Marsali licked her lips, dried by the warm salt air, and I pushed the jug of water toward her. She nodded in thanks and poured a cupful.
“So I thought,” she said, eyes fixed on the stream of water, “that it must be because Mam had had children—had us—and she knew it would be terrible again and so she didna want to go to bed with—with Jamie for fear of it.”
She took a drink, then set down the cup and looked at me directly, firming her chin in challenge.
“I saw ye with my Da,” she said. “Just that minute, before he saw me. I—I think ye liked what he was doing to you in the bed.”
I opened my mouth, and closed it again.
“Well…yes,” I said, a little weakly. “I did.”
She grunted in satisfaction. “Mmphm. And ye like it when he touches ye; I’ve seen. Well, then. Ye havena got any children. And I’d heard there are ways not to have them, only nobody seems to know just how, but you must, bein’ a wisewoman and all.”
She tilted her head to one side, studying me.
“I’d like a babe,” she admitted, “but if it’s got to be a babe or liking Fergus, then it’s Fergus. So it won’t be a babe—if you’ll tell me how.”
I brushed the curls back behind my ear, wondering where on earth to start.
“Well,” I said, drawing a deep breath, “to begin with, I have had children.”
Her eyes sprang wide and round at this.
“Ye do? Does Da—does Jamie know?”
“Well, of course he does,” I replied testily. “They were his.”
“I never heard Da had any bairns at all.” The pale eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“I don’t imagine he thought it was any of your business,” I said, perhaps a trifle more sharply than necessary. “And it’s not, either,” I added, but she just raised her brows and went on looking suspicious.
“The first baby died,” I said, capitulating. “In France. She’s buried there. My—our second daughter is grown now; she was born after Culloden.”
“So he’s never seen her? The grown one?” Marsali spoke slowly, frowning.
I shook my head, unable to speak for a moment. There seemed to be something stuck in my throat, and I reached for the water. Marsali pushed the jug absently in my direction, leaning against the swing of the ship.
“That’s verra sad,” she said softly, to herself. Then she glanced up at me, frowning once more in concentration as she tried to work it all out.
“So ye’ve had children, and it didna make a difference to you? Mmphm. But it’s been a long while, then—did ye have other men whilst ye were away in France?” Her lower lip came up over the upper one, making her look very much like a small and stubborn bulldog.
“That,” I said firmly, putting the cup down, “is definitely none of your business. As to whether childbirth makes a difference, possibly it does to some women, but not all of them. But whether it does or not, there are good reasons why you might not want to have a child right away.”
She withdrew the pouting underlip and sat up straight, interested.
“So there is a way?”
“There are a lot of ways, and unfortunately most of them don’t work,” I told her, with a pang of regret for my prescription pad and the reliability of contraceptive pills. Still, I remembered well enough the advice of the ma?tresses sage-femme, the experienced midwives of the H?pital des Anges, where I had worked in Paris twenty years before.
“Hand me the small box in the cupboard over there,” I said, pointing to the doors above her head. “Yes, that one.
“Some of the French midwives make a tea of bayberry and valerian,” I said, rummaging in my medicine box. “But it’s rather dangerous, and not all that dependable, I don’t think.”
“D’ye miss her?” Marsali asked abruptly. I glanced up, startled. “Your, daughter?” Her face was abnormally expressionless, and I suspected the question had more to do with Laoghaire than with me.
“Yes,” I said simply. “But she’s grown; she has her own life.” The lump in my throat was back, and I bent my head over the medicine box, hiding my face. The chances of Laoghaire ever seeing Marsali again were just about as good as the chances that I would ever see Brianna; it wasn’t a thought I wanted to dwell on.
“Here,” I said, pulling out a large chunk of cleaned sponge. I took one of the thin surgical knives from the fitted slots in the lid of the box and carefully sliced off several thin pieces, about three inches square. I searched through the box again and found the small bottle of tansy oil, with which I carefully saturated one square under Marsali’s fascinated gaze.
“All right,” I said. “That’s about how much oil to use. If you haven’t any oil, you can dip the sponge in vinegar—even wine will work, in a pinch. You put the bit of sponge well up inside you before you go to bed with a man—mind you do it even the first time; you can get with child from even once.”
Marsali nodded, her eyes wide, and touched the sponge gently with a forefinger. “Aye? And—and after? Do I take it out again, or—”
An urgent shout from above, coupled with a sudden heeling of the Artemis as she backed her mainsails, put an abrupt end to the conversation. Something was happening up above.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said, pushing the sponge and bottle toward her, and headed for the passage.
Jamie was standing with the Captain on the afterdeck, watching the approach of a large ship behind us. She was perhaps three times the size of the Artemis, three-masted, with a perfect forest of rigging and sail, through which small black figures hopped like fleas on a bedsheet. A puff of white smoke floated in her wake, token of a cannon recently fired.
“Is she firing on us?” I asked in amazement.
“No,” Jamie said grimly. “A warning shot only. She means to board us.”
“Can they?” I addressed the question to Captain Raines, who was looking even more glum than usual, the downturned corners of his mouth sunk in his beard.
“They can,” he said. “We’ll not outrun her in a stiff breeze like this, on the open sea.”
“What is she?” Her ensign flew at the masthead, but seen against the sun at this distance, it looked completely black.
Jamie glanced down at me, expressionless. “A British man-o-war, Sassenach. Seventy-four guns. Perhaps ye’d best go below.”
This was bad news. While Britain was no longer at war with France, relations between the two countries were by no means cordial. And while the Artemis was armed, she had only four twelve-pound guns; sufficient to deter small pirates, but no match for a man-of-war.
“What can they want of us?” Jamie asked the Captain. Raines shook his head, his soft, plump face set grimly.
“Likely pressing,” he answered. “She’s shorthanded; you can see by her rigging—and her foredeck all ahoo,” he noted disapprovingly, eyes fixed on the man-of-war, now looming as she drew alongside. He glanced at Jamie. “They can press any of our hands who look to be British—which is something like half the crew. And yourself, Mr. Fraser—unless you wish to pass for French?”