Voyager

by Diana Gabaldon

  “Fresh ginger,” I answered, holding up the remains of the root I was grating. “It’s the thing most of my herbals say is best for nausea.”

  “Oh, aye?” He picked up the bowl, sniffed at the contents, and sneezed explosively, to the vast amusement of the onlookers. I snatched back the bowl before he could spill it.

  “You don’t take it like snuff,” I said. “You drink it in tea. And I hope to heaven it works, because if it doesn’t, we’ll be scooping you out of the bilges, if bilges are what I think they are.”

  “Oh, not to worry, missus,” one of the older hands assured me, overhearing. “Lots o’ green hands feel a bit queerlike the first day or two. But usually they comes round soon enough; by the third day, they’ve got used to the pitch and roll, and they’re up in the rigging, happy as larks.”

  I glanced at Jamie, who was markedly unlarklike at the moment. Still, this comment seemed to give him some hope, for he brightened a bit, and waved to the harassed servingmaid for a glass of ale.

  “It may be so,” he said. “Jared said the same; that seasickness doesna generally last more than a few days, provided the seas aren’t too heavy.” He took a small sip of his ale, and then, with growing confidence, a deeper swallow. “I can stand three days of it, I suppose.”

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon of the second day, six men appeared, winding their way along the stony shore on shaggy Highland ponies.

  “There’s Raeburn in the lead,” Jamie said, shading his eyes and squinting to distinguish the identities of the six small dots. “Kennedy after him, then Innes—he’s missing the left arm, see?—and Meldrum, and that’ll be MacLeod with him, they always ride together like that. Is the last man Gordon, then, or Fergus?”

  “It must be Gordon,” I said, peering over his shoulder at the approaching men, “because it’s much too fat to be Fergus.”

  “Where the devil is Fergus, then?” Jamie asked Raeburn, once the smugglers had been greeted, introduced to their new shipmates, and sat down to a hot supper and a cheerful glass.

  Raeburn bobbed his head in response, hastily swallowing the remains of his pasty.

  “Weel, he said to me as how he’d some business to see to, and would I see to the hiring of the horses, and speak to Meldrum and MacLeod about coming, for they were out wi’ their own boat at the time, and not expected back for a day or twa more, and…”

  “What business?” Jamie said sharply, but got no more than a shrug in reply. Jamie muttered something under his breath in Gaelic, but returned to his own supper without further comment.

  The crew being now complete—save Fergus—preparations began in the morning for getting under way. The deck was a scene of organized confusion, with bodies darting to and fro, popping up through hatchways, and dropping suddenly out of the rigging like dead flies. Jamie stood near the wheel, keeping out of the way, but lending a hand whenever a matter requiring muscle rather than skill arose. For the most part, though, he simply stood, eyes fixed on the road along the shore.

  “We shall have to sail by midafternoon, or miss the tide.” Captain Raines spoke kindly, but firmly. “We’ll have surly weather in twenty-four hours; the glass is falling, and I feel it in my neck.” The Captain tenderly massaged the part in question, and nodded at the sky, which had gone from pewter to lead-gray since early morning. “I’ll not set sail in a storm if I can help it, and if we mean to make the Indies as soon as possible—”

  “Aye, I understand, Captain,” Jamie interrupted him. “Of course; ye must do as seems best.” He stood back to let a bustling seaman go past, and the Captain disappeared, issuing orders as he went.

  As the day wore on, Jamie seemed composed as usual, but I noticed that the stiff fingers fluttered against his thigh more and more often, the only outward sign of worry. And worried he was. Fergus had been with him since the day twenty years before, when Jamie had found him in a Paris brothel, and hired him to steal Charles Stuart’s letters.

  More than that; Fergus had lived at Lallybroch since before Young Ian was born. The boy had been a younger brother to Fergus, and Jamie the closest thing to a father that Fergus had ever known. I could not imagine any business so urgent that it would have kept him from Jamie’s side. Neither could Jamie, and his fingers beat a silent tattoo on the wood of the rail.

  Then it was time, and Jamie turned reluctantly away, tearing his eyes from the empty shore. The hatches were battened, the lines coiled, and several seamen leapt ashore to cast free the mooring hawsers; there were six of them, each a rope as thick around as my wrist.

  I put a hand on Jamie’s arm in silent sympathy.

  “You’d better come down below,” I said. “I’ve got a spirit lamp. I’ll brew you some hot ginger tea, and then you—”

  The sound of a galloping horse echoed along the shore, the scrunch of hoofbeats on gravel echoing from the cliffside well in advance of its appearance.

  “There he is, the wee fool,” Jamie said, his relief evident in voice and body. He turned to Captain Raines, one brow raised in question. “There’s enough of the tide left? Aye, then, let’s go.”

  “Cast off!” the Captain bellowed, and the waiting hands sprang into action. The last of the lines tethering us to the piling was slipped free and neatly coiled, and all around us, lines tightened and sails snapped overhead, as the bosun ran up and down the deck, bawling orders in a voice like rusty iron.

  “She moves! She stirs! ‘She seems to feel / the thrill of life along her keel’!” I declaimed, delighted to feel the deck quiver beneath my feet as the ship came alive, the energy of all the crew poured into its inanimate hulk, transmuted by the power of the wind-catching sails.

  “Oh, God,” said Jamie hollowly, feeling the same thing. He grasped the rail, closed his eyes and swallowed.

  “Mr. Willoughby says he has a cure for seasickness,” I said, watching him sympathetically.

  “Ha,” he said, opening his eyes. “I ken what he means, and if he thinks I’ll let him—what the bloody hell!”

  I whirled to look, and saw what had caused him to break off. Fergus was on deck, reaching up to help down a girl perched awkwardly above him on the railing, her long blond hair whipping in the wind. Laoghaire’s daughter—Marsali MacKimmie.

  Before I could speak, Jamie was past me and striding toward the pair.

  “What in the name of holy God d’ye mean by this, ye wee coofs?” he was demanding, by the time I made my way into earshot through the obstacle course of lines and seamen. He loomed menacingly over the pair, a foot taller than either of them.

  “We are married,” Fergus said, bravely moving in front of Marsali. He looked both scared and excited, his face pale beneath the shock of black hair.

  “Married!” Jamie’s hands clenched at his sides, and Fergus took an involuntary step backward, nearly treading on Marsali’s toes. “What d’ye mean, ‘married’?”

  I assumed this was a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t; Jamie’s appreciation of the situation had, as usual, outstripped mine by yards and seized at once upon the salient point.

  “Have ye bedded her?” he demanded bluntly. Standing behind him, I couldn’t see his face, but I knew what it must look like, if only because I could see the effect of his expression on Fergus. The Frenchman turned a couple of shades paler and licked his lips.

  “Er…no, milord,” he said, just as Marsali, eyes blazing, thrust her chin up and said defiantly, “Yes, he has!”

  Jamie glanced briefly back and forth between the two of them, snorted loudly, and turned away.

  “Mr. Warren!” he called down the deck to the ship’s sailing master. “Put back to the shore, if ye please!”

  Mr. Warren stopped, openmouthed, in the middle of an order addressed to the rigging, and stared, first at Jamie, then—quite elaborately—at the receding shoreline. In the few moments since the appearance of the putative newlyweds, the Artemis had moved more than a thousand yards from the shore, and the rocks of the cliffs were slipping by with inc
reasing speed.

  “I don’t believe he can,” I said. “I think we’re already in the tide-race.”

  No sailor himself, Jamie had spent sufficient time in the company of seamen at least to understand the notion that time and tide wait for no one. He breathed through his teeth for a moment, then jerked his head toward the ladder that led belowdecks.

  “Come down, then, the both of ye.”

  Fergus and Marsali sat together in the tiny cabin, huddled on one berth, hands clutched tight. Jamie waved me to a seat on the other berth, then turned to the pair, hands on his hips.

  “Now, then,” he said. “What’s this nonsense of bein’ married?”

  “It is true, milord,” Fergus said. He was quite pale, but his dark eyes were bright with excitement. His one hand tightened on Marsali’s, his hook resting across his thigh.

  “Aye?” Jamie said, with the maximum of skepticism. “And who married ye?”

  The two glanced at each other, and Fergus licked his lips briefly before replying.

  “We—we are handfast.”

  “Before witnesses,” Marsali put in. In contrast to Fergus’s paleness, a high color burned in her cheeks. She had her mother’s roseleaf skin, but the stubborn set of her jaw had likely come from somewhere else. She put a hand to her bosom, where something crackled under the fabric. “I ha’ the contract, and the signatures, here.”

  Jamie made a low growling noise in his throat. By the laws of Scotland, two people could in fact be legally married by clasping hands before witnesses—handfasting—and declaring themselves to be man and wife.

  “Aye, well,” he said. “But ye’re no bedded, yet, and a contract’s not enough, in the eyes o’ the Church.” He glanced out of the stern casement, where the cliffs were just visible through the ragged mist, then nodded with decision.

  “We’ll stop at Lewes for the last provisions. Marsali will go ashore there; I’ll send two seamen to see her home to her mother.”

  “Ye’ll do no such thing!” Marsali cried. She sat up straight, glaring at her stepfather. “I’m going wi’ Fergus!”

  “Oh, no, you’re not, my lassie!” Jamie snapped. “D’ye have no feeling for your mother? To run off, wi’ no word, and leave her to be worrit—”

  “I left word.” Marsali’s square chin was high. “I sent a letter from Inverness, saying I’d married Fergus and was off to sail wi’ you.”

  “Sweet bleeding Jesus! She’ll think I kent all about it!” Jamie looked horror-stricken.

  “We—I—did ask the lady Laoghaire for the honor of her daughter’s hand, milord,” Fergus put in. “Last month, when I came to Lallybroch.”

  “Aye. Well, ye needna tell me what she said,” Jamie said dryly, seeing the sudden flush on Fergus’s cheeks. “Since I gather the general answer was no.”

  “She said he was a bastard!” Marsali burst out indignantly. “And a criminal, and—and—”

  “He is a bastard and a criminal,” Jamie pointed out. “And a cripple wi’ no property, either, as I’m sure your mother noticed.”

  “I dinna care!” Marsali gripped Fergus’s hand and looked at him with fierce affection. “I want him.”

  Taken aback, Jamie rubbed a finger across his lips. Then he took a deep breath and returned to the attack.

  “Be that as it may,” he said, “ye’re too young to be married.”

  “I’m fifteen; that’s plenty old enough!”

  “Aye, and he’s thirty!” Jamie snapped. He shook his head, “Nay, lassie, I’m sorry about it, but I canna let ye do it. If it were nothing else, the voyage is too dangerous—”

  “You’re taking her!” Marsali’s chin jerked contemptuously in my direction.

  “You’ll leave Claire out of this,” Jamie said evenly. “She’s none of your concern, and—”

  “Oh, she’s not? You leave my mother for this English whore, and make her a laughingstock for the whole countryside, and it’s no my concern, is it?” Marsali leapt up and stamped her foot on the deck. “And you ha’ the hellish nerve to tell me what I shall do?”

  “I have,” Jamie said, keeping hold of his temper with some difficulty. “My private affairs are not your concern—”

  “And mine aren’t any of yours!”

  Fergus, looking alarmed, was on his feet, trying to calm the girl.

  “Marsali, ma chère, you must not speak to milord in such a way. He is only—”

  “I’ll speak to him any way I want!”

  “No, you will not!” Surprised at the sudden harshness in Fergus’s tone, Marsali blinked. Only an inch or two taller than his new wife, the Frenchman had a certain wiry authority that made him seem much bigger than he was.

  “No,” he said more softly. “Sit down, ma p’tite.” He pressed her back down on the berth, and stood before her.

  “Milord has been to me more than a father,” he said gently to the girl. “I owe him my life a thousand times. He is also your stepfather. However your mother may regard him, he has without doubt supported and sheltered her and you and your sister. You owe him respect, at the least.”

  Marsali bit her lip, her eyes bright. Finally she ducked her head awkwardly at Jamie.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, and the air of tension in the cabin lessened slightly.

  “It’s all right, lassie,” Jamie said gruffly. He looked at her and sighed. “But still, Marsali, we must send ye back to your mother.”

  “I won’t go.” The girl was calmer now, but the set of her pointed chin was the same. She glanced at Fergus, then at Jamie. “He says we havena bedded together, but we have. Or at any rate, I shall say we have. If ye send me home, I’ll tell everyone that he’s had me; so ye see—I shall either be married or ruined.” Her tone was reasonable and determined. Jamie closed his eyes.

  “May the Lord deliver me from women,” he said between his teeth. He opened his eyes and glared at her.

  “All right!” he said. “You’re married. But you’ll do it right, before a priest. We’ll find one in the Indies, when we land. And until ye’ve been blessed, Fergus doesna touch you. Aye?” He turned a ferocious gaze on both of them.

  “Yes, milord,” said Fergus, his features suffused with joy. “Merci beaucoup!” Marsali narrowed her eyes at Jamie, but seeing that he wasn’t to be moved, she bowed her head demurely, with a sidelong glance at me.

  “Yes, Daddy,” she said.

  * * *

  The question of Fergus’s elopement had at least distracted Jamie’s mind temporarily from the motion of the ship, but the palliative effect didn’t last. He held on grimly nevertheless, turning greener by the moment, but refusing to leave the deck and go below, so long as the shore of Scotland was in sight.

  “I may never see it again,” he said gloomily, when I tried to persuade him to go below and lie down. He leaned heavily on the rail he had just been vomiting over, eyes resting longingly on the unprepossessingly bleak coast behind us.

  “No, you’ll see it,” I said, with an unthinking surety. “You’re coming back. I don’t know when, but I know you’ll come back.”

  He turned his head to look up at me, puzzled. Then the ghost of a smile crossed his face.

  “You’ve seen my grave,” he said softly. “Haven’t ye?”

  I hesitated, but he didn’t seem upset, and I nodded.

  “It’s all right,” he said. He closed his eyes, breathing heavily. “Don’t…don’t tell me when, though, if ye dinna mind.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “There weren’t any dates on it. Just your name—and mine.”

  “Yours?” His eyes popped open.

  I nodded again, feeling my throat tighten at the memory of that granite slab. It had been what they call a “marriage stone,” a quarter-circle carved to fit with another in a complete arch. I had, of course, seen only the one half.

  “It had all your names on it. That’s how I knew it was you. And underneath, it said, ‘Beloved husband of Claire.’ At the time, I didn’t see how—but now, of course, I
do.”

  He nodded slowly, absorbing it. “Aye, I see. Aye well, I suppose if I shall be in Scotland, and still married to you—then maybe ‘when’ doesna matter so much.” He gave me a shadow of his usual grin, and added wryly, “It also means we’ll find Young Ian safe, for I’ll tell ye, Sassenach, I willna set foot in Scotland again without him.”

  “We’ll find him,” I said, with an assurance I didn’t altogether feel. I put a hand on his shoulder and stood beside him, watching Scotland slowly recede in the distance.

  * * *

  By the time evening set in, the rocks of Scotland had disappeared in the sea mists, and Jamie, chilled to the bone and pale as a sheet, suffered himself to be led below and put to bed. At this point, the unforeseen consequences of his ultimatum to Fergus became apparent.

  There were only two small private cabins, besides the Captain’s; if Fergus and Marsali were forbidden to share one until their union was formally blessed, then clearly Jamie and Fergus would have to take one, and Marsali and I the other. It seemed destined to be a rough voyage, in more ways than one.

  I had hoped that the sickness might ease, if Jamie couldn’t see the slow heave and fall of the horizon, but no such luck.

  “Again?” said Fergus, sleepily rousing on one elbow in his berth, in the middle of the night. “How can he? He has eaten nothing all day!”

  “Tell him that,” I said, trying to breathe through my mouth as I sidled toward the door, a basin in my hands, making my way with difficulty through the tiny, cramped quarters. The deck rose and fell beneath my unaccustomed feet, making it hard to keep my balance.

  “Here, milady, allow me.” Fergus swung bare feet out of bed and stood up beside me, staggering and nearly bumping into me as he reached for the basin.

  “You should go and sleep now, milady,” he said, taking it from my hands. “I will see to him, be assured.”

  “Well…” The thought of my berth was undeniably tempting. It had been a long day.

  “Go, Sassenach,” Jamie said. His face was a ghastly white, sheened with sweat in the dim light of the small oil light that burned on the wall. “I’ll be all right.”

  This was patently untrue; at the same time, it was unlikely that my presence would help particularly. Fergus could do the little that could be done; there was no known cure for seasickness, after all. One could only hope that Jared was right, and that it would ease of itself as the Artemis made its way out into the longer swells of the Atlantic.

  “All right,” I said, giving in. “Perhaps you’ll feel better in the morning.”

  Jamie opened one eye for a moment, then groaned, and shivering, closed it again.

  “Or perhaps I’ll be dead,” he suggested.

  On that cheery note, I made my way out into the dark companionway, only to stumble over the prostrate form of Mr. Willoughby, curled up against the door of the cabin. He grunted in surprise, then, seeing that it was only me, rolled slowly onto all fours and crawled into the cabin, swaying with the rolling of the ship. Ignoring Fergus’s exclamation of distate, he curled himself about the pedestal of the table, and fell promptly back asleep, an expression of beatific content on his small round face.

  My own cabin was just across the companionway, but I paused for a moment, to breathe in the fresh air coming down from the deck above. There was an extraordinary variety of noises, from the creak and crack of timbers all around, to the snap of sails and the whine of rigging above, and the faint echo of a shout somewhere on deck.

  Despite the racket and the cold air pouring in down the companionway, Marsali was sound asleep, a humped black shape in one of the two berths. Just as well; at least I needn’t try to make awkward conversation with her.

  Despite myself, I felt a pang of sympathy for her; this was likely not what she had expected of her wedding night. It was too cold to undress; fully clothed, I crawled into my small box-berth and lay listening to the sounds of the ship around me. I could hear the hissing of the water passing the hull, only a foot or two beyond my head. It was an oddly comforting sound. To the accompaniment of the song of the wind and the faint sound of retching across the corridor, I fell peacefully asleep.

  * * *

  The Artemis was a tidy ship, as ships go, but when you cram thirty-two men—and two women—into a space eighty feet long and twenty-five wide, together with six tons of rough-cured hides, forty-two barrels of sulfur, and enough sheets of copper and tin to sheathe the Queen Mary, basic hygiene is bound to suffer.

  By the second day, I had already flushed a rat—a small rat, as Fergus pointed out, but still a rat—in the hold where I went to retrieve my large medicine box,