turned to Leander. “If you don’t soon get some sleep, you’ll end up a patient yourself.”
He smiled wanly. “And if I do, would you give me rum and laudanum and an occasional cup of water?”
“No. As punishment for allowing yourself to get sick, I would bestow that honour upon Mr. Brockley.”
Leander threw up his slim arms. “In that case, I am going. I’m going to get some sleep.”
“You’re welcome to my corner, although the floor in there is wet, so you’ll have to sleep on the stool next to Magpie.”
He dipped his hands into a basin of pink water and dried them on a square of cloth. “Thank you, but I have a cabin down on the orlop deck. Unless we do battle again in the next few hours, Osmund should be fine with his charges. And Mr. Evans, as he still possesses all of his limbs and faculties, has promised to watch out for you while I’m gone.”
Morgan saluted Emily from his cot, but his eyes did not meet the compassionate light that shone from hers. She turned away from Morgan and lowered her voice. “How is he, Doctor?”
“Very low. He has said nothing since his coming here.” Leander fumbled in his pockets for his cabin key, unaware that the letter he had been writing in the night to the enigmatic “Jane” had slipped out and onto the damp hospital floor. Emily was about to pick it up when Osmund, carrying a bucket of body wastes, crushed it with his large foot.
“What about Miss Emily, Doctor? Whose bed is she gonna sleep in now Magpie’s in her cot?” Osmund stood there with his fetid bucket, licking his thick lips, awaiting the doctor’s reply.
A flush of colour crept into Leander’s white face. “That, Mr. Brockley, is not your concern. Keep your thoughts focused on your tasks or I’ll send you packing along with Mr. Crump.” Having said that, he meandered slowly through the maze of hammocks towards the galley door.
With Leander gone, a hush fell upon the hospital. Emily could hear her footsteps on the floorboards as she squeezed her way through the hammocks, offering a drink of water to those with parched lips, aware that several pairs of curious eyes had locked onto her every move. She was frantic to rescue Leander’s letter from the floor, but didn’t dare, in case any of the men had witnessed it falling from the doctor’s pocket. Like a hovering hawk about to go in for the kill, Osmund stood awkwardly by, still holding his bucket, his tongue hanging out of his mouth as he watched her.
“Mr. Brockley,” came a firm voice from one of the hammocks behind Emily, “we could all breathe a bit easier if you would please take that which you are holding and dump it over the side of the ship.”
Osmund awakened from his reverie and sprang into action. Grunting an apology, he tripped his way up the ladder, sloshing some of the bucket’s contents upon the rungs. It was Morgan Evans who had spoken. Smiling, Emily refilled the water cup and went to stand next to his head. He looked up at her like a shy schoolboy and took the cup from her hands.
“You are very kind to me, Mr. George,” he said quietly.
“And you have been nothing but kind to me, Mr. Evans,” she whispered. Seeing a shadow of a smile pass over his face, she pulled the nearest stool up to his bed. “I have been told that you were the one who rescued me from the sea.”
“It was my pleasure, Mr. Geo … ma’am! But I can’t take all the credit. It was Mr. Walby who first spied you through his glass.”
“Perhaps it was, but Mr. Walby might have laboured in vain to pull me from the fallen mizzenmast and into the cutter, now wouldn’t he?”
A shot of red rushed into Morgan’s unshaven cheeks, which set Mr. Crump howling in mirth.
“Oh ho, Miss, ya made Morgan blush like a maiden,” he laughed, scratching the stump of his leg. “Be careful what ya be sayin’ to him; otherwise, he’ll think ya fancy him.”
Morgan pulled the pillow from beneath his head and hurled it at Crump, hitting him in his raised stump.
“Oooh, me leg, me leg,” he cried in pain.
“At least, Crump, Morgan’s still got thee necessary parts for a woman,” said a rheumy-eyed sailor whose head was bound in bandages. “Can’t rightly tell how much thee doc had to cut away from ye.”
A storm of laughter arose from those who had been eavesdropping.
“Aye, I heard Morgan complainin’ he hadn’t had a woman in a long time,” quipped a young powder monkey with a badly burned face. “And he thinks he’s too good for the likes o’ Meggie Kettle.”
Morgan turned purple with humiliation and gripped the sides of his hammock.
“And what would a young lad like yerself be knowin’ of our Meggie Kettle?” the rheumy-eyed sailor asked the powder monkey.
“I seen what she does with the men in her cot when she ain’t at her laundry,” the little boy said, sitting up in his hammock, thrilled to be included in the men’s discussion.
As the hospital vibrated with merriment, Emily noticed Biscuit standing behind her, holding up a pitcher of grog, his old face rosy with drink and hilarity. He cleared his throat and bellowed, “Here, here, now! I bring yas all a bit o’ refreshment and what does I find? Ya’ve all takin’ leave o’ yer senses, forgettin’ yerselves in front o’ our lady guest. So yer mothers never taught ya any manners? Well, old Biscuit will have to teach yas all a bit o’ thee etiquette.”
“But I saw ya laughin’ with the others, Biscuit,” sneered the powder monkey.
“Shut up there or I’ll be fryin’ the other side o’ yer face on me galley stove.”
The banter ceased the moment Osmund returned with his empty bucket. Spying Biscuit’s grog pitcher, his eyes lit up. “Hurry up. Pour it round. One never knows how long Dr. Braden will be gone to his bed.”
Biscuit happily set about doing Osmund’s bidding, and once the attention had shifted from Morgan, the young carpenter collected the courage to look up at Emily again.
“I am truly sorry for all that.”
It was on her lips to tell Mr. Evans she had quite enjoyed the conversation – it being such a departure from the idle chit-chat that women of her class were wont to indulge in when left to their own devices in their richly-decorated drawing rooms – but she thought better of it and encouraged him instead to get some sleep.
Four bells soon sounded around the Isabelle, summoning the men from their beds and mess tables, their below-deck stations, and down from their lofty posts on the masts, to the burial service. While Emily moved among the hospital hammocks, offering a bit of solace to the injured wherever she could, she imagined the scene as the seamen – officers, marines, sailors, idlers, landsmen alike – silently assembled above deck under a mournful sky that refused admittance to the sun. There they would pray and sing hymns, and Captain Moreland, whose many duties included that of ship’s chaplain, would read out the names of the thirty-seven men killed in yesterday’s conflict. And when the sermon was over, the bodies – sewn into their hammocks with a heavy ball of lead at their feet – would be poured into the now-purring sea, there to join Mr. Alexander in his watery grave.
The moment Osmund became
