Quintspinner (22 page)

“To us!” Edward raised his glass towards Tess.

Engagement?
She was to be married?
To Edward Graham?
The brandy glass slipped from Tess’s grasp and shattered on the floor. Her heart pounded furiously. She couldn’t breathe at all. The room was spinning and a roar built in her head.

Good Lord! Married. To Edward Graham.
To a man who she had seen first-hand was capable of grisly violence. She wasn’t going to jail.

Just a different kind of prison,
she thought desperately as unconsciousness overtook her, and she too, crashed to the floor.

Tess awoke, confused as to her whereabouts. She closed her eyes, and focusing her thoughts, tried to remember.
The engagement!
Her engagement. She felt nauseated and willed herself to slide back into the peacefulness of deep sleep, but it was not to be. She opened her eyes again and blinked to clear her vision.

Cassie’s worried face swam into view.

“There you are! How are you feeling?” She swabbed Tess’s brow with a cool wet cloth.

“What happened?” Tess’s tongue felt thick and furry and a niggling headache snaked across her forehead.

“You fainted. Your father brought you back to our room. He said to give you this tea when you came to.”

Tess smelled the spicy aroma rising from the cup of tepid liquid. “What’s in it?”

Laudanum and some of Mrs. Hanley’s tea leaves and cinnamon. They said it was to give you some rest and calm you, what with the news about you and Mr. Graham ….” Cassie’s voice trailed off and she looked as though she were about to cry.

Tess sipped the tea, feeling its warmth sooth the dryness in her throat. “So that’s it, is it? Father would throw me away into the care of a murderer?”

“He doesn’t believe us. There’s no way to make him believe us.” Cassie’s brow crunched up with worry and she studied Tess’s face, both of them sharing the fearful memory of the dying Crone. “What are you going to do?” she asked softly.

Tess finished her tea with a last swallow and looked into Cassie’s anxious face. A warm buzz was creeping up her spine and she felt a feeling of calm wash over her.
What to do indeed?
She thought carefully for a moment and exhaled.

“I’ll not marry,” she said firmly. “Better to die by my own hand, than by his.”

“I’ve been savin’ this fer a very long time,” Mrs. Hanley told Tess, as she handed her a small package of rolled ribbons. “It’s not much, but who knows when a woman pretty as yerself will have nice things again in this new land. Go on. Take them. Fer yer weddin’. They’ll bring good luck!” She beamed at Tess, her eyes floating with tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks at any moment. Her grandmother seemed genuinely delighted with the announcement of Tess’s engagement.

Tess looked down at the ribbons that her grandmother offered as they lay in the woman’s shaking hands. She took them, lingering a moment as her own hands touched her grandmother’s work-worn skin.

Red ribbons. Shiny coils of crimson silk. Light as a feather, each one, but strong as a rope. A tiny item, but suddenly, the strands felt more dear to Tess than anything she had ever been given.

I will use these for something much happier than a forced wedding,
she thought, no matter what her grandmother’s intent was. Of that she was certain. Tess clasped the ribbons in her own hand and gathered the teary-eyed woman in a hug, feeling her own eyes well up with gratitude and guilt.

Where did she get these?
Tess wondered. Such an item would have been very expensive to buy back in the market. Probably completely out of her grandmother’s financial reach.

“Where–how did you get these?” Tess stammered.

Her grandmother grinned at her, obviously pleased at the reception of her gift.

“Do ya’ like them? They’re from China!” she proclaimed, as though she had personal knowledge of such a far off land.

“But they must have cost a fortune!”

“Aye, they did at that,” she nodded, and puffed her chest out in pride. Then she whispered conspiratorially, “But there’s rich folk, women with empty wombs, who was willin’ to pay dearly fer the secret tinctures what allowed them to get with child.” She hugged Tess tightly to her and kissed her cheek.

“After all,” she continued, wiping her own cheeks with the back of one hand, “what worth was all their fortune to
them
if they couldna’ bear any young? If they couldna’ have
any family?”

Mrs. Hanley, unused to being idle, soon found ways to pass the days aboard the ship. Immediately after Tess’s faint, the housekeeper insisted that Tess spend the next few days lying down. She herself, Mrs. Hanley announced, would assist Dr. Willoughby in looking after the patients in the sick bay, until Tess regained her strength. Cassie, she reasoned, with her strong aversion to the sights and sounds of Dr. Willoughby’s surgical room, was more suited to looking after baby Charles and Mrs. Willoughby than the sick ones anyway.

Sick bay on the merchant ship was little more than a storage hold outfitted with four hammocks and two long low tables. Spirit lamps burning a sharp mixture of brandy and turpentine were allowed here under careful supervision during the daily inspection of the sailors’ wounds. The fumes from the lamps’ fuel helped to mask the thick gut-wrenching odor of decay that was a constant companion of the sick and injured. A thin curtain partitioned the room in half, the intent being that the sick and fevered men would lie on one side, and those with physical injuries on the other.

She had spent only one day in sick bay before Mrs. Hanley observed that two who were injured seemed to have their own personal attendants. A crew member, who went by the name of John Robert, whose hands and face had been badly burned in the
Argus’s
fire and the carpenter whose lower leg had been amputated were both frequently visited by a small boy and a young sailor named Mr. Taylor. The boy was obviously malnourished and scratched shamelessly and furiously at his hairline, his armpits, and his crotch. Mrs. Hanley made a mental note to herself to ask the doctor’s permission to douse the lad’s cooties with full strength turpentine. The one they referred to as Mr. Taylor seemed to be in good health and was obviously adored by the younger boy.

“Don’t scratch, Tommy,” he warned. “You’ll only make it worse.” Tommy looked up at the older lad and grinned, then gritting his teeth, scratched with renewed vigor behind one of his ears. “You need a good scrubbing with the lye soap!” he chastised Tommy. “That’s what my mother would have done with you, back home.”

Mrs. Hanley wondered where ‘home’ had once been for either of them.

Since the burned man’s hands were still wrapped in bandages, even though they were, by now, crusted over with dried purulent fluid, Mr. Taylor brought him his meals and patiently fed him three times each day. Each time he arrived with a meal, he knocked and waited to be let into the room by Mrs. Hanley, acknowledging her with a sharp nod of his head.
That young William Taylor has fine manners,
she thought as she watched him balance a full bowl and two slices of bread spread thickly with lard.

“It’s fish chowder today,” William explained to his waiting patient, “and better bread than we ever got on the
Argus.”
John Robert smiled and grunted in reply. At least Mrs. Hanley
thought
he was smiling. It was hard to tell. The man’s face had been deeply scorched by the fire and the scar tissue there was already tightening, as it began to shrink and cure, like a piece of wet leather drying in the sun. His eyelids pulled tightly across his eyeballs, giving him the appearance of someone permanently squinting; the corners of his mouth pulled back into an ugly scowl. His hair and eyebrows showed no sign of re-growth. The overall effect was one of a rather terrifying façade. Quite imposing it was, given the man’s height and massive build.

“It’s the finest of the fish piss passin’ fer gruel, ya mean, don’cha? ‘Course ya’ do!” the carpenter chuckled from his hammock. Mr. Lancaster was one of the best natured men Mrs. Hanley had ever run across. It had been nearly two weeks since his surgery, and it was time to change his dressing. She hoped his jolly outlook would carry him through the removal of the stuck-on bandaging. The infection would have made the stump end very tender by now, and judging by the ripe odor emanating from it, it
was
infected, as nearly all wounds came to be.

“Mr. Taylor? Tommy?” Mrs. Hanley asked. “Would ya’ be so kind as to help John Robert out into the fresh air after his meal is done?” She intended to give Mr. Lancaster as much privacy as she could, given their surroundings, when she revealed his leg stump to him for the first time.

Bringing a bucket of sea water to him, she set it on the floor in front of him. “Stick yer leg into the water fer awhile,” she instructed him. “It’ll loosen the wraps a wee bit.” She opened a tall cupboard door and produced a part bottle of rum from within. “This here’s meant to flush out the wound,” she informed him as she tilted it to wet a strip of linen. “An’ it might sting a wee bit.”

“Hold on now!” Mr. Lancaster exclaimed. “Ya’ don’t intend to pour that nectar on the wrong end of me, do ya’?” he asked in amazement. “ ‘Cause if ya’ was to ask me, I’d be tellin’ ya’ that it’d do a whole lot more good goin’ in this end of me!” and he pointed to his open mouth.

Mrs. Hanley laughed at his earnest observation. He had a point. She looked at him for a moment and decided.

“I’ll get a cup fer ya’ then. Just stay put.”

“Can I make another request of ya’, if it’s not too forward of me to think it?”

“An’ that would be?” she asked warily.

“Bring two. I’d hate to be celebratin’ the loss of me foot all alone.”