Come Looking For Me (42 page)

“I wanted a career in law, you know,” he said suddenly.

Deliberating the wisdom of staying with him, Emily finally asked, “Why, then, did you choose the navy?”

“For the simple reason that the
choosing
was done for me.” He coughed, and once he had recovered, an odd laugh burst from his lips. “If someone had told me I was going to find the King's granddaughter by my side near the end, I – I might have lived my life differently.”

“How so, Mr. Lindsay?” Though her voice was challenging, the lump rising in her throat perplexed her. Cognizant of his spreading stain, she waited patiently for him to continue, but he had turned his head to the wall and closed his eyes, his features locked in a wince. Emily looked to Leander, who was now applying bandages to the badly burned torso of a powder monkey, the sound of the young lad's sobbing agony only precipitating her lump to rise higher.

A violent pitch of the ship caused the
Serendipity's
cargo to shift and several of her guns to break free from their binding tackles, the grinding, thumping clamour of it all striking fear in the men as if an explosion were about to blow them to bits. Emily was thrown up against the medicine cupboard and onto the floor. Leander and Joe unhooked the lurching lanterns seconds before a shocking torrent of water hurtled into the surgery like the flow of a tide, sending the wounded sailors – those of them who could – scrambling for the ladders.

Mrs. Kettle went hysterical when she found she could not get out of her hammock. “I needs to get outta here,” she shrieked. “I needs to tell 'em I ain't Yankee.”

Cold water swirled around Emily's legs. Every part of her ached and it was hard to breathe, for two dead sailors – their eyes staring into eternity – had pinned her to the cupboard. Beside her, a young sailor vomited, and panicking voices filled the air.

“The guns! They're poundin' our sides.”

“There's too much water!”

“Abandon the pumps.”

“We're founderin'.”

“Every man – every man fer himself.”

“Joe! Grab hold of Mrs. Kettle! You there, are you able to stand? Carry out whomever you can.”

Wedged between the cupboard and the wall, Octavius looked over at her, fear plainly written on his boyish face. Emily blinked back at him, astonished to think he was likely her age. “Give me your hand, Mr. Lindsay,” she said, surprised by her own words.

His breathing came in dreadful snatches, his coal-black eyes welled up with tears and he stared around him in despair.

“Come!” she insisted. “Perhaps you may still have your career in law.”

He did not reach out to her. Instead, his hand disappeared into his blood-drenched jacket. When it reappeared, he was wielding a small pistol. Emily froze in horror, knowing all too well what he was contemplating. She tried to plead with him, but her mouth would not move. Slowly, he cocked the trigger. Tears ran down his pimply face as he lifted the gun's barrel to his temple. Silently, his lips moved. “I'm sorry, Mother,” he seemed to say as he pulled the trigger. Emily's body convulsed as if the shot had ripped through her and not him. Crumpling against the solid mass of the cupboard, she gasped for air, trying to shut out the image of his shattered skull.

The gun blast heightened the hysteria in the surgery. Around them, the
Serendipity
whimpered like a wounded animal. The water level rose. The rhythmic pounding continued its funereal lament. In all the confusion, Emily sensed Leander nearby. Working quickly, he hauled the heavy bodies off her, locked his arm around her waist, and yanked her to her feet. She could see that his jaw was set, his feverish eyes fixed on the way out. “You must get out of here,” he cried, leading her to the ladder, already clogged with frantic men climbing for their lives.

Like the feeble gasp of a dying mouse, the lantern went out.

Gus's distraught voice stabbed the darkness. “Magpie? Prosper? Pemberton?” When no one came, he broke down and wept. He couldn't help it. He was certain that any minute now Trevelyan and his dogs would come creaking down the ladder and …

“Help! Help! Please!”

He waited and listened, straining to hear something beyond the hammering of his heart. But hope faded when there came no reassuring replies, no hastening footsteps – only the lonely sounds of the muttering bilge water and the suffering ship that wreaked havoc with his head. No longer could Gus sit tight. With one tremendous effort he propelled himself out of the chair, screaming in agony as he did so, rolled over the hassock, and landed hard on the scummy planks of the orlop, jarring his broken body. He lay there for a moment, waiting for the overwhelming wave of pain and nausea to subside. Then, using his unsplintered forearms, he dragged himself to the ladder.

When at last they reached the lower deck, Emily was shocked to find it deserted, except for a half-dozen or so men who were rummaging through ditty bags or sitting alone with their belongings, fingering coins, combs, letters, and silhouettes of loved ones. Nevertheless, the areas surrounding the ladders to the gun deck were seething with sailors who hoped, sooner or later, to gain the weather decks. The ship continued to list, no longer able to completely right itself. Emily gritted her teeth and kept her eyes forward. Her anxiety was impossible to ignore, but she took some comfort in feeling Leander's hand on her arm.

As they jostled their way up the ladder like a herd of cattle en route to the slaughterhouse, Bun Brodie spotted them, and in his gravelly accent yelled out, “Give me yer hand, m'am.” With his strong right arm he hoisted Emily to the deck as easily as if she were a bucket in a well. At Joe's urging, Bun did the same for Mrs. Kettle, though imperilling every muscle in his back as he did so. Once Leander and Joe had rejoined them, they stayed close to Bun, for he was reassuringly armed. Together they surveyed the final set of steps, watching in alarm as the aft hatchway became blocked with brawling men. Leander yelled for them to head fore. They dashed along the gun deck, kicking aside the scattered debris of battle – powder horns, shot, sponges, wads, ramrods, cartridge cases – and dodging the cannons that rolled dangerously about, rupturing the ship's sides with their pounding weight. But when they came upon the wounded, huddled in tattered heaps where they had fallen, Emily slowed down, unable to look the other way. Their piteous pleas for mercy cut into her like a surgeon's knife.

“Can we help them, Doctor?”

Leander tugged her forward. “I'll come back for them.”

As they approached the fore hatchway, three Yankee sailors threatened them with their long sabres.

“Go on!” shouted Bun, shielding them with his immense frame as they began their ascent.

Leander lifted Emily up the ladder and hissed “Don't look” in her ear. But his warning came too late. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bun shoot one of the sailors, and as he levelled his pistol a second time, one of the two remaining sailors, enraged by the loss of his friend, viciously hacked at Bun's right arm, severing it completely. The gushing blood struck Leander in the side of his face and coated the wooden rungs under Emily's feet like a grisly form of paint.

Reaching the main deck, they discovered Joe and Mrs. Kettle were no longer with them. Certain that Joe could take care of himself and his objectionable charge, Leander insisted they press onward. Swiftly he scanned the smoke-shrouded deck, as if assessing the best escape route. A small brig was lashed to the starboard rail of the listing
Serendipity,
and a gang of men was labouring furiously to cut the ropes of the grappling hooks that held the brig up on a precarious angle. Off the
Serendipity's
larboard bow, Emily sighted a collection of boats plucking men from the sea, and in the dreary distance, a waiting ship. “Doctor,” she said, pointing, but Leander had already seen them and was pulling her in their direction. They scrambled over the bulwark and were steadying themselves on the slender ledge of the fore chains on the exterior of the hull, holding tightly to the railing – enemy shot had razed the standing rigging – when Emily suddenly lifted her head to listen. There was no mistaking the eager young voice that called out to her.

“Emily! Em! Em!”

Ignoring Leander's protests, she spun around and searched the knot of men locked in hand-to-hand combat in and around the splintered remains of the foremast. There was Magpie, his felt hat pushed down upon his dark curls, his lost eye hidden behind a black patch. He was hopping about on the broken bowsprit as if it were scorching hot, waving two impossibly long dirks. No more than four feet from him, standing taller than the others, was Trevelyan, his face a grimace of indomitability as the blade of his sabre crashed down again and again upon his enemies. Around the imposing captain, four of his officers and marines were locked in a clash of swords with, among others, a sure-footed, florrid-faced man with fox-like features, and – Emily could hardly believe her eyes – Fly Austen.

“Good God!” gasped Leander when he too recognized his old friend.

Emily's hands were riveted to the rail. Though each jab and slash of the men's steely weapons pierced her heart, she could not tear her eyes away. Leander let go of the rail and drew Emily to him, his hands on her arms hurting her now, his eyes burning into hers.

“That ship out there is the
Amethyst;
the boats below are theirs.” He dropped his voice and spoke fervently. “This is the
one
thing I can do for you.”

Emily wavered in the fore chains, the water roiling at her feet, and sadly turned to the ghastly scenes that played with a strange clarity on the sloping deck. Faces of men she remembered from the
Isabelle
were fighting alongside Fly and Magpie. There was Leander's loblolly boy, Osmund Brockley, his bulky frame moving slowly, awkwardly, but fending off sabre strikes quite expertly with his pike, and the coxswain, Lewis McGilp, baring his teeth as his cutlass thrust upwards into the trunk of a Yankee marine. And there was Biscuit, spitting out the bone-chilling battle cries of his Scottish ancestors as he cut a path to Trevelyan.

Leander, his eyes gleaming with anticipation, eased his grip on her arms and waited for her to jump to her freedom. Death and destruction closed in on them like the choking smoke of the battle. Stifling a sob, she laid her weary head against his heaving chest.

“I – I need to know what will become of you, Doctor.”

With a quick indrawn breath, he gazed down at her. “I will be right behind you.”

Emily shook her head, knowing he would first see to her safety, then steal a sword from a dead sailor to join his childhood friend in battle and perhaps in death. Behind them, the engagement raged on, Emily finding it sickeningly hypnotic despite her fear that, when she looked up again, she might find Magpie's small body drawn and quartered upon the bowsprit. Rolling her head around on Leander's breast, she found Magpie still jumping around and thankfully intact. It was Mr. Austen who was in trouble. In numbed horror, she watched as Trevelyan raised his sword and struck Fly with the side of its cold blade, and with his boot shoved him sprawling upon the deck. Trevelyan set his bloodless lips in a determined line and aimed his pistol at his victim, limp with resignation at his feet, as powerless as his namesake caught in a spiderweb. Then suddenly, as if reconsidering his options, Trevelyan swivelled his head and hooked his haunting eyes onto Emily's, his morbid grin an indication he was savouring his advantage over her compatriot. He did not carry out Fly's execution; instead, he swung his long arm around in a sweeping semi-circle and pointed the gun in her direction.

Then he fired.

Emily sensed time grinding to a halt, as it did in her nightmares, the ones in which she tried desperately to flee dark, sinister, unnamed shapes. Dazed, she could not immediately comprehend why Leander, having made no sound at all, had collapsed against her, nor why his shirt, already soiled with the dried blood of his patients, now had a patch of bright red creeping across the left shoulder. Clasping him gently to her, Emily stood still by the rail and watched helplessly as Trevelyan again raised his pistol.