“I need air,” I said. “Help me up on deck, will you?” Jamie glanced at me with a hint of worry, but I smiled reassuringly at him, and took Fergus’s arm.
“Where are the papers for that slave we bought on Barbados?” I demanded, as soon as we were out of earshot of the cabin. “And where’s the slave, for that matter?”
Fergus looked at me curiously, but obligingly rummaged in his coat.
“I have the papers here, milady,” he said, handing them to me. “As for the slave, I believe he is in the crew’s quarters. Why?” he added, unable to restrain his curiosity.
I ignored the question, fumbling through the grubby, repellent bits of paper.
“There it is,” I said, finding the bit I remembered Jamie reading to me. “Abernathy! It was Abernathy! Branded on the left shoulder with a fleur-de-lys. Did you notice that mark, Fergus?”
He shook his head, looking mildly bewildered.
“No, milady.”
“Then come with me,” I said, turning toward the crew’s quarters. “I want to see how big it is.”
The mark was about three inches long and three wide; a flower, surmounting the initial “A,” burned into the skin a few inches below the point of the shoulder. It was the right size, and in the right place, to match the scar on the man Ishmael. It wasn’t, however, a fleur-de-lys; that had been the mistake of a careless transcriber. It was a sixteen-petaled rose—the Jacobite emblem of Charles Stuart. I blinked at it in amazement; what patriotic exile had chosen this bizarre method of maintaining allegiance to the vanquished Stuarts?
“Milady, I think you should return to your bed,” Fergus said. He was frowning at me as I stooped over Temeraire, who bore this inspection as stolidly as everything else. “You are the color of goose turds, and milord will not like it at all if I allow you to fall down on the deck.”
“I won’t fall down,” I assured him. “And I don’t care what color I am. I think we’ve just had a stroke of luck. Listen, Fergus, I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything, milady,” he said, grabbing me by the elbow as a shift in the wind sent me staggering across the suddenly tilting deck. “But not,” he added firmly, “until you are safely back in your bed.”
I allowed him to lead me back to the cabin, for I really didn’t feel at all well, but not before giving him my instructions. As we entered the cabin, Jamie stood up from the table to greet us.
“There ye are, Sassenach! Are ye all right?” he asked, frowning down at me. “Ye’ve gone a nasty color, like a spoilt custard.”
“I am perfectly fine,” I said, through my teeth, easing myself down on the bunk to avoid jarring my arm. “Have you and Mr. Ishmael finished your conversation?”
Jamie glanced at the prisoner, and I saw the flat black gaze that locked with his. The atmosphere between them was not hostile, but it was charged in some way. Jamie nodded in dismissal.
“We’ve finished—for the moment,” he said. He turned to Fergus. “See our guest below, will ye, Fergus, and see to it that he’s fed and clothed?” He remained standing until Ishmael had left under Fergus’s wing. Then he sat down beside my berth and squinted into the darkness at me.
“Ye look awful,” he said. “Had I best fetch your kit and be feeding ye a wee tonic or somesuch?”
“No,” I said. “Jamie, listen—I think I know where our friend Ishmael came from.”
He lifted one brow.
“You do?”
I explained about the scar on Ishmael, and the almost matching brand on the slave Temeraire, without mentioning what had given me the idea in the first place.
“Five will get you ten that they came from the same place—from this Mrs. Abernathy’s, on Jamaica.” I said.
“Five will…？ Och,” he said, waving away my confusing reference in the interests of continuing the discussion. “Well, ye could be right, Sassenach, and I hope so. The wily black bastard wouldna say where he was from. Not that I can blame him,” he added fairly. “God, if I’d got away from such a life, there’s no power on earth would take me back!” He spoke with a surprising vehemence.
“No, I wouldn’t blame him either,” I said. “But what did he tell you, about the boys? Has he seen Young Ian?”
The frowning lines of his face relaxed.
“Aye, I’m almost sure he has.” One fist curled on his knee in anticipation. “Two of the lads he described could be Ian. And knowin’ it was the Bruja, I canna think otherwise. And if you’re right about where he’s come from, Sassenach, we might have him—we may find him at last!” Ishmael, while refusing to give any clue as to where the Bruja had picked him up, had gone so far as to say that the twelve boys—all prisoners—had been taken off the ship together, soon after his own capture.
“Twelve lads,” Jamie repeated, his momentary look of excitement fading back into a frown. “What in the name of God would someone be wanting, to kidnap twelve lads from Scotland?”
“Perhaps he’s a collector,” I said, feeling more light-headed by the moment. “Coins, and gems, and Scottish boys.”
“Ye think whoever’s got Ian has the treasure as well?” He glanced curiously at me.
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling suddenly very tired. I yawned rackingly. “We may know for sure about Ishmael, though. I told Fergus to see that Temeraire gets a look at him. If they are from the same place…” I yawned again, my body seeking the oxygen that loss of blood had deprived me of.
“That’s verra sensible of ye, Sassenach,” Jamie said, sounding faintly surprised that I was capable of sense. For that matter, I was a little surprised myself; my thoughts were becoming more fragmented by the moment, and it was an effort to keep talking logically.
Jamie saw it; he patted my hand and stood up.
“Ye dinna trouble yourself about it now, Sassenach. Rest, and I’ll send Marsali down wi’ some tea.”
“Whisky,” I said, and he laughed.
“All right, then, whisky,” he agreed. He smoothed my hair back, and leaning into the berth, kissed my hot forehead.
“Better?” he asked, smiling.
“Lots.” I smiled back and closed my eyes.
56
TURTLE SOUP
When I woke again, in the late afternoon, I ached all over. I had thrown off the covers in my sleep, and lay sprawled in my shift, my skin hot and dry in the soft air. My arm ached abominably, and I could feel each of Mr. Willoughby’s forty-three elegant stitches like red-hot safety pins stuck through my flesh.
No help for it; I was going to have to use the penicillin. I might be proof against smallpox, typhoid, and the common cold in its eighteenth-century incarnation, but I wasn’t immortal, and God only knew what insanitary substances the Portuguese had been employing his cutlass on before applying it to me.
The short trip across the room to the cupboard where my clothes hung left me sweating and shivering, and I had to sit down quite suddenly, the skirt clutched to my bosom, in order to avoid falling.
“Sassenach! Are ye all right?” Jamie poked his head through the low doorway, looking worried.