Taming Charlotte (29 page)

Every night she ate alone in the cabin and slept alone in the overlarge bed. Sometimes she would return and find evidence that Patrick had been there, to retrieve a book or fresh clothes or some other personal belonging probably, but for the most part he managed to stay on the opposite end of the ship.

The dreams continued and always left Charlotte with a
vague feeling of impending disaster, although she could never remember clear details when she awakened.

They had been at sea a full ten days, and the
Enchantress
was headed in an easterly direction, toward the South Seas, when they found the first rat.

Cochran himself had stumbled upon the corpse while on night watch. The rodent had retched up most of its insides, and was still bleeding from its ears. It was too much, even for Cochran’s iron stomach, and he staggered to the rail.

He was weak when he came away, and he took care not to step on the vile mess on the deck as he hurried past it to awaken the captain.

Patrick was in a foul mood. He had not exchanged a civil word with Charlotte in nigh on two weeks, let alone shared her bed. He hated sleeping in the cramped cabin reserved for the occasional paying passenger; the ceiling was too low and he was continually bumping his head.

He was awake, nursing a glass of brandy, when the pounding sounded at his door and he heard Cochran’s voice.

“Captain! Open up, quickly!”

Alarm spiraled in the pit of Patrick’s stomach at the urgency of the man’s plea. Cochran had been everywhere and seen everything, and it took a great deal to shake him.

Patrick raised the latch and drew back the door. “Good God, man, what is it?” he grumbled. He wasn’t drunk exactly, but his head was fogged and he was a little unsteady on his feet.

“Come with me,” Cochran ordered, and even though the night was cool for the tropics, a fine sheen of perspiration gleamed on his skin. “Now.”

“What—?”

“Now, “
the first mate insisted.

Patrick followed him along the passageway, up the steps, onto the main deck. On the starboard side, Cochran took one of the lamps down from its hook and held it over a disgusting mass of gore that had once been a rat.

The stench was worse than the sight, and Patrick turned
his head for a moment, swallowed the bile that rushed into the back of his throat. “What do you make of this?” he asked, in a hushed voice, after a long interval had passed. “Is it plague?”

Cochran was keeping his distance. “I don’t know if it’s plague or not, Captain. I do know that we’re in trouble, every last man jack of us.”

“And Charlotte,” Patrick whispered, closing his eyes briefly.
And our baby.
“Have somebody get rid of this thing and swab the deck with lye soap. In the morning we’ll search the ship from one end to the other to see if there are others.”

“There will be more,” Cochran assured his captain. He sounded like a man talking in his sleep.

Patrick roused the cook and set him to boiling water. Then he went back to his cabin, stripped off his clothes, and scoured himself from head to foot. Of course, he couldn’t wash away the memory of the diseased rat; it was an image that would haunt his mind for a long time.

When he was through washing, he dressed in fresh clothes and left the cabin again, going straight to the place where Charlotte slept.

She had locked the door, and even though that was the only prudent thing for a woman to do on a ship full of men, he was annoyed.

He closed one hand into a fist and pounded on the heavy panel until it shook.

Finally Patrick heard the latch rattle on the inside and the door creaked open a little way. Charlotte peered around the edge.

“Patrick?” It sounded as though she would have been less surprised to encounter Lincoln’s ghost. “Wh-What is it?”

He pushed the door open, stepped over the threshold, and stood looking down at her. She was wearing one of his shirts for a nightgown, and her maple-sugar hair tumbled loose down her back and over her shoulders. Her golden eyes were wide and troubled, but if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a triumph in them, too.

Patrick couldn’t tell her about the rat, and the possible meaning of such a gruesome event. After all, it wouldn’t do
to frighten her without just cause. Still, he couldn’t leave her, either.

“I’ve missed you,” he confessed gruffly, and that was true. He’d regretted his impulsive divorce many times, especially in the depths of the night when he’d needed so badly to turn to her for that sweet solace only she could offer.

She folded her arms, tilted her head to one side. “And I’ve missed you,” she admitted. “But—”

He thought of epidemics he’d seen, men dead of the plagues and strange fevers so rife in the tropics. “Just let me hold you,” he interrupted.

To his infinite relief, Charlotte did not make him beg. She simply took his hand and led him to their bed. Deftly she began unfastening his shirt.

“You look dreadful, Patrick,” she said gently. “What is it that’s frightened you so?”

Patrick pulled her near, held her very tightly for a moment, his eyes closed. He could not explain, not yet. “Charlotte,” was all he said.

After a few minutes, he took off his shirt and boots, then his breeches, and crawled into bed. Charlotte came readily into his arms and tucked herself up close against him. Her heart seemed to beat in rhythm with his.

“I need you,” he said, after a long time, fully expecting her to rebuff and even revile him.

Instead, Charlotte ran her hand over the hard muscles of his stomach, then clasped his rod with strong fingers.

Patrick moaned in an agony of joyous relief and passion as swift as a riotous western river. Then he caught hold of her wrist and held it for a moment.

“I’m warning you, Charlotte,” he rasped. “If you’re only teasing me, stop. Now.”

She kissed the edge of his jawline. “Whatever it is that’s tormenting you, I’ll make you forget it,” she promised.

And she did.

Charlotte was humming to herself as she washed and dressed the next morning, recalling how she’d put Patrick through his paces the night before. There had, of course,
been no small amount of personal satisfaction in the task, and for the first time in days, she hadn’t been troubled by nightmares.

She breakfasted in the cabin, as usual, then took a sketch pad and pencils and went out on deck.

The sun was bright against a robin’s-egg sky, but there was no wind, and the water seemed smooth as blue ice. Tension lay over the vessel like an unseen shroud, and when Charlotte looked up, she saw that the sails were limp against the masts.

“We’re becalmed,” Tipper Doon told her as he passed with a bucket of steaming water. “And there’re dead rats all about. You’d best go back to your cabin and stay there, Mrs. Trevarren.”

Charlotte scrambled to catch up with him. “What do you mean, there’re dead rats all about’?” she insisted.

The boy stopped, met her gaze. His young face looked grim, even in the golden beauty of that strange day. “It’s some sickness, ma’am,” he said patiently. “The rats got it first, but chances are they’ll spread it to us people soon enough.”

Charlotte shrank back for a moment, automatically sheltered her baby by putting one hand to her abdomen. “Dear God,” she breathed. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Doon!” bellowed a voice from farther along the deck.

“I’d best go now, ma’am,” Tipper hastened to say. “‘Fore this water is too cold to do any good.”

Charlotte hunted until she found Patrick. He was aft, searching the horizon through a gleaming steel spyglass trimmed in copper.

It was obvious that he’d sensed her presence, but he took his time acknowledging her.

“If you’ve come seeking an apology for last night,” Patrick informed her brusquely, keeping his eyes trained on the distance, “you’ll be disappointed.”

“Last night be damned,” Charlotte sputtered. “Look at me!”

He slanted his gaze in her direction. “You’ve found out about the rats,” he said, with a note of resignation in his voice.

“What does it mean?” Charlotte was filled with dread, and she well knew that the disaster her dreams had warned about was upon them.

“They’re diseased. Cochran came across the first one last night, turned inside out on the deck. Since sunrise, the men have found a dozen more in like condition.”

Charlotte swayed ever so slightly, reached out and gripped the rail to steady herself. “There will be sickness, then.”

“Without question,” Patrick answered grimly. He made no move to touch her, but she so wished to be sheltered in his arms.

“Perhaps we could go ashore somewhere—”

“Even if there were land within a hundred miles—and there isn’t—we couldn’t bring a plague like this on innocent people, Charlotte.”

She trembled, hugged herself. “My baby,” she whispered. “Oh, dear God in heaven, my baby.”

Patrick took her into his arms at last, but he sounded angry when he spoke. “And mine,” he pointed out in sharp tones.

Charlotte embraced him, rested her head against his shoulder. “God help us,” she said brokenly. “God help us all.”

The first sailor went down with the malady the crew had named the bloody fever the next morning. The ship was still becalmed, and it seemed to Charlotte that the
Enchantress
and all her passengers were adrift in the palm of the devil’s hand.

By noon, two more men had been carried to their beds, and at twilight, the first victim died. A prayer was offered and he was put overboard, wrapped in the blanket from his bed. The man’s meager belongings were put into a tin box and locked away until they could be given to his family.

In the beginning, Charlotte was practically inert with fear. Then she got hold of herself, and her mind cooled. She went below to help tend the sick and was quickly and fiercely ordered away.

Desperate to be doing
something,
she tried to draw, but all
her pencil would produce were gargoyles and specters and other horrible monsters.

When night came, the deck seemed utterly deserted. Charlotte stood looking up at the stars, praying for her baby’s life. A cool breeze whispered through her hair, and she heard a shout from a man high up in the crow’s nest.

“There’s a wind coming up!” he cried, and sailors rushed on deck, eager to set the sails and be under way again. Charlotte suspected they were entertaining fanciful hopes of outrunning the pestilence somehow, just as she was.

There were more funerals the next day, and still others the day after that. Charlotte remained hearty and strong, though even Patrick could not keep her from the sick. She bathed fevered faces, wrote letters to mothers and sisters and sweethearts, spooned broth into unwilling mouths, and emptied slop jars. She sang soft songs, held hands, prayed that departing souls would be received in heaven.

“You must go back to your cabin and rest,” Cochran told her, late one night, when she’d just covered the slack face of a boy barely older than the eldest of her brothers. “You have the baby to think of, and the captain.”

Patrick had been working as tirelessly as Charlotte, if not more so, since the members of his crew had begun to diminish and the winds had picked up. Far into the night, he would collapse beside her on their bed, fully clothed, sleep for two hours at the most, and then get up and start over again.

“There’s nowhere I can go to hide from this fever,” Charlotte said. “Patrick says it’s got into the very timbers of the ship herself.”

Cochran nodded. He was gaunt, and his beard stood out, bristly, on his gray cheeks. “I’ve seen vessels come ashore without a living soul aboard, once they’ve been struck by the pestilence.”

Charlotte shivered, folded her hands in her lap. She couldn’t remember which of her dresses she was wearing, and didn’t take the trouble to look. “I refuse to die,” she said, addressing the fates as much as Cochran. “I haven’t done all my living yet.”

Remarkably, considering the circumstances, Cochran smiled. “If anybody can survive a plague like this one, it would be you,” he said. “It does seem that the faeries and spirits love you with devotion.”

Tipper Doon, fallen sick these three days past, groaned fitfully in his sleep. Tears of despair stung Charlotte’s eyes as she moved her stool to the side of his hammock and began to bathe his face. “Don’t you go and die, Tipper,” she scolded, so weary that she forgot her conversation with Cochran in midstream. “You haven’t done all your living, either.”

With that, Charlotte began to weep in earnest, bending forward until her forehead touched Tipper’s chest. “Lydia,” she sobbed, beyond the bounds of reason now and unable to pull herself back. “Oh, Lydia, please help us!”

Strong hands lifted her from the stool, steely arms encircled her. Patrick had come for her, and she wept helplessly, hopelessly, against his shoulder as he carried her out of the hold where the sick men lay.

In their cabin, he undressed her and put her to bed. When she wouldn’t eat, he spooned weak tea into her mouth instead.

“If only Lydia were here,” she said, aware that she was raving, unable to stop herself. “She would know what to do—”

“Hush now,” Patrick said. He was beside her in bed, holding her. “We’re only a few days from the island. You can go ashore there, and old Jacoba will look after you until you’re strong again.”

The words made little sense to Charlotte, but she understood one thing: that the island was near. She held on tightly to the hope of reaching it.

Charlotte slept until the middle of the next afternoon, and awakened feeling stronger. She was even a little embarrassed that she’d surrendered so thoroughly to exhaustion the night before, and allowed Patrick and the others to see her fall apart.

After nibbling at a piece of dried bread and some fruit, she dressed and went off to the hold to see how the sick were
faring. If she didn’t spell Mr. Cochran, she feared he would not take the time to eat or sleep, and much depended upon him.

Reaching the hold, Charlotte saw no sign of the first mate, but the ship’s captain sat in a straight-backed chair beside a patient’s berth, his face buried in his hands.

She stood behind Patrick, touched his shoulders. She knew his despair, knew he felt responsible for the sufferings of his crew. “This isn’t your fault,” she pointed out, with gentle reason.