Archive of Our Own

Strange how something which is no longer there can feel such pain. That was the sole rational thought that swam in my brain for a long timeless blur. Pain, and then the poppied rum that took the pain away, and even as my tears stopped running when the elixir took hold I marveled at the ghost that told me my left hand was still there, and that it must be still intact or it couldn’t hurt so much.

I handed the empty cup to the bos’n. “Ship, Mr. Angel?” I slurred even as sleep beckoned once again. My hammock rocked me like my mother’s arms.

“Flying like an albatross, Dr. Jack. Cap’n’s made the Spider eat our shadow and there’s little fear of pursuit now.” Angel sounded pleased at the outcome, even as he braced his feet and gripped an overhead beam as the ship listed in her flight, his wrist displaying one of his many dark blue tattoos. “They didn’t catch us, nor find our bay by chasing us.”

I could see the white wake foam behind us from the windows of the captain’s cabin, and see our path weave between the lumps of the countless miniature islands in these waters like a rabbit racing through its warren, well ahead of the weasel. Everything tilted again, and a tiny island loomed huge in our rear as the Baker came close enough to beach itself, were the tide low enough. No, Moriarty could not find our bay by following Shear-Lock.

Nor had he found it by putting me to the question. My pride was a limping small thing full of pain, but its head was up even as it limped.

The Spider, my first assignment as a surgeon aboard a Royal Navy ship. Not long ago I’d been sure it would be my sarcophagus, ferrying me to my death in England. I was lost, taken captive by the commander who’d had me declared traitor and mutineer, who had then proceeded to take me apart piece by piece until I should shriek out the Baker’s berthing-harbour and betray my shipmates.

But not lost. For I’d seen it with my own eyes and taken it for a dream. The captain had come for me, had saved me, and in the process of doing so had boarded a ship of Their Majesties William and Mary, freed a prisoner of the Crown, and struck a Royal Navy captain with his own blade – Shear-Lock the privateer, who did nothing worse to most of his opponents than steal their perukes as trophies of his conquests, had as good as knotted the noose about his own neck by that deed.

My thoughts tumbled, thinking of the captain’s situation. He ought to have left me to die by inches at Mr. Moran’s pleasure – but Moriarty wanted me executed in England not killed under interrogation, so he would have continued the torture until I gave up my shipmates, so perhaps it was the only thing Shear-Lock could do to preserve the Baker’s haven. In truth there had been no good outcome for what ever would have happened. Cornered like a rat…

I blinked, and stared at the wake foaming in the great window that stretched the width of the Baker. Wait – a window? Why was I in the captain’s cabin? My hammock should be forward, with the carpenters. This wasn’t right either.

My anxiety ebbed away with my pain as delicious torpor filled me. So easy to see why some became addicted to this lovely stuff…My hammock rocked me back to sleep as the ship sped to her haven. I did not notice the moment when the bos’n left me to return to his post.

***

Pain. Sleep. Pain. Sleep. I knew nothing of the nightwatch, midwatch, dogwatch, daywatch – my only bells were painwatch and sleepwatch.

The first time I could remain aware for longer than an hour or two daylight once again shone from the captain’s window and Angel changed my dressings; the bos’n had developed a knack for medical assistance during my service aboard the Baker and had seen his share of wounds in all their forms. “Look, Dr. Jack,” he said with satisfaction. “It weeps for joy."

I looked at the unwrapped stump and agreed with him, for I myself could see the steady, healthy seep of laudable pus from the site. The stump was dark pink, warm, and a little swollen; but we had not been greeted by the stink of rot and the sight of sloughing, slimy cold flesh from an insensate limb that would have meant losing my whole arm as well. Nor was the flesh red-streaked, fever-hot and shiny-tight with suppuration that would also have meant a lost arm. The old dressings were stained with blood and seepage, but the bloodstains were dark brown rather than bright red. Shear-Lock had done a sterling job at his first solo amputation. "That's good to see, Mr. Angel. The Cap’n’s as good at removing ruined limbs as yourself. Perhaps the Baker will some day be renowned as a floating surgery-college rather than as a privateer!”

We laughed as I watched the man re-wrap my arm in rum-soaked dressings; I resolved to change my own bandages next time.

“We will be in our bay in two days’ sailing, Dr. Jack, the wind holding. Mr Murray assures me that it will.”

Our bay was still our bay, still our secret. I smiled triumphantly at the pain in my arm. “Mr. Murray knows his sails and what feeds them best. I myself should soon return to my logbook and my kit. I've been idle long enough, Mr. Angel, and I shouldn't like the captain to glare at me for shirking my duties over this trifle!" I laughed again at the ridiculous notion; of the thousands of looks the Captain had exchanged with me, his quartermaster and surgeon, never once had a glare crossed our eyes.

But Angel did not return my mirth this time. He looked down and said softly, “No. You shouldn’t want that, Dr. Jack.”

“It was only a joke, Mr. Angel,” I said. “Thank you. You may return to your duties.”

The big man left the captain’s cabin without another word. I lay back, troubled, watching the much-less-frantic curl of foam behind the Baker. Something was wrong besides my injury. Had someone died during the rescue raid? Angel had not been a friend of young Cartwright, so he would feel regret rather than sorrow at the man’s death during my capture at the Octavius.

There was that much truth in my jocular reply to the bos’n – that there exists in a man a great need to work. Even as my stumped arm throbbed with pain and my self-pity now threatened to drown me, I could not simply lie back in my hammock (in the captain’s quarters, no less) as if I were a duchess on her barge. We no longer fled our imminent capture and there was sure to be work to do.

I turned to my left. “Wiggins?”

“Yes, Dr. Jack,” Wiggins replied.

Not long after my joining the Baker, the cabin boy had become my unofficial dogsbody; rather than object to the loss of his personal attendant, Shear-lock had had Billy take on cabin-boy duties as well as those he assayed as powder monkey. The older youth had become my shadow in the months since, and practically burst his buttons whenever he announced himself as “Surgeon’s mate Wiggins, sir!”

Wiggins had stood by me during the dressings-change, and he still looked faintly whey-faced under his freckles even though my arm was now snug in its fresh wrappings and once more bound securely across my chest.

“Don’t take on so, lad,” I consoled him as he helped me don my linen shirt (washed but still marked with bloodstains from my torture session). “That pus looks like horrid stuff, but it is helping to heal my wound. There is a purpose even for the nasty things, as we once discussed. I need your aid as quartermaster’s mate now. The books.”

At my bidding Wiggins fetched both the logbook and my personal diary, and helped sit me up and spread the broad volume across my lap.

I took up the quill. “I need to up-date, it’s been a few days. Any injuries or calamities? What’s the talk at the scuttlebutt? The Octavius was destroyed on … let me see, it was October 6. How many days has it been?”

“Oh, aye, the day Cap’n hit Mr. Hopkins, no one’ll forget –”

I dropped the quill and left a streak of ink down the page as I rounded on the boy, throbbing arm be damned. “Shear-Lock struck the mate?”

Wiggins looked as terrified as I felt. “Aye – Cap’n was back not an hour after you and Cartwright was away, shoutin’ for you from his boat, told you not to go to the Octavius – ‘cept you wasn’t here no more, o’course. When he got on deck he shouted at us all – oh I thought he’d have a apoploxy, never seen him so angry, like a Navy admiral he was – wanted to know who was fool enough to let you walk into a trap. Hopkins said he’d done it, and the Cap’n laid one on him in front of all of us – nearly dropped him to deck. Still got a black eye, Hopkins has. Cap’n studied the chart mutterin’ like poor old mad Raskin for half a bell, then told us where the Spider was holed up and to throw up the goddamn sails goddammit.” Wiggins stared at the floor, perhaps having trouble looking at the horror on my face. “We was… we was all awful glad you was still alive, Dr. Jack. Even, even if you were bunged up a bit.”

I stared at the boy. “I can just imagine.” I tried to wrap my mind around this new information and connect it to Shear-Lock, the first ship’s-captain whom I’d never seen raise a hand to a crewman, and who rarely even took lives during his raids – who couldn’t even curse as roundly as his cabin-boy. I felt my jaw set and my brows lower.

Wiggins peered at me timidly. “Dr. Jack. Y-you look a bit…apoploptic, too.”

“Apoplectic,” I corrected automatically, “and no, it’s not a fit. But this is wrong, it’s very wrong. Tell me everything, my boy. Fair and foul.”

Wiggins looked stricken.

“Everything,” I said firmly. “Including the mutters against me. It’s only natural. I have become a liability to this crew.”

“No, Dr. Jack, no!” Wiggins burst out. “Y-you ain’t! You’ve your other hand, you can cut off legs and pull out bullets, and you can read and write, and the Cap’n –”

“Not by my injury,” I added over the lad’s remonstration, “but by the trouble that will follow us because of this business.”

Wiggins closed his mouth. “Oh. Oh, yeah, we’re all worried about that right enough. I thought you was talkin’ about losing your hand.”

I bit my lip to hide a smile at the lad’s candour (and to control my reaction both to my anger and to the pain in my arm). “Then tell me, Mr. Wiggins.” I took up the quill once again – but the book I opened was my diary rather than the ship’s official logbook.

Work is a blessing in times of pain. I focused intently on copying all that Wiggins told me; the lad related it all, with the thoroughness of the illiterate who must perforce memorise all that he hears as he cannot read it back later.

A fog of pain obscured my vision; I blinked hard to clear the tears. “Wiggins,” I gasped, my arm on fire, “the poppy.” Hurry lad, hurry, my arm throbbed.

But when he fetched the bottle to pour out a dram for me, I stared in dismay at the amount remaining – perhaps a half-gill remaining, a quarter of the bottle. “Stop,” I commanded even as he began to tip the bottleneck into the dram-cup. “Cork it.”

The poppy draught that I’d compounded on board had not quite filled this pint-bottle. There was a ship full of men that needed the drug to be available, twenty-one of them. I’d been putting the poppy elixir to good use aboard the Baker – amputating poor Cartwright’s arm, pulling Angelo’s rotten back molar (to the encouraging comments of the off-duty men, starved for entertainment), and stitching the deep gash in Murray’s buttock. I had not known how much I’d imbibed of the invaluable stuff; but I was not the sole crewman aboard.

“Dr. Jack?” Wiggins asked, his face distressed.

Take the dram, put out this fire, like red-hot knives running up my arm into my brain –

“Grog,” I whispered, and blinked the fog away again. “Just grog. Put that away. Mustn’t use it all.”

Wiggins gave me a long look, but in the end put the bottle back with the surgical stores. But what he poured out for me to drink was not the pale heavily-watered tipple of the crew out of the scuttlebutt but a full glass of pure dark Jamaican rum, straight from the cask I used to cleanse my tools. That dram I accepted wholeheartedly, and the fire of the liquor in my blood battled the fire that raged in my arm; the pain was a deal less.

“Come lad, still gotta up-date log,” I slurred, dunking the pen once again. “Wha day zit?”

“You’re dead-drunk, Doctor,” Wiggins said, but smiling – he’d had his own glass with me, “and you can still write?”

“Damn’ right I can write drunk,” I said, pronouncing each word carefully. “And half-asleep. In Latin. I was a medical student, my boy.”

Between us, we managed to up-date the ship’s log. No fewer than four full days had passed since my capture; I recorded Cartwright's death and a truncated version of my ordeal, as well as my amputation. I even jotted down such notes on the wind and direction as Wiggins could recall from day to day, during their escape from the Spider. The bare raw facts of the ship’s travels went into the log; the more personal items went into my diary.

“Wiggins lad, I need to go topside,” I said as we closed the volumes. “See Cap’n. I think it’s time someone shouted back at him.”

Wiggins shook his head. “Dr. Jack, you know better. Cap’n lets us have our tipple offwatch, but he don’t abide drink onwatch – even this kind.”

“And right now I’m the last man on this ship the Cap’n would punish for telling him off in this state, am I right?”

“That’s as may be,” the boy said gloomily. “He hates the cat, says it’s for captains too stupid to do their jobs right, but he ain’t above giving a lick with a rope’s end if someone won’t learn no other way. Even gave me a switching once, and it was for drinking on-watch – I never done it again, couldn’t sit for two days. And some’d be glad to see you get a stripe or two, long with the lost hand, for what this raid’s done us.” (He’d already told me the names of the crew who were unhappy with the decision to rescue me – and those names were in my diary, not the logbook which I shared with the captain.)

“Mr. Wiggins,” I said, wincing as I swung my legs out of the hammock, “I have a duty to perform, both as ship’s surgeon and as quartermaster. The Baker has taken a wound, and I must clean it and cut away the infection before it brings suppuration and death. My boots.”

***

Once Wiggins had helped me out of the hammock, I came abovedeck for the first time since my ordeal, the lad behind carrying my chiurgeon-kit as well as the ledger. (Angel, or someone, had cleaned all my blood and flesh off of the instruments that had been turned on me during my interrogation, and had removed all the bits of my chopped fingers that had fallen among them.) It was the forenoon watch, most likely four or five bells. A teal blue sky and a moist wind greeted me, filling the sails and driving us to our berth; I drew in a deep breath, heedless of the stab of pain from my arm.

The bos'n's piercing whistle made me start, and I nearly looked about myself to see which visiting lord or ship-captain had just stepped aboard the Baker. But we were at sea with no-one around –

"Three cheers for Dr. Jack!" Angel bawled. "Hip hip!"

And the whole ship responded with a bellowing huzzay!

Twice more, the whoop was repeated.

Face flushed, I turned to look at the captain (I most certainly did not glare at him), who was as impassive and expressionless as was his wont. He stood at the wheel as cool and collected as if he had not spent the last few days flying to beat the Devil after staging a dangerous raid. He had not joined in on the cheer. "I concur," was all he said, coolly.

Small slithered down from the foreyard, his stumped leg jutting outward, and hit the deck with a great grin. “Welcome to our society, sawbones. Takes more than a missing limb to keep a Baker from his watch!”

Our? Of course; I grinned as Victor the carpenter approached me from belowdecks and held out his right hand, neatly adorned with the polished dark wooden peg strapped across his palm that served in place of his missing thumb. “Let your wing toughen up for a few weeks, Dr. Jack, and I’ll fashion your replacement like I did for myself and for Timber-toe here. Put some thought into it.”

I looked down at my bound arm. "So I'm to be Dr. Hook, am I?" The nearby men laughed.

"If you like,” All-Thumbs said, “it’s what most men ask for, but there's other schools of thought. I've known a whaling man or two preferred having a harpoon-hand, one fellow I seen once had a knife – and Mad Edward aboard the Burton's Game asked for a pair of shears instead; he must have been a tailor on land. Let me know when you’ve decided."

From waist to forecastle to stern, starboard to larboard, I made my round of the Baker, talking to the crew and being greeted by them. The friendliest men were the most painful – the enthusiastic shoulder-claps and hand-grips jostled my bound arm, but I locked my jaw into a smile for them – they’d all rowed and fought like demons to save my life, and had just spent two days eluding a Navy ship. The aloof fellows who threw me the abbreviated knuckle-to-the-forehead and continued their work I returned with a cool nod of my own. I did not see Hopkins, as this was Angel’s watch and Shear-Lock was at the wheel.

The pain grew worse. I kept my teeth locked and continued my round to the stern and the ship’s master.

“You have not taken poppy today,” the Cap’n said as a greeting, never looking away from the tilt of the royal mainyard. “You have done a sterling job of hiding your pain from most eyes.”

“But not from the sharpest privateer in the South Seas,” I added wryly.

“In the Seven Seas,” he corrected automatically, and I smiled to recall my own pedantry to Wiggins. “The way your jaw moves indicates that you are grinding your teeth. As quartermaster, you have not informed me that any stores have been depleted to their completion, which would include the surgeon’s bottle of poppy elixir. There is still poppy in store. You have not stopped taking it due to its lack.”

“Shear-Lock,” I said as calmly as I could, trying to ignore the fire in my arm and the knives behind my eyes, “we have a quarter-bottle remaining. This is – one injury, severe as it is, and suffered by only one man. Others will need the poppy. I may need it to perform surgery, which would make this pain look like a midge-bite in contrast. I have been rescued from the very teeth of my captors by the captain and crew of this ship, at no little cost, and I now sleep in the captain’s quarters. To permit me to expend our sole store of this drug is a favouritism that could be permanently injurious to the crew.”

“Take it and be damned, you stubborn Scotsman,” the Cap’n said testily. “We drop anchor in Sholto Bay in two days, and you may harvest all the benighted poppies you like once again.”

Blinding relief filled me. “Then I shall take my dram, once I have finished my duties on deck and those belowdeck as well.”

Shear-Lock looked sidelong at Wiggins, and the lad was away to the galley, no doubt to prepare the captain’s midday meal. “Quartermaster, we will speak of my conduct at the change of watch. Join me for dinner.”

“I shall,” I said firmly; by now I was not surprised that he’d correctly deduced what I’d meant by my “belowdeck” work. “And when we are done, you will retire to your bed and sleep at least until first dog-watch. There is no further need for you to tie yourself to the wheel watch-on-watch; you have shaken off the Spider and we are in home waters once again. Give Hopkins the helm at noon.”

He laughed humourlessly. “Wiggins told you.”

“The rope-marks on the back of your coat, and the indentations on your palms from prolonged gripping, told me. Angel told me how we flew, and the only time you stepped away from the wheel during the chase was to remove my hand. You’ve lashed yourself to the wheel during storms in the same way. No; at noon we will dine, and we will discuss your infamous act of temper against your brave and loyal first mate. And you will sleep in your bed for the first time in four days.”

The Cap’n let the wheel play out a bit and caught it with the ease of unconscious mastery. “And perhaps we will discuss the matter of the quartermaster returning to his post before he has been removed from the sick-list, and appearing on deck with his wits compromised by pain and medicinal rum.”

“This wound is days old and must not be allowed to fester longer,” I replied promptly. “Lop off the gangrene before it’s given time to spread. My arm is healing splendidly; the medical profession has lost a shining star in you. Now I will go to your quarters, take my dram, and await your company. With the Cap’n’s permission.”

***

Wiggins awaited me with the poppy at the tiny dining-table he’d set up in the captain’s suite. My moustache curled up in a rueful grin. “God bless you, Mr. Wiggins,” I said, and tossed back the poppied rum with no other toast.

My dogsbody had laid out two settings of covered tin plates and two tumblers of ale. “It’s salt beef and beans today, Dr. Jack. I already cut up yours. Won’t be here to assist.” The eight bells that marked end of the forenoon watch rang out.

“Thank you, lad. Go on and fetch your own dinner.”

Shear-Lock was off-watch; but he was the captain. I expected him to be late, and amused myself by rearranging the chessmen on his board.

Bliss stole through my veins – the delicious, utter absence of pain. My howling arm slept at last; sleep beckoned to me, too, but I blinked and glared at my tray. Not on duty, for on duty I still was.

“You should have begun without me, quartermaster,” Shear-Lock said with no further greeting, seating himself and uncovering his plate.

“I’d have finished before you came in, Cap’n,” I retorted, beginning my own midday meal.

My medical-school days had accustomed me to dining as quickly as did a sailor – and I’d been eating one-handed as long (the other holding an anatomy or philosophy book). Despite the surprising elegance of our surroundings, our habits held us true; our meal was history in five minutes, the plates shoved aside 30 seconds after that.

“Out with it, ’Master Jack,” Shear-Lock said tightly. “Rather, I will save you the trouble. Yes, I struck Mr. Hopkins upon re-boarding the Baker on the afternoon watch of October 6. I did not think such an incident would be noteworthy to a man who’d been in the Royal Navy.”

“On the Spider such a blow from a commander to an underling would have been one blade of grass in a meadow,” I said sharply. “On the Baker it is a pillar of fire in a frozen lake. Privateer you may be, and out-law in the eyes of your prey, but that blow was beneath you, both as a commander of men and as a man of intellect. Hopkins was guilty only of exhibiting the same compassion that I foolishly acted upon by requesting to aid the Octavius.”

"It was a trap!" he cried passionately, smacking his hand down on the table and making the silver forks ring. "From the moment I heard the explosion from the agent's office and saw which ship had gone up in the harbour, I knew. Why, indeed, would such blatant, terrible damage occur in a ship so near the Baker – near enough for her surgeon to hear the cries of pain? It is what I would have done to lure you away from safety, were I as cold-blooded and ruthless as the worst cutthroats asea. If I'd been aboard at the time I’d have had you in irons before I'd let you set foot off the ship – and you'd still have your hand."

“So Mr. Hopkins and I are both punished for the crime of not being as swift as the two most dangerous men in these waters.” I cast my eye down to my no-longer-throbbing arm. “I, at least, received my punishment from an enemy.”

His pale grey eyes glared into mine (ah, a glare at last).

I matched him, glare for glare. “Speak the truth, Captain Shear-Lock, and shame the Devil. Your true anger is with me, for the position in which I have put you.”

His mouth thinned and his eyes flickered. Touché.

I continued, emboldened no doubt by my dose of poppy. “No need for pity over my lost paw, Cap’n. It’s only the truth. There was no good outcome no matter your decision, once I was off the Baker. If you’d left me to my fate, the best you could hope for was that I would die under torture without giving you up; as it is, in retrieving me you have caused an act of aggression. The Crown will not be able to wink at this, once Moriarty has made his report.”

“And Admiral Holmes will be called into question over this – and he, in turn, will call me to account,” Shear-Lock said. The storm on his face indicated that he’d rather face a Kingston court and a gibbet than his Navy liaison. “It’s bad any way we look at it, Jack. I am entirely to blame for this.”

I nodded, bitterness filling my heart. It was the way of a true commander; he knows that all fingers point to him for whatever his men do. “You should have knocked me down when I bandaged that Dutchman, Shear-Lock. That was the spoor that Moriarty followed to find me.”

A terse laugh puffed out from between his lips in a cloud of foul smoke as he lit his infernal white clay pipe off the tiny lantern over the table. “Yes, an act of Christian charity would be a freakish thing to that man.” He exhaled, hard. “The flint is struck and there’s no stopping the bullet, Jack. We must weather the storm since we cannot sail around it.”

“This crew will weather what comes better if there are no hard feelings among us,” I added, and turned to awkwardly move the chessboard one-handed to the table.

Shear-Lock nodded. “I must make my amends with Mr. Hopkins, and hope he’s kind enough to avoid aiming at my heart when he fires.”

Half the chessmen spilled across the table surface as I dropped the board the last few inches with a clatter. “Begging the Cap’n’s pardon?”

Shear-Lock met my appalled eyes with an inexorable light in his own. “A duel ashore, away from the ship. The accepted way to handle disputes among Navy men as well as among the Brethren, even if dueling is officially outlawed by the Crown.”

All I could think to say was “Mr Hopkins is your man, Cap’n. He’s surely angry, but not disloyal enough to shoot at you!”

“He also has his honour and wounded pride as a privateer.” He exhaled a sharp little laugh. “How often have I been called a cold-blooded captain, a mathematical machine? But see, Jack, what chaos ensued when I did succumb to my heart rather than let my brain guide my every move. Now all is endangered, and at the very moment of crisis the Baker stands to lose at least one of its best officers, if not two. No, my buck, I see the thought forming in your mind and prepared to leave your lips – but a public apology to Mr Hopkins is insufficient at this juncture. A blood insult must be paid in blood.”

“Then cutlasses! Surely there is a stipulation about fighting only until first blood is drawn?” A duel with blades would be dangerous, but less lethal than pistols and their notoriously filthy deep wounds; both men could easily die of infection if they were struck by shot even if the wounds were superficial.

“ ‘If one of the Brethren hath a dispute with his brother seaman, the two men shall remove from the ship to land; there they shall settle their differences with their preferred weapons until one is vanquished in his blood.’ So speaks the Code.”

I hung my head to stare sightlessly at the awry pawns and rooks. To lose a good man over a blow given in temper, aboard this sailing demokratia, this bastion of Greek civilization –

Greek. Greek!

I looked up.

“You are the first man to find that passage of the Code amusing,” Shear-Lock responded with asperity.

“There is another way, Cap’n,” I said. “Let me handle this, as quartermaster and as ship’s surgeon.”

When I told him, I received my reward; Shear-Lock’s face lightened like a storm dispersing before the sun as he took my meaning. He straightened so quickly that his coat swirled once about him. “Hopkins has the watch. Come with me, Master Jack.”

Out onto the waist, and to the wheel. Shear-Lock waited until Hopkins finished calling an order up to Murray in the royal yard before ascending. The stillness was telling; each man on the deck doing his assigned work, but without a word; it was as if all held their breaths.

Hopkins himself had not yet met the Cap’n’s eyes. His left eye still bore the deep-yellow mark from Shear-Lock’s blow.

“Mr. Hopkins,” Shear-Lock said, in his deep voice that carried his orders to the crow’s-nest or the jib boom in the wildest blow. “I have wronged you before the entire crew, in an act of unseemly temper. The apology I must make is not one of words, but in blood. I say that when we drop anchor, that we settle our differences ashore, in keeping with the laws of the Brethren. You, as the wronged party, will select our weapons and send notice to me. Agreed?”

Not a word from the entire deck for a long stretch. Every face was that of a man attending a funeral. Hopkins, as I thought he might, was the same. But he met Shear-Lock’s eyes at last, sorrow writ large on his face, and said curtly, “Agreed.”

“Then I leave you to your duties. Mr. Hopkins.”

Shear-Lock left. I remained beside the mate, and hoped the Cap’n would sleep for at least a decent half-hour before resuming his own watch.

“Your presence is not required above deck at this time, Master Jack,” Hopkins said curtly.

“I am here in my capacity as ship’s surgeon, Mr. Hopkins, not as her quartermaster,” I replied coolly. The poppy really was excellent stuff; I had no difficulty in focusing my mind on the work here instead of on pain. “I am aware that there will be bloodletting ashore, and would prefer not to have two superfluous patients.”

“You shall have only one patient,” Hopkins replied in the same curt voice. “Cap’n Shear-Lock is the finest swordsman aboard the Baker. If I were to choose pistols we would both take grave injury, as he and I are equally imperfect at small-arms.”

Even here, even now, with his own pride on the line, Hopkins preferred endangering himself rather than the captain who’d wronged him – or reasoned as clearly as the Cap’n that it was better for the ship to lose one good man rather than two, even though that one good man be himself.

I looked down at my arm-stump – my own bloodied badge of proof of how Shear-Lock commanded love and loyalty in equal measures from all his men. This was something that brocaded reptile who bestrode the Spider would never understand. (And for me, for my sake, Shear-Lock had endangered everything he held dear. That did not bear close scrutiny now.)

The wound gaped; time to stitch it shut. “There is another choice of weapons,” I said. “Ones that will not burden me with the tedious chore of keeping either or both of you from death afterward, even though blood will surely flow. True, I have lost one of mine recently, but it had once been hailed with its twin aboard the Spider.” With my remaining hand, I made a fist. “Was not Pollux, the twin of Castor and loved by all who braved the sea, himself a formidable boxer? Is it not a form of combat with the blessing of antiquity upon it?”

Hopkins’ hands tightened on the wheel and his body went rigid and then nearly limp. How quickly I had picked up on Shear-Lock’s niceness of observation, to see how very relieved the mate was.

I continued, still in the cool voice. “Fisticuffs. If I may suggest such, as one with a vested interest in this outcome. Fisticuffs, until one is knocked down and vanquished in his blood.”

“That,” Hopkins said, and gripped the wheel anew, “is.” And a grin uncurled under his great brown moustache. “Acceptable.”

I did not let my vast relief show; instead I looked at the men who still went about their work as if already mourning their officers. “Is it customary to have seconds at these Brethren duels? Or a witness or two from the ship?”

“Our lot?” Hopkins turned to me – once again as level and staid as he usually was, but with that terrible silent rigidity gone. He’d been dreading this inevitable confrontation, I could see – and for as long as I myself had been in pain. “Not a man will miss this!” He raised his voice in his command bellow. “All hands!”

The wound posed no more danger to the patient; as the men attended their wheelman I nodded to Hopkins and left the deck, almost stumbling with exhaustion, and let myself into the captain’s cabin, where my hammock beckoned like a canvas lover.

Shear-Lock was abed but engrossed in a book, as was his wont in his brief leisure. We both heard the muffled cheer over our heads from the men as Hopkins told the news. “Ah, they’ll be in a sweeter mind. You were quite right, Jack.”

I eased into my hammock, mindful of my bound arm, and sank like a sounding-plumb. “They didn’t want to see either you or Hopkins come to grief. The men love you – and at the very least they love the gold they reap every time you gain a new wig for your ratline.”

He laughed, a little bitterly, and set his book down (my heart sped when I recognized The Book of Nature, that well-loved tome from my medical-school days). “Whether they love me after this cannon-shot finds its target remains to be seen, my buck.”

“There are those who will remain your men though you beg in rags, and trade pirate-stories in a tavern for a bowl of stew and a cot.”

“Ha! I’ll retire to some flower-strewn islet and turn beekeeper first.”

Even as we both laughed at that ridiculous notion my heart was wrung. It was because of me that all this had happened. I, at least, had managed to turn the worst of the first gale by providing an honourable alternative to deadly weapons, but it had exhausted me. Drugged sleep dragged me down now.

“Know this, Captain,” I said before sleep took me. “Not until you order me away from your side will I ever leave you.”

My dreams, so often dark and full of windowless rooms and pitiless questions, faded away in the sweet Zephyr breeze of my favourite violin tunes.

***

True to the Cap’n’s prediction, the Baker – a much happier Baker – dropped anchor without incident in Sholto Bay at first dog-watch next day. Once word of the duel had whipped through the crew, the atmosphere changed from charged tension and dread into a positively Carnival aspect.

At this time my thoughts were not of the upcoming duel but of the privateer graveyard and the blessed field of waving poppies that guarded the dead and brought ease to their living shipmates; the elixir showed very low in the bottle. Despite Shear-Lock’s certain disapprobation, I clenched my teeth against the throbbing pain in my arm and stoppered the remaining poppy, stowing it in my chest.

The last time I’d been on this sand I’d been a ragged refugee from an open boat, a beggarly drunk in a dead man’s shirt and operating with borrowed instruments. Now I strode ashore as a ship’s officer twice over, wearing a handsome pair of boots, and wearing clean new shirt and trousers; my servant trotted behind me with my chiurgeon’s kit; I led a detachment of men (Dix, Small and Tonga) on a medical errand; and I was enrobed with the pride and satisfaction of having kept this bay safe for my ship and her captain.

The last time here, some sad demon on my shoulder whispered, I’d had two good hands, could prove my surgical prowess, and did not intimately know the acrid taste of poppy mixed with pain. The Devil takes his due.

“Must you go collecting, Dr. Jack?” Wiggins said unhappily, his attention on the sinking sun. “Now?”

I affected nonchalance. “Tomorrow will be taken up with ship’s business. Of course, Mr. Wiggins, if you’d rather I can easily appoint Billy as my surgeon’s mate, and you can return to your cabin-boy duties – ”

Wiggins leaped to my side. “Who said I wasn’t coming with you?”

“Good lad. You know how to harvest the poppies and you can instruct the men.”

The flowers had withered; but their valuable pods hung heavy on their dry stalks around the worn wooden markers and crosses on the hill. I accepted Wiggins’ aid in slinging a carry-basket around my neck but dismissed his offer to cut my stalks for me; by nightfall I had perfected a one-handed harvesting technique that did not result in fresh cuts to my remaining thumb, even if I reaped but one pod for every three gathered by the others. Taking my cue from Shear-Lock’s own commanding style, I deliberately ignored the men’s chatter about laying wagers on the upcoming duel; as they were not gambling aboard the ship, where disputes over dice could quickly turn ugly, they broke no rule laid down by the Cap’n.

Wiggins himself was silent, and about the time I judged we had enough I saw him standing by one grave with his cap off and head bowed; he was no doubt paying a call on his old shipmate Ben. He did not seem as frightened of our locale this harvesting session – a graveyard under a brassy-hot early-evening sky, surrounded by armed company, looks a good deal different than that same grim land when one is alone under a midnight moon. When I called a halt, Wiggins started, hastily crossed himself and returned to my side with his cap jammed back over his red ears. “Well done, all of you,” I said. “For now we’ll stow these aboard.” I clapped Wiggins on the shoulder and felt the lad straighten like a bow-string. “My apprentice and I can concoct the medicine later. We have other work to concern us now.”

We headed back to the ship in a downright jaunty mood, and I grinned even though my pain was back, for my arm throbbed at half of its former force, with a pain I could hold back without resorting to poppy.

“Will you lay a wager on the dust-up, Dr. Jack?” Dix asked with a smile. “Say, a gold louis that your matelotaged flattens young Hopkins?”

I laughed, in startlement as much as amusement at the term the rigger had used. “The very definition of favouritism, Mr. Dix, is it not? No, as the unwitting cause of the insult and its response I must keep myself apart from such things. It’s enough that they both sensibly chose a duel form that won’t cause the Baker to lose any more hands – for we’ve lost Cartwright’s two as well as my one.”

There was some laughter at the play on words, but subdued with the reminder of their lost shipmate.

“You’re soon to join my wooden-limbed society, Dr. Jack,” Small said, one hand on Tonga’s shoulder for balance as his pegged leg found purchase in the downward slope. “Your arm is better and All-Thumbs will be able to fashion you a hook.”

“I’ve a better idea for my replacement, Mr. Small – a good stout blade or bone-saw would be more useful to a surgeon.”

Dix kept us amused the rest of the way back by relating a filthy tale about a tavern-doxy and her own false wooden limb – false for her sex – and the things she did when she strapped it about herself. Upon our return I sent Wiggins to stow our prize and headed to the Cap’n’s shore cabin where I knew I could find him, to report on our success.

“The wound has stopped suppurating,” Shear-Lock said by way of greeting, even with his back to me and his entire person seemingly occupied with the charts on his table. “You have gathered enough poppy pods to replenish your stores and are exceedingly relieved that you yourself shall no longer need its use. Your arm needs re-wrapping, however.”

“That I can do myself now, or possibly with the aid of the surgeon’s mate.” By now I did not ask how he knew. “With the Cap’n’s permission, I’ll make my rounds of the crew before taking a hammock among them.”

A quick impatient wave of one long hand was my reply, and I left the cabin. I might be Shear-Lock’s particular friend, but he needed solitude and privacy now more than my company.

A particular friend, whom many in the crew believed to be united in matelotage with Shear-Lock.

Well, it was an understandable error, I mused whilst updating the log-book Wiggins had fetched for me after my rounds. I’d heard rumours that this sodomitic form of marriage existed among many of the outlaws of the sea (very often loudly excoriated by righteous Naval officers who hypocritically buggered their own servants, cabin-boys or underlings off-watch). A cool and calculating man suddenly acquires a particular friend who shares his cabin without as much as an eye-blink; a captain who’d outlawed on-ship gambling that had nevertheless wagered everything he had and was, to rescue one man… My body cried out for the natural embrace of a woman, but I owed this man so much – shelter, a place, a position, my very life – that were he to exhibit any inclination toward such inverted desires I should not hesitate to offer him whatever he wished of me out of love and gratitude – and the fact that he surely knew this already and refused to do so made me love him all the more.

***

At dawn all were astir, and I had not imagined the festival atmosphere. A great stretch of the sand had been marked off by furrows, and the Baker tribunal – the bos’n, bos’n’s mate and sailing master (Angel, Gregson and Murray) stood at the forefront. As quartermaster I would normally have taken my place with the tribunal as representative for the crew, but my unique position meant I was excluded. I stood by All-Thumbs with Wiggins and my kit. Angelo and Billy were busy far back from everyone else, laying out wood for what looked like an elongated bonfire.

The Bakers of the second watch whooped when Hopkins stepped into the square, stripped to the waist and barefoot. The whooping swelled when Shear-Lock strode across the beach from his cabin, likewise wearing only his breeches, which emphasized his tall leanness. Side by side, with no mark of rank to distinguish them, the captain and first mate of the Baker faced the tribunal of crewmen – another aspect of Athenian life that had no counterpart aboard a Navy ship.

Angel raised both his hands to quiet everyone, his dark blue wrist tattoos stark against his dark brown skin. “Captain Shear-Lock,” the bos’n intoned, “on October 6 you struck Mr. Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins, you have agreed to a duel. In keeping with the laws of the Coast, both of you have removed from the ship and will fight until one is struck down and vanquished in his blood, and the weapon chosen by both of you is the fist. So say both?”

“So said,” Shear-Lock and Hopkins both said, almost at the same time.

“Then when we give word both are to commence your duel. None of the crew are to interfere, on pain of death.” I looked around and saw no surprise at this grim injunction. It made sense – for this was still a duel, and any interference meant an inter-ship war. “Agreed?”

Affirmation by both men.

“Then begin,” Angel said simply, and stepped away from the marked area.

Only then did Shear-Lock and Hopkins face each other. “Mr. Hopkins,” the captain said.

“Cap’n,” Hopkins responded. And he swung directly at Shear-Lock’s face. We all heard the blow land, and a shout went up from all throats.

Shear-Lock blocked the next swing and threw a fist back, and the fight was on – but none of us had missed that Shear-Lock allowed Hopkins to land the first blow. Honour was satisfied, and all that remained was a good bloody punch-up.

It was quite the most satisfying duel of my acquaintance – I found myself shouting in excitement with the rest of the crew as one or the other gained ground, stumbling across the sand after the other.

And not a half-hour later, when Shear-Lock stood, tottering, blood dripping from nose and widely-grinning mouth, to offer a hand up to the flattened and equally bleeding (and grinning) Hopkins, a cheer rang across the shore for both men.

***

“This tooth will have to come out,” I said, handing the now-empty poppy bottle back to Wiggins. Other injuries – a broken nose, split lip, a blackened eye, and black bruises over ribs and knuckles – would heal themselves. “You must confine your dining to beans and ale for a few days – no meat, no hardtack – and be sure to wash your mouth well with salt-water morning and night to avoid suppuration.”

“Exthellently handled, Jack,” Shear-Lock said with his mouth open as I reached in with my pliers, my bandaged arm-stump bracing the captain’s chin for the deed.

One pulled canid, the entire extent of my services required after the duel. Hopkins had not even needed this much treatment, though he would likely have a deformed ear and hear ringing for a while on that side of his head. No festering bullet-wounds, no fever, no pierced organs, no gouting sword-wounds to stitch; no dead officers, no mutinous crew. This was quite apart from the barrel of ale and brace of porkers Angelo had wisely laid in the night before that turned the aftermath into an impromptu party for the entire company.

“It was only my duty, Cap’n,” I said, handing the man his own gory tooth as a keepsake and reaching for the pot of steeping tea. “I was the cause of the trouble, and I needed to prove that I was still surgeon and quartermaster despite my affliction.” I rolled the steaming wet leaves into a plug one-handed, hissing at the heat, and applied the wad to the bleeding gap in Shear-Lock’s mouth. “Hold that in place until the bleeding stops or slows, and if it does not let me know and I’ll stitch it closed.”

I almost jumped when a long cool hand wrapped around my truncated forearm, just below the bandage. Those impossible grey eyes fixed upon mine, with the same expression I’d seen in my rescue boat.

“Jack,” Shear-Lock said, as clearly as he could with his other hand holding the compress to his tooth socket. “I have commandeered eleven ships, most without taking a single life. I have acquired a half-dozen fortunes for Their Majesties and for myself and my men. And at this moment, I am surer of this than of anything else – that signing you to the Baker is the single wisest decision I have ever made as captain of this ship.”

I felt my cheeks heat, as if a lovely maiden had expressed admiration for my uniform, but did not look away. Wiggins had thankfully gone deaf and dumb for the moment. “Cap’n,” I finally said. “I can only hope you believe that to be true, when the butcher’s bill for the Spider comes due.”

“I will.” As if he’d said “The wind is from the north-west.” “Mr Wiggins, I believe you and your master are now overdue to take your meal. My teeth preclude my own involvement.”

“Not true, Cap’n,” Wiggins said eagerly, grinning at his surprise. “Angelo’s made you a special pudding with the pigs’ livers and kidneys, soft as baby’s pap. Billy and me’ll bring it here.”

I would have been happy to join the whooping Bakers at the beach, where the delicious smells of spiced pork sizzling on iron skewers over the coals teased my nose and stomach – had I not begun to emulate our captain’s uncanny ablity to discern the world around me. I saw that Shear-Lock did not, in fact, wish privacy now as he had the night before, but was merely excusing himself from the rumpus to allow joy to reign unconfined among the crew, as any good captain would do. “A pork pudding sounds delightful, Mr. Wiggins,” I said. “Would Angelo have had the foresight to make enough for two? That’s a dish I’d have no difficulty eating one-handed, and will allow you to join the men on the beach instead of waiting on me here.”

“Bring the chess-board with you as well, lad,” Shear-Lock said coolly; his eyes on me were anything but cool. “And a bottle of the Canary from my locker.”

Wiggins flashed a great grin – of course Angelo cooked enough to feed twenty ravenous sailors twice over – and was away in a flash to fetch our supper.

“I didn’t lie to the boy, Cap’n,” I said to the shrewd and grateful look, and grinned. “It has been a good long time since I’ve had a proper haggis.”