Chapter Three #3
The light is fully flowing now, pink and purple and early morning gray vying for dominion of the sky.
The wind has largely died down, the river laps at the roots of the stone wall around the garden.
After the closeness of the room, the scent of sea, grass, and flowers is as fresh as the new day.
She pulls the air into her, mouth open, breathing deeply, and throws the reddish water from the bucket over the wall.
The light hits the stream and everything turns soft pink: the water, the sky, the river.
Isabel feels soft with it, as if the edges of her have worn away.
The moment lasts maybe a minute, then she jogs to the well. Her arms ache from how fast she turns the pulley crank. Some of the water spills from the bucket as she lifts it over the stone edge. She has filled it to the brim and makes a trail of drops on the floor as she carries it in.
The doctor says, “Oh, thank you,” distractedly as she places the bucket on the floor beside him.
A selection of metal instruments sits on a clean cloth on top of the bed.
If the sight of them inspires a fright in her, she wonders how the captain feels.
He doesn’t look afraid, but maybe that’s just for the benefit of his men. Mainly, he looks desperately weary.
“Is he going to live, Doctor?” She surprises herself.
The doctor, too; she can tell by the tinge of irritation in his voice when he says, “I have good hope of his full recovery. It doesn’t appear that anything vital was hit, which is a piece of mighty luck with a shot in these regions.
I shall, however, have to remove the bullet, as it’s still in the wound, possibly along with some of the cloth of his shirt. Do you have any brandy or rum perhaps?”
Her tongue has gone dry. “I’m afraid not.”
“We’ve got plenty on the ship,” Oppy says, and the captain smiles, again very lightly.
“Pity,” the doctor says. “Looks like you’ll have to bear it sober, Jack.”
Jack says, “No matter. I’ve lost enough blood I feel drunk.”
The doctor turns to Isabel. “Madam, if you’d be so good as to leave us, I shall get on with the operation.”
At the door, the captain’s voice calls her back. “I should like her to stay, if it’s all the same to you, Doctor. I reckon I’ll swear less in the presence of a woman.”
She turns, and just looking at him she feels the edges of her softening as they did in the garden.
“You may swear all you like,” she says, going over to kneel next to the bed.
She’s terribly close to him now; she can smell the sweat on him and wipes it from his brow with her sleeve.
When she reaches for his hand, there’s a faint smell of something else, something sharp and metallic—gunpowder, she thinks, though she has never smelled it before.
She lifts his hand from the bed. It’s clammy, but any limpness leaves it as he grips hers, hard, when the doctor begins to work.
Jack doesn’t make a sound all through the surgery.
He just looks at her, his eyes glued to hers, not once looking away, his grip at times so strong she has to fight not to show it hurts.
The only sounds in the room are those of their breath, mingling in the stale, sweet air, the click of the doctor’s instruments as he replaces one with another, the odd mutter as the doctor works, and the sharp intake of air from Dick or Oppy or maybe both when the doctor pulls out the bullet, saying, “I’ve got it.
Thank Jesus, it’s out, both the cloth and the bullet. ”
Only then does Jack’s gaze leave her. His hand slips from hers and she thinks he’s going to faint, with his eyes turning away like that and his expression going slack.
But then he’s back and he sighs so deeply his entire body seems to sigh.
He says, “Thank you, Rowell,” and then he looks up at her and smiles, saying, “And you. I’m much obliged. ”
“It’s nothing.” Her knees ache from kneeling on the bare wooden boards and her hand aches from how hard he squeezed it and she knows it’s not nothing.
What she did, yes, that was nothing, and she only wishes someone could’ve done it for George; she wishes someone could’ve held his hand as he lay dying and the thought cuts and cuts.
But this man now, the smuggler, Jack, he’s alive, he’s going to be all right, and she got to do it for him.
All through the operation, she didn’t once think of George.
The doctor is getting out strips of bandaging, needle and thread, and suddenly Jack is reaching up with the hand with which he held hers, saying, “Don’t cry.” But he cannot quite reach her face, so she wipes it herself and says, “I’m reminded of my husband, is all.”
The sun is by now pushing above the horizon.
Puddles of light fall on the bed, the wall, and the doctor as he bends over the patient and finishes bandaging the wound.
“I’ll come see you two days from now to check on the wound and change the bandaging,” he says, washing his hands again in the bucket.
“Can I get back to the Rapide?” Jack asks.
“Not if you don’t wish to die,” the doctor says. “You’ll want to stay put for a couple of days. At the very least until I’ve been to check on you. Longer would be better, but I appreciate you’ll have to be moved before the moon is grown too fat.”
Jack says, “I’m afraid I must impose on your hospitality a little longer, Isabel. Will you permit me to stay until the good doctor releases me from his care?”
“I don’t see what choice I have.”
“I’ll compensate you for it, and well.”
“I don’t want any compensation.”
“Why not? You could use it, with your husband’s debts.”
“I don’t want it,” she says angrily. “And I don’t want any trouble, either. You leave as soon as you are able. You don’t get to stay a minute longer.”
He closes his eyes. “Of course.”
The two men, Dick and Oppy, go back to the Rapide, which she thinks must be the name of the ship.
The captain tells them they’ll have to unload the cargo as soon as they can arrange for a new landing place.
Then he closes his eyes again, looking beyond exhausted.
The doctor speaks to Isabel in hushed tones, telling her what signs of infection to look for, what to do in case of fever.
“Try to get him to eat something,” he says, and then he’s out the door, too, and she’s alone with the smuggler.
His mouth is open and his breathing is very heavy, bordering on snoring.
She sits on the floor beside the bed, close to him.
If she draws her legs up and places her arms around them, she just fits.
Leaning her head against the wall, she watches the morning sun move along the wall opposite, shifting and sliding, making patterns.
One looks like a hand, reaching for her, and there’s a man’s face, bearded and strange, and a fish’s tail…
the room grows comfortable, then warm. Maybe she’s dreaming.
Later—much later, judging by the sun—she goes down and returns with bread and cheese, of which the captain eats only a little, as well as water and more milk.
She’s standing by the side of the bed, waiting for him to hand back the cup.
He drinks eagerly, which pleases her. He has the most singularly blue eyes, she notices now that the room is full of sun.
They’re not sea blue or sky blue or cornflower blue—they’re simply blue-blue. She can’t imagine anything bluer.
“Thank you,” he says. “For allowing me to stay, too. It was never my intention.”
“To get shot? I should hope not,” she says.
“To cause you any trouble.”
Her feeling darkens and he reads it in her face, she can tell by the way he’s looking at her. He says, “It’s why you left London, isn’t it? Because of trouble.”
Now the fear creeps in. Does he know something? But how could he? He’s a smuggler, a captain of a ship that tries to outrun the cutters of the Revenue Service all the way at the tip of England. How could he possibly know about the rumors?
“I told you,” she says. “My husband left a lot of debts. He was a good officer, but I’m afraid he had no talent for business.
He was advised badly and lost all of our wealth in a series of investments overseas.
” It feels disloyal to George to say even this much.
She adds, “He was going to take his lieutenant’s examination as soon as he got home. His captain recommended it.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Jack says. “Is that why you wear his medal?”
Her hand goes up to the ribbon, feeling the silver. “Yes.” Then: “You don’t really believe that, do you? That I’m the child of this creature, the Sea Bucca?”
“I don’t know. You look like you could be the daughter of merfolk.”
“I’ve been told the Sea Bucca has the skin of an eel and seaweed for hair.”
He says, “You’re as pretty as a mermaid’s daughter. You could be one of the sirens, calling to the sailors, luring their ships onto the rocks.”
She looks down to hide the blaze in her cheeks. “Now you’re jesting.”
Glancing up, she catches his smile, light and quick. “Perhaps. In any case, I cannot fully discount the tale. Didn’t you arrive dripping wet as if you’d come out of the sea? And at such a young age. It’s strange, you’ll have to admit that, at least. Don’t you wonder where you came from?”
“My parents—the ones I was born to—are either dead or they did not want me. So no, I do not wonder about them.”
“Yet of all places, you moved here, to Helford.”
She has no answer to that. “The fact that I was found in this manner is strange, I do agree,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean there was anything…unnatural to it.”
“There’s nothing unnatural about the Bucca. He’s nature itself; he’s a part of the sea.”
She cannot tell if he’s serious. It irks her and she bursts out, saying, “But to believe in such a thing!”