Chapter 30
Chapter
McGann’s been in the brig, by his own estimation, for a little over a week.
Ten days, he reckons. Ten days without a bedroll, a chair, or medical attention for the wound in his thigh that’s turning darker and uglier by the day.
The skin around it is red and swollen and, when he gingerly presses his fingers to it, exceptionally painful.
He turns his mind away from what might happen to his leg and his life if infection truly sets in and drags himself over to the waste bucket in the corner to relieve himself instead. After over a week of use, it smells rank and is near to overflowing. He’s certain he smells just as bad if not worse.
Ten days already behind these bars. He tries to think what the timing might mean for where they’re headed.
After a week at sea, they’d have landed already in Boston or New York, so their destination is further afield than those two cities.
If he spends three more weeks in this brig, he’ll know they’ve been traveling to some exceedingly far-flung destination.
India, probably, where he’ll once again be at the utter mercy of the East India Company.
Not that it will matter; he won’t survive three more weeks at sea. Not with this festering wound in his thigh.
That leaves Jamaica, the Bahamas, or another mid-way port of call.
Given that his brother is holding the lockbox McGann left in the care of his grandmother in Jamaica, he’s nearly certain that’s where they’re headed.
He doesn’t know how Barclay knows about the box, or what’s stored in it, but he’s certain Barclay got it from his gran.
The thought hurts him more than he would have imagined.
But he’s only met the woman once and for a few fleeting hours.
She has no ties of loyalty to him, not really.
They have only their shared blood. And life with his father and his brother has already taught him how little blood ties mean.
But still, the idea that she gave up his most treasured possession to his brother of all people makes his guts twist in a way he wished they didn’t.
Leave it, he commands his mind. After all, what’s one more betrayal in a life filled with them?
Nothing he can’t handle, even if it does leave him feeling slightly nauseous.
He hadn’t realized, not until it was taken away from him, how much he’d invested in the idea of finally building a relationship with his grandmother.
And in learning more about his mother. In the back of his mind, he was always going to return to Jamaica and find his family after the shipping and trading company launched.
But Barclay has destroyed that dream too, it seems.
He sits, as he always does, with his back pressed up against the brig’s bulkhead, letting his head hang, feeling the darkness creep in around the edges of his vision.
James gives him food only once a day, usually a few hard, wormy biscuits and a little ale.
He always tries to eat it, even the worms, but today he’s no appetite.
He’s afraid of what that might mean, because he’s never in his life not wanted his supper. Just as he’s afraid of what the pain and redness in his thigh mean. And what will happen when they land in Jamaica and Barclay discovers there’s no key. Not that McGann has possession of anyway.
The only balm in his mind is Catherine. That she’s still aboard The Elphame, where McNeil will keep her safe.
That Barclay doesn’t seem to know or care who she is, which means James hasn’t mentioned her yet.
That when she lands in Boston, she’ll go to her family in New York and she’ll be safe and well-cared for.
From there, he lets his mind wander: that Catherine will immediately alert Crawford to what’s happened and that Crawford will send help.
Or that she’ll alert Violet’s father, the timber magnate, and he’ll use his considerable coffers to mount a rescue mission.
That she herself will appear to him out of the darkness with that mischievous smile and a mean left hook.
Unlikely, he reminds himself.
But he still likes to daydream of the possibilities.
Even as he reminds himself that on the chance she does send help, she won’t know where to find him.
And that even if that help comes, it won’t get to him in time.
That it’s increasingly likely he’s going to die here in this small, dark prison.
Killed by, of all the ludicrous things, neglect.
It’s so like Barclay to do it this way, too, from afar without getting his hands dirty.
Why bother with the unpleasant task of killing a man when the brig and a leg infection will do it for you?
Just as he’s never bothered to truly drive Esmee to bankruptcy; he just keeps raising the land rents until it’s all but assured she’ll lose the distillery.
He’s been more aggressive about ruining The Elphame, of course, but that’s because the East India Company is somehow involved.
And because, after all’s said and done, Esmee is a proper duke’s daughter.
Right side of the blanket and everything.
Not like him. Maybe that fact has spared her some of Barclay’s wrath.
But his treatment of McGann has always been this, in some form or another.
There was a time, when Esmee was fifteen, McGann thirteen, and Barclay just turned eleven, that McGann thought things might turn out differently.
Their father had just died and McGann was sure that his half-brother, the new duke, would move him back into the manor from the shack on the outskirts of the estate where their father and his current wife, Barclay’s mother, had made him live.
That he’d be welcome with his family and not forced into solitude and poverty and loneliness.
But Barclay didn’t bother to change a thing. After their father died, all was just as it had always been, perhaps worse because Barclay was only a child. And children do not often think much of the plight of other children.
Esmee stole out of the house as often as she could, smuggling him bits of dinner and company. The occasional book, after she taught him to read. Without her, McGann would have withered away to nothing out there alone, the harsh Scottish winters nearly freezing him to death.
And Barclay would have let him die. Then as now. His brother, McGann realizes, is a coward. Happy enough for the outcomes of his own avarice but never eager to see them through himself.
Until now, that is. Searching his rooms, planting James on his ship. The cost alone ought to have been prohibitive. What is it that’s driving Barclay now? He said the lockbox was worth a fortune. Presumably he’d meant to himself.
What in hell are you up to, eejit?
Whatever it is, it puts him in danger. And Catherine too, along with his ship and his crew.
McGann shakes his head and turns away from those dark thoughts. He isn’t dead yet. And he’ll last as long as he possibly can, if only out of spite. Spite can give a man more drive in his life than one might think.
Spite’s going to get him through the next day and perhaps the next one after that. Spite and his mental catalog of Catherine’s smiles. Because he’ll be goddamned if he lets his brother harm one more hair on her head.
Catherine stands on the deck of The Elphame with Rogers, overlooking Hamilton Harbour, while McNeil leads the crew ashore to the island of Bermuda. Even in December, the sun overhead is high and hot, and the water a turquoise color the likes of which she’s never seen before.
This landscape is so opposite to London’s, she feels as if she’s landed on another planet entirely.
She wishes she could enjoy it, but she can’t.
Not while she despairs every moment they’re here and not in Jamaica searching for Andrew.
At least the crew will have a chance at a meal and a washing up before they carry on; that thought is some consolation, although it does little to keep at bay her growing fear and anxiety over Andrew’s well-being.
“How long will the repairs take?” she asks Rogers as they watch the crew make their way down the ship’s gangway to the pier in a single file.
“They said two days so I’ll assume a week at least.”
“That’s not fast enough.”
“It’s as fast as we can afford,” Rogers says.
“I’ve only limited cash available and I used most of it for provisions and extra pay for the men.
Jamaica is a much longer leg than what they signed up for and there will be no percentage of goods sold once we get there because the whisky barrels didn’t survive the cannon attack.
As I said before, we cannot afford a mutiny. ”
“No,” she agrees, “we can’t. Did you tell them nothing about what we’re doing here?”
“McNeil gave them the barest bones of the story. Piracy, which they well know having lived through it. Abduction, which they saw with their own eyes. And that we believe McGann’s kidnappers are headed to Jamaica for reasons we do not yet understand.”
He pauses. “If you’re asking whether the crew wants to rescue their captain, the answer is yes. They feel a loyalty to him.” He gives her another of those assessing looks. “But they need to feed their families as well as the next man, and loyalty doesn’t put food on the table.”
“I know,” Catherine replies. “I did not mean to imply otherwise.”
The crew is made of good men; farmers who have bravely taken on a new role as sailor for a chance at a better life for themselves and their families. Even if they did agree to go to Jamaica without the pay they’ve been promised, she wouldn’t ask it of them.
But they can’t wait a week for the repairs, either, not if money could hasten the work.
Her mind flits back to her wedding jewels. She’d removed them from the hem of her wedding gown before she’d given the fabric to McNeil to use in the oakum mixture and now has them hidden once more in the captain’s cabin.
Those jewels represent all the money she has in the world and her only way of supporting herself until she can reach her family in New York.
It would be beyond foolish to give up her only source of income.
But she can’t ignore the need to know that McGann’s alive, or the urge to do whatever she can to ensure his safety.
If foolishness is the price she has to pay for his safe return, that’s the price she’ll gladly pay.
“Will they take jewelry as payment?” she asks. “The men who repair the ships? And the crew?”
Rogers examines her. “I sense that is not an idle question.”
“It isn’t.”
“Then yes, they will. If you have jewelry to offer. But Mrs. McGann, I wouldn’t suggest this course of action. There’s no guarantee we’ll find him. You ought to keep a tight hold on the things you’ll need to survive after this journey is over.”
“That,” she says, “is exactly what I’m trying to do.”
He gives her his shrewd look again, the one she’s very much coming to dislike. “First your gown, and now your jewels. Soon you won’t have anything left of Lady Catherine West at all.”
She thinks back over the last few days. That’s true enough, she supposes, in the materialistic sense.
But there are other things she’s carried with her on this journey that are worth far more than a gown or a necklace.
She’s brought her wits, honed by her time spent on the marriage mart.
Her strength, learned from McGann. And all that Violet has taught her about finding where one fits and not settling for anything less.
She needs nothing more from her former self, so she only shrugs at Rogers in reply.
“Are you certain?” he presses.
“I am. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”
“Then bring me the jewels, Mrs. McGann, and I’ll do what I can to speed up this process.”