Author's Query—Can something as distracting and consuming as writing Patrick O'Brian fanfiction really be called a hobby? Perhaps with greater experience I will be able to more gracefully slide this new pursuit into a life already bursting with work, school, friends, and fascinations (not to mention the random flights of research stemming from curiosity—Why oak for the British ships? Why did it take so long to conquer scurvy? What was gaol fever? What was used as toothpaste in the 1800s?...and on and on and on.) Alas, updates must match breaks in work and school.
Waking, Kate is slow to accept awareness. What she hears—distant muted voices, thuds, slow deep creaks, and (could it be?) a bell—makes no sense. Her eyes are open and in fact have been open for some time, but all within sight confounds. In the dim light, rough wood beams close overhead sway from side to side; no, it is she who sways from side to side. The coppery smell of blood and a strangled groan of pain nearby bring a cascade of memories and with them alarm. A rough movement, begun to propel her upright, in the next instant sends Kate falling in a confused snarl of blankets, canvas, and rope, the floor rising to meet her in a jarring, breath-stealing blow.
The sound and vibration of steps coming closer herald an approach. Squinting in the brightening of light, Kate stares at the slight, anxious man drawing back sheltering canvas. Naming himself Higgins, he clumsily tries to help her stand. His evident reluctance to touch her matches her dismay at the need for assistance. Her body, her very bones ache. Where the unfamiliar pale shirt and loose trousers do not cover, her skin is a welter of bruises and abrasions. To their mutual relief, a chair and a seated position are at last reached. Kate, watching Higgins closely, offers nothing in response to his questions; the confusion of her thoughts, the dryness of her throat, and the uneasy manner with which he regards her caution for silence. A deep hiss of pain accompanies Kate's first reach for water. Warily, Higgins moves the cup so it may be grasped with her other hand. Once, twice, and then, more slowly, a third time she empties the cup. Higgins studies her for a moment, absently rubbing his right hand, before producing a bowl. His expression betrays a determination that she will, if not enjoy, at least eat this; the sour smell rising from the bowl assures Kate that she most certainly will not. Kate for the first time speaks—a surprisingly forceful "No." Hesitantly, Higgins describes the wholesomeness of this offering, its benefit in her recovery, and how obliged he would be were she to try a swallow. His attempts at persuasion are interrupted by an unseen but distinctly weary authority,
"You shall eat it or Higgins will pinch your nose and pour it down your throat. It is the most roborative of portable soups, put up no more than six months past."
Flustered, Higgins, in a voice grown low, "Now, Miss, that's the doctor and you must be listening to his advice. He will attend you directly as he has finished with the surgery..."
"Higgins, what are you playing at?" still unseen, but exasperated now, "You of all men surely know her bark cannot be worse than her bite."
In haste to conceal his hand, Higgins succeeds only in drawing attention to the unmistakable half-circle bruise cresting the flesh of his right palm. A strained silence grows between the bewildered Kate and the mortified Higgins, each struggling to assume a semblance of nonchalant ease, until a thin, bespectacled, ill-featured man (with the look of one who dressed in the dark and never quite set himself aright) bursts in. His measured gaze takes in the untouched bowl of soup and the nervous start both give at his abrupt entrance. With a cursory wipe of his hands, he reaches for Kate's wrist, pausing as she shies from his touch.
"Your wrist, if you please."
Her face betraying a clear weighing of distaste at the state of the doctor's hands—the nails blood-rimmed—and his implacable manner, Kate reluctantly yields her wrist. Motionless, at least while the doctor focuses on his timepiece, Kate asks, "Who are you? What is this place?"
"A question! One would have thought you as disinterested as this chair." This weak attempt at levity a failure both for he and his solemn-eyed patient, releasing her arm, he replies, "I am Dr. Maturin, and you are aboard the HMS Surprise."
Kate, startled, her fingers beginning a nervous worrying of the hem of her shirt, responds, "I am on a boat?"
"Any pain when you breathe? Hold still, if you please. Still, meaning the cessation of movement." His manner distracted, "No, most assuredly you are not on a boat. You are on a ship, and should you wish to avoid offending the crew you will take pains to remember the distinction."
Kate's confusion shifts suddenly into relieved comprehension, "I'm dreaming? Of course, I must be dreaming! Soon, very soon I will awake."
The doctor pauses and then begins a careful palpation of her skull, musing, "No doubt a more severe cranial injury than suspected. Or, perhaps, mental confusion as sequelae from shock. Pray show me your tongue. Or a possibly a lingering effect from the laudanum. What amazing dentition!"
Shocked, Kate pulls away, "Laudanum! "You drugged me?"
"Oh, yes, you became quite overwrought when brought aboard."
Softer, evading his touch, "You drugged me."
The doctor, halting his exam, addresses his assistant, "Higgins, attend to the distillation in the dispensary. It will be near ready."
Carefully pacing the removal of his glasses to fill the time until Higgins' exit, the doctor then gently states, "I regret to inform you that no others survived."
Kate, her attention captured by the precision of the doctor's movements, for a moment does not register the meaning of his words. Then, her restless movements stilled, her voice a mere whisper, she asks, "None?" Her shaking exhalation a moment later releases more than just breath, there is in that movement a diminishment.
A scratch at the door interrupts, a young gentleman, announcing, "With the captain's compliments, he would like to interview the lady without delay when she awakes."
"Yes, Mr. Calamy, I will speak with the captain directly," replies the doctor.
Mr. Calamy, turning to leave, finds the way blocked by curious onlookers. "Stand aside, Davis. I suspect you have seen a woman before."
"Not in the last six months, I ain't."
The doctor, calling to the dispensary as he departs, "Higgins, bring, what is your name.."—no answer—"Higgins, when you have finished with the decanting..," considering Kate's bowed head for a long moment, he adds, "and tidying the surgery, bring the lady to the great cabin." Turning to Kate, "You shall have some time alone here before your interview with the captain, but," he warns,"do not stir beyond these walls without Higgins."
Guided through corridors crowded with men busy at tasks of repair, the sailors and the ship equal in marks of injury and fatigue, Kate, catching looks of suspicion, and perhaps avarice, carefully fixes her attention to the seams backing Higgins' coat as they move through the dim and damp passageway.
Halted at a sentry-guarded door, Kate hears clearly first the doctor's voice and then another of deeper pitch.
"Not quite alert, no doubt in some distress. I should like to bleed her. Shockingly bruised, lacerations, burns. Unusual tattoo across left wrist—circular divided by a wavering line and half dark colored. Most intriguing dentition, the..."
"Yes, Stephen, fascinating I am sure, but who is she?"
"Jack, I am at a stand to hazard an opinion as to her origins. I had not more than a moment before your summons came. Really, it was the most abominable timing. She speaks English not with a British or an Irish or a Scot accent nor in the manner of an American. Jack, she's barely sensible. I must insist on allowing time for a recovery of wits."
"Stephen, has it escaped your notice that we are hard pressed in these waters? Your concerns are noted, but necessity leaves no time for niceties."
Kate, alarmed by the overheard words and the slow change of the sentry's demeanor from curiosity in this visitor to stolid woodenness, rubs a shirt sleeve across her face, finger-combs her salt-stiffened hair, then sighs in resignation at the grubbiness of her bare feet.
After Higgins' hesitant knock, a deep voiced "Come."
Entering the room, the dazzling fall of sunlight athwart a floor patterned in painted squares strikes Kate's vision with a sensation near pain. Drawn to a bank of open inward-curving windows, she brushes past the waiting men to look out on the clear blue sky, eyes half-lidded against the brightness, breathing deeply of air which in its clarity dispels the damp mustiness that has accompanied every breath since waking. A moment passes. Another. Then a loud clearing of the throat sends her spinning in alarm, the abrupt motion remarkable in the pain caused and the effort required to stifle its outward signs, betrayed only by a whitening about the mouth.
Shapes seen mostly in outline as her vision adjusts resolve into men, men clad in worn uniforms, tired-looking men of determined countenance. One—active-looking though tending towards portliness in a uniform sporting an embarrassment of trim, tassels, and lace—advances towards her.
"How do you do, Miss. Captain Aubrey."
Taking in his habit of command and the deference of posture clear in those around him, Kate's manner becomes decidedly aristocratic, her outstretched hand halting the captain's motion, her voice crisp in reply, "Kathryn West."
Aubrey gazes at her hand in bemusement for a moment. There is nothing in her appearance which speaks of refinement or decorum or privilege; nothing, that is, except her apparent expectation.
Gingerly, Aubrey guides her to the table.
"Please won't you have a seat. Killick, some wine. Tell us, Miss West, what manner of ship were you on?"
"Ship?"
"How was your ship sunk?"
"Sunk?"
Puzzled, glancing towards the doctor, the captain asks, "Stephen, are you certain she understands English?"
A perish-the-thought wave of the hand is the doctor's only reply.
Turning again to Kate, the captain tries once more, "Your attackers, they were enemies of the King?"
"The King? The King of what?"
"Where are you from? From what land do you hail?"
Blank faced with distress, Kate looks from one man to another.
"Come, show us the port where your voyage began."
Charts are thrust before her. While the officers pull the charts first one way and then another (do the crowding men really presume this is helpful?), Kate traces shorelines, deciphers place names, until, looking up, her forehead creased into a frown, she asks,"What is this? These charts are wrong. They are wrong. Where is my home? What trick is this?" Pushing away from the table, toppling the chair, "Did you attack... No!" Kate backs away until brought short against the wall, dislodging the tidy array of gleaming swords.
"Which you will be minding the.." a man, his scowl made more terrible by ferocious facial hair, starts towards her.
The captain's "No, Killick, leave it" sounds in the same moment as Kate's panicked "No, don't touch me!"
Kate, whispers to herself, in soft repetition, "No, this is not real. Is not real."
"Stephen, if you please," directs the captain, his tone appalled.
"Yes, this was o'rhasty. Killick, pass the word to Higgins for the laudanum."
"No. No more drugs! No drugs!" One hand braced against the wall, the other warding, Kate pleads, "Wait!" She bows her head and then turns her face away. A slight trembling made clear in the shiver of locks parting at the nap of her neck yields a greater reproach than ever would sobs or cries.
Jack's dismay—his need for facts conflicting with his accustomed gallantry towards the fairer sex (and their equally accustomed welcoming response)—resolves to irritation when Kate turns to the men, to the captain, and, visibly bracing herself, declares,
"I have nothing to tell you."
"Where are you from?"
"I have no answer for you."
The beginning of thunder in his voice, the captain once again asks, "Who sunk you?"
Kate in precise articulation replies again "I. Have. No. Answer. For. You."
In this moment there is between the captain and this chance-found stranger the seed of true ill-will. Many words further are uttered (the primemost being "No") while nothing much is said. Rapidly exhausted with each other, the captain releases her to return to sickbay and himself to return to his ship's worries, which—be it the ship's foul bottom, the leaky water casks, or even the critical dearth of additional spars—in light of this quarter-hour last spent seem, by contrast, the lesser of two evils.
Later, at last free of observers, her belly drumskin-taut over the double portion of gruel she had been persuaded to eat, Kate's resolve—perhaps more aptly termed bravado—begins to fray. Without it, awash in pain and fear, she holds only confusion and a very human frailty. After several attempts—defeated by stiffness—to reclaim the swinging cot, Kate ceases to fight the irresistible weight of weariness. Hands still clutching the sides of cot, she slumps to floor. After a moment, she pulls the blanket free and slowly settles until lying braced against the corner. Eyes first stare blankly at beams overhead and then determinedly shut. But that is worse. With her eyes closed, nothing counters the flash of memories—water pouring over her fellow travelers, the cries of the dying, the feel of hands gripping her wrist. Grasping a hank of her hair, she gives it a vicious yank—"Wake up, Kate!" Pain, but no resolution of these surroundings into what is familiar. First one tear gathers, then another, and then yet another, spilling in a torrent, until at last Kate pulls folds of the blanket across her face to muffle desperate sobs, sobs that will not quiet until the mercy of sleep overtakes her.