Captain of My Heart (5 page)

“Calm yourself, Dalby. I have things well
under control.”

“But, Captain, I’m going to be sick,
sick—”

“Please don’t get sick now, Dalby; wait till
we reach port.”

“But, Capt—”

“Liam!” Brendan grasped his lieutenant’s arm,
jerking him from his terrified reverie. Newburyport was approaching
fast; Brendan could hear the church bells ringing now, guns firing,
dogs barking as the alarm was raised. “Please take Dalby forward
and watch for those piers, would you?”

“Aye, Cap’n!” he shouted. “’Bout
time
ye got serious!”

Liam was already hauling Dalby forward at a
dead run, his shirttails billowing behind him. Brendan grinned, and
in his best quarterdeck voice, called, “And glazed almonds and
mince pie, and pear tarts smothered in sweet, fresh cream. ...”

He heard Dalby’s wheedling voice: “Liam?
Liam, why’s the captain talking about food at a time like
this?”

But Liam only ran faster, hauling Dalby over
debris and deck furnishings alike.

“Haven’t had fresh cream in ages! Faith, must
be at least three, four years now! How ’bout you, Liam? Getting
sick of pork souse and hardtack?”

Over his shoulder Liam shouted, “If I ever
get t’ see pork souse and hardtack again, I swear, I’ll get down on
me knees an’ kiss yer goddamned feet!”

Brendan, grinning, glanced over his shoulder
at
Dismal
’s bloated spritsail. “And custards and jellies,
apple cider, cold glasses of milk—run out the starboard guns now,
would you, Mr. Saunders?—sauces and gravies and piping hot bread,
fresh from the oven and just oozing butter. ...”

“And your bloody toes, too!” Liam bawled.

Brendan laughed. “Double-shotted, Mr.
Saunders!”

“In the bread
,
sir?”

“For heaven’s sake, Mr. Saunders, in the
guns.
What in God’s name d’you think I’m talking about,
eh?”

“Aye, sir! Right away!”

“And lively, Mr. Saunders!”

They were well into the mouth of the river
now. Close abeam, marshlands and riverbanks slid past. Ahead,
Newburyport was growing larger; fine homes of brick and
white-painted wood looking out over the riverfront, their windows
glinting with orange sunset. Wharves stretched into the harbor, and
a church thrust a spire toward the sky.

Dismal,
just beginning to overtake
them, maneuvered her mighty broadside into position.

“Stuffed mutton and Indian pudding. ...”
Retrieving his speaking trumpet, Brendan dusted it off with his
elbow, heedless of the fresh musket hole like an eyeless socket in
the metal. “Though I could pass on the green beans, if Ashton’s
serving them!”

He peered over the side, staring down into
the swirling depths, not thinking at all about the supper he was
determined not to miss, but about those sunken piers that Dalby and
Liam would probably never see, the sunken piers that were probably
approaching just . . . about . . . now—

“
Hard alee, Mr. Keefe!”

The helmsman shoved the tiller over so
violently that men lost their footing, shot spilled across the
deck, and the topsail yard stabbed down like a harpoon. Striated
bars of sand swept beneath them, broken here and there by the
fuzzy, ominous hulk of the sunken pier just beneath the river’s
surface. As one, the crew held their breaths, cringing. But their
captain knew what he was about. A sigh, a whisper, and they were
safely through the channel. Another sigh and they looked up to see
brigs and sloops, schooners and cutters, some anchored, some
docked, and some already moving toward them.

Brendan leapt onto the deckhouse, waving his
speaking trumpet and jumping up and down in excitement. “Steady,
Mr. Keefe, steady, steady,
steady!”

Crichton wasn’t as clever. With an agonized
shriek of grinding timbers,
Dismal
struck the sunken pier,
her broadside lighting up her entire side in fiery tongues of
orange against black. Thunder split the air with an unholy,
deafening roar. Iron slammed against
Annabel’s
sides and
whined overhead. There was an awesome crack, like a lightning bolt
hitting too close, and the mast teetered wildly. Men screamed,
stays and shrouds split with a noise like gunfire, and the
deckhouse fell out from beneath Brendan’s feet.

Air whooshed past him. A cannon belted him
across the shoulders, sky flashed beneath his shoes, a piece of
railing shot by his face. He hit the deck on his back, careened
across it on his coattails, and slammed into the truck of a gun so
hard that his sword split in two. He lay there for a moment,
stunned, the fact that he was too dazed to even wonder if he was
dead assuring him that he was not. Smoke burned his throat, seared
his lungs—and through it he saw the ghostly shapes of Crichton’s
guns, running out once more.

He lurched to his knees, raised his
half-sword, and choked out,
“Fire!”

And then the deck itself seemed to open up
and fall away. Grabbing frantically for a line, he was aware of
someone yelling his name, and then nothing but weightlessness,
space, and the dizzying rush of air against his face, his arms, his
legs, before he hit the sea with a stunning slap.

Not again.

He clawed toward the surface, grabbing a
piece of flotsam and fighting to stay afloat as the river’s mighty
current swept him past the smoke-wreathed frigate, the point of
Plum Island, and eventually, into the cold, open Atlantic.
Powerless, he watched the thick black cloud that hung over the two
ships diminish in size as he was carried further from his ship, saw
a few stabs of orange as fire was exchanged. And then there was
nothing but vast, empty space beneath his feet and a sea bottom
that lay countless fathoms beneath him. And still the current,
drawing him farther and farther out to sea.

Sunset came and went. Gloom snuffed out the
smudge of land that was Plum Island, distant now and growing more
so, until even the lights that marked it sank below the horizon.
The flotsam was cold and slimy beneath his cheek, the constant slap
of the waves filling his nose and mouth and sinuses with every rise
and fall of the sea beneath him. Up and down . . . up and down. . .
. The stars came out. The moon rose to stand guard over him,
sheeting the ocean in silver and picking him out as a speck of life
in a vast and starlit emptiness. He locked his arms around his
float, laid his cheek atop the wet wood, and despite the biting
chill of the ocean, fell asleep.

His Irish luck held. Dawn found him still
alive, paralyzed with cold and barely able to open his swollen eyes
when the first rays of sunlight poked over the horizon and nudged
him out of his stupor. His waking thoughts were of neck of mutton
and Indian pudding dripping with sweet maple syrup. Groaning, he
dug at his eyes with a white and wrinkled fist. Sunlight lanced his
pupils and sent a shaft of pain straight into the back of his
skull. Spitting out seawater and squinting against the glare, he
managed to focus on that blinding ribbon of sea that marked the
eastern horizon.

He blinked, squinted, blinked again. For
there, etched as dark squares against the white glare, were the
sails of a fine and lovely ship, a ship that saluted the morning
and heralded its arrival upon her proud pennants and the highest
reaches of her sun-gilded masts. A curl of pink light sparkled at
her bows, along her sides. Her canvas and shrouds sang in the
wind.

She was glorious. She was beautiful.

And she was coming for him.

He wondered if he was dead and this was his
just reward, for there was no feeling left in his limbs, no
reasoning left in his brain. Just fogginess and a thick, swirling
haze, pierced here and there by sounds; the protests of spars and
canvas as the brig hove to, the keen of water dying beneath her
bows. Frantic shouts above him, splashes nearby, the
thunk
of oars against a hollow hull. Gentle hands worked around and
beneath him. Rope, swathed in sailcloth to lessen its bite, was
passed beneath his arms and chest, tightening until the pressure
between his shoulders and against his ribs became blinding pain.
The sea sucked at his legs in a last desperate attempt to hold him
as he was hauled free of it, and through the salt-swollen slits
that were his eyes, he saw blue water, slowly revolving beneath
him, sparkling, blinding, as he was hoisted higher and higher.

A rail brushed his knees. Hands supported and
guided him as his feet touched a solid deck, his legs crumpled
beneath him, and he was eased down to warm, dry planking that
smelled pleasantly of sunlight and vinegar beneath his cheek.
Dimly, he was aware of someone tugging at his stock, loosening it
and tearing it free.

“Easy, now, careful with him. The poor
fellow’s been through enough. Joey, fetch the surgeon, would ye?
And Jake, stop gawking and go get me a bucket of fresh water from
below. Blankets, too, while you’re at it, lots of ’em. Hurry,
now!”

Brendan coughed, and tried to sit up.

“Easy, there, fellow,” came that Yankee drawl
again. Firm hands pressed against his chest, pinning him against
the sickeningly solid deck. Brendan saw a pair of boots three
inches from his face, smelled their worn leather, and felt shadows
cooling his cheeks as someone leaned over him. “Mr. Malvern’s on
his way to see you now. Some hot gruel and a few warm blankets and
you’ll be on your feet in no time, guaranteed.”

He tried to open his eyes, for there was
something familiar about that voice . . . something very familiar.
Something connected to the drafts.

It hit him with choking horror.
The
drafts.
He’d never given them to Liam! They were still in his
pocket, and he’d just spent the night in the open Atlantic—

He clawed upward into the blinding
brightness. His fingers brushed a hat, knocked it awry. A rough
cheek, someone’s nose, a light object of wire and glass.

“
The drafts!”
His eyelids parted like
ripping cloth. Through a wall of pain he saw a reedy man in a
slapdash, half-buttoned coat bending over him and blocking the
sunlight, the proud pyramid of sails rising high above his head.
Hair so red, it hurt his eyes to look at it. Dense patches of
freckles sprinkled like cinnamon over a narrow nose down which a
pair of spectacles was slowly sliding. The man raised his head,
presenting the underside of his red-stubbled jaw, but Brendan had
seen enough to know who he was.

“Ashton!” he gasped, lapsing into a fit of
choking.

“That water, Jake, give it here!” the man
yelled, reaching impatiently for the wooden pail.

Moisture trickled between Brendan’s teeth and
across his swollen tongue, dragging pain down his throat and into
his writhing stomach. The world tilted and swam. The water was
coming too fast for him to swallow, most of it splashing down his
chin and the rest of it making him cough and gag. Choking, he
twisted away, willed himself not to be sick, and gasped, “Matthew
Ashton!”

Instantly the water stopped coming.

“Nice . . . to meet you again, sir. I trust—”
Brendan’s swollen lips cracked in a grin. “—you have the table all
set?”

Ashton gaped at him. “
What?
”

“He’s out of his head,” a seaman
muttered.

“And British, just as we thought,” another
said darkly. “His Majesty’s finest. Told ye he was off that
frigate.”

“British? Sounds Irish t’ me.”

“Idiot, he’s as British as tea an’
crumpets!”

“Irish, damn ye! And as full of blarney as a
four-leaf clover.”

“’Bout as lucky, too.”

But Ashton was peering speculatively at him,
his brown eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his spectacles.
Didn’t he recognize him? Didn’t he remember their meeting off
Portsmouth?

But no, the Yankee was already standing up,
pushing his spectacles up his nose with one freckled finger. “I,
uh, think we’d better take you below, good fellow. My surgeon is
most competent, and perhaps some rest would do you good. You’ve
obviously been through quite an ordeal.”

“No, please, you must understand! I am not .
. . unhinged.” Brendan shut his eyes, too sick, too weak, to
protest further. “I know fully well what I’m about . . . but I see
that my delay in introducing myself has . . . led to some confusion
about my identity.” He opened his eyes and stared desperately up
into the Yankee’s freckled face. “You are Matthew Ashton, American
privateer. Your father is Ephraim Ashton, shipbuilder—” He took a
deep breath and tried to grin. “—and I am Captain Brendan Jay
Merrick, late of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, late of the sloop
Annabel,
and late—very late, I’m afraid—for dinner.”

“Good God,” Ashton expostulated, and dropped
the water pail.

Someone wrapped a blanket around him. Hands
drove beneath his shoulders, his arms, his legs, lifting him high.
The deck fell away beneath him and he opened his eyes to the sight
of Ashton’s face, spinning in a blurry mass of freckles, red hair,
and spectacles. Didn’t the Yankee believe him? Did he look so bad
he didn’t recognize him? Panicking, he began to struggle
wildly.

“Hold still, ye bugger!” a seaman growled.
“Ye wanna make us drop ye?”

“Won’t be no big loss, I tell ye.”

“Only t’ Georgie’s bloody navy. He’s lyin’, I
tell ye. He ain’t no American.”

And then, Ashton’s quiet voice. “You drop him
and you’ll be going to England in his place.”

“But, Cap’n, ’e’s a
Brit!”

“I said, be easy with him!”

But one last look at Ashton’s uncertain face
told Brendan the Yankee was unconvinced. And as his dripping blue
coattails brushed the deck, and darkness began to dim his vision,
he remembered.

The drafts.

He drove his hand beneath the wool blanket
and into his pocket. His fingers found—and sank into—a sopping,
squishy mess of pulp that instantly disintegrated between them.
With something like a sob, he drew it out.