13. In which pigs might fly and the rum stocks are sorely depleted
IN WHICH PIGS MIGHT FLY AND THE RUM STOCKS ARE SORELY DEPLETED
Angel Hester watched the scene unfold in front of her.
Her body lay still and lifeless on the deck. The Intrepid’s crew had gathered round, faces grim. At least she still looked absolutely stunning in death.
Septimus’s shoulders caved as he sat back on his heels and brushed the strands of wet hair from her face.
The Intrepid’s surgeon took out his pocket watch and announced gravely, “Captain Hester Orn. Time of death fifteen minutes past the eleventh hour, tenth of December, nineteen fourteen.”
Septimus took out his own pocket watch and stopped it, then got to his feet and pushed through the crew, heading for the companionway.
The scene before her began to fade, dark stormy clouds swirling overhead where there had been blue sky moments before.
Angel Hester frowned, then turned her head as a bright glow appeared at the edge of her vision.
“Oh no, you don’t,” she said, backing away.
“Is that the white tunnel? I will not go, I tell you. I will not be taken up there—with those good dullards. Hell is surely the place for me. There is some mistake!”
The white glow crystallised, the sparks forming together. A female angel stood before her, her face so familiar that Hester’s brow furrowed as she tried to place her.
“It is not your time yet,” the angel said, placing a hand on Hester’s cheek. Hester could only stare.
“You…”
The angel smiled sadly and stroked Hester’s hair. “Go back,” she whispered, and gave Hester a little shove backwards, just as Fliss’s heartbroken wail floated over the water.
Hester staggered and fell flat on her back. Her stomach lurched, and she opened her eyes. And they were her own eyes, blinking open, cloudless blue sky overhead. She vomited saltwater, rolling to her side and heaving it onto the deck as the Intrepid’s crew shouted in surprise and rushed to her.
“Get Septimus!” Emlyn shouted, shoving James away, the semaphore flags clutched in his hand as he knelt next to her, thumping her back as she coughed and dragged sweet, sweet air into her lungs. Oh good Lord. She was alive. She had been dead and now was blissfully alive.
Fliss’s mournful cry echoed in her chest. She gripped Emlyn’s arm and looked him in the eye. “Tell Fliss—tell her I would not leave her. And tell her—” Hester giggled raggedly. “I shall be an angel one day.”
Emlyn roared with laughter. “And pigs might fly, Captain Orn. And pigs might fly.”
Peggy sprang up from the companionway. “What is all this noise?! I was trying to plot a course and—”
Charlotte shook her head, her lips pressed together, and Peggy’s eyes swept across the assembled crew. She couldn’t speak the words to tell Peggy. Could hardly believe it herself.
“What is it?” Peggy whispered, her brown curls blowing in the wind.
“Wait,” Rufus said, his voice rising. “Wait! What are they…Winston?”
Winston was watching the semaphore flags flashing in the distance, and he gripped Rufus’s shoulder, his jaw falling slack, then snapping shut.
Charlotte awaited his translation, her heart in tatters.
He turned to the gathered crew.
“She’s ALIVE!” he bellowed, jumping on Rufus, both of them crashing to the floor.
Charlotte gaped. Alive? Arnold crushed her to his chest. Hester was alive.
Her tears rolled faster than ever, and then more of the crew pressed into her, jumping and cheering and embracing, Mei holding up a wobbly Fliss, who seemed utterly beside herself, laughing and crying.
Alive!
But oh, it had been so close. So very close to utter disaster.
“I’ll get the rum!” Mei disentangled herself from the crush of bodies and raced to the companionway, reappearing moments later with a bottle.
She pulled the cork, took a long swig, and then passed it to Arnold, who handed it to Charlotte.
Charlotte wrinkled her nose at the smell but drank the burning liquid down anyway.
She needed something to steady her nerves.
Anything. The bottle was passed around and emptied.
“More!” Betty said, and Mei disappeared again, this time reappearing with four bottles, the most she could carry. The rum inside was soon gone.
Charlotte could hardly contain herself as she drained the final bottle, Betty clapping her on the back. Hester was alive. All would be well. Her friend was alive. She raised her eyes to the sky and spotted an albatross wheeling overhead.
“Thank you,” she whispered. No one heard her in all the noise.
The rich tones of an accordion sounded. Mei sat on a hatch, the instrument expanding and contracting across her chest in a merry tune.
Rufus joined Mei with a banjo, the crew singing shanties at the tops of their lungs.
Charlotte did not know the words to join in, but as the singing became more slurred anyway, that hardly mattered.
She would not ordinarily have danced with such wild abandon, but the rum left her with a newfound confidence.
Arnold whirled her round and round until she collapsed in a giggling heap on the deck.
Hester had no memory of being brought back to the Valour, or of being put in dry clothes and in bed.
She snuggled more firmly into her sleeping bag, eyes still closed, then rolled over, burying her face into her pillow.
It smelt incredible, all her senses heightened after her brush with death.
She took a deep inhale and groaned at the salt and musky tobacco scent.
Strange. Why did her pillow smell like that?
She shivered, the cold still biting into her bones, and wriggled her way further into the fur-lined bag, luxuriating in the feeling of being alive, even if her chest ached and her head was sore.
She lay listening to the familiar creaking of the ship, the occasional grinding of wood on ice.
After a while, she had a yearning to see Fliss and the rest of the crew, and surfaced from the sleeping bag, looking around the cabin with bleary eyes.
And she sat up quickly. Someone had removed her dressing table and replaced it with a desk, and lined the entire far wall with books, logs and charts.
She was dressed in a woollen jumper and breeches that were far too big for her, the fabric pooling around her wrists.
She rubbed at her face, trying to make sense of it all.
The door burst open.
Septimus.
Hester spluttered, “You?!”
“You’re awake,” he said, standing in the doorway, his black hair unbound for once, falling to his shoulders.
She stared at him, flashes of a very odd dream coming back to her. “You…wait. Hang on…”
Incredibly befuddled, she could not piece together the hazy memories.
“The surgeon said you might be a little confused. Lack of oxygen to your brain. Do you remember what happened?”
Hester hummed, frowning. What had happened? It was a good question. “Wait. This is your cabin?”
“Yes.”
“I want to go back,” Hester said quickly, shucking out of the sleeping bag and jumping down from the bed. The too-big breeches dropped to her ankles, and she scrambled to pull them up, holding them around her waist. “Take me back.”
“Hester, you need to rest. Get back in bed.”
“Your bed! Oh—no, thank you. Take me back to my ship, my crew.” She scrabbled around, looking for her boots, her head pounding.
Damn it, she didn’t need boots. Just needed to be home.
She darted forwards, trying to push past Septimus, but he held her shoulders and led her gently back to bed. A black wolfhound trotted at his heels.
Septimus wrapped her up in blankets, and the dog curled up at the end of the bed, soft brown eyes fixed on her. “Later on, maybe,” he said.
A flash of a black monster came to her mind. “The orca! What happened to it?”
“So, you do remember.” He pulled up a chair and sat in it, crossing an ankle over his knee.
He was being infuriatingly calm about all of this.
“Answer me! Are they all safe?”
“Your crew is safe. The orca disappeared after you shot it,” he paused. “It was twice the size of any orca I’ve ever seen.”
“Yes.” Hester shuddered, remembering its cold voice within her skull, the jaw lined with teeth that gaped open, ready to swallow her whole. And now, it was either dead, or mightily enraged. “And then what happened?”
Septimus hesitated, stroking a hand along his jaw. “Victor saved you.”
Hester frowned. She rubbed at her forehead and the lines that formed there. “No…that’s not…”
She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes as memories hurtled back to her, and she gasped. “It was you! You saved me. Victor refused.”
Septimus folded his arms. “How could you possibly know that? You were dead.”
“Why did you just lie to me?”
He tapped his fingers on his thigh, his brow furrowing. “To save your feelings.”
“You would rather have me believe that Victor was the hero? When it was, in fact, you?” Hester’s mind whirled, a pain pounding at her temple. Why would he want her to believe that?
Septimus waved a hand. “How did you know it was me?”
“I saw it.” She paused. Should she divulge the next bit of memory that crashed back to her mind? She saw no reason not to. “I was an angel.”
Septimus laughed heartily, then stopped when he realised that Hester was not laughing, her face deadly serious.
“You? An angel?” he asked, raking a hand through his hair. “That’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.”
Hester smirked. It was, she agreed. “And yet, I saw the whole thing. I knew what happened even when you lied. And then another angel appeared and told me it wasn’t my time. And then I woke up.” The whole thing was rushing back to her.
“Your subconscious must have heard what transpired. That happens.”
“It’s true!” Heat coursed through her veins. She hadn’t dreamt it. She was damn sure of that.
“Alright, alright,” Septimus murmured, holding up his hands.
“You don’t believe me,” Hester huffed, then fixed him with a stare.
“But I saw it. How do you explain that? I saw you trying to revive me. I saw you telling Victor he was a coward. I saw the surgeon announce my death.” She slid down from the bed and stood before him.
“Get up,” she demanded, her hands on her hips, holding the breeches up.
She had an unequivocal piece of evidence.
Septimus raised an eyebrow and rose from his seat. Hester took a step closer, mere inches between them. Her eyes swept over him, and then her hand shot out to his breeches pocket.
She plucked his pocket watch out and held it between them. “See? I saw you stop your watch, and it still reads eleven fifteen. How do you explain that?”
Septimus was silent for long moments as they both stared down at the watch in her palm. “I can’t explain that, little witch.”
She smiled, and it wasn’t a smirk. She reached for his hand and slipped the watch into it, closing his fingers around it with care. “You ought to restart it.”
He slipped it back into his pocket. “Later.”
She looked up into his blue eyes. He had saved her.
He had risked his life to save her. “I don’t know how I can ever…
” She paused and chewed her bottom lip. “I mean to say—thank you, from the bottom of my heart.” She laid her hand over her heart, over the tattoo that meant everything.
She didn’t know what else to say, or how she could express her gratitude.
“Don’t mention it,” he murmured. “Though perhaps you could take it easy on me from now on.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and Hester’s gaze lowered to the curve of his perfect lips. She grinned wide and whispered, “Where would be the fun in that, my lord?”
11th December 1914, Weddell Sea
“Oh, God,” Charlotte moaned, rolling off her bed in the most unlady-like manner possible.
She stumbled to the looking glass that hung on the wall and peered at her reflection, expecting to see a ghastly appearance.
She rubbed a hand over her eyes and did a double take.
Her skin was no longer pale, but rosy, and there was a twinkle in her ice-blue eyes that had not been there before.
She passed a hand over her forehead, over the headache that pounded there.
In all of her twenty-five years, she had never drunk so much, or stayed awake so late.
It had been four o’clock in the morning when Arnold had helped her to bed.
She cradled her head in her hands as recollections of the party drifted back to her.
“Oh!” she cried, reaching for the ends of her hair, hacked much shorter than she usually wore it. She flung the door open and raced to the galley. Rufus was asleep with his head on the table, his hair shaved close to his head.
Hair and bottles littered the galley floor.
“Rufus,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder. “Rufus. Wake up.”
He sat bolt upright and groaned. “My head. Oh my god.” He went to rake a hand through his hair, through the very scant amount left. “What the Hell?”
Charlotte stifled a giggle. It did look funny, after months of hair growth, to see his tight salt-and-pepper curls gone.
Arnold and Winston entered the galley with similarly shorn heads. Charlotte covered her mouth, her eyes widening. They had all cut their hair? She couldn’t remember a thing.
Rufus laughed at the men and slapped a hand on the table. “It was a good party, then?”
Arnold smiled sheepishly and shoved a woollen hat over his head. “I can report that the rum stocks are sorely depleted.”
“And look at you, Boss!” Winston said, leaning against the wall.
“I quite like it. It’ll be much less of a hassle to wash now,” Charlotte said, pulling her fingers through her new shoulder-length hair. Yes, perhaps she would keep it like this.
Fliss was the next to slope into the galley, her black waves also chopped to shoulder length. “We women all look like the captain,” she said, laughing when Mei staggered in behind her, her straight black hair cut just the same.
“Speaking of which, shall we go and collect her?” Winston asked. A rousing cheer went up, stopping quickly as they all covered their ears and grimaced at the loud noise.
Hester opened her eyes and blinked.
“Hello, Captain,” Fliss whispered, her face inches from Hester’s, her eyes shining with tears.
Hester’s face split into a grin, and she wrapped her arms around her first mate’s neck, pulling her into a tight embrace. “Hello, mate.”
“You gave us quite a scare,” Fliss muttered into Hester’s hair.
“You know me,” she chuckled. “I like to keep you all on your toes.”
Fliss breathed a laugh and hugged Hester tighter. “Let’s get you back home.”