missus. They swish it aboot tae kill squid and the like.”
Elizabeth glanced at Nathaniel and he lifted one brow at her, not quite concerned and a little intrigued.
“It is very kind of you, Mungo, to think of us.” He had wrapped the broader end in a piece of rawhide and she took it gingerly between two fingers. From the tip to the base it was as long as her arm.
“Did you catch the fish yourself?”
“Och, ne. A gey great monster, is a swordfish. The meat is richt tasty, forbye, bu’ they fight like the de’il.”
Nathaniel bent over to examine it more closely. “Where did you come by it?”
“A marine harpooned him. He gave the neb tae ma brother Charlie, and Charlie gave it tae me.”
Elizabeth handed the sword to Nathaniel and resisted the urge to wipe her hands on her handkerchief. “Are you sure you want to part with such a treasure?”
Even in the near dark the boy’s blush was clear to see. He sent her a sidelong glance. “Ye were kind tae me when I was injured, missus. I willna forget it.”
Nathaniel asked, “How’s that bump on your head today?”
The boy touched his forehead. “No’ sae bad.” He inched a little closer, still examining his own feet. Elizabeth sensed that he would roll over like a puppy if she patted his head.
“What’s that?” Nathaniel asked, turning sharply toward the west, where a rushing noise seemed to come from the darkened sea.
“Sweet Mary,” breathed Mungo. “A falling star.”
It arched across the sky, its tail undulating in a blaze of white and yellow. The whole of it sizzled as if the air around it were on fire, and it seemed to Elizabeth as wide as the sky itself and as bright as the sun.
“White panther in the sky,” said Nathaniel, his voice hoarse with excitement.
“Aye,” Mungo whispered. “He roars.”
It did roar, but more faintly as the star spun to the east. They watched, the three of them focused on the sight of it until th
e ferocious light disappeared into the sea.
Elizabeth said, “Do you think anyone else saw it?”
“No,” said Nathaniel, still staring at the spot where it had disappeared. “The sign was meant for us.”
He looked down at her, and for the first time in so many weeks he smiled, really smiled, his teeth sparkling white in the dark.
“A sign,” Elizabeth repeated. After more than a year with Nathaniel she was still sometimes taken by surprise by his faith in things she would have once dismissed summarily: unseen worlds; dreams that evoked truths beyond the ones that could be dissected by reason; a sky that opened itself to offer faith and speculation.
“Is it a good sign, then?”
“The best kind before battle,” Nathaniel said. He covered her hand and squeezed it hard.
Mungo glanced between them. “Battle? Surely ye canna mean ye want tae fight Carryck.”
Nathaniel nodded. “If that’s what it takes to get home.”
The boy licked his lips nervously, glanced up at the quiet sky and back to Nathaniel. He started to say something and then stopped.
“Mungo?” Elizabeth tried to catch his eye, but he would not look at her. “What is it?”
“I’m feart for ye.” He frowned, and ground a knuckle hard into his eye. “I’m feart for ye if ye stay and I’m feart for ye should ye slip awa’ and head for hame.”
Nathaniel’s expression hardened. “Say what you’ve got to say, Mungo.”
The boy’s face crumpled suddenly. “Carryck will come after ye, and he willna be alone. The earl wants ye alive, ye see, but John Campbell o’ Breadalbane wants ye daid.”
Nathaniel’s expression was almost one of relief, to hear finally what he had suspected. “Tell me what you know of this business.”
Mungo’s face drained of color until it was so white that it seemed to have soaked up the moonlight itself.
Elizabeth could hardly breathe. “Mungo, please. Think of the children. Please help us.”
“I owe ye my life, missus, I ken that weel enough.” He let out a whistling sigh and met Nathaniel’s gaze. “I can tell ye only what every man on this ship kens already. Some years syne, the earl’s dauchter Isabel ran off tae marry Walter Campbell o’ Loudoun.”
Nathaniel jerked back. “Carryck has a living daughter?”
Mungo’s voice shook. “He disowned her when she eloped wi’ a Campbell o’ the Breadalbane line. Wi’oot a male heir all Carryck falls intae John Campbell’s hands. That canna happen, ye mun understan’, and it willna happen, sae lang as there’s a man alive under Carryck tae fight.”
Nathaniel pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Are you saying that all this—kidnapping women and children, the loss of a ship with two hundred men aboard, and devil knows what else—that it was all to keep his money away from his own daughter because she married into this Breadalbane clan?”
“No!” Mungo’s voice wavered and broke. “It’s got naethin’ tae do wi’ money. It’s the land. Can ye no’ understand? Carryck and every man who ever swore him an oath wad die tae keep the Scot territories free o’ the Campbells.”
Nathaniel’s brow creased. “What does it matter to the men who sweat in Carryck’s fields who owns the land?”
“Nathaniel,” Elizabeth said, as calmly and firmly as she could. “Surely you understand the concept of a blood feud. You have told me similar stories of the Hodenosaunee.”
“No,” Nathaniel said, his jaw set hard. “There’s something else going on here. I can smell it, and I’ll wager Mungo can tell us what it is.”
The boy’s shoulders rolled forward, and his gaze darted away into the shadows. When he looked at them again, he was calm. “If I had anythin’ tae tell ye that wad keep ye safe, I wadna keep it tae masel’. And that’s aye true.”
The bosun’s voice came to them, raised in conversation with the marine on watch. Mungo sent them a pleading look and slipped away silently.
When the watch had passed and they were alone again, Nathaniel put his arm around Elizabeth and pulled her close. “Boots,” he said, his voice ripe with satisfaction. “Our luck is turning.”
“I trust you are right. At least things are starting to make some sense now.”
He grunted, a low and comfortable sound. “You can’t fool me. You might believe in me, but you can’t believe in a sign out of the sky.”
She tugged on his sleeve. “What do you mean, Nathaniel Bonner, with ‘might.’ Of course I believe in you. I have never doubted you for a moment.”
With a little laugh, Nathaniel pulled her face up to his. “Slippery as ever. Listen, Boots. It’s time for you to go below.”
She ducked her head away. “For me to go below? And where will you be?”
“I’ve got business with MacKay,” he said.
He kissed her, a hard stamp of his mouth. His stubble raked her cheek and then he put his lips to her ear, nipping there so that a ripple ran down her spine to the small of her back. “I’ll be with you at sunrise. I swear it.”
Elizabeth lit every candle in the cabin and then she sat down to drum her fingers on the table. Directly in front of her the rosewood clock sat in its wall niche, and it gave her sorry news: just one o’clock in the morning, hours until sunrise. Hours in which irritation and worry would battle for the upper hand.
In front of her there was a small pile of books, Hannah’s basket with its bits and pieces, papers and notes, Mungo’s sword, paper, quill and ink, and a half-eaten orange. In any other setting these things would have been more than enough to pass the time until sunrise, but this evening Nathaniel was roaming the ship in search of Adam MacKay.
It is between Hannah and her father, Elizabeth told herself resolutely. And between Nathaniel and Adam MacKay. She picked up the orange and peeled off a section. It was parched and sour, but she swallowed resolutely. She would leave this to Nathaniel, as she had once left Billy Kirby to him.
Hannah’s journal lay before her, the page held open by a small bottle of pale yellow fluid. Tucked into the leaves were odd pieces of paper, some in the Hakim’s handwriting, others she did not recognize. On one page Hannah had begun to copy a letter addressed to Hakim Ibrahim from a Dr. Jenner of Barkeley.
Most of the journal was filled with Hannah’s drawings, circle after circle of what she had seen through the Hakim’s microscope, each carefully labeled: skin of an onion, human eyelash, chicken feather, codfish scale. And pages devoted to blood, the blood of every animal on board, and human blood, too. Elizabeth studied them for a good while and could decipher little beyond the notes that Hannah had already made in her small, neat hand: a sea of small oval shapes, and with an occasional larger, rounder shape among them. How strange that this unwanted journey should bring to Hannah an opportunity she would otherwise never have had. It was something to be thankful for, in spite of Adam MacKay.
But it was not enough. Elizabeth stood and pushed the journal away. She could not sit here; she would not. If Nathaniel might move about the ship at night with impunity, so could she.
19
The Kahnyen’kehàka knew that the best time to attack an O’seronni village was at night. As a young man training under Sky-Wound-Round, Nathaniel had heard the stories of such raids, where rich merchants came under the knife with an open tinderbox clutched in a fist. The Kahnyen’kehàka warriors, feared throughout the Hodenosaunee Nation and far beyond for their ferocity and courage, shook their heads over men afraid of the dark.
Nathaniel, growing up between red and white worlds, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of both, knew that this much was true: white men did not all fear the dark, but most of them forgot how to use their ears when the sun set.
Now he made his way through the darkened ship, navigating by his memory, by his senses of smell and touch, and most of all by an ability to listen hard. In the endless forests he knew the size of a doe by the sound of her step in the undergrowth; on the Isis he had come to recognize the walk of a dozen different me
n and boys by the way the boards gave under their feet. Now, just above him on the middle deck, the first officer was on his way to his quarters, weaving down a corridor he had walked a thousand times, making as much noise as a child at play. Nathaniel kept pace with Adam MacKay, moving soundlessly in the dark.
MacKay had been in the round-house earlier in the evening, his strange profile standing out like a flag. Nathaniel knew of the man only a few things: that he ignored his wife, or beat her when he could not; that the sailors respected MacKay’s seamanship but disliked him for his poor humor, the tight fist he kept with rum rations, and his generosity with the whip; that he took pleasure in giving little girls nightmares.
Nathaniel ducked around the thick pillar of the fore capstan, tucked his arms in close, and spidered his way up the narrow ladder to the middle deck. MacKay was just behind now, but not by much. Nathaniel crouched down low in the deeper shadows of the capstan wheel, its long wooden spokes polished smooth by generations of calloused hands. The wood smelled of salt and sweat, and the great wheel muttered softly to itself like an old horse at pasture.
Not ten feet away, MacKay sang in a crusty monotone:
Heart of oak are our ships
Heart of oak are our men
We always are ready
Steady, boys, steady
We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again.
Nathaniel pulled in a lungful of stale air tinged with gunpowder, axle grease, and salt. A calm came over him; he could feel the blood moving through his arms and legs, pooling in his hands. His fingers twitched slightly. It was the feeling a man got when he came across a bear. Bear meant meat for a month or more, fat to cook with, a good pelt. But a bear was always a gamble. Most would take a bullet to the brain and lie down without an argument, but every once in a while you got one too dumb or too ornery to give in quick, and that was the bear to watch out for: she’d take all the lead you could offer and come roaring for more. The trick was to strike fast and hard.