The Dreamer (22 page)

Notes: Death and chaos. We are all lost. What have I done? What have I done?

“Pirates” screamed a voice above us.

The ship leaped into action, men emerging from below.

“All hands above deck! The wind’s perfect, she’ll carry every sail we’ve got!”

“Prepare yer battle stations,” Fredrick shouted, almost with glee. His voice was guttural, his words vernacular, no longer refined. “If they want a fight, we’ll give it to ‘em, maties!”

Mallory took me by the arm and dragged me to my cabin. “Stay here,” he said, his voice as tight as his grip.

“But Captain, I ….”

But he was already gone, the door slammed behind him.

All alone, I stood in the middle of my room, my hands balled into fists at my sides. “Stay calm. Stay calm,” I tried to will myself, trying to conquer the terror that seized me, but to no avail. My heart raced and my hands trembled. All I could see was that dark cage again, waiting for me.

I stepped back and dropped onto the bed, all the while hearing the battle cries and preparation. The room began to fade away.

The door opened, and suddenly Mallory was kneeling beside me. A voice far away told me to breathe deeply, and I obeyed it. The room slowly came into focus again. I looked at him, his face level with mine.

“You have to be brave, Rachel,” he told me. “You can do this. You can do it!” He took me by the shoulders and shook me.

I wordlessly nodded, and I could feel some of the color come back into my face.

“We’ll make for shore,” he told me. “There’s still a chance we can outrun them. The wind is good, and the
Thrasher
is still a distance off. They won’t pursue us beyond shore. If we can get to port, and get you into a longboat and to land, then we can make it, you understand? You need to listen!”

“Then I don’t have to go back?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

“No,” he answered with some gentleness. “Do you think there’s a man on board who would give you up without a fight?”

“You came to get me knowing this could happen, didn’t you?” I asked, looking into his dark, weary eyes. “You came to help me, knowing that it could mean … that if you battled, you might ….”

He looked at me, an expression of tenderness on his face that I’d seen before but didn’t know it for what it was. “I would count it worthwhile.”

“Oh, don’t say that! I’m not worth all this, don’t you see? I couldn’t bear it if there was destruction and death just for me. Perhaps I should … it would be best if you just gave me up ….”

The captain didn’t let me finish. He took my face in his hands and sharply told me not to talk nonsense.

He pulled me to a stand. “Where are we going?” I asked as he led me to the door.

“We need to eat.”

“You can’t be serious. Try to eat at a time like this?”

He pulled on my arm forcibly. “We need to eat,” he repeated firmly. “They are still hours from us. We need to keep up our strength, and not tire ourselves out with worry and concern. So do as you’re told and come along.”

Many men were already below deck eating, and if I thought they would be silent and concerned over the danger that loomed closely in the distance, I was mistaken. They were as jocular and jovial as usual. In fact, more so. They called the enemy every vulgar and disparaging name in the world and predicted their brave acts and the opponent’s cowardly defeat.

And if I thought they might harbor some ill will towards the woman responsible for their danger, I would have been wrong in that, too. The men stood as I entered, food was gathered for me in alacrity, and every comment directed at me was unfailingly gentle and kind.

There were two … well, perhaps three exceptions to this. The first was young Duncan, who was uncharacteristically quiet and withdrawn. And once when he raised his cup, I saw his hand tremble.

The second, of course, was my good friend Finley, who could always be counted on in situations like this. He was nowhere to be seen.

The third was Mallory, who, while not perhaps uncharacteristically quiet, was tense and rigid as he sat next to me, and he often touched my hand, as though to assure himself that I was, indeed, still next to him. And once, he ran his hand up and down my back, which was something he never had done before.

Captain Fredrick pulled me aside as I rose to leave. He took my hand and kissed it, knowing perhaps it would be a last chance to say goodbye. But just as my stomach sank at the implication, he said grandly, “In return for the impending valor to be performed in your name, the likes of which the world has never seen, I believe you might make adequate repayment in the promise that you shall name every one of your children after us. The eldest son, of course, shall bear my humble name. Mallory shall have to wait for number two. If you have a girl, do not fear, you may aptly name her ‘Duncan’ with little embarrassment.” There was laughter. “Of course, it means you must bear fruit seventy-five times. But if you’re a woman of honor, and if you adore Mallory as much as he assures me you do, you will deem it worthwhile.”

The men laughed again, and even I managed to smile. With one flowery speech he had implied I would live to have children, Mallory’s children, and there was no reason to be afraid. And I loved him for it. And with that, Fredrick waved me away, dismissing me with a parting reminder to take good records for progeny.

Mallory took me back to my cabin. Once inside, he removed a key from his jacket pocket and showed me how to lock my door. He spoke quietly and evenly, and when he gave the key to me, he watched me lock the door myself so that he could be sure I knew how to do it.

Wordlessly he walked to my window that looked out over the deck. There was silence, and my hands were shaking so much it was difficult to put the key into my pocket.

He closed the shutters and locked them. “Rachel,” he said without turning, “I need to leave you now.” He spoke evenly, just like before.

I sat down on the bed.

The captain came to me, sitting down beside me. “I need to go. I must help the others. Do not leave the safety of this cabin. Ever. No matter what you see or hear. Do you understand me?”

“I … I won’t open the door for anyone but you.” I promised.

He breathed out through his lips. “Rachel, you need to ….” He looked down, not meeting my eyes. “You need to be prepared. We are not going to outrun them. We can’t. You must stay strong, no matter what happens … to me,” he cleared his throat, “… to any of us.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to prepare yourself ….”

My self control snapped, and I covered my ears with my hands.

“No. Don’t.” He gripped my hands and drew them back down. I think that was the worst moment of all: the moment I knew that things were as dire as I was afraid they were. The captain knew our chances were not good. We were outmanned, outgunned, and as he’d said before, it would be suicide to face them in open battle.

“You have to be prepared!”

“But Fredrick said … he made it sound like it wasn’t hopeless.”

“And so it may not be. But ….”

Wordlessly he released me, and from his jacket he slowly, methodically withdrew a pistol. My heart fell with a sickening thud at the sight of it, cold and wicked and mocking. He cocked it, and then gingerly put it on the bed between us.

“That is for me?” I asked, looking at it.

He nodded, looking at me, a miserable expression behind his eyes. He was trying to say something, trying to get me to understand.

I thought of his father and mother, and how his worst nightmare might possibly be coming true once more. Suddenly the gun blurred through my tears. I put my hands to my mouth and mumbled, “No, no, no …” Then I leapt to my feet and flew to the door.

He caught me easily and forced me down into a chair. His hands were like vices as he pressed me into the unforgiving wood, and I fought him.

“No, Mallory! Don’t.” I sobbed.

“Stop it, Rachel.”

“Don’t shoot me! Please! There’s still hope.”

“Confound it. Stop squirming. I’m not going to shoot you, you fool. Would I show you the pistol and cock it in front of you if I was going to shoot you?”

I stilled, his arms like steel bands around me. “Then what …?”

“It’s just a precaution. For heaven’s sake, use your head. What’s happened to you?”

He released me carefully, and then, seeing I was not going to run away again, he rose and went to the bed where the gun lay.

He didn’t insist that I take it. He simply gestured to it and said, “There’s one shot. It’s cocked and ready to go. If things go bad, if the worst happens, simply … put it in your mouth and pull the trigger. It’s the surest way and it’ll be very quick.”

I was silent, the meager hope that had briefly budded dying again in anguish.

He turned to me. “Rachel? Tell me you understand,” he demanded. “And that you’ll be very discerning with this. I couldn’t bear it if you became afraid and used it too quickly … or not soon enough.”

“You can’t ask me to do this,” I whispered.

“It’s just a precaution, in case ….”

“In case what?” I demanded. “In case they win and there’s no one to stop them? In case you’re killed? Murdered before my eyes while trying to save me? Me, who doesn’t even belong here. Should never have been here. To keep them from taking me back to that ship again, with the dark cells and the chair with slimy r-ropes ….”

“Stop it!” he cried, striding to me. Taking me by the shoulders, he painfully shook me. “How can I leave you like this? How can I go out there and fight knowing that you’re falling apart?”

“Mallory, I ….”

“I would die in vain if you had no way out. Don’t you see?”

I looked up. He stared down at me with those unusual brown eyes, just as he’d done countless times before, looking down at me with compassion and fatigue.

Forcing back all the screaming torment, I willed myself to meet his eyes. I licked my dry lips and nodded. “I’ll be wise, Mallory,” I said steadily, forcing myself to stop trembling, “You can trust me.” It seemed to be the greatest gift I could give him.

He reached out and touched the side of my face with his palm. With care he ran his fingers down the length of my loose hair, looking at me intensely as though memorizing my face.

“Thank you.” He seemed almost calm now.

There was another shout from outside. And to my astonishment, without another word, the captain caught me close and kissed me, his lips hot and dry and frantic, his hands in those few seconds clinging, his breath coming in short, quick succession. And then, as abruptly as it started, it was over and he was suddenly gone. I stared after him in numb amazement.

*** *** ***

Shouts and the sounds of men’s boots running on deck, cannons being rolled into position, pistols loaded, and I felt the momentum of the ship turning into position to face our pursuers. Captain Fredrick’s voice could be heard high above, as though he climbed the mast to the top. “Looper! Come and get us, ye scurvy dog. A battle thirty years in the making, ye lily livered, scallywaggin’ son of a bilge rat.”

I pictured him up there, shaking his fist, a look of fire in his eye. If he had been born three hundred years later, he would have been jumping out of planes and climbing mountains, a true adrenalin addict.

I went to my desk and withdrew my notes with unsteady hands. I laid them out before me in conscientious order, just as I had done on my dormitory desk at home, and unbidden a picture flashed before me of my little room, my copious notes, my computer screen flicking in the dim light when I worked late into the night.

My eyes fell on a page.

I had a dream once that I flew
. How childish those words sounded now.

I thought of that dream, soaring as I had above the clouds, experiencing the first hint of joy in my life. I had never known it had existed until that dream. But I have felt it since. Oh, how I’ve felt it since. I thought of the captain’s face when he appeared next to me in that awful cage. How he pulled me close, his warm breath on my face as he kissed me fiercely, his hands sending through me a feeling of energy almost like electricity. The surge of emotion that filled me then was almost excruciating. That was joy.

Gun fire.

I spun around at the jarring sound. It was quickly followed by another and another. Men shouted, the ship shook with impact, and the acid smell of gun smoke drifted into my nostrils.

I turned back to my notes and picked up my pencil. I could hardly take hold of it with my trembling fingers, and the page became fuzzy in front of me. There was a succession of explosions, a man groaned in the distance. With a single, decisive swipe, I sent all my useless, meaningless notes flying to the floor. I ran to the window and peeked out.

Men ran everywhere. “Fire! Fire!” Fredrick shouted and another succession of cannons exploded. White smoke filled the air and it was difficult to see.

“They’re coming aboard!” a man shouted, and the sound of men’s boots stomped the deck, running to give aid.