The answer to this was “Not especially,” but I obligingly motioned to him to bend over, presenting the top of his head for inspection. There was a reasonably impressive lump under the thick hair, with a small cut from the edge of the shelf, but the damage seemed a bit short of concussion.
“It’s not fractured,” I assured him. “You have the thickest skull I’ve ever seen.” Moved by an instinct as old as motherhood, I leaned forward and kissed the bump gently. He lifted his head, eyes wide with surprise.
“That’s supposed to make it feel better,” I explained. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh. Well, then.” He bent down and gently kissed the bandage on my wounded arm.
“Better?” he inquired, straightening up.
“Lots.”
He laughed, and reaching for the decanter, poured out a tot of whisky, which he handed to me.
“I wanted that stuff ye use to wash out scrapes and such,” he explained, pouring another for himself.
“Hawthorn lotion. I haven’t got any ready-made, because it doesn’t keep,” I said, pushing myself upright. “If it’s urgent, though, I can brew some; it doesn’t take long.” The thought of getting up and walking to the galley was daunting, but perhaps I’d feel better once I was moving.
“Not urgent,” he assured me. “It’s only there’s a prisoner in the hold who’s a bit bashed about.”
I lowered my cup, blinking at him.
“A prisoner? Where did we get a prisoner?”
“From the pirate ship.” He frowned at his whisky. “Though I dinna think he’s a pirate.”
“What is he?”
He tossed off the whisky neatly, in one gulp, and shook his head.
“Damned if I know. From the scars on his back, likely a runaway slave, but in that case, I canna think why he did what he did.”
“What did he do?”
“Dived off the Bruja into the sea. MacGregor saw him go, and then after the Bruja made sail, he saw the man bobbing about in the waves and threw him a rope.”
“Well, that is funny; why should he do that?” I asked. I was becoming interested, and the throbbing in my head seemed to be lessening as I sipped my whisky.
Jamie ran his fingers through his hair, and stopped, wincing.
“I dinna ken, Sassenach,” he said, gingerly smoothing the hair on his crown flat. “It wouldna be likely for a crew like ours to try to board the pirate—any merchant would just fight them off; there’s no reason to try to take them. But if he didna mean to escape from us—perhaps he meant to escape from them, aye?”
The last golden drops of the whisky ran down my throat. It was Jared’s special blend, the next-to-last bottle, and thoroughly justified the name he had given it—Ceò Gheasacach. “Magic Mist.” Feeling somewhat restored, I pushed myself upright.
“If he’s hurt, perhaps I should take a look at him,” I suggested, swinging my feet out of the berth.
Given Jamie’s behavior of the day before, I fully expected him to press me flat and call for Marsali to come and sit on my chest. Instead, he looked at me thoughtfully, and nodded.
“Aye, well. If ye’re sure ye can stand, Sassenach?”
I wasn’t all that sure, but gave it a try. The room tilted when I stood up, and black and yellow spots danced before my eyes, but I stayed upright, clinging to Jamie’s arm. After a moment, a small amount of blood reluctantly consented to reenter my head, and the spots went away, showing Jamie’s face looking anxiously down at me.
“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Carry on.”
The prisoner was below in what the crew called the orlop, a lower-deck space full of miscellaneous cargo. There was a small timbered area, walled off at the bow of the ship, that sometimes housed drunk or unruly seamen, and here he had been secured.
It was dark and airless down in the bowels of the ship, and I felt myself becoming dizzy again as I made my way slowly along the companionway behind Jamie and the glow of his lantern.
When he unlocked the door, at first I saw nothing at all in the makeshift brig. Then, as Jamie stooped to enter with his lantern, the shine of the man’s eyes betrayed his presence. “Black as the ace of spades” was the first thought that popped into my slightly addled mind, as the edges of face and form took shape against the darkness of the timbers.
No wonder Jamie had thought him a runaway slave. The man looked African, not island-born. Besides the deep red-black of his skin, his demeanor wasn’t that of a man raised as a slave. He was sitting on a cask, hands bound behind his back and feet tied together, but I saw his head rise and his shoulders straighten as Jamie ducked under the lintel of the tiny space. He was very thin, but very muscular, clad in nothing but a ragged pair of trousers. The lines of his body were clear; he was tensed for attack or defense, but not submission.
Jamie saw it, too, and motioned me to stay well back against the wall. He placed the lantern on a cask, and squatted down before the captive, at eye-level.
“Amiki,” he said, spreading out his empty hands, palm up. “Amiki. Bene-bene.” Friend. Is good. It was taki-taki, the all-purpose pidgin polyglot that the traders from Barbados to Trinidad spoke in the ports.
The man stared impassively at Jamie for a moment, eyes still as tide pools. Then one eyebrow flicked up and he extended his bound feet before him.
“Bene-bene, amiki?” he said, with an ironic intonation that couldn’t be missed, whatever the language. Is good, friend?
Jamie snorted briefly, amused, and rubbed a finger under his nose.
“It’s a point,” he said in English.
“Does he speak English, or French?” I moved a little closer. The captive’s eyes rested on me for a moment, then passed away, indifferent.
“If he does, he’ll no admit it. Picard and Fergus tried talking to him last night. He willna say a word, just stares at them. What he just said is the first he’s spoken since he came aboard. àHabla Espa?ol?” he said suddenly to the prisoner. There was no response. The man didn’t even look at Jamie; just went on staring impassively at the square of open doorway behind me.
“Er, sprechen sie Deutsche?” I said tentatively. He didn’t answer, which was just as well, as the question had exhausted my own supply of German. “Nicht Hollander, either, I don’t suppose.”
Jamie shot me a sardonic look. “I canna tell much about him, Sassenach, but I’m fairly sure he’s no a Dutchman.”
“They have slaves on Eleuthera, don’t they? That’s a Dutch island,” I said irritably. “Or St. Croix—that’s Danish, isn’t it?” Slowly as my mind was working this morning, it hadn’t escaped me that the captive was our only clue to the pirates’ whereabouts—and the only frail link to Ian. “Do you know enough taki-taki to ask him about Ian?”
Jamie shook his head, eyes intent on the prisoner. “No. Besides what I said to him already, I ken how to say ‘not good,’ ‘how much?’ ‘give it to me,’ and ‘drop that, ye bastard,’ none of which seems a great deal to the point at present.”
Stymied for the moment, we stared at the prisoner, who stared impassively back.