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Jack shifted in the unfamiliar chair, banging his knee on the desk again and nearly knocking his pile of paperwork to the deck. Everything was too small in the Gryphon's little cabin—desk, chair, even the screened-off hanging cot. Captain Meriweather, her true commander, was off having some exceedingly personal medical treatment in a dreary New South Wales hospital; during his sick-leave, Jack had agreed to serve as jobbing-captain for a brief voyage to Van Diemen's Land and back, while Surprise was reprovisioned and repaired in Botany Bay. He now dearly wished that before he'd agreed, he'd remembered that Meriweather was a damned short man.
As if to prove his point, Stephen was curled very comfortably indeed in the other chair, one leg bent with his foot on the seat, using his knee as a prop for a jumble of bones he had fastened together with wire. He moved a joint back and forth, slowly, observing God-knew-what.
Jack sighed and rested his mouth on one fist, tracing the feather-end of his pen down the page to find where he'd got lost. Into his fist, though, he smiled. Despite it all, the little cabin and the sluggish crew, the recent storm, the Gryphon's tendency to miss stays in a shockingly uncooperative manner, he couldn't stay sour for long—not when he had Stephen near at hand. He was always happiest with Stephen by him, no matter what cabin they found themselves in. Even the horrible old Leopard had been brightened by his presence, and she had needed a powerful lot of brightening.
He wished he thought that Stephen had come along on this jobbing voyage because he felt the same—but it seemed very likely that the only thing capable of tearing him away from some mainland botanising was the promise of new species waiting for him in Van Diemen's Land.
"Are those from our farewell dinner?" he asked, eyeing the bones.
"Certainly not," said Stephen. "We did not dine upon this particular great bat, though it would have enjoyed an invitation to dine with us, the creature. It has been known to eat whole birds, much like many a well-fed sea officer."
"Oh!" Jack eyed the bones with respect well-tinged with alarm.
"I was unable, alas, to see it alive, having purchased it from a native hunter. But it provided an interesting dissection, and I have articulated it for further study." He scratched at part of a bone with one fingernail. "Only after much boiling, of course."
"I thought the galley had acquired a certain odor. Beyond the usual." Jack raised his voice: "Killick! Killick, there!"
Killick, who had come along less voluntarily than Stephen, thrust his head in with his usual courtesy. "What now! ...Sir."
"My respects to Mr Rowe, and there seems to be quite the hullabaloo rising on deck. If there is something I ought to know, I should be glad to be informed."
"Which it's birds, sir," said Killick.
At the magic word, Stephen's chin rose, his attention well and truly caught.
"A whole right mess of 'em, landing all upon the rigging," Killick told him, growing confidential. "Bosun thinks we should have some target throwing, most birds down in one minute wins the prize, ha ha!"
"Preserved Killick!" Stephen cried, shocked. He unfolded himself to his feet and laid his gory trophy on top of Jack's papers. "Forgive me, Jack, but I must see what can be done. If these are species which—" His voice, making some important point or other, was swamped in the general noise as he dashed from the cabin.
Jack, grimacing, slid the wired skeleton to the side with one finger and tried to concentrate on his paperwork. The noise out on deck decreased, presumably the petty officers restoring some sort of order. He heard Stephen's voice through the skylight, shaming someone into ceasing to use the birds for target practice, and again he smiled.
After all, why not take some time away from this tedious part of a captain's labours and step out on deck for a breath of air? One had to be sure the little visitors weren't fouling the rigging. With a light heart he tidied away his pen and ink, donned his uniform coat, and ducked his way out of the cabin.
Up on the quarterdeck, he had an excellent view of the menagerie: birds were perched upon every yard, all sizes and even colours, rustling and bumping against each other like squabbling schoolboys. The people had returned to their duties, mostly, although everything had a holiday air about it; Jack saw Stephen working his way forward through the cheerful throng, peering intently upward.
"They won't be as happy about it when they realise how much swabbing this will entail," he said to Lieutenant Rowe. Rowe, who had punctiliously removed himself to the leeward side of the quarterdeck at Jack's appearance, respectfully approached upon being addressed.
"No, sir," he agreed. He fell in at Jack's shoulder, and together they paced to and fro on the quarterdeck, pausing aft at the taffrail. The Gryphon's wake, with a few ungainly hitches in it, stretched out away and away through seas that last night's weather had left a turbulent green.
"Sir," Rowe ventured, "do you think it was the storm brought 'em down?"
"They do seem a bit worse for wear, I suppose," said Jack thoughtfully. He turned and strolled forward again, idly, hands behind his back. "We can ask Dr Maturin—he knows most everything about birds. And," he added confidentially, "some monstrous great bats."
"Oh?" replied Rowe with baffled courtesy.
As Jack went forward along the gangway, Gryphons stepping aside and touching their foreheads, he greeted as many as possible by name. They weren't his Surprises, to be sure; he suspected their sense of aloofness—obedient aloofness, but aloofness nonetheless—sprang primarily from a laudable attachment to their own captain. They had not yet truly warmed to Stephen, either, for he was technically aboard as Jack's guest, and they had their own surgeon. But Jack had seen even the hardest of King's-hard-bargains warm to Stephen, given time, and who would not?
He faintly heard Stephen's voice from the direction of the mainmast, gentle in the way it only ever was with his birds and beasts: "I see—it appears that your right-side flight feathers are damaged. Well, well, hold still, honey, and I will untangle you so."
Jack, barely suppressing a smile, looked around for him. Then, startled, he looked up, and further up—there Stephen was, clambering like a half-smashed, poorly-tutored spider, heading for the topgallantyard. By himself! Didn't anyone here know better than to allow— But of course, this was the Gryphon, and so they did not.
"Stephen!" he bellowed upward. "Hold fast! Don't move!" And to the crew closest to the mast: "Belay the signal halliard! Bear a hand, bear a hand there!"
Some youth brighter than the rest reached for it, and Jack started to scramble up the ratlines. But neither of them was fast enough.
Stephen, off-balance, all his attention for a snagged and thrashing bird, took hold of the unstoppered line to catch himself. It ran easily, as it was supposed to. And he fell.
The hard, flat sound of Stephen striking the deck knocked the breath from Jack's body. Jack couldn't cry out; he couldn't make his arms or legs move. He clung where he was, the heave and roll of the ship swinging him this way and that like a doll in a giant's hand.
Then all at once time started again: he sprang down from the rigging in one mighty leap and landed running as if boarding the enemy. He fell to his knees beside Stephen. Pale, still, quiet...so quiet.
"Pass the word for Mr Naismith!" called Rowe somewhere behind him. "Quick, man, quick!"
"Stephen," said Jack. He reached out but couldn't bring himself to touch; his hand hovered over Stephen's thin chest.
The longest moments of his life passed by, softly, softly. Until:
Jack, came the slow shape of Stephen's lips. No air behind them. But his lips did move, and now his eyes within slitted lids. Jack's hesitant hand lowered to rest upon the surface of Stephen's waistcoat, blotched with memories of his breakfast, and something unsavory from his dissected bat, and now with tar from the rigging. Beneath it, his heart.
"Sir, if you please!" The frigate's surgeon, a dapper and rather severe old man, bent into Jack's line of vision. He looked as if he would physically dash Jack's hand away were the difference of rank not so great. "Allow me, sir. If you please."
Naismith felt along Stephen's limbs, listened (his face drawn in distaste) with his ear touching Stephen's waistcoat, gripped Stephen's chin to open his mouth, perhaps to look at his tongue? Jack was gradually edged away by the assistant surgeon, the loblolly boy, two sickberth attendants. One of them handed Naismith a vial; he nodded briskly and poured it drop by drop between Stephen's lips.
"What was that?" Jack asked—not in a captain's voice, but a supplicant's.
"A special mixture of my own," said the surgeon with satisfaction. He turned to his many assistants. "Carry him to the sickberth."
"To the cabin," Jack corrected, but he still heard that supplicant sound. And so he rose, tugged his uniform coat straight, and said firmly, "My hanging cot."
Naismith eyed him, but said with thin, cool courtesy, "Aye aye, sir."
The two burly attendants carried Stephen in a chair made of their interlaced arms, though he was but a slight weight. Then the loblolly boy and surgeon's mate, then the surgeon, in a grand parade. Jack came along hindmost, and couldn't help but say, "Anything you need, Mr Naismith. Anything at all."
The surgeon shook his head. "We need nothing now, sir, but time. Time, as they say, will tell."
Jack suddenly hated the self-satisfaction in his tone. He hated his upright carriage, his perfectly-groomed silver moustaches, his crisply-starched gleaming-white neckcloth. But he had had years of learning to master himself in battle, so he said only, "Will there be more medical help in Van Diemen's Land?"
Naismith shrugged carelessly. "Yes, sir, of a sort. And solid ground never goes amiss in cases such as these."
"Very well." Jack turned away, glad to do so. And gladder still to see the first lieutenant stepping forward, honest and capable. "Mr Rowe, you know the Gryphon. You know what she likes—what she can do."
"Yes, sir," he answered earnestly.
"Then you are the one she needs now." Jack leaned toward him, fixed him with a look. "Crack on. Every bit of speed you can coax from her: do it." And at the faint uneasiness dawning on the man's face, he went on strongly, "Don't worry about the spars; I will make it good at the shipyard, should anything spring."
Rowe took off his hat. "Aye aye, sir." He hesitated, and something that was almost a smile touched his face. "Skysails and kites, with doubled travelling backstays to bolster them, sir?"
Jack let his expression lighten, difficult as it was. "So you have heard about my little peccadilloes? Well, well. Make it so, and I'll explain to Captain Meriweather, should he come to hear his poor Gryphon was treated so harsh."
Rowe wasted no more time, but donned his hat, touched it, and turned away; the word was passed for the bosun, his mates, and the other skilled petty officers. Jack looked aft toward the cabin and imagined it cram-full of the surgeon and all his followers. No room for a useless captain in their midst, taking up the last of Stephen's air.
Would he die? Was he in fact dying right at this moment? And Jack not there?
Jack forcibly steadied himself. He thought of Stephen's heart beating beneath his hand. Rapid, straining, like a—
—like a trapped bird. He looked up. At once he saw, tangled in a line, a pale and blotched little bundle, feebly thrashing. None of the crew had been sent aloft yet; they were scurrying about to the sound of whistles, fetching and arranging tackle on the deck.
And thus Jack heaved himself outboard once more, ran up the ratlines, burning his own fear for effort. He stood on the crosstrees, eyed the creature swinging to and fro like a torn scrap of canvas. It was white with red streaks around the neck, dangling upside down, feathers ruffled all ahoo, a lopsided beak and two bright black eyes pointing fixedly his way.
"Well." Jack cleared his throat, felt foolish, but remembered Stephen's voice. "Ah— hold still, there. I'm second-best I know, but..." He reached out for the snagged feet, gripped them with one hand, used the other to ease the line slack. "Now just one— ouch!"
The upside-down eyes glared at him, the beak working with what seemed satisfaction. Jack wondered if it had torn a piece of his coatsleeve away with that bite. His coat was good solid broadcloth, yes, but the beak was formidable, the top overlarge and ending in a sharp hook.
"Steady on!" he said reproachfully. "One more moment and I would have had it. Wasn't I who got you in this tangle, anyhow."
He reached again, gingerly, but pulled back just in time as the beak flashed out.
"Oh, so that's how it is," he said. The eyes told him, frankly, that that was how it was.
He looked round for some inspiration, even some help. He even considered calling down for a seaman to come assist him. Not that he would take away any of the hands working hard on the rigging reinforcement, but...maybe Killick?
No, he'd be damned if he let the creature beat him. And besides, Killick must surely be elbow-deep in preparing things for Stephen—portable soup, beef tea. There came times in a man's life when he had to face these things alone. He loosened his neckcloth, unwound it, mopped his forehead.
Now: he steadied himself, the pitch and roll of the ship hampering his balance no more than were he standing on the steps of his own house. With one hand, he reached out toward the bird with obvious timidity, drawing the baleful attention of the eyes and beak. It readied itself to snap. And just when it seemed likeliest, then Jack's other hand flashed forth and scooped the neckcloth entirely around the bird. It struggled, it screeched. It tried to teach him a lesson again, but held so close with cloth and now Jack's arm, it couldn't get the proper leverage.
Jack carefully turned the bundle upright, though the beak worked energetically beneath the neckcloth and he kept it well away from his eyes. "Hold fast," he said, and climbed back down, barely slower with one hand.
As he jumped from rail to deck, he was opening his mouth to call, when he abruptly realised he had been about to pass the word for Dr Maturin. The words instantly vanished in a heavy breath out. He stood aside from a respectfully-hurrying petty officer and regarded the wriggling object in his hands. No Stephen to look after it—and the Gryphon's surgeon was no naturalist. Who else? No schoolmaster— No chaplain— his thoughts kept grasping at ranks employed to care for the littlest of the young gentlemen, which seemed the closest thing, except they bit much less.
If he simply unwrapped it, held it upright, would it fly away? Or fly into battle against him? But he heard Stephen's voice yet again, your right-side flight feathers are damaged...was that serious? Was it curable?
As well, he thought of the eagerness in Stephen as he had tried to rescue the bird. A rare specimen, perhaps, even unknown to science? When Stephen woke—as he surely would soon, might even have by now—would he be unhappy if Jack had just let it fly free without a closer look? Right-side up this time?
"Come along, then," he told the irascible bundle.
Carefully holding it firm between his hands so it couldn't flap, keeping away from the spot where the beak was steadily chewing a hole in the neckcloth, Jack went aft. Look who I have brought you, no, too frivolous, like a nurse bringing a baby— I caught it for you, no, Stephen's pride would not take kindly to being reminded of his error— Here, brother, and 'ware that beak, it's bloody fast I can tell you.
Bolstered by his imaginings, as well as by the following picture of Stephen sitting up and reaching for it entirely undamaged, Jack strode for the cabin, clutching in his arms something that writhed and complained like the world's angriest pillow.
"Stephen," he began heartily as he crouched in through the cabin doorway—and stopped.
The screen blocking off Jack's hanging cot had been removed; the table and papers had been shoved as far as possible to the side. But whatever crowd of medical men had been made room for was gone now. There in the cot, pale and still, was Stephen, stripped to his shirt. Eyes closed. Breathing, thank Heaven, but his face pale as whey, hands curled and limp at his sides. One shirtsleeve was pushed all the way up and his arm was scantily bandaged; presumably Naismith had bled him. Bled him and left him alone.
"Alone, by God—" said Jack in a furious rasp, and he only became aware he was squeezing his captive when it let out an angry squawk. "—Oh!" He lowered his voice and his grip both. "I do beg your pardon."
The beak stabbed through the hole in the cloth in answer, but missed him. Jack thrust his head out through the door and roared, "Killick! Killick, there!"
Killick appeared within the minute, showing none of his customary surly resistance. He held a large, covered mug in both hands, steam leaking from the lid. "Which it's some of the portable soup, and a tot of brandy in for medicinal purposes." He looked at the cot and lowered his voice, or at least made the effort, though his voice was not particularly lowerable. "Their surgeon says he ain't going to be eating it, though, or not soon. Their surgeon says time will tell."
Jack bit down on an urge to damn the surgeon and what was obviously his favorite platitude. Discipline must be preserved, even when Jack could hardly tell why. Perhaps especially then.
"Very well," he said instead. "I will sit with him. If he wakes—" He coughed. "That is, if he wants the soup when he wakes, he may have it."
Killick unhappily surrendered the mug. "I'll bring up the doctor's own blanket, shall I, your honour?"
"Yes—but just the one, mind," said Jack, who knew Killick was never happy until an ailing officer was as protected from draughts and the falling damp as the smallest raisin buried in the middle of the pudding, leaving him muddling in an airless sweat.
Killick went to and fro for some time while Jack and his parcel stood against the wall, out of the way. The bird had subsided for the moment, but was still busily chewing, chewing, chewing, and one eye occasionally peered out through the growing hole.
It did end up being just the one blanket, technically, but also a heap of other miscellaneous coverings, topped with a grizzled animal fur that Killick must have begged, bought, or bullied from one of his temporary shipmates. He piled them high on Stephen without looking at Jack, glanced at the mug of brandied soup slowly steaming its virtue away, and slunk out.
At last, Jack sat down on one of the chairs. He placed the bundled bird upon the other chair, setting it at last upon its own feet.
"Now," he said, eyeing those feet with trepidation—long, knobbly grey toes tipped with wicked black claws—"I do hope that you will not have taken any of this personally." He loosened the enveloping neckcloth and drew it free, slowly, carefully. At the risk of looking a flat, he kept one forearm advanced during the entire procedure; he would certainly rather suffer another rent in the coat, despite Killick's eventual complaints, than he would lose the end of his nose.
The bird, revealed, tipped its head and fixed Jack with one eye, black as a button, ringed with red.
"Are you hurt?" Hand drawn protectively inside his coat sleeve, he made as if to touch one of the red splotches scattered round its neck. But the bird's white crest rose and it worked its beak in preparation; he withdrew as quickly as dignity allowed.
"Perhaps not," he said placatingly. "Just your own, eh..." —what did Stephen call it— "...colouration. Very pretty, upon my word."
The bird sidled to one edge of the chair, then the other, feet making dry little pitter-pat sounds. Its crest rose, half-fell, settled.
"Pretty?" Jack tried again, and smiled. Now this was surer ground. He had met many a girl with canary or budgerigar, hopping about in a wicker cage or perching delicately upon her finger. This language he could speak. "Pretty bird. Pret-ty bird. Eh?"
It fluffed its feathers, hunched its head down.
"There, now, you'll see I ain't so bad," he said, and reached out to give the head a comforting pat.
Round went that wicked hooked beak, a lightning-strike of pain, and Jack flinched backward so violently he nearly tumbled from his chair. His fingertip was neatly sliced open, the blood welling up, stinging like nettles.
"Oh bloody hell and damnation!" he cried before he could help it. He cast a guilty look at Stephen, lowered his voice, and swore steadily through the process of rummaging through his belongings for a clean handkerchief. None was to be had.
"Killick," he called at last through the cabin door, "Killick, there. Rouse out clean handkerchiefs. And a bandage." He paused to eye the bird, who was moving its tongue within its beak as if savoring Jack's tender flesh.
"Wipers and bandage, aye," came Killick's voice. And when he arrived with his hands full of clean linen, Jack said, "I believe our guest is hungry."
Killick stared at him.
"Him," snapped Jack, jerking his head at the bird, who stood on its chair innocently nibbling one of its wing feathers back into order. "Or—her, I've no knowledge of these kinds of things."
"Well," said Killick tentatively, "there's the last of the cheese what needs toasting, but that was for your lark tonight."
Jack lifted his chin, fighting down the despair in his belly. Just this morning he and Stephen had been blithely planning their evening's music and toasted cheese, making this tiny cabin their home from home.
"Don't be a fool," he said gruffly. "Bring some— Bring some pap. Pound ship's biscuit up small. See if the gunroom officers would kindly spare a splash of their goat's milk. Damn it, man, you know the sort of thing I mean."
"Pap it is, sir." Killick and the bird traded very similar beady looks, and he left.
More swearing, then, as Jack tried and tried to wind a bandage round his finger and tie it off without having the use of both hands. The blood blotched through it and he got a smear on his white breeches, which would surely endear him to Killick. He ended up at last with a big clublike wrapping which wouldn't let the finger bend.
"The most sensitive spot, too," he grumbled. The bird watched him keenly, opened its beak, and muttered something that sounded like "bloody."
Jack blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"Ell," it said indistinctly, "bloody-ell. Bloodyyy...ellll."
"Well...bless my soul." Jack spoke more softly, as if Stephen had not been lying there peacefully during the whole affray. "Stephen, do you hear?"
Stephen breathed steadily, the hanging cot swaying slightly with the heel of the ship. Jack rested a hand on the cot's side and braced it. "I knew a purser once," he said, "had a parrot he taught to sing 'Heart of Oak'—he meant to sell it on his next home leave. It slipped away during a victualing stop, however. It flew off and—" He paused, cleared his throat, remembering the absconding bird's vigorous physical congress with another of its kind in a wharfside tree— "—met a very good friend," he finished. "And would not be persuaded to return."
Stephen said nothing. Nor did the bird; having delivered itself of its blasphemies, now it was quiet as a lamb. It had combed one of its wings back into order, but the feathers on the other side still seemed draggled.
Killick returned, carrying a bowl. "Pap, sir, and fit for a king. Gunroom sends its compliments and says their goat is at your service."
"Capital, capital."
"I also," said Killick, eyeing the bandage, "brung you a very long spoon."
Jack snatched the bowl and spoon from him. "Yes. Well. Dismissed."
Killick had obviously noticed the bloodstained breeches, but he also obviously saw the light in Jack's eye that said this was no time to discuss it. And thus with a sniff, he left.
"Here we are," said Jack, stirring the milky mush. The handle of the spoon was indeed comfortingly long. He scooped it up and carefully held it out—but not too far out. The little fellow would have to come and get it.
Head tipping first this way and then that, flexing its neck, the bird watched the spoon. A thick droplet gathered and fell upon the deck right in front of the chair with a soft plip.
"That's right," Jack cooed.
He had waited out many an opponent in his day, bringing him in on Jack's own terms. So he waited now. And finally the silence was broken by the little pit...pat of the gnarled grey feet, edging slowly toward the front edge of the chair. Jack proffered the spoon.
Delicately, the bird leaned out, and settled the long, sharp top of its beak into the bowl of the spoon. Then in one quick writhe it clamped down, twisted the spoon from Jack's hand, and flung it to the deck with a dull clang. Pap splattered about, thankfully none of it onto Stephen.
On the verge of another bout of curses, Jack stopped himself. "Spoon too shallow? I must say I doubt I'd get much turtle soup out of my own spoon with a mouth like that." This time, feeling hopeful, he held out the bowl on both flat palms.
The beak took a strong and sudden grip on the rim of the bowl despite Jack's best efforts. They struggled for it a moment until Jack's greater mass enabled him to wrest it away—at the cost of more splattering over the deck as well as his poor breeches.
"I see." Jack bent heavily for the spoon and dropped it back into the bowl. "Killick! Killick, there."
He reappeared almost instantly, his face deadpan. Jack, resigned, knew the tale of the pap-war would be spread far and wide within the hour.
"Swabber to the cabin."
"Swabber it is." Killick retrieved the sticky bowl and spoon and went on his way.
One of the afterguard came in, turned not a hair at the bird or the mess, had the deck swabbed and flogged dry in a minute, touched his forelock and departed. Jack sat at the little desk the entire time, looking busy; the bird sat on its chair and sharpened its beak on its claws, looking likewise.
When the swabber left, Killick returned. He had a nearly empty bread-bag in his hands. "A few more old biscuit here, your honour," he said. "But the goat perhaps needs to wait till morning."
"No," said Jack wearily. "It was splendid pap, but it will not do." He plucked one of the broken biscuits from the bag. It was rock-hard to the touch, and down within one of the fractures wriggled a weevil, or some other robust little reptile, disturbed in its feasting. A familiar enough sight, but somehow at this moment it only made him feel rather low.
He noticed the bird watching him. And although Stephen surely would not approve, Jack's temper flew out: "Too good for milk in your porridge, eh? Well, here, if you're so Goddamn particular." He thrust the old biscuit toward the creature, who seized it in its eager beak with a solid chomp.
Jack and Killick stared, then, to see it lose itself in ecstasies of chewing. It held the biscuit in one claw, balanced deftly on the other, and gnawed with its eyes half-closed like a man supping the finest port. When it came upon a weevil or bargeman creeping about within the crumbs, it gulped it down and gave a long, languorous blink.
"Rouse out one of the coffee cups," muttered Jack from the side of his mouth. "Fill it with water from the scuttlebutt. Bear a hand, will you, while it still has something to bite upon."
Killick scurried to do so, and Jack, emboldened by the beak and one claw being full of biscuit, gingerly set the cup of water upon the bird's chair.
"There." He beamed. "Not an entirely bad life in the Royal Navy, is it now?"
A small, dry cough behind him revealed the Gryphon's surgeon in the cabin doorway.
Jack stood up—as far as the cabin would let him—and clasped his hands behind his back, drawing the remains of his dignity round him like his gold-laced coat. "No change."
Naismith nodded absently, even condescendingly, as one might to a child. He went to Stephen's side and drew back the heap of covers, touching brow and pulse points and the rest, paying no further attention to Jack.
"He showed no signs of waking," Jack added. But the surgeon just nodded again with one of those infuriating medical humming noises, looking sleek and satisfied. That was suddenly as far as Jack felt he could go in begging him to explain what was happening, and to declare that Stephen would soon be well again.
"Carry on," he said stiffly, and left the cabin. He mounted to the quarterdeck, unwrapped his enormous attempt at a bandage, and flung it over the side. The wind, brisk and full of sea spray, cooled his hot face and calmed his frantic mind somewhat; now he could look about and truly see the changes. The Gryphon's officers and crew had done an excellent job with the sails and the reinforcing rigging, everything shipshape, if heartrendingly ugly. Now the Gryphon could bend to her task with a will, her masts and spars taking on more thrust, rushing toward their destination.
Rowe approached, touching his hat. He looked tired and worried.
"Well done, Mr Rowe! Very well done indeed," said Jack, and saw the worry ease before shy delight.
"Nothing, I am sure, sir, to your own efforts in this vein."
"Nonsense! You know the Gryphon much better than I, and see how she has responded." They both leaned reflexively into the pitch as the frigate leapt like a deer.
"Thank you, sir," Rowe said, heartfelt. "And I hope Dr Maturin recovers well?"
The joy of cracking on, the refreshment of wave and wind, abruptly faded within Jack's breast. He smiled widely, nodded: "Oh, yes, yes indeed. Perhaps a little better once we get him on land, but he is resting." Killick passed by at the edge of Jack's vision, possibly fetching something for the surgeon, and Jack found himself saying, "I brought him the bird he was after. For him to study, when he wakes."
"Yes sir." Rowe seemed entirely respectful, and presumably had not heard the story of the pap just yet. "Sir, my cabin has been prepared for you, and Chips has knocked out the foot of the cot so that you may lie comfortable."
Thoughtful, though of course only to be expected: a captain forced from his bed would naturally prevail upon his First, who would take over the room of the Second, and thus the dominoes went.
"Oh," he replied, "very kind of you, Rowe. But it ain't necessary, you know; tonight I expect to sit up over my paperwork. Victualling can be a complicated affair."
The lieutenant demurred with the greatest courtesy, explaining how all was already laid along, the bosun looked forward to sharing with the new sailmaker, them being former shipmates on another commission with many tales to tell. But Jack, still smiling, would not be moved. He couldn't be sure that Rowe truly believed it, but that was his affair—if in the end everyone crammed themselves together in order that an empty cot should swing in Rowe's little cubby, so be it.
As he turned away, he saw the surgeon leaving the cabin, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket.
"Mr Naismith!" he said.
The old man mounted to the quarterdeck and stood, blotting tidily at the sea-spray on his cheeks. He waited a moment, his patience an effort as always, until perhaps something in Jack's face made him say, "Sir?"
"Report."
Brows up, Naismith said, "Nothing new, sir, dear me no."
A lifetime of training and experience kept Jack from seizing him by the lapel and shaking him. "Good," he said. It did not quite rise into a question.
"All continues apace." Naismith flinched at a gust of very wet wind and wiped his eyes. "If I may, sir, it is time for the rest of my rounds."
Jack dismissed him and turned to the rail, refusing to watch him go. For some time he stood and gazed out to judge the frigate's progress, the sound of her working, the feel of the wind. He was remembering with a pang a late-night discussion he and Stephen had had recently, over port and cunning little tarts left over from a dinner for a visiting admiral, about the maddening insistence of some medical men not to share one fact more about a treatment than they were absolutely forced to.
"You must remember, my dear," Stephen had said, gazing through his wine at the lantern, "that to the physician his knowledge is his most valued possession, acquired at great labour and expense of body and mind. Sure, and soul, too. Then you might think to ask yourself, why would he give it away?" He sipped. "Swine and pearls come to mind."
"But Stephen," he had replied, leaning comfortably back in his chair, "you tell me things about your work all the time."
Stephen had smiled, not a common expression from him on an ordinary day. "Perhaps it does not reflect how I am with the rest of the world. After all, joy, my possessions are already yours, and yours mine. 'With all my worldly goods I thee endow.'"
Jack's hands tightened on the wood of the rail.
When he went back into the cabin, all was dim and still. After the feel of the wind and spray outside, the noise of the sails and rigging, the sprawling glow of the setting sun, now the cabin was a dark and hushed little hole of a place. The brightest spot in it was the bird, dozing on its chair, white feathers faintly agleam.
Jack did in fact continue with his papers for quite some time. He called Killick for an extra lantern; he called Killick for a bite of bread and cheese which he made himself eat as he worked; he called Killick for a pot of coffee. And at the sight of Stephen's face, smooth closed eyes twitching not a jot at the rich scent of the brew ground from Jack's own private store of beans, Jack felt an inward quailing. He had to rest his head in his hands for a time before he drank.
Late in the first watch, the sky and sea outside the stern windows a matching black splashed with silver, Jack called Killick yet again, this time for a cloth and a basin of cool water. Killick brought them without comment, and a little flask besides, which smelled of sickberth vinegar.
"That will be all," Jack said, laying his coat on the padded stern locker. "You may turn in."
Killick scratched his whiskered cheek. "Well, your honour," he said slowly, "which I'm not so particularly sleepy at that. And could sit up, like, with the doctor and the doctor's, ah..." he looked at the bird— "...object."
Jack had not the energy to spin out his story again about paperwork and victualling. He only shook his head. "Thankee, Killick."
When the cabin door had closed unwillingly behind him, Jack settled his chair by the cot, the basin and flask at his feet. It was hard to tell the state of Stephen's complexion under the warm lantern-light, not to mention the sun-browning of his face and hands. But he yet breathed.
Wringing the cloth in the water and a few drops of vinegar, Jack began to carefully, most gently, dab the sweat from Stephen's skin. Along his scruffy cropped hairline, down his temples, behind the sharp hollows of his jaw, Jack lightly bathed it away.
pitter pat, scritch, and Jack looked over to see the bird, awake and alert, watching Stephen from the edge of its chair. His muscles tensed—that beak was still very sharp, the eyes intent and unreadable—but there was no leap, no bite, no flailing of undamaged wing. It sat and watched, and moved back and forth on its chair, and fluffed its white crest.
"This is Dr Maturin," said Jack. The head tipped, the crest rose. "You will know him better hereafter, I have no doubt."
He turned back to Stephen, where some water droplets had escaped the cloth, trickling down his cheek like tears. Jack smoothed one thumb along his skin to catch them, glittering amber in the lamplight. "You two shall surely get along. He ain't a bit like me."
"Killick," said the bird. "Killick there."
The night passed by: cool cloth, water and vinegar, the sound of the sea rushing beneath the ship's living, creaking frame, the bells of the middle watch faintly tinging in their orderly round. Jack let himself linger, bathing Stephen's face, his hands, the column of his throat, his sharp collar-bones through the loose open neck of the shirt.
When at last the basin was dry, he sighed and put it aside. He rose, stretched—reflexively avoiding striking his extended arms on the low beams—and took his fiddle from its case. A few swipes of rosin on the bow (do not forget my rosin, Stephen had said sternly last night, it seems to have found its devious way somehow into your pocket), and he poised it upon the strings, grateful that his bird-injury was on the bow hand.
He paused and turned again to the bird, whose crest was smooth and whose eyes were blinking heavily. One clawed foot rested atop a fragment of biscuit.
"You will excuse me, I know." He no longer felt foolish. In fact he no longer felt much of anything at all, except for the one depthless driving thing.
The first long note was tentative, sounding frail and thin in the silence of the cabin. Then it rose, reaching and strengthening, and Jack began to play his part of the little transcribed duetto Stephen had acquired during some ship-visiting in Botany Bay. They had planned to try it together for the first time tonight. Now Jack sallied forth alone.
He went slowly at first, until the argument of the piece began to declare itself; as he sped up, more sure and more fluid, he felt the structure settling into place. But—only a ragged structure now, battered and listing like a home torn by a hurricane. The gaps where Stephen should have been were all sorrow, all silence: no longer the 'cello answering the violin's questions, nor its low honeyed notes sweetly supporting the high yearning trills. Jack went on and on without him, and found no beauty, no hope, just effort and emptiness.
He lowered the fiddle.
The bird was restless, mumbling mixtures of "bloody-ell" and "Killick there," swooping its head down and up again. The claw clutching the remaining biscuit was squeezing and crumbling it away bit by bit. Perhaps it saw Jack as some great yellow-topped bird with a strange uneven song.
The cut on Jack's finger stung from holding the bow. He sat back down, watching Stephen's face. "I am sorry for all the noise. I suppose... I suppose I thought it might wake you." He essayed a smile, heavy as lead. "Perhaps it takes my snoring to do that. Ha ha."
All at once the smile crumpled, as did he, sliding from his chair to one knee. He clutched the hanging cot and leaned upon it, lowering his forehead to rest upon the soft heap of covers.
It was unjust, really, for Jack to indulge himself in this way simply because Stephen was too—not too injured, he insisted to himself, but too deeply asleep—to resist. He knew that Stephen didn't care for moaning and groaning. He stood back from the exhibition of Jack's emotions, the heights of his enthusiasms. And Jack truly did try not to burden him with them. But now...
"Oh, Stephen," he said. "Stephen, please." No answer, of course. And quietly, desperately, more words spilled forth, helpless, overflowing like tears. He said them for himself perhaps even more than for Stephen, over and over, a secret litany.
The lanterns burned low, lower still, like the fragile departing soul at the final sunken hour before the lightening of the sky. Until at last Jack was sitting on the deck against the locker, knees drawn up, head in his arms, hollowed out and cold. This was the time, he knew, when men died: guttered out like candles, drawn out and away with the tide.
A rattle, a rustle, a scratch; Jack did not stir. Let the bird go about its business, it would come to no harm.
"...Oh." Barely a voice, faint as a breath. "Why...it is you."
Jack looked up.
The bird had climbed from its chair onto the cot. Stephen, awake—awake!—was watching it walk sideways along his covers.
"God and Mary be with you, bird," he said sleepily, and reached out his hand. Jack was slow and dazed, else he would have shouted a warning.
But the bird only lowered and ducked its head, and Stephen gently scratched and fluffed the feathers with one finger. The bird's eyes closed in comfortable ecstasy.
Jack's numbed soul suddenly woke, and he scrambled to his feet, making an ungodly amount of noise and knocking over his empty chair.
"Stephen!" he cried.
The hand hesitated; the bird looked up, lifting its crest. They peered over at him with similar startled faces.
Jack coughed. "Why, Stephen," he said. "There you are."
Stephen smoothed down the bird's head-feathers, then stretched gingerly, wincing, dislodging the many covers. "Such a sleep I have had." He looked about him. "And in your cot, too, my dear. Forgive me."
"Forgive you!" Jack came to his side, feeling such pressure in his chest that he clasped his hands together to control them. The bustle seemed to alarm the bird, who moved pointedly away to perch on the hump that was Stephen's feet.
Stephen sighed, looking disagreeable. "I could just as well have been in my own cot, but that idiot Naismith would be giving me a sleeping draught before I had even recovered my wind. He subscribes to the philosophy that immobilizing a broken rib is best done with a long sleep rather than strapping."
"...Broken rib?" Jack plucked at the fur coverlet, restrained himself, folded his hands again. "He never said— So it wasn't your head? The skull?" His mind, still ablaze with emotion like the gundeck in the midst of an action, brought him unwelcome flashes of broken heads he had seen, usually with Stephen over them fishing out splinters of bone with mysterious long-handled devices.
"No, no." Stephen waved a thin hand. The bird, tracking this, bobbed its head and lifted its crest, and Stephen gazed at it affectionately. "You rescued it."
"Oh," said Jack, smiling, "we are the best of friends."
If Stephen had any doubts on that score, he seemed to be keeping them to himself. The bird picked its way closer to him again, one squinting eye on Jack, and Stephen ran deft fingertips along the one untidy wing. "Well, we shall watch how you go on," he said to the bird. "And should these feathers continue to cause you trouble, we shall see them properly repaired. In the meantime, shall I draw you, so?" He stroked the bird's white breast; it fluffed and smoothed like a ripple in a pond.
To Jack—who could have watched this perfect, peaceful scene forever—Stephen added, "One of the carpenter's mates back on the dear Surprise was a falconer's boy, and has great experience. Between us, we may 'imp out our drooping country's broken wing', as Shakespeare says, although the poet's knowledge of the natural world was always a bit fanciful otherwise." He looked more directly at Jack at this last, and saw him properly, up and down. He blinked. "You have been in the wars, I find."
Jack brushed ineffectually at his breeches. "It's nothing, nothing at all." He grimaced. "Although I don't expect Killick will agree."
"Killick!" the bird said in a high, peremptory tone, perhaps displeased with its loss of Stephen's complete attention. "Killick, there!"
Stephen, smiling, and Jack, still perhaps just a little nervous, both looked at it. It stretched its crest and its healthy wing, lifted its beak. "Killick! Bloody-ell!"
Stephen's brows rose. "Why," he exclaimed, scratching the bird beneath the red-patterned feathers round its neck, "only one night aboard and already speaking like a Captain, lord of all creation, King and Pharaoh? You are the fine bird of the world, so you are, too."
"Bloody hell!" it said proudly.
Jack averted his guilty expression, turning to busy himself as the bird chattered on; he retrieved his fallen chair from the deck, dusted it off, then hurriedly snatched up a handkerchief and wiped the bird's chair clean of a most unfortunate deposit.
He was just about to turn back to Stephen and discover whether the invalid diet for a broken rib might stretch so far as eggs, bacon, and piping hot coffee, when the bird went on to say a few more things.
Nothing about Killick, this time; none of the irritable swearing of a man trying and failing to bandage himself. And, of course, nothing mild and innocuous like Jack's attempt at "pretty bird".
Instead, there were those choked, tearful words, the litany, the secret. Over and over, in dogged imitation, the bird revealed him to himself—and, what was far, far worse, to Stephen.
Jack felt his face grow hot, scalding, spreading to ears and neck and even to his chest, as if he had been dipped upside-down in a cauldron. He felt upside-down, too, his world turning, his head and stomach light and unmoored and queasy. It might have been what seasickness felt like, though he scarcely knew.
So many times, since he was a useless little reefer, Jack had had to stand up and face what was coming to him. And never a time he could remember that he feared more than this.
He turned, hands by his sides.
Stephen's attention was all on the bird, though he no longer stroked it. His eyes were very pale, almost shining, and only then did Jack realise that the sky through the cabin windows had gone pearlescent with the approach of dawn.
Then Stephen cocked his head at the bird, and said coaxingly, "Killick. Killick, there."
The bird stepped back and forth, back and forth. Finally: "Killick."
"Killick there," said Stephen.
"Killick there," said the bird. It tipped its head back. "Killick there!"
Stephen rewarded it with a lingering, obviously satisfying scratch beneath the chin, round the throat, behind the crest. "Killick there, Killick," it muttered happily.
Jack swallowed with some difficulty.
When those pale eyes found Jack's at last, they too were pearlescent, gleaming soft.
"Jack, my dear," Stephen said. "With a broken rib, I find myself in need of help to exit this acrobat's perch."
Stephen Maturin, asking for help. Help, when injured. Jack started, feeling he had been staring, and quickly moved to his side. He put both arms round him, lifted and eased him, feeling how fiercely the life beat in that small, powerful frame. And in his turn, Stephen slid his arms around Jack's neck. His stubbled cheek rasped upon Jack's. His lips, his warm breath, whispered something for Jack's innermost soul alone.
No litany, no chant. Said once, but powerfully, and for all time.
Jack steadied him on his feet. They stood very close for a few long moments, before Stephen stepped back slightly. "I dreamt, you know, while sleeping, which is not always the case when under a surgeon's draught."
"Oh?" said Jack hoarsely.
"Yes. I dreamt we had our music together."
"I, ah— I did play a bit on the duetto, Stephen. I do hope I didn't disturb you."
Stephen was still holding Jack's arm as if to lean on him, rather than pulling away to show how little he needed support of any kind. "Never in life, soul. I only make the remark, because this leads me to suppose that perhaps other dreams of mine were conjured, were summoned, by sounds within my sleeping ear."
"Oh." Jack's face warmed once more, and he could scarcely concentrate under the feeling of Stephen's comfortable grip. "We may still— Stephen, we will still play? Once you are well again?"
"Well again!" Stephen's ironic scoff was familiar and beloved. "Should a misbehaving rib or two keep me from our evenings? Lash the chair to the floor, lash me to the chair, lash the 'cello to my frame, and the devil take the hindmost!" He tossed his head. "'Well again', forsooth."
"Of course, of course," Jack said. "Though perhaps you mean the deck? Lash the chair to the—"
"I mean what I say." Stephen let go at last and moved toward the quarter-gallery, his long shirt dangling round him. "And it is high time you learned, Jack Aubrey, that nothing will keep me from it."
With this promise, strong as a threat and warm as a vow, he vanished into the private washing-place where lived Jack's personal seat of ease. Jack was left with the bird, still perched on the cot, now busy with a solid beakful of the fur coverlet.
"Killick won't be grateful," Jack warned it.
It eyed him, yanked the fur from its mouth with one knotted foot, and said, "Killick there!"
There was a sudden ill-tempered rap on the cabin door, and the scent of fresh coffee. "Come!" Jack called; and, settling on the locker, he began to laugh.