Page 15 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son (Brides of Chattan #3)

Chapter Fourteen

B elow deck, even outside the priest hole, day and night had little meaning. Each time an engorged leech fell off Bash’s ear and rolled down his cheek or neck, Maggie noted that another couple of hours must have passed. The bells rang to change the watch, but she didn’t heed them. She only had attention for Bash.

Would removing the whole ear have been less painful? Was she prolonging his torment only to meet the same outcome in the end? Would he thank her for interfering if he had the chance, or be angry because she’d chosen for him when he’d have preferred the quickest solution?

She hoped he’d be glad, but either way, Maggie wasn’t sorry. She doubted she would ever be sorry, unless he died as the Butcher had threatened, and that she would not allow.

If the Butcher had returned to spy on her patient’s progress, she hadn’t noticed him any more than the bells. She dozed in fits and starts when Langley’s snoring would permit it, stirring every time Bash so much as twitched.

He was still running a fever, and as often as she could, Maggie rinsed a linen cloth in the bucket of cool water Langley had brought in for her to mop Bash’s clammy brow. When his eyes fluttered open, there was no recognition in them, only an agony that made her ache with second-guessing. His breaths came in rapid, shallow gasps, and once, when she leaned forward to wipe his face, he grabbed her wrist with surprising strength and begged, “Put a bullet in me.”

“Langley,” she snapped, and the boy bolted up in his hammock, completely alert. “The hashish?”

He grinned and went straight to a cupboard, quickly returning with a small, rolled cigar which he lit off a nearby candle.

“Here you go, Nav, suck that in nice and slow.”

It smelled foul, but Langley patiently held it to Bash’s parched lips, and his breathing seemed to ease after a few excruciating minutes.

When it was clear Bash had passed out again, Langley rocked back on his heels and took a drag of the tiny cigar himself. “Seems a shame to waste it,” he explained. “Good stuff, hashish. Ever tried any?” He offered it to Maggie, but she shook her head.

“No,” she said with a self-conscious laugh, wiping Bash’s hair off his forehead and smoothing the creased lines between his brows. Mercy, she hoped this treatment worked and didn’t add to the patchwork of scars he already carried.

Langley giggled to himself, enjoying the hashish. She only hoped that in his oblivion, Bash was feeling half so fine.

He would still be beautiful with or without the ear, with or without another scar, so long as he was hers.

Hers .

Even without imbibing, the medicinal smoke seemed to be turning Maggie’s own nerves to confidence. As every new leech drank its fill, the angry, purple swelling abated and the ear shrank down to size, leaving Maggie more convinced she’d done the right thing. Her plan would work because it had to.

But would it work before the Butcher or the quartermaster called time up ?

When morning came, she knew it must be morning because Langley had fetched her a bowl of Roo’s infamous loblolly, and Maggie was grateful to scarf it down. After having missed at least two meals already, her stomach was burning with a ravenous hunger.

“Kind of funny, innit?” Langley said, digging into his own breakfast with gusto. “Even on the merchant ship, I ate better than home. I’m the youngest of twelve, and anyone who thinks a girl won’t throw a punch over the last crust of bread ain’t never met one of my sisters.”

Maggie smiled, trying to imagine Ellen fighting her for anything. Eleven sisters like Ellen wouldn’t be so bad, but eleven little Maggies would add up to a reign of terror. “I hope all eleven weren’t sisters.”

“No, but four was enough.”

“Are all your brothers sailors?” She said sailors, but she meant pirates.

“Mostly, though I ain’t been home in a while, mind. Ben and Charlie were ’prenticed to a ship builder. And the youngest ‘afore me was sent to the Virginia colony. But for the rest of us, it was the army or the sea.”

“I despise Red Coats,” Maggie sighed with a ferocity she hadn’t even realized she possessed. At Langley’s curious head tilt, she added, “No offense.”

He grinned. “We chose the sea.”

She nodded, marveling at how little the Scottish versus English divide seemed to matter here, aboard the ship.

“Do you miss them?” she asked. She missed Ellen and Jory something fierce and couldn’t imagine the loss of nine more siblings in the bargain.

Langley pondered the question with a wistful expression. “Not so much during mealtimes,” he concluded. “Truth, in some ways Nav here’s been more a brother to me than my real brothers ever were. He’s about the same age as Isaac there in Virginia. Better temperament, though. ‘Levi,’ he always said—that’s me Christian name—‘you’re a scab, but you’re my scab, and I’ll crush anyone tries to pick you.’”

“I never had any brothers,” Maggie admitted. “I used to wish I did, but now I’m not so sure.” She laughed, and Langley laughed with her.

“Well… they’re good for learning to fight. But if you had sisters, you probably learned just as good as if you had brothers.”

She shook her head, and his eyes widened in surprise.

“No one would knock you down faster, but if anyone else tried it, there’d be blood.”

“Sounds like my cousins. Lion, Logan, Lennox, and Lodie. Suppose you’d fit right in with them, Levi Langley.”

Langley found the whole thing especially hilarious and slapped Maggie repeatedly on the arm to emphasize it as he laughed. “Cor, we start counting cousins, we’ll never finish!”

“Do you ever think about what comes next?” she asked him.

“If that poxy Walsh’d had the captain’s bounty, you mean?”

“Aye.”

Langley leaned back against the bulkhead, his chin tilted up in thought. “Like to go back to Hull and set me oldest sister, Annie, up proper so she never has to wash another frock or stocking again, including her own.”

Maggie couldn’t help grinning at such a selfless dream from the young pirate. The riches of the world, and he wanted to look after his sister.

“Sure the others must have half a dozen brats apiece by now. Someone ought to look after Annie.”

“She’s lucky to have you.”

He snorted but preened a little. “Mind telling her that?”

“I’ll drop a message in a bottle.”

“Probably reach Yorkshire before I do.” He said it with a laugh, but she couldn’t help wondering what would become of them all.

“So did Red Coats steal your sheep or something?” he asked, with none of his usual cheek.

“No.” Maggie shook her head. “But they turned clan against clan. Without them, I don’t think Simon Fraser would have ever marched on Inverness, forcing entire families to flee their homes. I was only little. What I remember most is that I didn’t really understand.”

“Did they burn your houses down?” Langley asked, setting down his half-eaten breakfast to listen to her tale.

Maggie shook her head again. “We got lucky. Twice. We had somewhere safe to go until the Rising was all over with. But they quartered soldiers in our house while we were gone. I’ll always swear they stole my favorite doll.”

Langley burst out laughing at that, and Maggie realized her mistake. Her face heated furiously as she tried to stammer an excuse.

“You must have had sisters, besides all them boy cousins,” Langley cackled. “Did they make you play with the ugliest one?”

“Exactly,” she agreed. “Every single time. It wasn’t fair.”

Langley collapsed in another fit of laughter, and Maggie smiled, her heart starting to beat again because mentioning the doll didn’t seem to have given her away.

“You two scallawags are just about loud enough to wake the dead,” Dutch said, stepping into the infirmary, but there was no anger in his voice.

“Seemed like the thing to do,” Langley giggled. “To make sure Nav stayed with us.”

“How’s he doing?” Dutch asked, stepping close enough to see for himself, but looking to Maggie for confirmation.

“His fever hasn’t broken yet,” she admitted, praying he wasn’t here to say her time was up. “But he’s easier than he was, and the ear doesn’t look any worse. ”

“No,” the quartermaster agreed. “I dare say it looks better.”

She exhaled in relief, tears springing to her eyes, and she bit her lip and nodded her own agreement.

Dutch studied her intently. “Keep up the good work, Magnus.”

“Aye, sir.”

To Langley he added, “But keep it down. This is supposed to be sickbay, not shore leave.”

“Aye,” Langley echoed, sitting up a little straighter.

“Fetch me if anything changes.”

Maggie nodded, laying the back of her hand against Bash’s cheek to check his temperature once more.

Bash’s mother was radiant in a dress of green and gold. Her skirt flapped in the wind as she stood on the white sandy beach, gazing out to sea. She didn’t look like anyone else on their island, and she didn’t love like anyone else, either. She loved Bash with her whole heart and nothing held back in reserve.

The breeze carried her voice to him, where he perched on a rock watching her. It was an old familiar tune and Bash hummed along, trying to dredge the words from the back of his memory. She sang them, but they were gobbled up by the surf, so he hopped down from his rock and went to her.

Skipping along until he grew tired, Bash slowed to a walk, and then a trudge, his feet growing heavier and heavier with caked-on sand. It was like sailing into a headwind, he fought and fought but never got any closer, so he broke into a run. She turned, squatted down, and held her arms out for him to fly into, so Bash ran harder until he tripped over his own feet, landing facedown with a mouthful of sand, slicing his ear open on a sharp shell.

After scraping his eyes clean, Bash glanced behind him to see how far he’d come. His boulder was miles away, an almost indiscernible speck. When he turned back towards his mother, she was gone.

Bash began to cry, rubbing his burning ear, trying desperately to remember the words of her song as though singing it might bring her back to him.

The king once built a town so fair.

Red hibiscus lined the square…

His eyes snapped open. He was on a ship, the familiar creak of timbers a comfort in his discombobulation. His head pounded, the whump, whump, whump of his heartbeat so loud it was almost deafening, and his ear burned like fire. He reached for it, but someone caught his wrist, then entwined their fingers with his.

“You mustn’t touch,” his mother scolded. No. Not his mother. Maggie. He blinked, and she came into focus. “Do you need more hashish? I can rouse Langley.”

Ah. Hashish. That explained the vivid dreams.

“I dreamt of my mother,” he said, and his voice sounded strained and scratchy to his own ears, too loud and too close by half. “What’s happened?”

“Have something to drink,” she urged, tipping a tankard to his lips, and he tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down with a firm yet gentle hand. “Tiny sips. What do you remember?”

His vision swam and he closed his eyes. Waves, on a beach. Why did his head ache so badly? Even his hair hurt. How on earth did one’s hair hurt?

“I was on a beach.”

“A beach?”

“She was singing this old lullaby she used to always sing.”

“She? ”

“My ma.”

“Before your dream, Bash. What do you remember from before?”

He tried to think, but it was all a blank of blinding, searing pain.

She knelt before him so they were eye to eye and licked her lips. He’d kissed those lips once, he remembered that, kissed them and grown lost in them. He wished he could kiss them now, except he firmly believed even his lips would hurt to touch. They felt as dry and cracked as hers had been the day he found her.

“Do you remember boarding a ship?” she asked. “With Langley and Samson and Dutch?”

Dutch. He’d been standing with Dutch, feeling small and disgraceful as a whipped pup.

You’re better than that, Bastian, Dutch had scolded. You’re not your father. You must treat the child as I treated you.

Shame washed over him, and his eyes burned as though full of sand like in his dream. “Can you ever forgive me,” he whispered. A tear tickled down his cheek like the slow, fiery slice of a knife. Was he crying fire?

“It’s all right,” she soothed, stroking his brow. “You’ve been injured. Your memory will return.”

“I took advantage of you,” he said, his heart ripping open. “I never meant my protection to be contingent upon… upon anything else.”

“What?” she asked, glancing around nervously.

“I didn’t think. I’m no better than the captain, no better than your husband. I hope you can forgive me. I should never?—”

“Shh, shh, shh,” she whispered as though he were the silly parrot. No. A kestrel, that was her pet. “You mustn’t upset yourself. You’ll wake up Langley.”

“I am upset. Dutch was right. I preyed upon your trust and let myself believe you wanted me to?—”

“Bash,” she said, taking his face in both hands, and they were soft and cool against his fevered skin. They felt like heaven must surely feel. “You did nothing wrong.”

“I did everything wrong?—”

“Please, listen to me. I don’t know what Dutch said—” Fear flickered across her face, but she schooled it into a determined calm. “I never once felt like anything less than a queen.”

He closed his eyes against the tears. Christ, what was happening to him? He hadn’t wept since he was nine years old, not even when the captain ordered Dutch to flog him for leaving the ship to search out his mother’s old place in Kingston. The pain had been unbearable, only rivaling his disappointment at not even managing to leave Port Royal, but still, he hadn’t cried.

The king once built a town so fair. Red hibiscus lined the square…

Ma’s song drifted back to him again. Would she be ashamed of him as Dutch had been for his treatment of Maggie?

“You have my word and my honor,” he whispered fiercely. “I will protect you no matter what—even if you send me away, you’ll have it from afar.”

He meant to swear he wouldn’t touch her again, but it seemed a hollow promise when something was so obviously wrong with him. He tugged hard at his forelock and then reached for his ear again, but as before, she took his hand so he couldn’t rub away the pain.

“There was a ship,” she explained, her brow creasing. “The Woebegone Whale ? You feared it might be a trap.”

A trap. Of course. How had he forgotten? “It was deserted,” he said. “Nothing in the hold to even keep the rats alive.”

She nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“But someone was there.”

Blinding pain shot through Bash and he closed his eyes, recalling the flash of a cutlass. His hand jerked up again, but she held it fast, pressing it instead against her heart.

“Did I lose my ear?” he whispered.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “Not yet. ”

“The Butcher wanted to, but Magnus here insisted it stay attached to your ugly mug, Nav,” Langley said, grinning from a nearby hammock.

Maggie released Bash’s hand and turned to the lad. “He might need more hashish,” she said. “Did you save any?”

Langley jumped up still grinning, but Bash tried to shake his head and instantly regretted it. “No,” he gasped, closing his eyes. “Not just now.”

“You sure?” Langley asked with a disappointed tone. “It’s the good stuff.”

“I can bear it,” Bash said. He didn’t want to lose a moment’s consciousness with Maggie, nor did he want to chance any more nightmares.

“Then I’m to run and tell Dutch you’re proper awake,” Langley said.

“Ask Roo for some cheese, while you’re at it?”

“Cheese, Nav? How hard was you hit?”

“You know Roo. Why do you think we’ve a cow and no milk?”

Langley’s eyes widened and he scampered off, twirling to avoid running into a stack of supply crates on his gangly legs.

Dance a waltz, then dance again…

“What does that mean?” Bash wondered.

Maggie winced. “About your ear? It’s ah… still attached at the bottom. The Butcher wanted to make a clean cut of it and then stop the bleeding with gun powder.” She shrugged. “I… strongly suggested an alternative. It was Dutch who made him let me try.”

Bash blinked, having trouble following her words through the throbbing pain. “An alternative? What alternative could there be?” he asked. “Magic?”

She bit her lip and his prick stirred, and he wanted to scream, Really? Now? But he didn’t have the energy to even feel ashamed anymore.

“Leeches,” she said, closing her eyes and then peeking at him through a half-opened one .

She was so adorable that for a moment he forgot to be horrified . He even forgot about his pain. Then his brain caught up with her words.

“Leeches?” he rasped.

“They’re quite remarkable, honestly. Jory taught me.”

He was silent for a long moment, contemplating the little marvel. Every ship, pirate or otherwise, should be as lucky in their selection of cabin boys.

“Are you angry?” she asked.

“That you single-handedly kept the Butcher from blowing my head off? Livid.” Why had he ever thought she needed his protection from the Butcher or Balthasar or any of them?

“I told you, it was Dutch who?—”

He stopped her. “I’m grateful.”

“Still might not work.”

He reached out blindly for her hand, and when she met him, it felt like coming home. “I’m grateful,” he said again. “Somewhere around here, the Butcher keeps a bit of mirrored glass.”

“You want to see it?” she asked, uncertainly.

“Please.”

She released his hand once more and it pained him, as she and her light and her warmth left his side to rummage through the barber-surgeon’s supplies, finally returning with the mirror in hand.

“Are you certain?” she asked.

He swallowed. “No. But show me anyway.”

She held up the glass and somehow it was both shockingly grotesque and intriguing at the same time. “How does it work?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “But the Butcher gave me twenty-four hours to try and, bad as it looks, it was worse yesterday.”

“You should’ve seen the kid standing up to the Butcher,” Langley exclaimed bursting in with Dutch and inspecting Bash’s ear for himself with a shudder .

“Reminded me of you, in point of fact,” Dutch agreed, clapping Bash on the shoulder and shaking his hand.

Langley offered Bash a small hunk of cheese. “Roo says fuck you, by the way, for ratting him out, but enjoy. I only took a tiny taste on account of you’re convalescing.”

Bash sniffed the cheese, and it smelled divine, making his stomach rumble. He hadn’t realized he was hungry, only wanted Langley gone long enough to ensure a few more minutes’ privacy.

“Color looks better,” Dutch observed to Maggie, who blushed, making Bash’s prick stir once more.

Christ, he was going straight to hell if he could be so prurient while in this much pain.

“Was it Walsh?” he asked, to take his mind off Maggie and her lovely face.

Dutch nodded. “Half out of his mind with starvation. Said his crew abandoned him when they realized the rumors about the gold weren’t true. There’s an odor to his story, but I believe that much.”

“Thought he retired?”

“Maybe he un-retired. Wouldn’t be the first,” Dutch said with a shrug.

“The lads tore up every inch of his ship searching for Mad’s bounty,” Langley added. “While the old bastard sat in a corner cackling at his pigeons. Samson and Duffy were desperate to see you didn’t get sliced up for no reason.”

“What did they do with him?” Maggie asked. “The other captain?”

“Left him to it,” Dutch told her. “Ship wasn’t worth taking, and he wasn’t worth a bullet.”

“Have we laid in a course?” Bash asked. Maybe it was the injury or he was still unnerved by the whole encounter, but something felt off. The ship was too still, and he didn’t want to loiter in these waters .

“We found ourselves becalmed,” Dutch said. “The men are rowing on alternating shifts. Wind’ll pick up in a day or two.”

A shiver ran down Bash’s spine. “Feel that in your bones, do you?”

“Don’t get cheeky with me, son,” Dutch warned, but the relief in his face was evident, and Bash flooded with affection for the old quartermaster, though he was still uncomfortable with the close eye Dutch was keeping on him and Maggie.

“Mad?” Bash asked. He could well imagine the captain would be raging if he really believed his own fairytales about Willy Walsh, and whether he did or he didn’t, the crew would be simmering with their own discontent.

“There’s nothing for you to do but heal,” Dutch said. “And you,” he added, turning to Maggie, “if you’re planning to stay aboard the Revenge , perhaps you should consider apprenticing with the Butcher. Or just taking over for him all together.”

Maggie’s blush deepened at the compliment, and Dutch turned back to Bash, nodding once. “I’ll see that you’re not disturbed,” he said, and Bash blinked his acknowledgment rather than move his aching head. He was grateful to have cheated death out of a few extra days, but he needed to make the most of them, get back on his feet as soon as possible, and find a fair wind to carry them to safe harbor.