My thanks, MusicBoxDancer, juicyjuicy Mango's, and Wing Pikepaw (how your pen names charm!), for your reviews. Your encouragement is so welcome—it being harder than I suspected (first) to get on paper the chapters written in my imagination and (second) to stop tinkering with the words and post it already.
They whispered about her, the crew did, that she was mad, that she would bring bad luck, or—being her figure not overly feminine (though, in truth, this perhaps was due to the indifferent fit of the purser's slops)—that she were not a woman at all. This last speculation was favored most by Wilson and Reeve, whose preferred shipboard amusement was convincing Jimmy, one of the ship's simpletons, of many a fantastical thing. Pressed into service (probably to the great relief of those who had the care of him landward), strong as an ox, Jimmy was a handy enough fellow hauling on a line, provided he was pushed or pulled into a useful position. In their time, Wilson and Reeve had sent Jimmy diving into the sea for mermaids, searching the ship for the gunner's daughter (who they swore was waiting to give him a kiss), and worried him with tales of a bunghole in the hull which if uncorked would send them all to Davy Jones' locker. Being made game of, when he twigged to it, sent great grieved tears running down Jimmy's usually amiable face or, were he in the grog, his great fists flailing wildly.
One certainty was shared by all—there was no predicting what the lady would do next. The story of her contrariness with the captain had passed quickly through the ship, nearly outpacing the event itself, and grew more exuberant with each telling. Had she really leapt onto the table, calling for the captain's surrender? Wiser heads thought not though many (the tale having a robust life) were ready to swear they had with their own eyes seen her brandish a sword or with their own ears heard her call down the wrath of heaven. There being a certain objectionable quality to the lady's uncommon lack of gratitude—she having been plucked from a watery death, after all—the crew were minded to view her, from a distance, with misgiving.
Kate, in careening flight out of sickbay early the following morning, did not note the crew eyeing her with agitation, scrambling out of her path. Her bleary-eyed disarray and wild-eyed panic only added to the disinclination to seize her, each relying on his neighbor to step into the fray. One grizzled seahand, in haste to withdraw, trod fully upon the hand of a messmate, exciting immediate rancor (and later drunken reconciliation). Trailing a wake of astonished midshipmen, a young marine sentry and his calls of "Miss, Miss", Kate gained the larboard gangway before being recaptured, a full force collision with the officer of the watch finally halting her.
With his cheerful manner and kind eyes—lacking only a placard reading "trustworthy" to be the very picture of reassurance—Mr. Mowett, a steadying hand at Kate's elbow, began a surprised (and, truth be told, somewhat flustered) "beg your pardon; William Mowett; your servant; honored by this meeting" but was cut short by Kate's panicked, "That noise! Are we attacked?"
"No, Miss." Adopting a calming paternal air quite at odds with his youth (and the fact that she almost certainly was his senior in years), Mowett explained, "the men are at the deck with the holystones."
"We are not under attack?"
"No, you are quite safe," Mowett replied, the freshening wind drawing his attention to the mizzenmast. "Mr. Boyle will see you back to sickbay."
Mr. Boyle, in some distress with the unexpectedness of this charge, came near himself requiring assistance reaching sickbay, the mechanics of breathing returning to him only on descent to the crew berth. Fortunate that, as after discharging his duty, he found every breath needed to answer the flurry of questions from his excitable shipmates.
The captain, regretting the tenor of their first meeting, had set himself the task at the next occasion of putting the lady at ease—inquiring after her health, her sleep, her appetite. But Kate would not be soothed, she would not be lulled, and she would not be calmed. With every evasive response, Kate's regard of the captain as a villain was made clear as a shout. Jack, a man made for friendship, for camaraderie, felt this a blow more deeply for all it was foreseen. There was none in the service more ready to dismiss danger in the cause of duty; there was none in the service less able to withstand the attack on his own good opinion as occasioned by an angry, fearful woman. Each skirmish left Jack more and more out of patience—as the crew noted with muttered cautions of "watch for squalls" and "goldilocks on a tear".
This tendency towards aggravation was noted, too, during a pause in a late night assault on Boccherini's Sonata in D Major (wherein Jack, irritated, had wielded his bow with the forcefulness of a sword in deadly battle, lending the meditative Grave an aggressive air quite unintended by the composer), with Stephen finally observing, "She has challenged you, brother."
"Indeed, and with such a baleful eye that were she that snaky Grecian lady I would most certainly have been turned to stone." A witticism involving Miss West in the forecastle and petrified enemy ships came to Jack, but he could not quite flash it out, and it was, perhaps, ungallant and best left unsaid. "Set her off on the next shore!—She cares not where!—Can she be in earnest?" Jack asked, a vigorous flourish of his bow punctuating each statement. "Tell me, Stephen, is she perhaps of any strategic concern?"
"Another Louisa Wogan? No, no, she has not the inclination of an agent. She requested and required me—crashingly unsubtle—to stop asking questions as her only recourse was silence, anything else necessarily being a lie and she—most emphatically—finds nothing more entirely despicable than a deceiver."
Jack, his ear attuned by long acquaintance (and his knowledge of the doctor's discrete forays to the confoundment of Napoleon's power—sometimes requiring the doctor to assume habits, actions, and methods outside natural inclination), caught a hint of sourness in Stephen's reply. "Ah," he remarked inwardly, "she has crossed his hawse with that one."
"She is not of intelligent interest, but a mystery nonetheless," continued Stephen. "Her pack yielded only further puzzle with its a cunning closure device—interlocking teeth, genius! A journal or diary of sorts that sea water had returned to a near pulp state..."
"Enough," declared Jack, leafing through the musical sheets, taking up his violin. "Though I regret the imposition, I leave her to your care." Then, suspecting he may have been too abrupt, Jack added, "I have set a marine sentry for her safety."
"A veritable dueña, though more martial and, I dare say, hirsute than is custom," was Stephen's sole response as they launched into the lovely Vivace, which now—with Miss West concluded, dismissed, and dispatched—flowed between the stringed voices in graceful lively chase.
Her pack, the torn side having spilled most of its contents, retained few useful items, most of which Kate hastily bundled away, the familiar sights coming too near to unleashing tears—one, a twilight blue scarf, a gift intended for her mother; another, a Baroque-style maple recorder, the wood having swollen and split with immersion, heartbreaking in its ruin. Kate, with gentle Padeen's assistance, sorted through a bewildering assortment of wares. Shifting yet another parcel of linen handkerchiefs ("Who would ever require such an abundance?" Kate wondered), she marveled at the delicacy of a carved comb and at the generosity of such a treasure freely given. Her cabin likewise was a gift; vacated by the captain's clerk, who had nobly volunteered to bunk with the master's mate, a move soon to be deeply regreted for the master's mate had the unfortunate habit of sniffing—sniff, sniff, sniff when amused; sniff, sniff, sniff when perplexed; sniff, sniff, sniff even when sleeping—a habit tiresome under any circumstances, but in close quarters near a justification for violence. Kate, surveying her cabin, saw it not as close, or cramped, or spartan, but as private—privacy being more dear to her than any amount of linen, any delicacy of design. Her need for solitude had sent her prowling the ship at unusual times, turning up in unconsidered places. Killick's bellow this morning when he discovered her in the galley, apparently communing with the kettles, had roused the whole ship. Her marine guard, knowing Killick's temperament, had piously stationed himself just outside the steward's domain. Kate, having noted many an odd fact in her foray to the galley, examined her next meal (burgoo, this being a Thursday) with a decidedly suspicious eye.
While the passage of time healed the pain in her body and began its work in blunting the sharp edges of the grief in her heart, Kate's days became unchanging, monotonous, but for the persistent infliction, each afternoon with tea, of the doctor's company—an occurrence Kate both dreaded and anticipated. Dreaded—for she knew that, though the doctor no longer pressed her for particulars of her past, any detail thoughtlessly escaping her restraint in conversation would not escape his keen notice. And anticipated—for she feared, in loneliness, she would soon resort to conversing with the ship's cat. This rangy tom, well aware of his own eminence as a champion ratter, would not suffer a caress, but could be lured with a bit of pork skimmed from her meal to sit for a companionable moment across the length of the cabin. Kate could not find it in herself to be amused with the contradiction of her loneliness and her aversion to company, each being of equal strength, equal urgency, and in direct opposition.
In company, Kate held herself stiff, held herself quiet, and, as much as she was able, held herself very, very angry—anger being a force with which to conceal her fear. With the loss of contesting the captain, Kate's anger had grown harder to sustain. With the bustle of industry all about, Kate, her gaze never quite settling on those around her, drifted in an island of silence. The men eyed her with suspicion, but only from the corner of their eyes, there being strong orders not to be leering at the lady. When Kate found herself with food, she ate (a little). When she was in her cabin, she slept (a little). When she was on deck (trailed by a bored sentry), she gazed at the sea, at the horizon, and at the sky for long, long spans of time.
The doctor, noting with exasperated relief that Miss West finally had stopped scratching her near healed lacerations, found new cause for concern in her dark-circled eyes, her pale color, and her desultory replies to his polite inquiries. "How benignly she gazes right through me," Stephen reflected, "and she has shed near a stone in weight. I must stir her torpor." A brief inner debate weighing the use of gentian versus the use of quassia resulted in a joint concoction, which, unfortunately, did not answer. Indeed, it could be said that Miss West grew very low in spirit.
The doctor, enjoying a portion of his rapidly dwindling supply of tobacco, considered the utility of elixir of vitriol as he paced the forecastle. Surprised by how late the hour had grown, he recognized Jimmy's voice, inebriated and jolly, calling for birthday wishes from his companions. "Foolish fellow," Stephen sadly noted, "how he will regret the excess in the morning—again."
Jimmy, apparently a most unusual fellow with birthdays every fortnight or so, had claimed from his mates the indulgence of a portion of their rum; not that, with the liberal (or illiberal in the view of some) allotment, anyone went dry. By moonrise, Jimmy, judging by the glazed look in his wide staring eyes, had achieved a fertile mix of intoxication and incredulity which would soon yield to sedation.
Stephen, his ruminations having drifted from vitriol to the philosopher's stone to the folly of greed and false hope for riches, had unthinkingly consumed not one, not two, but three thin cigars before making his way to retire to bed. Calls for the doctor caught him just at reaching the lower deck. Hurrying to the forward ladder (the calls coming from below), he feared the lure of the spirit room had tempted some fool to folly, but when he reached the shadowed orlop—an overturned lantern blessedly extinguished—he found great Jimmy laid out on the floor, blood covering his face; Wilson bent over grasping his privates and gasping for breath; and Reeve clutching at his right knee, but on spying Wilson in agony breaking out in boozy laughter.
The doctor, focusing on the wounded, brushed past young Williamson, who, tender in his midshipman's authority, was questioning the men, "Silence, Reeve. What has happened here?"
Miss West, until now unnoticed, stepped from a darkened corner, her cheeks bright colored, her eyes intent, and answered, "I believe these men misjudged the current and were tumbled for their mistake."
Such a preposterous statement (nautically speaking) did not pass the gathering sailors, one going as far as to mutter "Which there is no current here, not even a swell (daft lubber)" while hoisting up his fallen mate, then adding "you clumsy idiot" to his groaning burden.
The marine sentry hurrying to the scene, shirt untucked, already regretting entirely his earlier overconsumption of Lee's Patent Bilious Pills, grew red and then pale at the sight of this mayhem and confusion until he spied the lady apparently unperturbed by what she saw.
Williamson, turning to Kate, began a stammered apology, "men fighting amongst themselves—the drink—most regrettable," then, gathering his thoughts, meaning to be consoling, remarked, "Miss West, this is a most distressing sight for a lady."
"Distressed wasn't quite the word I would use to describe Miss West in that moment," thought Stephen as he followed the parade of men to sickbay. "Determined might be a better fit."
"How is Jimmy? Is his nose broken?" came a soft inquiry as the doctor returned order to sickbay. Turning, Stephen found Miss West hovering in the doorway (the marine sentry conspicuous in his attendance).
"No," answered Stephen, noting Miss West's subtle ease of tension at the news, "traumatic inflammation of the paranasal meatus and perhaps exacerbated deviation of the nasal septum. Keep him here until he has recovered from this night's drink. No doubt we shall all be subjected to great roaring snores. Wilson and Reeve, on the other hand.."
Miss West, interrupting, "I do not care to hear of Wilson or Reeve."
Moving into the room, to Jimmy's side, Miss West, her fingertips resting gently on his forearm, addressed him softly, "Jimmy, I am so sorry you were hurt."
"Miss?" Jimmy looking to her in confusion.
"Jimmy, you fell." Repeating with quiet force, very near an order, "You fell." Holding Jimmy's gaze, Miss West murmured, "rest now and feel better in the morning."
Falling into step as she moved toward the door, Stephen quietly remarked, "The current must have been strong to fell three men, fools though they may be, three strong men nonetheless," and caught a quick sidelong glance and an even quicker look of consternation before Miss West hurriedly departed.
Kate, sleepless, her thoughts untangled by a night of fevered deliberation, greeted the morning with a certainty of what she had to do. Who she was going to do it to was never in question.