Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 89

One of the crew was calling down from the rigging again.
"Capting! The 'Siris is signaling! Hold a minute!"
Elizabeth crossed her arms across her chest and bowed her head, waiting.
"What is it, Tommy?" shouted Stoker.
"It's one of them bible signals, sir! Hold a minute!"
"A bible signal!" Granny Stoker's disgust was plain. "Bloody hell. Plain English ain't good enough for them."
"Here it is, Capting! Revelation, chapter three, verse eleven, it says."
Hawkeye and Nathaniel turned to Elizabeth together.
"I don't have the whole bible memorized, you know," she said with considerable irritation.
"Dinna fash yersel', lass," said Robbie. He raised his voice so that Stoker could hear him. ""Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.""
There was a whoop of dry laughter from Anne Stoker. "Now, that's rich. The Osiris warning us away from the Frenchman when every one of her own men is saying his prayers this very minute. Poor sods."
Elizabeth blanched and Hawkeye put his hand on her shoulder. "The frigate ain't about to sink the Osiris."
"Sink a merchantman?" Granny Stoker's kerchiefed head bobbed as she laughed. "She may be French and waspish, but she ain't mad. Sink a prize like that! D'you hear those warning shots? If she wanted to sink the 'Siris she'd yaw and let heave wit' her broadside."
"The Osiris is well armed," Elizabeth said hoarsely.
The old lady fixed her with a stare. "Mark my words--they'll rake each other bloody but in the end the Avignon will board her in the smoke."
"Then may God have mercy," whispered Elizabeth.
Granny Stoker's head swung away suddenly, the beetle-black eyes darting from the sails to her grandson. "Mac!" The thin high voice rose and cracked like a whip. "She's falling off too fast!"
Stoker jumped, the black hair lashing around his shoulders.
"'Vast bracing!" he bellowed, running down the deck, passing close enough to spray them with his sweat. "Goddamn it! Helm's a-lee! Move sharp, now!"
There were a few minutes of tense silence as the Jackdaw's speed picked up again, and then Granny Stoker turned back to Elizabeth.
"Still a Tory at heart, eh? Don't suit you to see the Frenchies with the upper hand. Damn the toothbrush, dearie--do you care to put a hundred pound on your countrymen?"
"I need not be English to regret the loss of life," snapped Elizabeth. The deck pitched, and her stomach rose again like a fist in her throat. She pulled suddenly away from Nathaniel and pushed past Hawkeye and Robbie to lurch toward the rail. Bracing herself with both hands, she leaned forward to get the full force of the spray in her face, wanting the sting of it and the cold. She heard Nathaniel behind her, but louder still was the memory of old Tim Card, and his talk of privateers.
"Most is just merchants, missus. Interested in the profit, is all. What ain't profitable goes over the side."
Before her eyes the Avignon was headed for a rare prize, but all Elizabeth could see was the Isis. What would a French privateer make of a cargo of three children? All they had between them and whatever might come was Curiosity. Elizabeth's stomach turned and heaved.
"Steady on, Boots." Nathaniel's hands were cool, bracing her neck and forehead while she retched and retched, until she brought up only bile. When she could breathe again, she pressed her face against his chest, and said aloud those words that came to her unbidden:
What though the sea be calm? Trust to the shore; Ships have been drown'd, where late they danced before.
Before them the Osiris was in mortal danger, and the same could be true of the Isis. Now, or tomorrow, or the day after.
The frigate took that moment to fire another shot, stealing whatever calm words Nathaniel might have been thinking to offer.
17
Hannah slept badly, rising up from ragged dreams again and again to listen for a scratching at the door that might mean word of an approaching ship, or Mr. MacKay come to save them from his Christian hell. She woke for good at dawn, cocooned in a shift damp with sweat and the scent of her own fear. She woke overwhelmed and undone with wanting her grandmother's voice, her father's smile, the pine tree with the crooked top that stood outside her window at Lake in the Clouds. Hannah woke and wished she hadn't. She feared what the day would bring, and what it might not.
She rose quietly so as not to disturb the babies, dragged her spotted calico dress over her head and stumbled out into the other cabin.
Curiosity had fallen asleep at the workbench, her lap full of sewing and her breath rattling faintly with the last of the cold in her chest. Her head wrap had come undone and a thick braid fell to her shoulder, the colors of tarnished silver and rich loam. In his own cabin the Hakim was singing his prayers again. The ship rolled gently, a bird with clipped wings pinned to this patch of water between familiar worlds and strange ones.
With a small murmuring, Curiosity woke and rubbed at an eye with one knuckle. Then she looked at Hannah and closed her eyes again. "Squirrel," she said, smiling. "Ain't you a pretty sight to wake to. Do you think you could fetch me some of that spruce beer? Then we better see to those babies, I hear them stirring now."
Hannah might have cried in her frustration and disappointment. Instead she said, "I thought there would be word of the Osiris."