Chapter 17 #4
The sailmaker answered, “Aye, laddie. Better ’tis another in any case.” Then, “Willy, be a good boy. See what ye can do. Easy does it.”
Insulated by the scorpion pain inside her skull, Merry couldn’t see the tanned young man approach her, and she hardly heard one word in three that he spoke to her.
She leaned back tiredly against the lines, feeling the vibrant blast of the gray sea under her neck.
The young man’s slowly enunciated words began to come to her.
“Merry. Listen to me, sweeting. It’s Will Saunders. You remember—big brother Will. You want to walk to the bow cannon, don’t you? If you take my hand. No. All right. But come with me, won’t you? You don’t want us to… to have to be rough with you.”
Eventually she felt herself begin to respond to the patient commands, and when she reached the nine-pounder in the bow and fell against it, she gasped, “How do you like your victims? Should I drape myself across it, like laundry spread to dry?”
“No, Merry.” This time the voice belonged to Devon. “Sit by it, rest your head on the chase, and wait.”
Merry dropped to her knees, looping her arms over the cannon, hugging it like a flood victim in rampaging waters, dropping her face against the sweating metal.
Sobs began to hiccup from her aching throat.
Superheated tears traced quick rivulets over her skin.
After a while she remembered to look up, but her field of vision had become a mosaic of pretty, abstract shapes and colors, like a pattern on cloth, their meanings only loosely symbolic.
The colors faded into a soft gray, and then she realized Cat had come and that he was talking to Devon.
As Cat came down beside her the sleek rope of his braid slid over Merry’s hand, and she caught it and carried it foolishly to her burning cheek and saturated the pale hair with her tears.
His hands were sweetly cool where they touched her with a calm and sexless assessment. Even so she whimpered, “Don’t hurt me.”
“Never, sweetheart,” he said. “Let your head fall back against my arm. That’s it.… Merry, tell me where you’re having pain.”
She had tried to listen to him, but each word slipped away separately from her as soon as she heard it.
Sounds around her were hauntingly muted.
She stared distractedly at the rolling tears that were landing in fat oily bubbles on her hand.
A cold cloth, laid against her neck, her ears, her cheeks, brought her gently back.
“Merry, where’s the pain?”
Trying sluggishly to concentrate, she evaluated her unfriendly body. The headache was gone. It took her a long time, following false and benumbed nerve routes, to learn that the pain had spread downward.
“C-Cat—I’ve been whipped.… I th-think I’ve been whipped.”
Devon said something, a sharp exclamation, and over her head Merry heard Cat say, “Don’t start that, for God’s sakes. It’s the fever talking.” His voice had grown less calm than his hands. “Raven?”
“On the other island, the one Will and I searched”—the soft Caribbean vowels were slurring heavily—“they had buried two men. They had a fever—”
Cat said urgently, “Did it begin with back pain?”
“No. A rash.”
Merry was lowered to the deck with dizzying speed, and Cat tore open her shirt.
Groggily angered by the indignity, momentarily recalled to sanity by the uncomfortable hard surface striking her shoulder blades, she said in a cranky voice, “Don’t treat me like a blighted corn ear.
I can hear you talking about me. And I don’t want fifty people looking at my rash. ”
“You don’t have a rash, Merry, peach. That’s one possibility eliminated.” Devon’s voice came from close to her. “Can you slide your arms around my neck? Including every and all circumstances, there hasn’t been a time when I’ve wanted more to take you to bed.…”
She returned to awareness in Morgan’s cabin.
Wet cloths covered her aching limbs, and the diamond cut windows dropped light on her eyelids.
The sun, which had been bright when she opened her eyes, smeared to dun, and when she looked again, the room was dark and the windowpanes were thick with stars.
A quiet voice—Devon’s?—was saying, “She’s much cooler now. ”
“I knew it.” Cat’s voice. “Damn. That’s what we were afraid of.”
Why was it bad that she was cooler? Vaguely disturbed, she slipped into sleep.
Morning’s silver light gave a misty patina to the cabin when she awoke.
Devon, who needed a shave, sat on the bed close to her.
He slipped an arm under her shoulders and lifted her to a sitting position.
Slowly he fed her a cup of vegetable broth that was rich, flavorful, and full of shredded cabbage—where had that come from?
After she had taken all of it, he set the cup down and then turned the pillow with his hand and plumped it before he laid her back down.
“Some people,” he said calmly, “will do anything to attract attention.”
A return to the temporary benevolence. That’s fine with me, she thought, since I’m weaker than a tin candy kettle. She retained a hazy memory of making a spectacle of herself the day before on deck. She grinned weakly and said, “Hullo.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself?” he said with feeling.
So she sheepishly added, “Good soup.”
He laughed, pressing the side of her neck with long, graceful fingers. It seemed to her that he was searching for fever, but he showed neither surprise nor relief when he found no evidence of it.
“How do you feel?” he said.
“Good. But like a stewed grouse.” With a knit brow, “Am I not cured?”
“We’ll see.” His smile was carefully arranged to cheer and to instill confidence. It was so well done that it didn’t occur to her to look under the surface. And there was another, more urgent issue that needed to be settled. Merry gathered her nerve.
“I don’t doubt you’re disappointed that I was too ill for a whipping.”
“Heartsick. I’ve been up all night wringing my hands over it.”
One thing was certainly true. He had been up all night. Sleeplessness, like every other state, loved his face. Nevertheless, she could see its fine bite.
He moved to take her hand, and it lay small and curving in his as he touched it gently to his lips. Tiny sparks grew under her skin where his mouth had touched.
“I suppose you think that falling ill was my just deserts for running away from you?” With her free hand she made a project of wrapping one red-gold curl around her finger and gazing studiously at it.
“All things considered, it was easier on your dignity than on mine for you to find me in such a mess.”
“A mess? Was that what it was?” He gave her a wide-eyed look that she realized was an imitation of her own.
“My dear! And here I was thinking you were happily rusticating on a balmy island. It must have been refreshing to get away from all men after your months of patiently enduring the stag-and-drake atmosphere on the Joke.”
He waited for her brief smile to bloom and fade away before glancing down at their entwined hands.
She watched curiously as he stroked the tip of his forefinger over the pansy surface of her nail plates.
His expression was soft. Had she actually surprised some real spark from him?
The promise of that settled like a moody stranger in her heart.
“Poor Windflower. Did you really think I was going to beat you?”
Cat came into the room with her breakfast in time to hear the last, and he put in grimly, “Why shouldn’t she? You ought to see yourself when you’re angry.”
Devon watched Merry slowly withdraw her hand and lay it in a slack fist on the pillow beside her cheek. “You’re right. I should,” he said as he stood up, making room for Cat to bring the tray to her.
Feeling awkward, light-headed, bashful for no good reason, Merry met Cat’s gaze and said the first cheerful thing that occurred to her. “Look at me—healthy again, though Devon won’t admit it. I want to dress.”
“You can dress if you want to,” Cat said, “but you’ll have to rest on the bed today. You’re better, not healthy.”
“Why not? Don’t worry so much.” Merry was smiling. “What do you think is wrong with me? I hope it’s the clap. Aren’t you supposed to be good at curing that?”
Devon had suddenly discovered something of great interest outside the window and was regarding it steadily, a suppressed smile pulling at his lips.
Glancing at Devon, Cat said sourly, as though in explanation, “It’s Saunders et al. They love to teach her blue language and listen to her innocently chirrup it back to them so they can laugh themselves to jelly. God knows what they’ll think of the change in her when you decide to send her home.”
This was new—someone talking about sending her home as though it were a thing that might happen soon.
She thought of Aunt April as she waited a moment to see if Devon had anything to say about it, and when he didn’t, she gave Cat a grin.
“This whole experience may make my fortune someday if I become an authoress. Publishing companies are always on the lookout for women whose experience has brought them into contact with peculiar people.” Congratulating herself for having slipped one in under his guard, she sat up and tucked the napkin under her chin.
“Furthermore, just because the pitch of my voice happens to be soprano—”
“Of the upper register, particularly when excited.”
“Soprano,” she said emphatically, ignoring Cat’s interruption and finishing her sentence. “I don’t think it’s fair to say that I chirrup. Why don’t you and Devon want to tell me what was wrong with me?”
“Come now. Don’t let your imagination tear downhill like a runaway wagon,” Cat said. “It was a fever. What else is there to know? Save your energy for your breakfast. Do you have to use the—”
“No, and don’t bring it up so casually. I’m not a heifer in a barnyard. If you don’t mind? Cat, please don’t hover.”