Chapter 28
Chapter
“There you are!” McNeil exclaims, charging into the boiler room only to meet the surprised faces of Catherine and Rogers. “I’ve been looking for you two. They’ve taken him!”
“Who?” Rogers asks, still pale and unsteady, one hand braced on the wall.
“Andrew,” Catherine says before McNeil can answer. The words scrape her throat raw. She can feel the weight of his absence—the shape of him missing from the air around her.
“Aye,” McNeil confirms. “And we’ve got a mess topside that needs all hands.” He glances at Rogers’s bloodied head. “If you’re up to it, that is.”
“I’ll be fine,” Rogers says, pushing off the wall. But after two steps, he sways and frowns. “Wait—who took Captain McGann? And where?”
McNeil hesitates, glancing at the cut above the first mate’s temple. “James, sir. The helmsman. Seized the captain and conveyed him aboard the black schooner.”
At Rogers’s bewildered look, Catherine says gently, “Give yourself a moment. You were struck rather hard. And you may have missed some important happenings. Cannons and pirates and the like, while you were knocked out.”
Rogers straightens with a wince. “Right. Well then. Did they take anyone—or anything—else?”
“Not that I could see,” McNeil says. “Bloody peculiar, too. Why take the captain but leave the crew and everything else behind?”
“Indeed.” Rogers agrees. “A mystery to solve, but we’ll be better served to head topside and begin repairs right away first.” He turns his eyes to Catherine and she can see they’ve regained their focus. “By your leave, of course, Mrs. McGann,” he adds.
She frowns but nods. They haven’t yet discussed the fact that he’s an agent of the Home Office, but finding Andrew and securing the ship are the most important matters at hand. She will have that conversation with him sooner or later, though. Sooner, she hopes.
“Let’s go,” she says, and the three leave the boiler room, only to be confronted with seawater rushing down the open ladder and into the hallway.
“Heavens!” Catherine exclaims. “It’s getting worse.”
“It is,” McNeil agrees, and they speed up their steps, rushing to the upper decks, where McNeil and Rogers waste no time surveying the damage and splitting the men into work crews.
Catherine aids McNeil and a small cadre of other men in cleaning the berthing and the galley, while Rogers directs the rest of the crew in restoring The Elphame to water-tight, running condition.
All day, they shore up cannonball holes and then fill any remaining cracks with tar and pitch. They drag cots, blankets, and hammocks from the berths to the main deck to dry in the sun, and they remove broken bits of furniture and crockery from the galley and mess.
It’s hot, hard work, but she’s glad of it to take her mind off the vision of McGann on his knees, arms bound and a bloody bandage wrapped around his thigh.
And she’s never met men like these before.
McNeil, it turns out, is also a Scot, although one with a much less dramatic accent than either McGann or James.
He’s from the south of the country, he explains to her as they haul broken bits of furniture up the ladders and out onto the deck to be used as spare lumber.
The south, McNeil says, is almost as different from the Highlands as Wales is from England in terms of language, culture, and history.
Catherine shakes her head; she’d no idea, and she’s been to Scotland. And if she didn’t know that about a place she’s visited—about the only place she’s ever visited—what doesn’t she know about all the places she hasn’t?
What, she wonders, is the world really like, filled with so many unfamiliar languages and cultures and histories?
The thought of how much she doesn’t know nearly bowls her over.
The rest of the crew, she learns, is made up of former Kentish farmers, with their own heavy dialects to parse.
And she’s delighted to find out how much she enjoys working alongside them all day.
Few were trained as career sailors. Most were tenants on Crawford’s family’s estate in Kent, struggling for years with the ever-increasing marshiness of the land that doesn’t lend itself to agriculture.
Crawford and McGann based their company out of Kent in part to give these men a chance at a new kind of life and then trained them to master their new trade.
She feels a kinship with them, all of them venturing together into unfamiliar waters.
And just as she’d once been shaken by how close she’d come to living without desire, she’s shaken now by the thought of never having known these people at all.
She might have spent her whole life merely watching the world drift by—flat, colorless, and distant—without ever touching it, let alone meeting the souls who inhabit it.
By heavens, how much she might have missed.
And even if all is not well in the world—Andrew missing, the Elphame damaged, her future uncertain—she knows she’ll never again give up the chance to be part of it.
An imperfect life fully lived, she decides, is better than a perfect one merely observed. And life, she reasons, can always be mended. No matter how much has gone awry.
We will fix this ship, she silently promises Andrew, and we’ll get you back.
When night begins to fall, the crew sits outside in the brisk air, huddled together for warmth and sharing hard tack and a bit of dried beef from what remains of the kitchen stores.
They pass around bottles of ale, and Catherine joins in, appreciating this meal in a way she wouldn’t have thought possible before.
Her body is exhausted from the day of physical labor, and her mind keeps reverting to the sight of Andrew injured, but her belly has never been more glad for a meal than it is now.
She’s never been part of a team before. And a dozen seated dinners served in the beaumonde, with oysters and pie and champagne, can’t compare to how it makes her feel to eat salted beef as a member of the crew.
To be needed and useful and a part of something.
She glances at Rogers, who raises his bottle of ale to her.
Tomorrow, she thinks, I’ll confront him. And tomorrow she’ll find a way to save Andrew.
Tonight, her stomach full and her eyes drooping closed, she has to sleep. She bids them goodnight and stumbles to the captain’s cabin, where she falls into a deep, exhausted slumber.
McGann awakes in the brig with a pulsing, nearly overwhelming pain in his leg. He eases himself up to sitting while the darkness does its best to spin around him. At least they cut the ropes from his ankles and wrists, a small gesture he can be grateful for.
Or maybe it’s just easier to keep him alive this way. They wouldn’t have taken him if they didn’t need him for something.
He presses his back into the bulkhead and sits still until the nausea settles and he can examine the wound in his thigh. The puncture goes deep into the muscle, and it’s dirty, but the bleeding has definitely stopped.
That’s something at least. Although when he lightly presses his fingers against his skin, the pain is excruciating. He flinches, jerking his hand back.
“Hurts, does it?” a voice sneers at him from the darkness.
And then James appears.
“You,” McGann says. “What in hell are you playing at, man?” And when James is silent, he demands, “Answer me!” from the cur’s smirking face.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” James finally says. “You’re not the one in charge now, are you? And I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you.”
He nods his head back into the darkness behind him. “He doesn’t like it when you make a ruckus. Disturbs his sensitivities, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ve no idea what you might mean,” McGann says. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”
“Nay.” James shakes his head. “He doesn’t like that either, being reminded of the dirty business. Keeps his hands clean, he does. So, if you know what’s good for you, you won’t remind him. Being reminded makes him mean.”
“That’s enough,” a cold, hard voice says from behind James.
That voice, with its cut-glass English accent, shoots a shiver of pure hatred down McGann’s spine. He’s known that voice for years.
“Barclay,” he calls to his bloody arsehole of a half-brother. “What in hell have you done now?”
“That’s ‘Your Grace’,” Barclay says as he approaches, “to you. And the question isn’t what I’ve done, you twit. It’s what have you done?”
“I’ve not done a bloody thing.”
“Haven’t you? Haven’t you been stealing daguerreotypes and burning ships and making a general nuisance of yourself?”
That stops him cold. How in hell does Barclay know about that?
“Haven’t burned a ship in years,” he finally says. “What’s this about?”
“I believe I’ll be the one asking questions, brother. And you’ll be the one answering them, not the other way around. Or James will see to it that you’re punished.”
“Will he?” McGann looks around for the other man, the one who was part of his crew, damn it. Someone he’d trusted.
“I’ll pay you more than whatever he will, James,” he says. “Much more.”
“Will you now?” Barclay interrupts. “And how exactly do you plan to do that? Borrow it from our sister, who’s already up to her eyeballs in debt to me?
Sell that ship of yours? From what I hear, it’s no longer worth the cost of the timber it’s made from.
You haven’t a dime to your name, brother, and everyone knows it.
So, let’s stop with the idle threats and get to business, shall we? ”
“Is that what this is about?” McGann asks, incredulous. “Sinking my ship? Taking Esmee’s distillery with it?”
His brother always was a greedy weasel, but this is too much. Too far by a dozen nautical miles.
Barclay only smiles at him, and McGann can’t help but notice how much he resembles their father.
The sight sends a shudder through him because he knows which parts of himself bear that same inheritance.
Which features he shares with Barclay. They’re both tall and broad-shouldered, though Barclay has gone soft around the middle and neck.
Their eyes are the same shade of green, but his brother’s are set in a sallow face with a reddened nose that already speaks of early dissipation.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Barclay says. “Although, watching you and Esmee lose what should have rightfully been mine has had its advantages. An inheritance should be complete, do you not agree, brother? It never sat right that pieces of it went to you and that woman.”
“That woman is your sister,” McGann says. “And a duke’s daughter.”
“Half-sister at best. But better, I suppose, than you. At least her mother wasn’t a—”
“What do you want, Barclay?” McGann cuts him off, tired of this conversation already.
“That’s ‘Your Grace’, and I won’t remind you again. But since you ask, I’d like the key to the lockbox now.” To McGann’s astonishment, Barclay produces the box from the shadows. “It’s rather harder to open than I imagined it would be.”
“Why do you have that?” McGann says, trying to keep the shock and surprise from his face. He thought the East India Company had been after it. Not Barclay. He would never in a million years imagine his brother to be involved.
Except…
He thinks back to the man with the mustache and that long ago night in Jamaica. Your brother is a handy man to have as a friend, he’d said.
“Where is the key?” Barclay interrupts his thoughts.
“I don’t know,” McGann says.
“I don’t believe you. Although I will grant you you’ve hidden it well, or we would have found it when we searched your shabby little rented rooms. And James here left no stone unturned on your ridiculous ship. What’s it called, James? The Eventide?”
“The Elphame,” McGann corrects. “It’s Gaelic, in case you’ve already forgotten where you came from.”
“Oh, I’m quite clear on that front. Those of us on the right side of the blanket usually are. Now tell me where the key is or I’ll leave you here to rot.”
“I don’t know,” McGann says again, his heart suddenly beating hard in his chest.
Catherine has the key. And whatever his brother is up to, he can never know that. He can never know about her.
Not if—goddamn it. His eyes flick to James, who undoubtedly knows something about Catherine, just from her presence aboard his ship. He may even know everything about her.
Hell.
“There’s nothing in that box for you,” McGann says.
“On the contrary,” Barclay replies, “That box is worth a fortune, and I’ll have it.” He looks down his nose at McGann. “And make no mistake, I will let you rot here until you tell me where that key is. So you best do whatever it takes to jog your memory before James does it for you.”