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Cicely got out of the hammock, carefully and slowly that night. The doctor lay in his bed, sweating profusely from the bullet wound that had been inflicted on him that afternoon. She stared at the door, knowing that an officer would be posted there to prevent her from leaving, though she wondered what the point was, since there was no-where for her to go. Not tonight could she see her brother. Not for her the shining light in his eyes, her only brother's eyes as his sister was brought back from the dead. Not for them both a new hope for the future. Only a cursed future, through her impetuosity.

Cicely looked at the doctor, lying so peaceful, though she knew he wasn't: that afternoon she had heard him cry out as the men had lain him down on his own bunk, which they had brought down from his cabin.

Saved again from discovery, she had thought; a bitter, ironic thought. Here the doctor was, having argued her case to the Captain, or so an eavesdropping James had told her, wanting her to get better and having brought Blakeney in to tell him about Edward.

Such care from a doctor for the crew, she had thought, as she watched his hands that afternoon, touch her arm, skilful, like an intricate carpenter, tearing her sleeve at the shoulder, bathing and treating the wound, watching his dark green eyes analyse and conclude a course of action in the same way Captain Aubrey would about the Surprise.

As he worked, the doctor had spoken to her and reassured her as he stitched a cut on her forearm that the Captain wanted her fighting fit, as if Aubrey's approval was what she sought. It was what all of the crew sought, another part of her mid thought. Aubrey's men. Lucky Jack's salts. These were the ends of the earth, all right, and they were still unquestioningly following him.

Cicely looked back at the doctor again, her decision racing through her mind, as it had been all afternoon whilst the men, Higgins, Blakeney and even the Captain had come to the sick berth, despite the malodorous air to care for the doctor.

She would fight, and it did make a difference that the Captain wanted Robert Young. He had also added that the flogging would take place after the battle with the French ship, as if this was a sort of comfort. They would discover she was a woman then. Not that it should matter now, she thought, looking down at her own filthy, dishevelled frame. The reason for her disguise, her Edward, was gone.

Cicely stepped towards the doctor, looking at his face and torso, dripping with sweat, as he lay delirious, and her heart sank at his pitiful state. She wouldn't have been afraid to tell him that afternoon, after he had told her to strip to the waist for the examination of her back, for she felt completely at ease with him, and she could imagine him listening to her reasons too. A totally different manner than the Captain.

As it was, this had not been necessary; Blakeney had entered, all fired up with excitement about land ahead and fabulous sea creatures, and the doctor had gone above, returning…like this.

Cicely stepped towards the bed, leaning over it, and stretching out her hand. His forehead was blazing, and she withdrew her hand quickly. He needed cooling, she knew, or the fever he was suffering through the gunshot would worsen before anyone could do anything about it.

Throwing off her shirt, she unpinned her bindings that held her breasts flat to her chest and uncoiled them, standing in the sickberth momentarily naked before slipping back on the dirt-ingrained shirt, and dampened the cotton strips in the ice-cold water that lay in a wooden bucket next to the bed.

"There," she said softly, as the glistening sweat from his brow and face was absorbed by the cloth. "Much better. A bit closer to getting well," she added, wringing out the cotton in the water. She paused just as she was about to wipe his neck and chest on the second pass, looking at his face.

Cicely had never been attracted to a man before, not romantically. She had hated and despised Benjamin Wigg, the man whom her father had intended she marry for the financial connections he would make. She also knew enough to be wise to men's amorous advances, and their true intent.

Now, looking at the doctor, his dark hair cut into a fashionable widow's peak and sideburns, knowing his kind but firm nature, and his evidential intellect in matters medical she knew if she were to fall in love, it would be with someone like him.

"Someone like you," she said aloud, turning round the cotton fabric to a dry part, "not Magistrate Wigg, with the three women in court circles. Not Magistrate Wigg who was reputedly with a harlot when his wife died in childbirth. I would far rather be flogged for an honest crime I'd committed aboard a Navy ship than have spent the rest of my life with him."

Cicely looked at the cloth, which she was about to wring out for the third time, its filthy fibres staring back at her.

"That won't do," she said, dropping it, and tearing two inches of fabric from what remained of her shirt, tying the rest in a knot, "there," she said, soaking it in the water again. She moved left arm which was covering the wound, and placed in on the sweat-soaked sheet. When Cicely saw the wound, she gasped – it was already beginning to fester; the skin round the wound was beginning to darken, where the blood supply was much reduced.

"How ever would Father believe I would fall in love with Wigg," she thought, pressing lightly on the skin near the wound. She smoothed the water across, in the dim light, she saw him twitch and shudder under her touch. Cicely looked down, realising she was pressing probably too hard.

"Not when there are men like you in this world that I could fall in love with…" Cicely dropped her shirt-end on the deck now, and looking back at the doctor. She leaned over him, and looked at his face again before bending over "…not when…when…" she touched his forehead with her lips "…I've fallen in love with you…"

"Young!"

Cicely jerked up with a start, kicking over the bucket of water and catching her head on the lower-slung beam. She landed on all fours, before finally getting to her feet.

"I, er…I was…" she began, a tremble in her voice as she reverted back to the submissive mizzenlad Robert Young.

"Get away!" he shouted at her. "What were you doing?"

"He seemed so hot…I…" She stopped, as William Blakeney looked between her and the doctor.

"You said you loved him…" he said, putting down a second bucket next to the bed, kneeling beside Maturin, touching his hand softly.

"Please, Mr. Blakeney," she said, and he pulled his eyes away from the doctor sharply so as to chastise Robert Young for being so bold. "You have been too kind on my part as to champion my cause to the Captain, so I hear, as did the doctor. My love is for his charity, where I have none for my own indiscretions." There was a pause.

"You are not Edward Hollum's brother, are you?" Blakeney stood back up from the doctor and walked back round to face Cicely, who was now shaking slightly.

"Are you? Answer me!" he demanded. She shook her head, bowing it, before looking at the worn oak planks beneath her bare feet, and before the tears spilled onto them. She sank down near the door, head in her hands.

"Please tell me," he asked, in an altogether warmer tone, walking towards her and crouched down near her, placing his hand on her shoulder and patting it gently. She looked at him and saw, not her superior, but a young boy, looking at her with the kindness of a childish comfort.

"You are right," she said, coming down to his level and looking at the lad. "I am not Edward's brother." Cicely looked at him, wondering whether this would suffice, and she saw the wind fill the sail of the boy's mind.

"He told us about you!" said Blakeney, light glimmering in his eye and all trace of rank dissolving before them. "Edward! When he was commissioned a middie two years' ago! And he told us of you. How your hair was long and golden, and your eyes were blue. And how he wanted you to marry an honest man." He looked into her eyes, his own glimmering with comprehension, as he scanned her face. She pulled off the material covering her hair and it fell round her face, filthy and matted.

"Cicely Emma Hollum," she said, sticking out her hand as an invitation for him to shake it. "Pleased to meet you." Blakeney grinned.

"William Thomas Blakeney, a pleasure to meet you too." He grabbed her hand, shaking it, before suddenly dropping it as real life permeated their politeness, and he stepped back from her.

"But," he said frowning, "you can't do that! You can't have been Robert Young for all these weeks? And rescued Fillings…"

"…and done all the work of a boy, as you asked, Sir," she added, reminding William Blakeney of his station.

"Did…was he…did the…he know?," he said, looking over at Maturin.

"…no," said Cicely. "I don't know why I said it. A foolish dream of the girl who I'm not," she added softly. "And…please don't tell the Captain," she added, looking back at the boy.

"But you're due to be flogged after the battle with the Acheron! The Captain can't flog you, Miss Hollum!" Blakeney looked at her in horror.

"Why not? Because I'm a woman? I deserve it," she said, laughing lightly. "Robert Young deserves it for avenging the murder of his brother," she added "but he'd rather fight tomorrow with the crew of the Surprise, against the Frogs, Mr Blakeney, on my behalf, to repay some of my debt of ill-luck. Nagel didn't kill him, I did." She looked to the ceiling before back at Blakeney. "I brought this bad luck to us all for being here," she said aloud, "and if I hadn't come aboard, Edward would still be alive…

"That's what he said about his sister when he got your father's letter," said the boy…

…and Cicely Emma Hollum told William Thomas Blakeney everything, from the moment she had knocked over the red pillar candle onto the oil-soaked books in the sitting room of her father's Gloucester home to the moments before she had walked across the sick berth and began to tend the doctor whom she had come to adore. Through it all, Will sat next to her, chipping in with details of Edward aboard, patting her arm reassuringly and touching her shoulder like a younger sibling as he listened intently, and often in horror at her sorry tale.

"Miss Hollum," he said eventually.

"Cicely," she interrupted. William Blakeney looked at her in awe.

"Miss Cicely, knowing what you've told me, I want to help you. Your family is far superior to mine yet you chose to face such difficulties to find your brother, you're tough enough to fight, I can see. But when the Captain finds out, and he will, he will," he added, as she looked at him sharply, "he will be very angry, especially as it is illegal for a woman to be aboard a naval ship whilst it is on a mission, even though unscrupulous captains do use them as powder monkeys and the like. The Captain is so proud of never using women and he's earned our respect." Cicely stood up, looking down on the young boy.

"How old are you, Will?" she asked, looking kindly at him. "Ten? Eleven?"

"I'm thirteen," he said proudly, "and I've been with Captain Aubrey for seven years."

"Then you must understand I have to do this for Edward, and for myself. It's like when you told Edward that no matter how much your mother hated Captain Aubrey for taking her only child away from her." Blakeney looked at her aghast. "It's in the only letter I received from him," she added sheepishly. "He said you had to do it, to prove yourself. Like your care for the doctor." She looked across at Maturin; perspiration bespangling his brown again, and his chest rising and falling, laboured and pained with the fever. Blakeney got to his feet, passing over to the doctor.

"You love him too," she added, looking at Will, whose strong exterior was close to breaking as he looked at the man he held in such high esteem. He nodded, sniffing. Cicely held him close, giving him a much-needed motherly hug.

"If he dies," sniffed Blakeney, "I don't know what I'll do. He's teaching me to be a naturalist you know," he said, looking up at Cicely, "the study of animals. He's already taught me the taxonomies, and I've learned about habitats and how to collect samples without damaging the land. He says I am a natural naturalist… if he dies…" Cicely stroked the back of his head.

"He's a remarkable man," she said, not to Will now but more to herself. Stepping away from the lad, she looked at his water bucket and cotton swabs. "He just needs our help to get over the worst of it."

Cicely dipped the cotton swabs into the water, handing it to Blakeney, before grabbing her own bindings, and dampening them. Together, they soothed the doctor's fever as he moved unconsciously, working together for almost an hour. Will smiled briefly a couple of times as he took the cloths from Cicely, interspersed with worry on his forehead. Cicely stepped back, allowing him to finish and the care and tenderness the young boy showed to Maturin was astonishing.

"He's going to be all right." Will dropped his last cloth with a thump into the bucket, and looked at Cicely when he had finished. It wasn't a question. "Timmins didn't intend this." He collected the cotton together, throwing it all in the bucket.

"Now I suggest, Young that you return to your sick bed. You will need all your strength if you are to fight the enemy with your comrades tomorrow."