Cinnamon and Gunpowder (40 page)

A lantern had shattered and spilled oil upon the rear wall, where the flame spread eagerly.

Feng and Bai were occupied warding off the attempts to seize Mabbot while she wove her way through the carnage toward the back, where the Fox stood guarded by a handful of his men. She had not drawn her pistols and she waved her hands in the air as she went, crying, “Hold! Hold!”, but her voice was swallowed by the roar of the guns.

I watched as the brute with the wrought-iron club threw his meaty arm around Mabbot’s waist and swung her to the ground like a sheep for shearing. With a knee on her neck, he began to tie her wrists with rope as Feng and Bai fought desperately to reach her.

The Fox came at a run from the other side of the hall, ducking Mr. Apples’s windmill arm, and shouting, “With respect, didn’t I say? You do not touch her but with respect!” He shoved his own man off of Mabbot and reached down to pull her to her feet. That briefest moment is frozen in my memory, the two of them holding hands in the eye of the storm with the battle converging upon them from every direction. Perhaps it is precisely because everything was, just a breath later, utterly torn, that this moment seemed to last much longer than it could have, lit with a trembling light.

Perhaps the Fox was about to say something—his mouth was open—but already some careening pistol ball had made its tunnel into his forehead. He looked up at the ceiling and fell backward. Mr. Apples and the twins scrambled to reach Mabbot as she dropped and pulled her child into her arms. Through the thickening eddies of smoke, I saw Mabbot on her knees, her face gone pale, holding his leaking head to her chest. There she rocked, as if comforting a baby.

Feng made it to her side just as Gristle lifted his blunderbuss and fired. Mabbot and Feng fell in a heap.

Bai rushed to his sister while Mr. Apples seized Gristle’s gun and swung hard. Even as the stock broke the head of a nearby ruffian like a melon, Mr. Apples reached out and crushed Gristle’s throat in his enormous fist. The few remaining brigands had begun a hasty retreat through the trapdoor rather than face Mr. Apples without their leader.

Joshua and I clung to each other until the tavern became still. Peering from behind our table, I could see that nearly all of our crew lay among the dead or wounded. Only Bai, Braga, Mr. Apples, and two frazzled seamen still stood over their fallen fellows.

Then another shot rang out, pinning a boutonniere of blood to Mr. Apples’s shoulder. The sniper in the loft reloaded behind the curtain as the others dragged Mabbot to the shelter of the bar. Mr. Apples made a move to charge the stairs but took another shot in the thigh and fell back. Behind the bar, Bai was worrying over Feng and Mabbot, who both lay motionless.

Except for the crackle of the rear wall burning, the tavern was quiet enough to hear the click of the sniper opening the chamber for another round. I saw then, as if in a dream, Joshua run a third of the way up the stairs. He pitched a lantern into the loft. There was a pop and sizzle as the sniper’s powder box went off all at once; a moment later the shooter fell through the air, his head and hands blackened, to the sawdust floor and writhed there in the deepening murk.

The next several minutes are hard to recall. The fighting had stopped, but the smoke and flames forced us to flee the building; when Mr. Apples gave us the nod, we moved as a band through the front door, carrying three bodies and leaving the rest to burn. There was no sign of the Fox’s surviving men, but a crowd of townspeople had gathered, and, when they saw us emerge, several of them braved the fire to see what could be salvaged from the building.

Mr. Apples moved quickly despite his wounds and gave Mabbot’s entire bag of silver to a passing woodsman in exchange for a grizzled mule.

Mabbot was insensate but breathing, a wash of blood streaming from her temple down her neck and back. Feng was dead, her heart cloven by the force of the blunderbuss. Bai had slung his sister over his shoulder and would not put her on the mule but instead made his way quickly toward the coast on foot. We followed, ever on the lookout for another ambush.

The two remaining seamen carried the body of Leighton, the Brass Fox, slung between them, as Mr. Apples ordered. One sailor balked, “But it’s hardly treasure.”

Mr. Apples took the sailor by the hair and lifted him kicking into the air. “Having trouble hearing me, man?”

“No, sir!”

I gave Joshua a kiss on the head before Mr. Apples lifted him and carried him like a hero on his broad shoulders. Because of my slow gait, I was obliged to ride upon the mule behind the unconscious Mabbot, who left a trail of pattering blood. Mr. Apples called for Bai to let us put Feng upon the donkey, but Bai would not let go of his sister, nor slow down. He carried her as if she weighed no more than a bundle of flowers.

“Knew this Fox was trouble!” one of the seamen grumbled.

“It hardly matters now!” I barked, surprised by the desperation in my own voice.

Ignoring me, he said, “Cap’m shot, an’ for what? A kiss from the boy? Is this corpse our hard-earned prize?”

The sailors received from Mr. Apples a glare so chilling that they shut their mouths and did not speak again.

By the time we made it back to the boats, Bai had laid Feng out and wrapped her face with his own shirt. The dragon tattoo made a dark storm on his back. Though his face showed signs of weeping, he was stony as we approached.

“How is the captain?” he asked.

“Breathing” was all I could say.

When we got back to the
Rose
, Mr. Apples carried Mabbot to her bed, and then left to shout orders at the crew. He was worried that Laroche was not far off, and we tripped anchor and set sail to hie south in a hurry.

Meanwhile, Mabbot, still bleeding from the head, wouldn’t rouse. Neither would the good doctor, who lay pickled, as usual, in his hammock—it’s the good doctor’s prerogative apparently to requisition as much wine from the hold as he pleases, no doubt for the sake of keeping wounds clean. Bai, as still as an idol, sat next to Feng’s corpse on the deck and stared out at the water. Asher keened and rolled his face upon Feng’s bloody chest, his hand cupping the slight swell of her belly.

In her cabin, I arranged towels under Mabbot’s head, then felt through her hair, gummy with drying clots, searching for the source of the flow, but could not ascertain the edges of the wound. Finally, distraught by the unceasing blood, I ran to fetch Mr. Apples’s wool shears. I began to hack through her hair, thick as a bear’s and sopping. Once I began there was no stopping, and soon enough I was surrounded by great tentacles of her legendary locks. Eventually I had clipped her to a rugged half inch. Although I could see grey hair sprinkled here and there in the scruff of her scalp, she seemed younger thus, almost girlish, thin and vulnerable.

I steeled myself to examine the extent of the damage. The wound was revealed: a gash from her eyebrow to the back of her skull, as straight as a saber’s cut. In places the tissue was sliced clean through and the grim white of her skull showed like teeth between bloody lips. Upon the bone itself, the bullet had left a shallow groove in its course. But for this scrimshaw, her skull seemed as solid and stubborn as ever.

Still, it was a heavy injury, and I doubted she would wake. I heated a blade over a lantern until it glowed. I rinsed the wound in brandy and pinched it shut with one hand. With the other I crossed myself and rolled the blunt edge of the red-hot blade as deliberately as I could over the length of the laceration, searing it shut and filling the room with the smell of burned hair and grilled steak.

I blistered my finger in the process and was bringing it to my mouth when something nearly broke my nose. Mabbot had woken to punch me in the face. She sat up, her visage a terrible muddle of confusion and rage, rolled her eyes, and fell again senseless. She was very pale and, except for her shallow breathing, looked lifeless. At least the bleeding was done.

“You’re welcome,” I muttered, clutching my tender nose.

I went again to fetch the surgeon, and when he would not rise, I followed Mabbot’s example and punched him square in the face. It did not wake him, and I turned to leave, then came back to punch him again; it felt so good the first time. I left him to his drunken oblivion and returned to Bai. Kneeling next to him, I begged, “I will watch over Feng, if you’ll only go and see the captain.”

He stood and went. When he returned, he said, “I’ve put needles in her ear. Nothing more can be done until she wakes.”

Every few hours an argument breaks out on deck about what will become of Mabbot, or whether Laroche is nearby. Mostly, though, the men argue about the Brass Fox, for his death has only stirred their fascination:

“That ain’t the real Fox in the hold. The real Fox can’t be killed.”

“We should sell him to Pendleton for a bounty.”

“Nah, we should find his hoarded gold! The man had a mountain of it!”

“Hush! His spirit will wreck us if you don’t show respect.”

“Drink piss, spirit! It’s Mabbot you need to worry about. He’s her blood. Bite your tongue or she’ll flay us all when she wakes.”

Mr. Apples is busy cracking heads together to keep the peace.

Thursday, November 11

My own injuries are nearly healed. Mabbot, though, has been asleep for two days. The wound upon her head no longer bleeds but has swollen around my hasty surgery. She sweats profusely in her sleep, and every hour I pull her upright and spoon coconut water and Bai’s fever medicine into her parched mouth. I’ve lived during this time in the stuffed chair beside her bed. I even tolerate the rabbit to nest in my lap.

Mr. Apples has announced that we are tacking back toward the Sunda Strait, much to the delight of the crew, who believe that this place is bad luck. He will not, however, give us any further indication of our destination.

Friday, November 12

I was asleep and drooling in the chair beside her bed when Mabbot’s voice woke me.

“You must think I was most … reckless, in the tavern.” She was sallow and stippled with sweat, but her eyes were keen.

“I’m in no position to judge,” I said.

“None?”

After a silence, I admitted, “I too have been undone in my time. I lost my wife in childbirth. The child too.”

“You loved her?”

“If not for godly counsel, I would have buried myself with them.”

“Then you’re familiar with the immodesty of grief.” She spoke so slowly and softly that I was obliged to kneel at the side of the bed with my ear close to her mouth. “Tell me, Wedge, is Leighton … How was he left?”

“He is here, Mabbot. We’ve put his body in a hogshead of Madeira to preserve it until you should wake. Mr. Apples has posted a guard.”

She seemed relieved, and I thought she’d fallen asleep again, but she said, “I’ll take him to America, find a cottage there, like the one in the Canaries where I nursed him. They’re not hunting me in the Americas; they too hate the Pendleton Company … maybe I’ll stay there. My sails are slack.”

I let her rest and rushed to the galley to prepare some broth. To heal, one needs a soup of real marrow bones. I used what we had—salted babirusa and dried fish—and cursed as I cooked. I added molasses for her blood, wishing I had even the lamb knees Ramsey used to throw to his hounds.