Voyager (107 page)

The Artemis was slower than the man-of-war; slow enough, I hoped, to be still safe, far out in the Atlantic.

I saw one clump of mangroves struck, a hundred feet away; the water hissed back, boiled away, and the dry land showed for a moment, before the waves rolled back, drowning the black wire of the blasted stems. I wrapped my arms about the trunk of the tree, pressed my face against the bark, and prayed. For Jamie, and the Artemis. For the Porpoise, Annekje Johansen and Tom Leonard and the Governor. And for me.

It was full daylight when I woke, my leg wedged between two branches, and numb from the knee down. I half-climbed, half-fell from my perch, landing in the shallow water of the inlet. I scooped up a handful of the water, tasted it, and spat it out. Not salt, but too brackish to drink.

My clothes were damp, but I was parched. The storm was long gone; everything around me was peaceful and normal, with the exception of the blackened mangroves. In the distance, I could hear the booming of the big black birds.

Brackish water here promised fresher water farther up the inlet. I rubbed my leg, trying to work out the pins-and-needles, then limped up the bank.

The vegetation began to change from the gray-green mangroves to a lusher green, with a thick undergrowth of grass and mossy plants that obliged me to walk in the water. Tired and thirsty as I was, I could go only a short distance before having to sit down and rest. As I did so, several of the odd little fish hopped up onto the bank beside me, goggling as though in curiosity.

“Well, I think you look rather peculiar, too,” I told one.

“Are you English?” said the fish incredulously. The impression of Alice in Wonderland was so pronounced that I merely blinked stupidly at it for a moment. Then my head snapped up, and I stared into the face of the man who had spoken.

His face was weathered and sunburned to the color of mahogany, but the black hair that curled back from his brow was thick and ungrizzled. He stepped out from behind the mangrove, moving cautiously, as though afraid to startle me.

He was a bit above middle height and burly, thick through the shoulder, with a broad, boldly carved face, whose naturally friendly expression was tinged with wariness. He was dressed shabbily, with a heavy canvas bag slung across his shoulder—and a canteen made of goatskin hung from his belt.

“Vous êtes Anglaise?” he asked, repeating his original question in French. “Comment ça va?”

“Yes, I’m English,” I said, croaking. “May I have some water, please?”

His eyes popped wide open—they were a light hazel—but he didn’t say anything, just took the skin bag from his belt and handed it to me.

I laid the fish knife on my knee, close within reach, and drank deeply, scarcely able to gulp fast enough.

“Careful,” he said. “It’s dangerous to drink too fast.”

“I know,” I said, slightly breathless as I lowered the bag. “I’m a doctor.” I lifted the canteen and drank again, but forced myself to swallow more slowly this time.

My rescuer was regarding me quizzically—and little wonder, I supposed. Sea-soaked and sun-dried, mud-caked and sweat-stained, with my hair straggling down over my face, I looked like a beggar, and probably a demented one at that.

“A doctor?” he said in English, showing that his thoughts had been traveling in the direction I suspected. He eyed me closely, in a way strongly reminiscent of the big black bird I had met earlier. “A doctor of what, if I might ask?”

“Medicine,” I said, pausing briefly between gulps.

He had strongly drawn black brows. These rose nearly to his hairline.

“Indeed,” he said, after a noticeable pause.

“Indeed,” I said in the same tone of voice, and he laughed.

He inclined his head toward me in a formal bow. “In that case, Madame Physician, allow me to introduce myself. Lawrence Stern, Doctor of Natural Philosophy, of the Gesellschaft von Naturwissenschaft Philosophieren, Munich.”

I blinked at him.

“A naturalist,” he elaborated, gesturing at the canvas bag over his shoulder. “I was making my way toward those frigate birds in hopes of observing their breeding display, when I happened to overhear you, er…”

“Talking to a fish,” I finished. “Yes, well…have they really got four eyes?” I asked, in hopes of changing the subject.

“Yes—or so it seems.” He glanced down at the fish, who appeared to be following the conversation with rapt attention. “They seem to employ their oddly shaped optics when submerged, so that the upper pair of eyes observes events above the surface of the water, and the lower pair similarly takes note of happenings below it.”

He looked then at me, with a hint of a smile. “Might I perhaps have the honor of knowing your name, Madame Physician?”

I hesitated, unsure what to tell him. I pondered the assortment of available aliases and decided on the truth.

“Fraser,” I said. “Claire Fraser. Mrs. James Fraser,” I added for good measure, feeling vaguely that marital status might make me seem slightly more respectable, appearances notwithstanding. I fingered back the curl hanging in my left eye.

“Your servant, Madame,” he said with a gracious bow. He rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully, looking at me.

“You have been shipwrecked, perhaps?” he ventured. It seemed the most logical—if not the only—explanation of my presence, and I nodded.

“I need to find a way to get to Jamaica,” I said. “Do you think you can help me?”

He stared at me, frowning slightly, as though I were a specimen he couldn’t quite decide how to classify, but then he nodded. He had a broad mouth that looked made for smiling; one corner turned up, and he extended a hand to help me up.

“Yes,” he said. “I can help. But I think maybe first we find you some food, and maybe clothes, eh? I have a friend, who lives not so far away. I will take you there, shall I?”

What with parching thirst and the general press of events, I had paid little attention to the demands of my stomach. At the mention of food, however, II’ it came immediately and vociferously to life.

“That,” I said loudly, in hopes of drowning it out, “would be very nice indeed.” I brushed back the tangle of my hair as well as I could, and ducking under a branch, followed my rescuer into the trees.

As we emerged from a palmetto grove, the ground opened out into a meadow-like space, then rose up in a broad hill before us. At the top of the hill, I could see a house—or at least a ruin. Its yellow plaster walls were cracked and overrun by pink bougainvillaeas and straggling guavas, the tin roof sported several visible holes, and the whole place gave off an air of mournful dilapidation.

“Hacienda de la Fuente,” my new acquaintance said, with a nod toward it. “Can you stand the walk up the hill, or—” He hesitated, eyeing me as though estimating my weight. “I could carry you, I suppose,” he said, with a not altogether flattering tone of doubt in his voice.

“I can manage,” I assured him. My feet were bruised and sore, and punctured by fallen palmetto fronds, but the path before us looked relatively smooth.

The hillside leading up to the house was crisscrossed with the faint lines of sheep trails. There were a number of these animals present, peacefully grazing under the hot Hispaniola sun. As we stepped out of the trees, one sheep spotted us and uttered a short bleat of surprise. Like clockwork, every sheep on the hillside lifted its head in unison and stared at us.

Feeling rather self-conscious under this unblinking phalanx of suspicious eyes, I picked up my muddy skirts and followed Dr. Stern toward the main path—trodden by more than sheep, to judge from its width—that led up and over the hill.

It was a fine, bright day, and flocks of orange and white butterflies flickered through the grass. They lighted on the scattered blooms with here and there a brilliant yellow butterfly shining like a tiny sun.

I breathed in deeply, a lovely smell of grass and flowers, with minor notes of sheep and sun-warmed dust. A brown speck lighted for a moment on my sleeve and clung, long enough for me to see the velvet scales on its wing, and the tiny curled hose of its proboscis. The slender abdomen pulsed, breathing to its wing-beats, and then it was gone.

It might have been the promise of help, the water, the butterflies, or all three, but the burden of fear and fatigue under which I had labored for so long began to lift. True, I still had to face the problem of finding transport to Jamaica, but with thirst assuaged, a friend at hand, and the possibility of lunch just ahead, that no longer appeared the impossible task it had seemed in the mangroves.

“There he is!” Lawrence stopped, waiting for me to come up alongside him on the path. He gestured upward, toward a slight, wiry figure, picking its way carefully down the hillside toward us. I squinted at the figure as it wandered through the sheep, who took no apparent notice of his passage.

“Jesus!” I said. “It’s St. Francis of Assisi.”

Lawrence glanced at me in surprise.

“No, neither one. I told you he’s English.” He raised an arm and shouted, “ÁHola! Señor Fogden!”

The gray-robed figure paused suspiciously, one hand twined protectively in the wool of a passing ewe.

“ÀQuien es?”

“Stern!” called Lawrence. “Lawrence Stern! Come along,” he said, and extended a hand to pull me up the steep hillside onto the sheep path above.

The ewe was making determined efforts to escape her protector, which distracted him from our approach. A slender man a bit taller than I, he had a lean face that might have been handsome if not disfigured by a reddish beard that straggled dust-mop-like round the edges of his chin. His long and straying hair had gone to gray in streaks and runnels, and fell forward into his eyes with some frequency. An orange butterfly took wing from his head as we reached him.

“Stern?” he said, brushing back the hair with his free hand and blinking owlishly in the sunlight. “I don’t know any…oh, it’s you!” His thin face brightened. “Why didn’t you say it was the shitworm man; I should have known you at once!”

Stern looked mildly embarrassed at this, and glanced at me apologetically. “I…ah…collected several interesting parasites from the excrement of Mr. Fogden’s sheep, upon the occasion of my last visit,” he explained.

“Horrible great worms!” Father Fogden said, shuddering violently in recollection. “A foot long, some of them, at least!”

“No more than eight inches,” Stern corrected, smiling. He glanced at the nearest sheep, his hand resting on his collecting bag as though in anticipation of further imminent contributions to science. “Was the remedy I suggested effective?”

Father Fogden looked vaguely doubtful, as though trying to remember quite what the remedy had been.

“The turpentine drench,” the naturalist prompted.

“Oh, yes!” The sun broke out on the priest’s lean countenance, and he beamed fondly upon us. “Of course, of course! Yes, it worked splendidly. A few of them died, but the rest were quite cured. Capital, entirely capital!”

Suddenly it seemed to dawn on Father Fogden that he was being less than hospitable.

“But you must come in!” he said. “I was just about to partake of the midday meal; I insist you must join me.” The priest turned to me. “This will be Mrs. Stern, will it?”

Mention of eight-inch intestinal worms had momentarily suppressed my hunger pangs, but at the mention of food, they came gurgling back in full force.

“No, but we should be delighted to partake of your hospitality,” Stern answered politely. “Pray allow me to introduce my companion—a Mrs. Fraser, a countrywoman of yours.”

Fogden’s eyes grew quite round at this. A pale blue, with a tendency to water in bright sun, they fixed wonderingly upon me.

“An Englishwoman?” he said, disbelieving. “Here?” The round eyes took in the mud and salt stains on my crumpled dress, and my general air of disarray. He blinked for a moment, then stepped forward, and with the utmost dignity, bowed low over my hand.

“Your most obedient servant, Madame,” he said. He rose and gestured grandly at the ruin on the hill. “Mi casa es su casa.” He whistled sharply, and a small King Charles cavalier spaniel poked its face inquiringly out of the weeds.

“We have a guest, Ludo,” the priest said, beaming. “Isn’t that nice?” Tucking my hand firmly under one elbow, he took the sheep by its topknot of wool and towed us both toward the Hacienda de la Fuente, leaving Stern to follow.

The reason for the name became clear as we entered the dilapidated courtyard; a tiny cloud of dragonflies hovered like blinking lights over an algae-filled pool in one corner; it looked like a natural spring that someone had curbed in when the house was built. At least a dozen jungle fowl sprang up from the shattered pavement and flapped madly past our feet, leaving a small cloud of dust and feathers behind them. From other evidences left behind, I deduced that the trees overhanging the patio were their customary roost, and had been for some time.

“And so I was fortunate enough to encounter Mrs. Fraser among the mangroves this morning,” Stern concluded. “I thought that perhaps you might…oh, look at that beauty! A magnificent Odonata!”

A tone of amazed delight accompanied this last statement, and he pushed unceremoniously past us to peer up into the shadows of the palm-thatched patio roof, where an enormous dragonfly, at least four inches across, was darting to and fro, blue body catching fire when it crossed one of the errant rays of sunshine poking through the tattered roof.

“Oh, do you want it? Be my guest.” Our host waved a gracious hand at the dragonfly. “Here, Becky, trot in there and I’ll see to your hoof in a bit.” He shooed the ewe into the patio with a slap on the rump. It snorted and galloped off a few feet, then fell at once to browsing on the scattered fruit of a huge guava that overhung the ancient wall.

In fact, the trees around the patio had grown up to such an extent that the branches at many points interlaced. The whole of the courtyard seemed roofed with them, a sort of leafy tunnel, leading down the length of the patio into the gaping cavern of the house’s entrance.

Drifts of dust and the pink paper leaves of bougainvillaea lay heaped against the sill, but just beyond, the dark wood floor gleamed with polish, bare and immaculate. It was dark inside, after the brilliance of the sunlight, but my eyes quickly adapted to the surroundings, and I looked around curiously.