absolutely to trouble with such nuisances as soaking peas or boiling oatmeal.
Compounding the difficulty was Murphy’s ingrained prejudice against oatmeal, a crude Scottish mess that offended his aesthetic sense. I knew what he thought about that, having heard him muttering things about “dog’s vomit” over the trays of breakfast that included the bowls of parritch to which Jamie, Marsali, and Fergus were addicted.
“Mr. Murphy says as how salt pork and hardtack is good enough for every crew he’s had to feed for thirty year—given figgy-dowdy or plum duff for pudding, and beef on Sundays, too—though if that’s beef, I’m a Chinaman—and it’s good enough for us,” Gordon burst in.
Accustomed to polyglot crews of French, Italian, Spanish, and Norwegian sailors, Murphy was also accustomed to having his meals accepted and consumed with a voracious indifference that transcended nationalities. The Scots’ stubborn insistence on oatmeal roused all his own Irish intransigence, and the matter, at first a small, simmering disagreement, was now beginning to rise to a boil.
“We knew as there was meant to be parritch,” MacLeod explained, “for Fergus did say so, when he asked us to come. But it’s been nothing but the meat and biscuit since we left Scotland, which is a wee bit griping to the belly if ye’re not used to it.”
“We didna like to trouble Jamie Roy ower such a thing,” Raeburn put in. “Geordie’s got his girdle, and we’ve been makin’ our own oatcake ower the lamps in the crew quarters. But we’ve run through what corn we brought in our bags, and Mr. Murphy’s got the keys to the pantry store.” He glanced shyly at me under his sandy blond lashes. “We didna like to ask, knowin’ what he thought of us.”
“Ye wouldna ken what’s meant by the term ‘spalpeens,’ would ye, Mistress Fraser?” MacRae asked, raising one bushy brow.
While listening to this outpouring of woe, I had been selecting assorted herbs from my box—anise and angelica, two large pinches of horehound, and a few sprigs of peppermint. Tying these into a square of gauze, I closed the box and handed Innes his shirt, into which he burrowed at once, in search of refuge.
“I’ll speak to Mr. Murphy,” I promised the Scots. “Meanwhile,” I said to Innes, handing him the gauze bundle, “brew you a good pot of tea from that, and drink a cupful at every watch change. If we’ve had no results by tomorrow, we’ll try stronger measures.”
As if in answer to this, a high, squeaking fart emerged from under Innes, to an ironic cheer from his colleagues.
“Aye, that’s right, Mistress Fraser; maybe ye can scare the shit out o’ him,” MacLeod said, a broad grin splitting his face.
Innes, scarlet as a ruptured artery, took the bundle, bobbed his head in inarticulate thanks, and fled precipitously, followed in more leisurely fashion by the other smugglers.
A rather acrimonious debate with Murphy followed, terminating without bloodshed, but with the compromise that I would be responsible for the preparation of the Scots’ morning parritch, permitted to do so under provision that I confined myself to a single pot and spoon, did not sing while cooking, and was careful not to make a mess in the precincts of the sacred galley.
It was only that night, tossing restlessly in the cramped and chilly confines of my berth, that it occurred to me how odd the morning’s incident had been. Were this Lallybroch, and the Scots Jamie’s tenants, not only would they have had no hesitation in approaching him about the matter, they would have had no need to. He would have known already what was wrong, and taken steps to remedy the situation. Accustomed as I had always been to the intimacy and unquestioning loyalty of Jamie’s own men, I found this distance troubling.
Jamie was not at the captain’s table next morning, having gone out in the small boat with two of the sailors to catch whitebait, but I met him on his return at noon, sunburned, cheerful, and covered with scales and fish blood.
“What have ye done to Innes, Sassenach?” he said, grinning. “He’s hiding in the starboard head, and says ye told him he mustna come out at all until he’d shit.”
“I didn’t tell him that, exactly,” I explained. “I just said if he hadn’t moved his bowels by tonight, I’d give him an enema of slippery elm.”
Jamie glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the head.
“Well, I suppose we will hope that Innes’s bowels cooperate, or I doubt but he’ll spend the rest of the voyage in the head, wi’ a threat like that hangin’ ower him.”
“Well, I shouldn’t worry; now that he and the others have their parritch back, their bowels ought to take care of themselves without undue interference from me.”
Jamie glanced down at me, surprised.
“Got their parritch back? Whatever d’ye mean, Sassenach?”
I explained the genesis of the Oatmeal War, and its outcome, as he fetched a basin of water to clean his hands. A small frown drew his brows close together as he pushed his sleeves up his arms.
“They ought to have come to me about it,” he said.
“I expect they would have, sooner or later,” I said. “I only happened to find out by accident, when I found Innes grunting behind a hatch cover.”
“Mmphm.” He set about scouring the bloodstains off his fingers, rubbing the clinging scales free with a small pumice stone.
“These men aren’t like your tenants at Lallybroch, are they?” I said, voicing the thought I had had.
“No,” he said quietly. He dipped his fingers in the basin, leaving tiny shimmering circles where the fish scales floated. “I’m no their laird; only the man who pays them.”
“They like you, though,” I protested, then remembered Fergus’s story and amended this rather weakly to, “or at least five of them do.”
I handed him the towel. He took it with a brief nod, and dried his hands. Looking down at the strip of cloth, he shook his head.
“Aye, MacLeod and the rest like me well enough—or five of them do,” he repeated ironically. “And they’ll stand by me if it’s needful—five of them. But they dinna ken me much, nor me them, save Innes.”
He tossed the dirty water over the side, and tucking the empty basin under his arm, turned to go below, offering me his arm.
“There was more died at Culloden than the Stuart cause, Sassenach,” he said. “You’ll be coming for your dinner now?”
* * *
I did not find out why Innes was different, until the next week. Perhaps emboldened by the success of the purgative I had given him, Innes came voluntarily to call upon me in my cabin a week later.
“I am wondering, mistress,” he said politely, “whether there might be a medicine for something as isna there.”
“What?” I must have looked puzzled at this description, for he lifted the empty sleeve of his shirt in illustration.
“My arm,” he explained. “It’s no there, as ye can plainly see. And yet it pains me something terrible sometimes.” He blushed slightly.
“I did wonder for some years was I only a bit mad,” he confided, in lowered tones. “But I spoke a bit wi’ Mr. Murphy, and he tells me it’s the same with his leg that got lost, and Fergus says he wakes sometimes, feeling his missing hand slide into someone’s pocket.” He smiled briefly, teeth a flash under his drooping mustache. “So I thought maybe if it was a common thing, to feel a limb that wasn’t there, perhaps there was something that might be done about it.”
“I see.” I rubbed my chin, pondering. “Yes, it is common; it’s called a phantom limb, when you still have feelings in a part that’s been lost. As for what to do about it.…” I frowned, trying to think whether I had ever heard of anything therapeutic for such a situation. To gain time, I asked, “How did you happen to lose the arm?”
“Oh, ’twas the blood poison,” he said, casually. “I tore a small hole in my hand wi’ a nail one day, and it festered.”
I stared at the sleeve, empty from the shoulder.
“I suppose it did,” I said faintly.
“Oh, aye. It was a lucky thing, though; it was that stopped me bein’ transported wi’ the rest.”
“The rest of whom?”
He looked at me, surprised. “Why, the other prisoners from Ardsmuir. Did Mac Dubh not tell ye about that? When they stopped the fortress from being a prison, they sent off all of the Scottish prisoners to be indenture men in the Colonies—all but Mac Dubh, for he was a great man, and they didna want him out o’ their sight, and me, for I’d lost the arm, and was no good for hard labor. So Mac Dubh was taken somewhere else, and I was let go—pardoned and set free. So ye see, it was a most fortunate accident, save only for the pain that comes on sometimes at night.” He grimaced, and made as though to rub the nonexistent arm, stopping and shrugging at me in illustration of the problem.
“I see. So you were with Jamie in prison. I didn’t know that.” I was turning through the contents of my medicine chest, wondering whether a general pain reliever like willow-bark tea or horehound with fennel would work on a phantom pain.
“Oh, aye.” Innes was losing his shyness, and beginning to speak more freely. “I should have been dead of starvation by now, had Mac Dubh not come to find me, when he was released himself.”
“He went looking for you?” Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a flash of blue, and beckoned to Mr. Willoughby, who was passing by.
“Aye. When he was released from his parole, he came to inquire, to see whether he could trace any of the men who’d been taken to America—to see whether any might have returned.” He shrugged, the missing arm exaggerating the gesture. “But there were none in Scotland, save me.”
“I see. Mr. Willoughby, have you a notion what might be done about this?” Motioning to the Chinese to come and look, I explained the problem, and was pleased to hear that he did indeed have a notion. We stripped Innes of his shirt once again, and I watched, taking careful notes, as Mr. Willoughby pressed hard with his fingers at certain spots on the neck and torso, explaining as best he might what he was doing.
“Arm is in the ghost world,” he explained. “Body not; here in upper world. Arm tries to come back, for it does not like to be away from body. This— An-mo—press-press—this stops pain. But also we tell arm not come back.”
“And how d’ye do that?” Innes was becoming interested in the procedure. Most of the crew would not let Mr. Willoughby touch them, regarding him as heathen, unclean, and a pervert to boot, but Innes had known and worked with the Chinese for the last two years.
Mr. Willoughby shook his head, lacking words, and burrowed in my medicine box. He came up with the bottle of dried hot peppers, and shaking out a careful handful, put it into a small dish.
“Have fire?” he inquired. I had a flint and steel, and with these he succeeded in kindling a spark to ignite the dried herb. The pungent smell filled the cabin, and we all watched as a small plume of white rose up from the dish and formed a small, hovering cloud over the dish.
“Send smoke of fan jiao messenger to ghost world, speak arm,” Mr. Willoughby explained. Inflating his lungs and puffing out his cheeks like a blowfish, he blew lustily at the cloud, dispersing it. Then, without pausing, he turned and spat copiously on Innes’s stump.
“Why, ye heathen bugger!” Innes cried, eyes bulging with fury. “D’ye dare spit on me?”
“Spit on ghost,” Mr. Willoughby explained, taking three quick steps backward, toward the door. “Ghost afraid spittle. Not come back now right away.”
I laid a restraining hand on Innes’s remaining arm.
“Does your missing arm hurt now?” I asked.
The rage began to fade from his face as he thought about it.
“Well…no,” he admitted. Then he scowled at Mr. Willoughby. “But that doesna mean I’ll have ye spit on me whenever the fancy takes ye, ye wee poutworm!”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Willoughby said, quite cool. “I not spit. You spit now. Scare you own ghost.”
Innes scratched his head, not sure whether to be angry or amused.
“Well, I will be damned,” he said finally. He shook his head, and picking up his shirt, pulled it on. “Still,” he said, “I think perhaps next time, I’ll try your tea, Mistress Fraser.”
44
FORCES OF NATURE
“I,” said Jamie, “am a fool.” He spoke broodingly, watching Fergus and Marsali, who were absorbed in close conversation by the rail on the opposite side of the ship.
“What makes you think so?” I asked, though I had a reasonably good idea. The fact that all four of the married persons aboard were living in unwilling celibacy had given rise to a certain air of suppressed amusement among the members of the crew, whose celibacy was involuntary.
“I have spent twenty years longing to have ye in my bed,” he said, verifying my assumption, “and within a month of having ye back again, I’ve arranged matters so that I canna even kiss ye without sneakin’ behind a hatch cover, and even then, half the time I look round to find Fergus looking cross-eyed down his nose at me, the little bastard! And no one to blame for it but my own foolishness. What did I think I was doing?” he demanded rhetorically, glaring at the pair across the way, who were nuzzling each other with open affection.
“Well, Marsali is only fifteen,” I said mildly. “I expect you thought you were being fatherly—or stepfatherly.”
“Aye, I did.” He looked down at me with a grudging smile. “The reward for my tender concern being that I canna even touch my own wife!”
“Oh, you can touch me,” I said. I took one of his hands, caressing the palm gently with my thumb. “You just can’t engage in acts of unbridled carnality.”
We had had a few abortive attempts along those lines, all frustrated by either the inopportune arrival of a crew member or the sheer uncongeniality of any nook aboard the Artemis sufficiently secluded as to be private. One late-night foray into the after hold had ended abruptly when a large rat had leapt from a stack of hides onto Jamie’s bare shoulder, sending me into hysterics and depriving Jamie abruptly of any desire to continue what he was doing.
He glanced down at our linked hands, where my thumb continued to make secret love to his palm, and narrowed his eyes at me, but let me continue. He closed his fingers gently round my hand, his own thumb feather-light on my pulse. The simple fact was that we couldn’t keep our hands off each other—no more than Fergus and Marsali could—despite the fact that we knew very well such behavior would lead only to greater frustration.
“Aye, well, in my own defense, I meant well,” he said ruefully, smiling down into my eyes.
“Well, you know what they say about good intentions.”
“What do they say?” His thumb was stroking gently up and down my wrist, sending small fluttering sensations through the pit of my stomach. I thought it must be true what Mr. Willoughby said, about sensations on one part of the body affecting another.
“They pave the road to Hell.” I gave his hand a squeeze, and tried to take mine away, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Mmphm.” His eyes were on Fergus, who was teasing Marsali with an albatross’s feather, holding her by one arm and tickling her beneath the chin as she struggled ineffectually to get away.
“Verra true,” he said. “I meant to make sure the lass had a chance to think what she was about before the matter was too late for mending. The end result of my interference being that I lie awake half the night trying not to think about you, and listening to Fergus lust across the cabin, and come up in the morning to find the crew all grinning in their beards whenever they see me.” He aimed a vicious glare at Maitland, who was passing by. The beardless cabin boy looked startled, and edged carefully away, glancing nervously back over his shoulder.
“How do you hear someone lust?” I asked, fascinated.
He glanced down at me, looking mildly flustered.
“Oh! Well…it’s only…”
He paused for a moment, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, which was beginning to redden in the sharp breeze.
“Have ye any idea what men in a prison do, Sassenach, having no women for a verra long time?”
“I could guess,” I said, thinking that perhaps I didn’t really want to hear, firsthand. He hadn’t spoken to me before about his time in Ardsmuir.
“I imagine ye could,” he said dryly. “And ye’d be right, too. There’s the three choices; use each other, go a bit mad, or deal with the matter by yourself, aye?”
He turned to look out to sea, and bent his head slightly to look down at me, a slight smile visible on his lips. “D’ye think me mad, Sassenach?”
“Not most of the time,” I replied honestly, turning round beside him. He laughed and shook his head ruefully.
“No, I dinna seem able to manage it. I now and then wished I could go mad”—he said thoughtfully “—it seemed a great deal easier than having always to think what to do next—but it doesna seem to come natural to me. Nor does buggery,” he added, with a wry twist of his mouth.
“No, I shouldn’t think so.” Men who might in the ordinary way recoil in horror from the thought of using another man could still bring themselves to the act, out of desperate need. Not Jamie. Knowing what I did of his experiences at the hands of Jack Randall, I suspected that he very likely would have gone mad before seeking such resort himself.
He shrugged slightly, and stood silent, looking out to sea. Then he glanced down at his hands, spread before him, clutching the rail.
“I fought them—the soldiers who took me. I’d promised Jenny I wouldn’t—she thought they’d hurt me—but when the time came, I couldna seem to help it.” He shrugged again, and slowly opened and closed his right hand. It was his crippled hand, the third finger marked by a thick scar that ran the length of the first two joints, the fourth finger’s second joint fused into stiffness, so that the finger stuck out awkwardly, even when he made a fist.
“I broke this again then, against a dragoon’s jaw,” he said ruefully, waggling the finger slightly. “That was the third time; the second was at Culloden. I didna mind it much. But they put me in chains, and I minded that a great deal.”
“I’d think you would.” It was hard—not difficult, but surprisingly painful—to think of that lithe, powerful body subdued by metal, bound and humbled.
“There’s nay privacy in prison,” he said. “I minded that more than the fetters, I think. Day and night, always in sight of someone, wi’ no guard for your thoughts but to feign sleep. As for the other…” He snorted briefly, and shoved the loose hair back behind his ear. “Well, ye wait for the light to go, for the only modesty there is, is darkness.”
The cells were not large, and the men lay close together for warmth in the night. With no modesty save darkness, and no privacy save silence, it was impossible to remain unaware of the accommodation each man made to his own needs.
“I was in irons for more than a year, Sassenach,” he said. He lifted his arms, spread them eighteen inches apart, and stopped abruptly, as though reaching some invisible limit. “I could move that far—and nay more,” he said, staring at his immobile hands. “And I couldna move my hands at all without the chain makin’ a sound.”
Torn between shame and need, he would wait in the dark, breathing in the stale and brutish scent of the surrounding men, listening to the murmurous breath of his companions, until the stealthy sounds nearby told him that the telltale clinking of his irons would be ignored.
“If there’s one thing I ken verra well, Sassenach,” he said quietly, with a brief glance at Fergus, “it’s the sound of a man makin’ love to a woman who’s not there.”
He shrugged and jerked his hands suddenly, spreading them wide on the rail, bursting his invisible chains. He looked down at me then with a half-smile, and I saw the dark memories at the back of his eyes, under the mocking humor.
I saw too the terrible need there, the desire strong enough to have endured loneliness and degradation, squalor and separation.
We stood quite still, looking at each other, oblivious of the deck traffic passing by. He knew better than any man how to hide his thoughts, but he wasn’t hiding them from me.
The hunger in him went bone-deep, and my own bones seemed to dissolve in recognition of it. His hand was an inch from mine, resting on the wooden rail, long-fingered and powerful.…If I touched him, I thought suddenly, he would turn and take me, here, on the deck boards.
As though hearing my thought, he took my hand suddenly, pressing it tight against the hard muscle of his thigh.
“How many times have we lain together, since ye came back to me?” he whispered. “Once, twice, in the brothel. Three times in the heather. And then at Lallybroch, again in Paris.” His fingers tapped lightly against my wrist, one after the other, in time with my pulse.
“Each time, I left your bed as hungry as ever I came to it. It takes no more to ready me now than the scent of your hair brushing past my face, or the feel of your thigh against mine when we sit to eat. And to see ye stand on deck, wi’ the wind pressing your gown tight to your body…”
The corner of his mouth twitched slightly as he looked at me. I could see the pulse beat strong in the hollow of his throat, his skin flushed with wind and desire.
“There are moments, Sassenach, when for one copper penny, I’d have ye on the spot, back against the mast and your skirts about your waist, and devil take the bloody crew!”
My fingers convulsed against his palm, and he tightened his grasp, nodding pleasantly in response to the greeting of the gunner, coming past on his way toward the quarter-gallery.
The bell for the Captain’s dinner sounded beneath my feet, a sweet metallic vibration that traveled up through the soles of my feet and melted the marrow of my bones. Fergus and Marsali left their play and went below, and the crew began preparations for the changing of the watch, but we stayed standing by the rail, fixed in each other’s eyes, burning.