Dawson Bride Read online

  “Hello,” Captain Kelley yelled down. “Are you decent?”

  “Yes,” I called.

  “Pity.” He jumped over the last three stairs with a thud. “Cook made breakfast and I wrangled some away from the men before they ate it all. Here.” He set the plate on top of one of the boxes of wine. “Find me when you’re done and I’ll give you the grand tour of my Anna Gale.”

  “Thank you for coming to help save me last night.”

  “Don’t mention it. No really, don’t. I have a reputation to uphold. Besides, I haven’t had that much fun in a week, at least.” He frowned at the snarling wolf. “Gable was always fun to find trouble with.”

  Salted pork and fried eggs covered the plate and I ate them quickly in my rush to see the ship. A quick look in my small mirror and a splash of canteen water over my face and I was ready to brave walking past the wolf in my journey to the steep wooden steps that would lead me to sea air soaked daylight. I didn’t have to worry about wearing my hat on the boat. I couldn’t hide my hair when the wind would steal the covering from me the first chance it got to throw a hefty gust my way.

  The deck was awash with the furious movement of working sailors. One man sat on the deck with an awl and repaired a ripped sail, while another slid down a rope from the rafters above. The men worked like a well-oiled machine but when I stepped out on deck, the working pieces came to a screeching halt.

  Captain Kelley and Dreck stood on a landing beside an enormous wooden wheel and when he saw me, the dark-haired man waved. “Listen up,” he yelled out as he launched himself down the small staircase.

  Dreck let out an earsplitting whistle and the crew stopped their mutterings.

  Fifteen men gathered closer and Kelley wrapped his arm a little too comfortably around my shoulders. “Boys, this is our honored guest, Gertrude, who will be accompanying us to the Americas.”

  One of the men flopped his head to the side and raised his eyebrow. “Is your name really Gertrude?”

  “No,” I said. He really could’ve picked a prettier name.

  “You can call her Gertie if you’d like, Werther.”

  “Sir, I seem to remember it being bad luck to bring a woman on a ship,” another said.

  “Ach,” Kelley said, waving his hand. “You said the same thing about bringing the twins on, and about shipping the cursed jewels of Antonia and about a hundred other worries that brought us nothing but money, you superstitious old glub. If women are in fact bad luck on a ship, then how do all those fancy rigged passenger boats stay afloat, hmmm?” He pulled a knife from his belt and picked at his teeth with the end.

  “I can see’s your point,” the man said to the relaxed chuckle of the others.

  I stretched away from the shining blade.

  “Now! Betty, here belongs to an important man who’s paid us well to get her to Boston Harbor safely.”

  “Gertrude,” I muttered.

  “Right, Lizzy here is to make it ashore untouched and unmolested and that means you Stanford, you creepy handsy bastard.”

  The Stanford in question shrugged his shoulders unapologetically.

  Kelley pointed his knife at the crowd. “If she’s abused in any way, I’ll slit your neck and feed you to the sea monsters, you savvy?” His voice had grown cold and serious.

  Nods and ‘yes sirs’ peppered the deck. Kelley’s good natured smile returned and he yelled up to the front of the ship. “Dreck, you take the wheel for a few minutes. I’m going to show this fine lady around our humble abode.”

  The men dispersed as Kelley led me toward a small herd of chickens clucking idly around the upper deck. “Everyone on the ship works, and your job will be to tend to the wolf chow. Feed them in the mornings, collect any eggs they lay and give them to Cook before he starts breakfast. When the seas get rough, they’ll need to be crated and stashed below deck. The stupid creatures couldn’t dodge a wave if their lives depended on it. Crate them nightly to be safe.”

  I’d never in my life touched a chicken. “How do I get them into a crate?”

  Kelley reached out and snatched one around the wings and tossed it in a nearby, wooden barred box. “Like so. It’ll take some practice, but you’ll get the hang of it before we see land again. Every third night, you throw one of the hens into the wolf’s cage.”

  “For him to eat?”

  “He isn’t going to live on air and water, Florence. If we run out of chickens before we hit dry land, we’ll give him fish.”

  “How long will it take to reach Boston Harbor?”

  He squinted up to the pink streaked sky. “There’s no way to tell for certain but if the weather holds, I’d say around six weeks. Maybe less if we get lucky with the winds.”

  Six weeks. Six long weeks until I’d see Gable again.

  Under the wheel was the captain’s quarters and below deck was the crew’s room. Rows of hammocks dotted the small space and a smelly chamber pot graced the corner.

  Kelley waggled his eyebrows. “Bet you’re glad we put you in the wine and wolf den now, aren’t you?”

  It was a close match.

  He showed me the kitchen and introduced me to Cook, who was a threadbare and emaciated looking old man with a big butcher knife in his hand to accompany his big, toothless grin.

  “Don’t let his looks fool you, miss. He’s capable in the kitchen and you’re going to thank your lucky stars we have him when the perishables disappear. He’s a creative man with the hard tack, that one.”

  “Are you a pirate?”

  “A pirate,” he said with a nervous laugh. His eyes darted around and his voice lowered considerably. “No and best not to be saying those words around here. It doesn’t pay to be a pirate anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, not many of them survived the purging. Humble thieves is all we are. We don’t loot other ships or dig for buried treasure. Strictly import and export business for the Anna Gale and her crew.”

  “Why are you importing a wolf to America?” I whispered.

  “Ah, you fancy him do you? Beautiful animal, that one. The man who owns him is an odd fellow and will be sorely happy to have him back when we get to shore. We’ve shipped many oddities over the years, but that one is probably our strangest haul. Don’t get bitten.”

  That might be easily done if my hammock wasn’t hanging over its snapping jaws.

  “I’d best be getting back to it. Wind to find and maps to read.” He bowed gallantly. “Welcome aboard my ship, Martha.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes as he turned with a flourish and made his way back to the helm of the ship.

  The eyes of the crew brought an unsettled feeling to my already rolling stomach. I’d never been on a ship before, and I swayed back and forth across the deck as I made my way back to the storage room. Becoming sick in front of all of the crew? Unsavory. Getting sick in front of the wolf? Not so bad.

  After hours of trying to calm my roiling stomach, I clutched a wooden bucket like it was my last friend on earth and rocked with the gentle push and pull of the sea. If I was going to feel like this for well over a month, it was going to be a miserable time. Maybe I’d get used to the waves like the wolf would have to get used to my presence. The man who owned him must be insane. I exhaled in a puff. Owned wasn’t quite the word to apply to a wild animal. A man could own that wolf like he owned the air he breathed.

  I was able to keep down very little in the days that followed. My beloved canteen was my only friend and I found a little ease in the hammock. In time, the wolf settled. After all he couldn’t growl for days on end. On the third day, I’d weakly trapped a chicken and tossed the poor thing into the cage. Its death chant brought another bout of nausea. Kelley and the crew didn’t come to check on me and thank heavens for small blessings. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this.

  Cook turned out to be a kind man with a generous heart, and he brought me plates of food in the middle of each day. He said, I had to keep trying. Or crying. His gummy words were a little hard to understand on t
hat one.

  It was a week before I could stand without help again and sometime during my sickness, my hip had the break it needed to heal. It still hurt like the dickens, but I didn’t need a cane anymore. My gate would likely always be hobbled, but a part of me found the relief in the inability to be perfect anymore. My perceived perfection had lost me everything that meant anything. Through the tragedy, I’d been damaged, and good riddance.

  On the fifteenth day, I began to draw on the paper Gable had given me. My brother’s face was always first out of the charcoal and I smudged it with my thumb to get the shadows of his smile just right. Sometimes, I drew him in our country garden with his back to me, and sometimes I drew just his dark eyes twinkling at something he’d found amusing. His tragedy had been the biggest. He was so young. I would have given anything, anything at all, to die in his place. The reasons I’d been spared and not him were unattainable and frustratingly so. My bullets had sang through me and killed him. I’d been helpless to stop fate from taking what it wanted, and a black fury rose up in me in these hours and days and weeks alone.

  I couldn’t stop crying some days. I lay in my hammock and clutched my pictures of Bryant like some weak, mewling thing. The wolf’s ever-watchful eyes never left me for long, but I’d grown used to it. It was on one of these dark days that something shifted.

  A tear slid down the corner of my eye as I swayed gently on my side in the hanging bed. The wolf lay with his head on his paws and just as an inescapable sniffle came from me, he let out the softest whine.

  He hadn’t moved so maybe I’d just imagined it, but when I let out a shaky breath, he did it again. Eyes the color of a first winter’s frost stared back at me. Perhaps I’d forgot to feed him and he was hungry. No, he’d had a meal last night. His water dish was still full, so what? Was he sick? Was he lonely like me, trapped in the cage of a similar, tragic life?

  I sat and rolled skillfully from the hammock. Usually he snarled at me if I got this close, but his head stayed relaxed and down. I snatched a strip of dried fish from my unfinished plate and held it well away from the bars. He lifted his head and licked the side of his lips before he whined again. Scuttling forward in a low crouch, I got as close as I dared and tossed the fish to him. With one gigantic paw he pulled the strip of meat through the cage and mouthed it lazily.

  “My brother, Bryant, would’ve loved you. In fact, he would’ve loved this entire, crazy adventure we’re on right now.” Moisture from the wooden planks below me seeped into the backside of my dress but I didn’t care. Here lay a creature that had to listen to all of my sordid story without a chance at escape or judgment. He didn’t even look as if he minded. His ears twitched when I spoke again. “He always begged for a dog of his own, but Mother wouldn’t allow one in the house. She didn’t want a dog shedding all over her fine furniture.”

  The wolf gave a low growl and lolled his tongue out to the side.

  “Oh, you don’t think you shed? I’m almost certain you do.”

  And so a tentative relationship was forged. He became an unlikely ear to soothe my heartache and in exchange, I shared my food.

  Eventually, he began to whine when I left the room to fulfill my meager duties on deck, or when I’d sit up top to sketch ocean scenes. From time to time, he’d even wag his tail slowly back and forth when I returned with that serious, wild expression of his. His near kindness was only for me, as the vicious wolf reemerged whenever any of the crew came down into his territory. He would lunge and snap at the bars until his face bled red on white fur. But for me he became calm, as if he waited for something I hadn’t the instinct or knowledge to give.

  I used charcoal the first time I drew him and smudged in the dark background, leaving only his silhouette the white color of the paper. The first few drawings were of a ferocious beast, but over time, and as I grew comfortable sketching my new muse, a subtle shift in the way I saw him changed his pictures. I drew the expression on his face when I came through the door, or the one he got when Cook brought me a plate of food. Or the lonely one that drifted over his furred face when I cried late at night because the homesickness got so deep I thought I’d drown in it.

  Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the pieces of my soul that had broken apart like a shattered looking glass that night in the fog mended itself. It was still fractured and weak, as it likely always would be, but it was whole again. The journey to heal mattered, but the progress mattered more.

  Chapter Nine

  Lucianna

  The temptation to reach out and touch my wild friend was consuming.

  A month had passed with only a handful of small storms. The crew had become used to my presence and I’d conformed to the rhythm of the ship. As I sat here in the dim lantern light, talking softly to the animal like it could understand human words, I imagined what it would feel like to run my fingers through his thick fur. Was it soft or coarse? Would it be warm like a blanket?

  I rang the water from my dress and hung it to dry on a length of rope. One of the barrels of fresh water wasn’t safe to drink anymore and Captain Kelley had thoughtfully given it to me in light of dumping it overboard. I’d boiled it and used it to wash the only dress I had to my name. Removing the last of the bandages to expose mostly healed red scars, I tossed them to the side and reached for the bar of rose scented soap. With a rag, I washed every inch of my body until my skin tingled and shone like an egg shell. The wolf watched my every move but that didn’t bother me. He had no way of telling anyone about my indecency. Into a separate bucket, I rinsed and soaped and cleaned my hair. Already, I felt like a woman again. It was amazing the difference a bar of soap and water could make to the quality of my life.

  It was when I let my damp hair fall down my back and reached for a robe that the wolf lifted his head with a chilling growl. It rumbled deep in his throat as boot steps echoed down the stairwell. I only had time to clench the thin shift in front of my body before Dreck ducked into the room. The wolf launched at the bars and came close to clawing his leg but the gap toothed man stood wisely out of his reach.

  My voice shook like the flickering lantern. “Sir, I ask that you leave right now.”

  His eyes hadn’t managed to make it up to my face and distractedly he said, “I was just coming down here to check on the cargo.”

  Lies. His smirk didn’t even try to hide the false note in his voice. The snarling and snapping of the wolf behind him was constant as he strode slowly closer. I sidestepped in a wide, slow circle. If I could make it up the stairs and to the captain’s quarters, he’d protect me. My hands shook as he pushed me further.

  “The cargo’s fine. Now leave or I’ll scream.”

  Dreck’s green eyes had taken on a dreamy look. “I like it when they scream,” he said in a faraway tone.

  I closed my eyes as I came within terrifyingly close distance to the caged wolf. He dodged around me, back and forth and back and forth, like he was trying to see the grinning man around my legs. Dreck lunged and grabbed my wrists and just as I opened my mouth to shriek, a boat rattling howl sang out. Dreck jumped away and I covered my ears from the close volume. The clunking of men’s boots could be heard on the deck and Dreck raced for the ladder. I ran for my sopping dress and covered my body with the dripping wetness of it. The most shadowed space in the room wasn’t nearly dark enough for my comfort.

  “What’s going on here?” Captain Kelley yelled from above. “What were you doing in the storage hold?”

  “Nothing, sir,” Dreck rushed out. “Just checking the cargo and the damned wolf went crazy.”

  A beat of silence passed. “You okay down there, miss?” Kelley yelled.

  I’d give anything for them not to pile down here and see my bare skin. Even lie through my chattering teeth. “I’m fine!”

  “Dreck, I swear on my ship, if you go down into that storage hold again, you’ll hang from the riggings for it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” he mumbled and the sound of receding boot prints rattled agains
t the bows of the ship.

  I sank to the floor as relief and fear flooded me. I was safe for now but how long would that last? The wolf whined and paced the cage.

  My whisper was ragged and shaky. “Thank you.”

  ****

  Last night had been a jarring wake up. Any one of those men had access to me at any time. Without Gable to scare the crew away, I was a juicy tomato ripe for the picking. Another chicken crate clattered into place. I couldn’t do much to defend myself but I could build a hidey hole and hope I remembered how to use the knife in my pocket on anyone who got too close. A large reed basket sat on the floor and housed the three remaining chickens. The wolf snapped lazily at some flying bug buzzing around its head and when he rolled over on his side, I could see his prominent ribs under his coat.

  “You’ve lost too much weight.” Three chickens left and really, I should’ve been feeding him every two days, even with the extra food from my own plate. It was time to start begging fish from Cook. I ate lightly and scraped the rest of my plate into the corner of his cage. While he ate, I used a straw broom to scoop the picked chicken bones between the bars. Into a bucket they went and I climbed the stairs to throw them overboard. I refused to sit in the storage room for the duration of the journey just to avoid Dreck and his filthy intentions. He’d scared me badly, but he didn’t have to know that.

  “Mornin’, milady,” said a leather-skinned man sewing a slit in one of the sails.

  “Morning, Ewen.” I tossed the bones overboard.

  “Bad weather’s comin’. Best you tie down your belongings and settle in.”

  I shielded my eyes from the light that sifted through the clouds. They looked only a little darker than the white, fluffy, harmless ones. “How do you know?”