A Different Sort of Perfect (15 page)

Her look at him held something of wonder. Did she
wish to know why he wasn't laughing or why he wasn't crawling away
in humiliation? He'd burn in the nether regions before he
asked.

"A very liberal policy, I'm sure." Her voice sounded
rather like the parrots' squawks, more shrill and breathy than
normal. Pink invaded her face and she lowered her head, loading the
pen and preparing to write. "Have you any notes for the — the berth
deck, Captain?"

Only to stay out of it during all future inspections,
until she was off his ship. And to have a word with his cook, too.
"No, this seems fine. Shall we carry on to the gun deck?"

Fleming led the way up a level and they checked to
ensure all the accoutrements were in place for each cannon. But
that ridiculous song kept going around and around in his thoughts
and like a stone inside his shoe, he couldn't shake it loose.
Everything around him took on new and, well,
lubricious
meanings — the long, hard lines of the cannons, the curves of the
powder horns, the rhythmic
slap slap slap
of the water along
the ship's sides.

He would not look at Lady Clara. He
refused
to
look at Lady Clara for the remainder of the inspection. Whatever
her expression said, he didn't need to know it. Nor did he trust
himself, not one sinful inch.

And when they again
mounted
to the
quarterdeck, he took his accustomed place behind a pulpit created
by standing two sea chests on edge and draping them with the blue
peter
signal flag. He slapped the Bible closed, astonished,
astonished
that it didn't scorch his guilty hand, and
instead pulled forward the Articles of War, so much more suitable
for his current temper. The Navy Board required they be read aloud
by the captain commanding each warship at least once per month.
Might as well start now.

"Thar she blows!"

Clara glanced up from Staunton's journal into the
brilliant sunlight. But the mainmast lookout on the crosstrees,
high above, was hidden behind the layers of stays'ls, the mizzen
tops'l, and the spanker, which she'd come to regard as her own
personal canopy. It was too bad the sailors occasionally rearranged
it to suit themselves.

"That's rather an odd cry."

On the other side of her little table, Staunton
swiped the heel of his hand across his chalked-in sum for the tenth
time. "I will get this. You see if I don't." He tossed the slate
down beside her crochet bag and straightened. "Old Mosey's off a
whaler, and he often forgets that he's not there any longer. Even
when it's a finner rather than a right whale, he calls out every
time, lets the whole crew know."

Ten days she'd been at sea, ten exquisite,
study-her-eyes-out days, and still there seemed so much to learn.
Something new, such as the whaler's call, surprised her at least
once per day. While the
Topaze
's progress across the Bay of
Biscay seemed to please Captain Fleming and Mr. Abbot, her own
stumbling progress with navigation, and Staunton's with conical
trigonometry, left her rather less satisfied. As marks of her
nautical education, however, her duties as captain's clerk now felt
like comfortable old slippers; she could bring the sun down to the
horizon if there was a horizon to be found, and only rarely did she
jump at the cannons' thundering report. That counted for
progress.

Over by the binnacle, with its little chimney and its
checkerboard sides of polished oak and glass, Chandler muttered
something to the compass, something lost beneath the ocean's
splashing and the ship's creaking.

The wheelmen, who were closest and who surely heard
him, didn't so much as blink. But Staunton, evidently close enough,
scowled. "That's the captain's decision to make, not yours. So shut
your face."

She hadn't heard his actual words, but the obvious
challenge to her could not be allowed to stand unchallenged in its
turn. Clara closed the journal and set it aside. "If you're
speaking of me, Mr. Chandler, do please have the courtesy to
address me to my face. I assure you, I'm more capable of returning
an intelligible answer than the compass."

Both midshipmen reddened, as if abruptly sunburned.
Whatever Chandler's words proved to be, the underlying argument
seemed to have a longer history. Nearby, someone exhaled, a long,
fluttering sound that ended beneath another, louder splash.

"Go on, then," Staunton said. "Tell her."

Chandler flushed more deeply. But he straightened,
tugged down his jacket, and his chin firmed. "You're not a member
of this crew." His uncertain tenor wavered at the start, but, like
his jacket, straightened at the sentence's end.

It hurt like a slap. She'd begun to feel so at home,
so secure and comfortable among the Topazes. True, some of them
still seemed not to like her much, but until now none had showed
her any open unkindness. For one of them, any of them, to assault
her with cutting words, felt like a betrayal. Even worse, she'd no
idea what to say.

Still the wheelmen showed no response. But one's
shoulders were relaxed, swaying with the lift and roll of the
waves, while the other held himself stiffly. Did one of them agree
with Chandler's sneering appraisal, one disagree? Or did neither
wish to become involved in the argument sure to ensue, and did they
merely have different ways of restraining themselves?

The hot blood drained from Staunton's cheeks, leaving
him white and cold. "Told you before, you awkward lout, tell you
again." He stalked close and shoved his pugnacious face into
Chandler's. "That's the captain's decision. Not yours."

The elder midshipman towered over the younger by a
good head, and the overall effect was of a small spaniel yapping in
a mastiff's face. But it was Chandler, lips thinning, who stepped
back.

"It's not a decision but a fact. She's a woman, not a
member of this crew. And it's disgraceful and indecent for her to
pretend otherwise."

"Is something wrong, gentlemen?"

Captain Fleming's voice, that was, and the hat rising
up the gangway ladder to the bridge covered his golden curls. The
two near-combatants fell apart.

For one awful moment, it seemed Staunton would
continue the fight. But he shot her a glance across the quarterdeck
and she shook her head.

She needed to sort this out for herself. Somehow, she
had to find a way.

"Nothing, sir." Surely only loyalty forced the words
from Staunton. His twisted scowl showed how he yearned to give the
captain an earful. But he'd not become a snitch on her behalf.

Chandler pursed his lips. "Nothing, sir." He doffed
his stovepipe hat to the captain, descended the gangway ladder, and
sloped away for'ard. The quarterdeck's tension trailed behind
him.

If only she could forget his diminishing words as
quickly.

"Now, Lady Clara." Captain Fleming touched his
scraper and joined her in the spanker's shade as Staunton also
scuttled away, the wretch. "You won't tell me such a bare-faced
fib, will you? What's upset you?"

Something had to be said to cover her distress. "Oh—"
But no, it wasn't that hot. What had been going on before the
contretemps? "Didn't someone say there was a whale in the vicinity?
I was hoping to see Leviathan."

His expression sharpened, the folded smile about his
lips smoothing away; she hadn't fooled him, and the painful knot in
her chest tightened further. As she'd insinuated to Staunton, this
wasn't something she wanted the captain to settle, but as a member
of his crew, if he ordered, she'd be obliged to 'fess up. But
suddenly he laughed and waved to the pinrail. Not twenty feet away,
a rising billow of mixed air, water, and mist spewed above the
ship's side and drifted away sternward. And again, that long,
fluttering exhale, far too long to be human.

Good —
gracious
. Clara leaped up, scrambled
from behind the little table, and raced to the rail.

A long, dark shape, more than half the ship's length
and shining grey in the Bay's aqueous blue, lay parallel to
Topaze
. Or it seemed to be lying there, motionless and
passive; but of course the frigate was moving through the water and
the whale had to be matching their speed, although it seemed
impossible anything so massive could move so fast—

"Captain, what's our speed?"

He checked the slate. "Ten knots, one fathom."

"
Gra
-cious." An inadequate expression for such
an amazing creature. But Lady Clara could think of no word
sufficiently grand. How odd, that two beings so diametrically
opposed — massive Leviathan and scrawny Chandler — could both
reduce her to inadequacy.

A shadow flashed beyond the whale, dark beneath the
water's surface. Without thinking, she pointed. "There's another!"
Two
of them — two huge, astonishing beasts, swimming without
effort as fast as
Topaze
sailed. Her numbed mind simply
could not contain the thought.

Captain Fleming laughed again. "Look up, Lady
Clara."

Another rippling underwater shadow, another massive,
sleek back: whales surrounded the ship, ahead, astern, surely on
the port side, as well. Five of them, ten, a dozen, a score, and
she lost count even as waterspouts erupted beyond her last mark,
all of them keeping pace with
Topaze
without seeming to
try.

The first whale exhaled again and the column of mist
and water blasted upward, higher than her head. Finally it drifted
away sternward, leaving the whale's heart-shaped blowholes
fluttering atop its back's glistening curve. She couldn't look away
from those surprisingly dexterous blowholes as the whale opened
then closed them, like the unfurling wings of a butterfly. Just
behind them, lighter stripes formed pale chevrons, pointing
forward, flashing in the sunlight as the whale's muscles extended
and contracted. It blew again and the mist drifted across her face.
She gasped, laughing with delight.

All of them were breathing, these beautiful
creatures, waterspouts blasting at every prospect — just imagine
how huge must be their lungs — all of them exhaling prolonged
streams of mist that sparkled with rainbows in the sun's rays.
Without warning, a hundred yards away one leapt as if for sheer
joy, rising and rising until she could not,
could not
believe the evidence of her eyes, only its tail remaining in the
water, and then graceful as a fleeing deer, Leviathan twisted over
and crashed side-first into the Bay's rollers, sending a spray as
massive as itself in all directions. Another leapt from the sea,
and another, great smacking crashes of sound and flying water—

"What if one of them comes down on the ship?"

Captain Fleming leaned on the pinrail beside her, his
hand not an inch from hers. His relaxed smile spoke of confidence
and when he glanced aside at her, his eyes sparkled. "They
won't."

The same wonder lit his face from within, the same
exhilaration. Her delight ratcheted another impossible degree
higher. It was as if in that moment, they shared not only an
emotion, not only an opinion, but the heart that felt it and the
mind that considered it. As if the world had contrived to bring
them together through a series of momentous events so they could
share this moment, and now that it had occurred, the emotion and
opinion, the heart and the mind, would last forever.

Which of course was ridiculous.

The frigate jolted, not enough to inconvenience her
balance, but unmistakably. It shattered the moment like ice. She
gasped;
Topaze
sailed on, undisturbed.

The first, closest whale rolled sideways in the
water, revealing the long, ungainly length of his mouth, his
wedge-shaped head, and a surprising white underbelly. Was it her
imagination, or did he watch her with that single, lazy-lidded eye?
Her chest tightened, some emotion between fear and fascination
locking her in place. The whale stared on, unabashed.

Then he slid below and out of sight. His little
dorsal fin cut the water's surface for a heartbeat, his tail
flipped as if waving goodbye, and all of them vanished within
seconds, leaving disturbed rollers and a rocking sea behind.

"'Oh, wonder!'" Something had happened to her voice,
choking it off in her throat.

But Captain Fleming smiled and completed the quote
for her. "'How many goodly creatures are there here!'"

* * * *

She fell to her knees in front of the stern locker in
the great cabin's corner, pushed aside the cushion, and lifted the
lid. Titus Ferry's stationer's supplies formed neat stacks in the
rear corner. Leaning over, she fumbled through packets of quills,
pushed aside bags of sand, reached past a sheaf of foolscap, and
pulled forth a box that rattled as it came. The first bottle
contained more of the fine black oak gall ink; so did the second
and third. But the final bottle, although made of dark glass, held
a brilliant red liquid that could only be Brazilwood ink.

Clara replaced everything and settled on the stern
locker with the ledger. Nothing less colorful could possibly
express the inexpressible emotions of the day. Thankfully Titus
Ferry had understood the impulse and laid aside the proper ink for
it.

She owed so much to that excellent man.

* * * *

"Now,
Mister
Staunton."

She'd caught him barreling down the port-side
accommodation ladder, where he couldn't squeeze past and where a
whispered conversation might not be overheard. He glanced up,
missed his footing, and she helped catch him indeed. No sense being
concerned; at his age, pests were indestructible.

"Crickets, you startled me." He retrieved his
stovepipe hat from beneath the line of belaying pins, dusted it,
and resettled it atop his black curls. "You shouldn't sneak up on a
fellow, you know."