Run Afoul (6 page)

“That's quite a story,” said Couthouy. He sounded admiring.

“Sir Roger—who?” The query came from Dr. Olliver.

“Palgrave,” answered Grimes.

Dr. Olliver lifted his glass and emptied it in one mouthful. Then he picked up the stopper that had been rolling back and forth between fiddle boards, and carefully inserted it in the neck of the decanter.

“Never met him,” he said without interest.

“He's dead,” said Grimes.

“Of natural causes?” inquired Couthouy on a ghoulish note.

Grimes snapped, “Of course,” and then added, “His only son sold the estate after he inherited it, so there's no Palgraves there anymore.”

There was an odd, awkward little silence, broken, unexpectedly, by the arrival of Robert Festin. The squat little man came around the corner of the credenza with a small covered dish in his hand, and the same sly grin that Wiki had seen before on his face.

He went straight up to Grimes, pushed the plate toward him, and said in English, “For you.”

“What?” The assistant astronomer scowled. Then he slowly took the cover off the dish, while they all watched in fascination.

It revealed an individual baked pudding, golden in color and liberally sprinkled with grated brown sugar. It steamed, wafting out a delicious aroma of sweet potato that had been mashed and blended with butter, molasses, and rum. Everyone leaned forward with blatant envy as Grimes plied a fork, puffing damply on each morsel to cool it before inserting it into his mouth. Even when he had finished, he made no comment, but Festin's grin was broader than ever.

“Now,” he stated, “you say
aye,
yes?”

Wiki, having suddenly deduced what it was all about, tensed warily. Grimes was slower on the uptake, saying blankly, “What?”

“Me sleep in your room, on floor. You say
yes,
no?”

“Absolutely not!”

“But Wiki said—”

To Wiki's enormous relief, they were interrupted. The afterhouse door slammed open, and Lieutenant Forsythe strode in. His burly form was swathed in a wet oilskin coat, making him look bigger than ever, and he was carrying a speaking trumpet, evidently set to take over the deck when eight bells rang and the watch changed.

He swung around a chair, threw himself into it, reached out, grasped Dr. Olliver's decanter, unstoppered it, and poured wine liberally into a mug, while he used an elbow planted on the table to brace himself against the roll of the ship. Then he gulped deeply, before looking at Lieutenant Smith with an evil grin, and saying, “Found you at last, you treacherous little bugger.”

Assistant Astronomer Grimes let out an audible gasp, while Lawrence J. Smith's eyes popped. “So you're back on the
Vincennes,
huh?” the Virginian remarked. “Last time I saw you, you was in charge of what passes for the quarterdeck of the U.S. schooner
Flying Fish,
taking off for the horizon like the devil himself was on your tail, having solemnly promised not to leave me and my men stranded at Shark Island with just the cutter to get us back to the fleet. So what are you doin' here? Your career taken a mighty downturn?”

The pompous lieutenant gobbled, at a loss for a dignified answer, and Forsythe laughed. “Don't bother,” he advised. “I'm merely here to deliver a message—that your presence is desired in the wardroom.” The ship's bell rang, and the big southerner drained the mug, heaved himself to his feet, grinned unpleasantly at them all, and left, kicking at a rat as he went.

Wiki got up, too, abandoning Festin to his doomed argument with Grimes. By the time he arrived on the windswept deck, Forsythe had disappeared, but nonetheless he stayed outside. The brisk air was invigorating. Spray, mixed with drizzling rain, flew across the decks, wetting his shirt and trousers, but on impulse he walked forward to the waist, kicked off his boots, jumped onto the bulwarks, and began to climb the mainmast shrouds. The wind tore away the lashing of his long hair, so that it whipped out behind him. Reaching the futtock shrouds that braced the platformlike top of the lower mast, he threw himself bodily outward, swarmed over the top with the roll of the ship, and then carried onward up the ladderlike ratlines to the topgallant crosstrees, where he wedged himself into place, hanging on to a lanyard.

The view was tremendous. The big ship, cracking on with the gale on her starboard quarter, was leaning well over, plunging every now and then, and the wake that curled away from her hull, a hundred fifty feet below, was white with rushing spume. The sky was streaming with broken cloud, full of holes that let through great shafts of rain-streaked moonlight, which gleamed on the spread of canvas below him, and lit up the scudding sails of the other ships of the fleet—the multiple triangles of the two schooners,
Flying Fish
and
Sea Gull;
the double pyramid of the brig
Porpoise,
and the piratical silhouette of the
Swallow,
dashing along at a terrific rate under her steeply raked masts.

The gale was on the rise—it was high time to take in more sail. Wiki heard Forsythe, on the roof of the afterhouse, bellow into his trumpet—“Stand by t'gallant halyards!”—and boatswains' mates shrilling their calls. A sudden gust of rain swept down, and men slipped and slid on the distant deck as they hauled on buntlines and clewlines to slacken the hard bellies of the sails.

Then, “Away aloft!” and hands were crawling up the rigging toward Wiki. Some, braver or more agile, were outpacing the others, and so the first topgallantman arrived well ahead of his shipmates. Wiki moved aside to make room for him, so he could sidle along the jolting yard to take the weather earring, and then, on yet another impulse, went out on the opposite end. Other men arrived on the footrope alongside him, and together they bent over the yard and heaved at the heavy wet canvas.

At last the job was done. The other seamen headed deckward, some casting Wiki curious looks. However, he lingered, watching the
Swallow
take in sail, imagining what it was like on board the smaller and much more lively craft. The decks would be a cacophony of shouted orders and trampling feet, the creaking of blocks and the groan of hauled ropes. Below decks, the little brig would be creaking like a basket, with every particle on the move, the rattling of cutlery punctuated by the smashing of plates.

Yet even in these conditions, he mused, compared to the chaotic state of society in the afterhouse of the flagship
Vincennes,
the atmosphere on board the
Swallow
would be remarkably tranquil.

Five

That night, Wiki woke to hear a grating sound as Grimes's chamber pot was dragged out from under the double berth, followed by a bout of loud, wet coughing as the pot was shoved back with yet another scrape. Worse was to come—at four in the morning, as eight bells rang for the start of the morning watch, Grimes was overtaken with griping pains, and groaned most horribly as he crouched.

The moment he was back in bed, shuddering and whimpering, Wiki swung down from his berth, and retreated into the empty saloon, carrying his clothes. The instant he was dressed he tapped on Dr. Olliver's door. The naturalist opened it almost at once, more whalelike than ever in a billowing nightshirt. After silently listening to Wiki, he nodded and went back inside.

It seemed to take an endless time for the surgeon to put on his clothes and come out again. Then Grimes objected strenuously to a medical examination, vowing that he did not want to be poked and prodded. Marveling that any man could be so obstinate when he was suffering so much, Wiki retreated to the saloon, leaving Dr. Olliver to it. By the time the echoes of the argument faded and the naturalist had set to work on his reluctant patient, coffee arrived on the table.

The ship was still plunging about in lively fashion, but the plump steward minced back and forth with the same steadiness he had displayed the evening before. Undoubtedly, Wiki mused, Jack Winter's remarkable sense of balance was the heritage of years on tiny sealing vessels in tumultuous southern seas. Perhaps, he thought ironically, that was where he had learned to make such horrible coffee, too.

“What's all the early commotion about?” the steward then inquired. “If I may take the extreme liberty of asking?”

“Astronomer Grimes is sick. Something gave him the gripes.”

“The fish didn't agree with his innards, huh?” Jack Winter's sideways look was malicious.

Dr. Olliver came into the saloon as Wiki replied impatiently, “I thought you might have more sensible ideas than that.”

“When I viewed them fish I didn't like the sight at all—to my mind they threatened something bloody nasty, excuse my biblical language, particularly when I saw their reproachful eyes.”

“But we all ate the fish!”

“And maybe we don't all have delicate digestions,” Jack Winter said in his smarmy way. “You sure they was fresh?”

Wiki snapped, “
Ehara!
I promise you they were caught yesterday morning! You can argue with Sua and Tana, if you don't believe me!”

As the steward went off with a resentful look, Dr. Olliver said, “I don't trust that fellow an inch—he steals my wine, you know.”

Wiki didn't doubt that for an instant. However, remembering the naturalist's little ritual of refilling his wineglass every time it reached the precise halfway level, he said curiously, “Why don't you mark the decanter?”

“Because God alone knows what he would pour into it to bring it up to the mark again. And anyway,” Dr. Olliver went on as he swung a chair around and eased his bulk into it, “I brought the Madeira on board in a butt, which is kept in the steward's storeroom, and there's no way I can check how much is taken out of that.”

Wiki helped himself to coffee, thinking that he now had a good idea why Jack Winter slung his hammock there. Captain Couthouy came into the room, blinking and complaining about being disturbed in the night, and the surgeon told him, “Grimes is suffering from a bout of diarrhea,” adding with relish, “And he reckons he's been poisoned.”

“By the fish?”

“Either the fish or the pudding,” said Dr. Olliver.

“Then it must be the pudding, because no one else has been sick.”

“Whatever, Grimes reckons that odd little cook is out to poison him, and maybe Jack Winter is, too.”

“Can't he make up his mind?” queried Couthouy.

“He doesn't need to, because he reckons it's a conspiracy.”

Wiki echoed blankly, “Conspiracy? Between Jack Winter and Robert Festin? But why?”

“Oh, you have the honor of being included in the number,” Olliver assured him with a smirk. “Not only does he reckon you want him out of that stateroom, but that the cook will stop at nothing to get in there, as well.”

“Dear God,” said Wiki. He wondered if Grimes were mad.

The surgeon said thoughtfully, “Do you have any idea why Festin made him a dessert all of his own?” He pursed plump lips, and confessed rather plaintively, “I must confess it smelled and looked so enticing I could easily have managed a portion myself—but now I wonder if I was lucky I didn't.”

“I didn't realize it until too late, but it was intended as a bribe, his logic being that Grimes would be charmed into letting him sleep on the floor of our room. He gets lonely, you see,” Wiki went on, as a lame kind of excuse.

They both stared at him, and then Captain Couthouy barked with laughter. “Well,” he said callously, “if the pudding
was
poisoned, he'll have a room all to himself—in the brig—and then a space of his own when he hangs from the yardarm, too.”

“Unless the steward sprinkled something on the top two fish—the ones that Grimes ate,” said Dr. Olliver.

Couthouy guffawed. “Surely you're not going in for this conspiracy idea, too? Why the devil would the steward want to kill him?”

Dr. Olliver shrugged bulky shoulders. “I agree that Grimes is exhibiting morbid delusions of persecution. The problem is that he's very ill—ill enough to die.”

Wiki exclaimed in horror,
“Die?”

“You've noticed how he stoops? His difficulty in breathing? He suffers from a pronounced lateral curvature of the spine, which is probably congenital, and has led to such a long-standing degeneration of the chest that the left lung has adhered to the wall. On top of his other symptoms, he now has a heightened temperature. If the diarrhea, with its accompanying chills, brings on a pneumonia, then the very worst could happen.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Wiki demanded.

“My first recourse would be venesection, but he utterly refuses to be bled. I have to say he's the most bloody uncooperative patient I've encountered in many a year,” Dr. Olliver confessed on a resentful note. “However, I have managed to dose him with carbonate of ammonia. It was the devil's own job to get it into his mouth, and he refused to swallow until I pinched his nostrils shut. Then he had the sauce to call me a goddamned quack because it tasted bitter.”

“Will the carbonate of ammonia fix the problem?”

“It should help. It's a cardiac stimulant, but can also be employed as a valuable expectorant. To make sure, however,” he said, his tone becoming businesslike as he heaved himself out of his chair and went to his room for a wooden box, “I'll make up some
pilula cinchona composita.
”

Paying not the slightest regard to the fact that the steward wanted to lay breakfast, Dr. Olliver dumped the box on the table. Opening the lid revealed the contents of a medical chest. He then asked Jack Winter for an egg, and by the time it arrived, rattling in a small bowl, he had four bottles lined up in front of him, along with a small stone pestle and mortar.

As Wiki and Captain Couthouy watched with deep interest from the other side of the table, he measured coarse powder out of three of the bottles. Then he picked up the fourth vial, which held a small amount of dried vegetable matter, and shook it, studying it with a frown before emptying it into the mortar.