Chapter 9
The boat arrives at dawn, while Hephzibah draws water from the well.
She can’t say what makes her look up from the stones and squint into the gray morning.
A cold, woolen fog lies on the sea, shrouding the world from view.
If she looks hard enough, in the right direction, she might spot the mast that pokes above the pillows of cloud, and the pennant that droops from its tip.
She stretches her ears for some kind of noise—the same sound, maybe, that raised the hackles on her neck in the first place. A creak of metal oarlocks, or a muffled word or two from an unseen throat. The plash of water from an oar.
But the air remains quiet. To her left, the house floats atop the mist. A curl of smoke drifts from the chimney in the center of the roofline. If she dares to fill her lungs—dares to breathe at all—she will taste woodsmoke and brine, the scent of her days.
Foolish, she tells herself. Turns back to the well.
As she draws the bucket clear, a shout breaks across the stillness.
She will never remember the word, or why the noise freezes her in place. When the prow of a boat pierces the fog and scrapes against the shingles, and somebody curses the teeth and wounds and blood of God, she can’t move a muscle.
Two men stumble over the sides. One of them grabs a rope and heaves the boat up the sand, until it comes to rest just above the line of flotsam that marks the highest point of tide.
The other reaches back into the boat and hauls out a third man. Even from a distance, Hephzibah can see that his clothes are soaked in blood.
Hephzibah gasps and releases the rope. The bucket makes a desolate splash at the bottom of the well.
Beulah doesn’t believe her.
“Likely a fisherman, lost his way in the fog. And where’s the water, pray?”
Hephzibah slams the wooden bolt into its place. “The musket, the musket!”
Beulah turns from the fireplace. The long wooden spoon dangles from her right hand, dripping porridge; the other hand clutches her shawl about her shoulders. “What are you about, sister?”
“Is Silas abed?”
“Hush, Hephzibah! You’ll wake him!”
Silas whinnies from the bedroom. “Beulah! Is that you?”
Hephzibah takes her sister by the shoulders. “He must rise! Go in and tell him he must rise and bring his musket!”
“His musket?”
The door rattles beneath the weight of a big fist. A roar follows—Open up! Open up, in there, damn you!
Hephzibah flies past her sister through the doorway into the dark bedroom. The shutters are pulled tight against the chill, because they haven’t the money to glaze the windows. Silas lies on his side, propped on one elbow. His gray hair tangles around his face. “Water,” he whines.
“Rise! Oh, do rise! Men—landed on the beach—they’re at the door—”
Silas coughs wetly. “Men! Men, you say?”
“The musket!” Hephzibah runs to the wall and lifts the musket from its hooks. “Is it loaded?”
A roar rattles the shutters. Open the door, in the name of God! We mean you no harm!
Beulah stands in the doorway, clutching her shawl and her wooden spoon, as if to beat back the intruders. Her cap hangs from one side of her head. “What do we do, Hephzibah?”
Open the fucking door, God blast you!
Another voice—this one calm, even pleading. A man is hurt, for God’s sake. Will you have some pity for him?
Hephzibah stares at the musket in her hands. Pity?
In her head, she calls back the scene on the shore. The fog so thick, the men like ghosts. The one hauled from the boat—his thick frame limp, his clothes soaked with blood. Behind her, Silas hacks again.
The first voice speaks up, a rough throat. Silver! We bring silver!
The other—On my life, we’ll pay you well.
“By God,” says Silas, “let them inside.”
Hephzibah starts back toward the front door.
The musket sits in the crook of her elbow.
Whether it’s loaded, she can’t say. She lifts the latch and the door bangs open, limbs and sweat and groans as three men stagger inside, the largest one slung by the arms over the shoulders of the other two. Blood everywhere.
“Lay him down, lay him down,” says one. He turns to Hephzibah. “Have you a bed?”
“In the attic.”
“Lay him in mine,” barks Silas. He stands in his nightshirt and cap, braced against the doorframe. “Lead them through, Beulah, for God’s sake!”
Beulah darts from behind his shoulder. At the sight of the three men, at the rank smell that rises from their clothes, she squeals like a frightened rabbit. Claps her hand over her mouth and stands dumb before the doorway.
“Make way, woman! Make way!” shouts the stouter of the two men holding the injured one.
“Beulah, you fool. Fetch the whiskey!”
Beulah scampers out of sight. Hephzibah follows Silas into the room and hands him the musket while the intruders lay out the injured man on the marital bed and deposit his blood-soaked shirt on the floor.
Beulah enters the room with the precious jug of rye whiskey and shrieks.
The edge of some blade has recently split open the man’s skin from his right armpit to the center of his belly.
Hephzibah glimpses a gleam of ribs in the candlelight, the pinkness of muscle, the narrowest possible line of yellow fat.
Over one ear hangs a flap of his scalp, matted with gore and hair.
The linen that binds his right hand is brown with dried blood.
The slighter man finds the pitcher of water on the stool next to the bed and washes the gore from his chest.
The other man—large, dirty, rimmed by a shock of brindle beard—pulls a split log from the stack of wood next to the hearth and chucks it on the fire.
Silas tells Beulah to open the shutters, quickly now.
Beulah sets the whiskey next to the pitcher and scampers to the window. The smaller man snatches the jug, yanks out the cork, and swigs deeply before pressing the rim to the lips of the injured man.
“Come along, then, Ramsay. Open up. You’ll be glad for it soon enough.”
Ramsay’s eyes slide open and focus on the jug. His head tilts from the pillow. Lustily he swallows the rye and falls back as if dead.
The man sets the jug back on the stool and turns to Hephzibah. “Now, then, madam. Can you or your companion sew a fair seam?”
His name is Elliott, the slight man tells Hephzibah, as she threads her sturdiest needle and bends over the right side of Ramsay’s chest while Beulah holds the candle above her head. He studied in Edinburgh as a physician. Now a ship’s surgeon. A long and sorry decline, he says.
“And which ship would that be, sir?” asks Silas. He’s dressed in waistcoat and breeches and stands next to the window, sipping his cider from the pewter tankard. The musket hangs from his other arm.
“She is called the Poseidon,” says Dr. Elliott, “a sloop lately of—”
The other man snarls. Dr. Elliott coughs down the last word.
“Ahem. Yes. As I said, the Poseidon. Now then, madam. Are you ready?”
“I’ll want a pair of hands to hold the flesh together.”
“God save us,” whispers Beulah.
Dr. Elliott uncorks the whiskey and pours another slug down Ramsay’s throat. “Brace yourself, mate,” he says cheerfully.
Ramsay gasps—Fuck you.
Elliott turns the jug to his own mouth and shuts his eyes as he swallows. Ramsay’s skin is as pale as milk. When Hephzibah glances at his face, she finds his eyes open and fixed on her.
Elliott rolls up his sleeves, places one sooty hand on each side of the wound, and presses the sides together. Ramsay roars out.
“Don’t mind him,” says the doctor. “If he makes any trouble, I’ll direct Walsh over there to pin him by the shoulders.”
Hephzibah bends over the end of the gash and sticks her needle into the oozing flesh.
It’s not easy, stitching a wound. You must press harder than you would into a length of cloth; a man’s skin does not give easily.
Ramsay’s chest jumps and a keening noise erupts from his throat.
Elliott sets an elbow into his sternum so that Hephzibah can draw the thread through the holes, snip it off with her scissors, knot the ends together.
“A fine, neat stitch, madam,” Elliott tells her.
“Thank you.”
“I would sew him up myself, mind you, snug as a cushion, but I fear my poor hands are none too steady, as you see.”
Hephzibah jabs her needle back into Ramsay’s flesh, an eighth of an inch from the first stitch and not much more from the doctor’s fingers, trembling with the effort of pinching the wound shut. “Drink will have that effect,” she says.
Outside the windows, a feeble sun penetrates the fog to shed some light on Hephzibah’s work. The fire beats off the chill. Whenever it falters, the man called Walsh—standing like a wolfhound at the hearth—tosses another stick into the flames.
Silas nudges his head toward Ramsay. “This fellow here seems to have caught the bad end of a blade.”
There comes a grunt from the fireplace that likely means assent.
“They call you Walsh, do they?” asks Silas.
The man says, grudgingly, “Walsh, aye.”
“If you don’t mind my offering a piece of advice, sir,” says Dr. Elliott, “I wouldn’t ask Mr. Walsh too many questions.”
“I’ll ask the man what I please. Standing at my own hearth, giving his friend to bleed over my own good linen. I’ll ask him what I please.”
Elliott shrugs. “It was kindly meant.”
“I’ll want silver,” says Silas. “Silver, or my sister here leaves him to bleed.”
“You shall have silver, my man, and plenty of it, I assure you.”
Silas wets his lips with a gray tongue. “He’s your captain, ain’t he? That’s why you take such care of him.”
“There you’re wrong,” says Elliott. “Each man aboard our ship is afforded the same due regard, whether he be captain or crew.”
“Aha,” says Silas. “Pirates, then. As I figured.”
“Watch your tongue, mate,” Walsh growls.
“Mr. Walsh,” snaps Elliott. “Remember we are guests.”
Silas’s voice turns silky. “That’s so, that’s just so. Honored guests, if I may say. The hospitality of my house is open to you, gentlemen, and not a word shall I breathe of this here accident, not a word, for I well know men of your sort do handsomely reward them as takes proper care of them.”
Hephzibah knots another thread. They’ve reached the bottom of Ramsay’s rib cage now, thirteen stitches so far. Elliott pinches the next section of flesh together so Hephzibah can jab her needle through.
“You shall have your silver, all right,” he mutters.
“Yes, I shall. I reckon I shall, indeed.”
Quick as you can blink, Walsh slides a knife from his belt, crosses the floor, snatches Silas across the chest with his left arm, and brings the point of the blade to rest against the tender skin of Silas’s throat. Beulah screams and drops the candle.
“Put that away, Mr. Walsh,” Elliott says mildly.
Hephzibah straightens from Ramsay’s ribs.
How her eyes ache. When you are stitching together a man’s hide from stem to stern, you can’t close your lids for a second.
Like the most intricate embroidery. She says wearily, “Let him go, Mr. Walsh, if you please. I won’t make another stitch until you do. ”
“Then I’ll gut him like a fish, I swear I will! The fucking rat.”
“Hephzibah,” whines Silas.
“Gut him all you please, but you’ll have no more help from me.”
“Then I’ll gut the lot of you, by God!”
Elliott rises to his feet. “Walsh, you dog. Don’t be a fool. Have you not shed enough blood? Think of your immortal soul.”
“Go to the devil,” Walsh mutters. But he draws back the knife a couple of inches and lifts his arm from across Silas’s chest. Silas slumps forward and catches himself on the chair.
Hephzibah returns to her work. As she bends back over Ramsay’s ribs and lifts her needle, a hollow boom rattles the air. Rattles the shutters beside the windows and the jug of rye whiskey on the stool.
Walsh swears.
“What’s that?” demands Silas.
Dr. Elliott says, “He can’t be moved, Walsh. You’ll need to come back for us later.”
“Back?” says Silas. “Back? What d’you mean by that?”
“Go, man. They’ll not harm us.”
Walsh looks at Silas. “I don’t trust that bugger, no more I can see him.”
Hephzibah lowers her needle and looks at Elliott. The open daylight is not kind to his reddened eyes and heavy skin. “You mean to stay here? In this house? For how long?”
“Why, the ship will return for us when she can, never fear. A week or two. Perhaps a month.”
“A month!”
Hephzibah counts the stores in her head.
The rye-n-Injun in the barrel, the braids of onion and garlic, the sacks of dried beans and peas.
In the cellar, the potatoes and squash. Carrot and corn.
Salted fish and smoked meat. Barrels of hard cider.
Enough to feed them through the winter. But not two additional men, full grown. One an invalid.
“We’ll pay for our board, as I said,” says Elliott. “In good hard coin, genuine silver dollars, new-minted on the Spanish Main.”
“How much?” asks Silas.
The gun fires again.
“Walsh! Give the fellow his silver and slip anchor, man. I’ll answer for it.”
Walsh swears again and pulls a small, heavy bag from the pocket of his coat, which he smashes against Silas’s chest. “Listen here, mate. If the skipper cops it, you’re a dead man.”
“And if he lives, a rich one,” Elliott says. “Now spread some canvas, Thomas Walsh. The tide waits for no man, as I need hardly tell an old sea dog such as yourself.”
Walsh sticks the knife back in his belt. Before he stomps out the door to the boat drug up on the shingles, he snatches the jug from the stool next to the bed and carries it away with him, for no pirate can resist a little booty, Hephzibah knows.