15. The Course of Nature

Before two bells had passed, four more Surprises joined Quayle in the shade under the trees. They shivered in fever and stared about them with burning, frightened eyes, their situation quickly deteriorating. Stephen Maturin cooled them and dosed them with laudanum to keep the fear down more than anything, and he waited. Simply waited; there was nothing else to be done.

‘Stephen, what is causing it?’ Jack asked in an undertone, leading him out of earshot from the sick men by the elbow. ‘Is it the red fever? The yellow jack? The black death? You know I can abide the butcher’s bill, much as it grieves me, but this… this struggling against an invisibly enemy…’

‘I am inclined to believe,’ said Stephen, ‘it is a form of tropical influenza. I am not familiar with the pathology. Not yet. But I believe the gentleman on the right, eh…’

‘Ferrier, able seaman,’ said Jack.

‘Ferrier. I do not think he will see out the day. Notice how his breathing is congested? His fever is ever increasing and just now, he coughed up a small measure of blood…’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Jack, thoroughly uneasy, ‘But what is there to be done about the damn thing? We can’t just let it ravage our crew, run rampant among what precious little hands we have?’

‘Do?’ Stephen fixed him with one of his unsettling cold glares. ‘Jack, there is nothing we can do. Nothing but wait. Let the lady Fortuna do her choosing.’

Thirty hands fell ill before the sun set. Stephen worked hard all through the night, and around three, Ferrier gave up the fight. He had struggled much longer than Stephen had anticipated, and for a short time the doctor had entertained hope that he would live. But it was not to be. Shortly after Ferrier’s death, three more hands succumbed. The rest seemed stable. Stephen breathed a little easier around four and allowed himself his five hundred drops of laudanum.

Stephen had been pleasantly surprised when shortly after midnight, Her Grace had come out onto the moonlit beach, wearing a leather hose and something he strongly suspected was one of the Captain’s shirts, gathered at her waist with a broad leather belt. She looked like a corsair maiden, her breathtakingly beautiful hair braided loosely over her shoulder. She coolly informed the doctor that she had had the disease on board the Indomitable, had obviously survived it and was in all likelihood immune now. It had killed about a third of LaSalle’s crew, and it had raged inside her body, keeping her on the brink of death for three days. And apparently it had still been present in the ship, perhaps hiding among the ever present ship’s rats, looking for new victims.

Cat generously offered her help tending to the sick, and she proved a calm and reliable assistant with wonderful bedside manners. Stephen was reasonably sure that her presence alone made sure no more hands died that night. After all, the men looked upon her as a good omen. Her cool hand upon a fevered brow could probably work wonders for the suspicious sailor’s mind.

Stephen regarded her closely while they worked side by side. Yes, she was very beautiful. Very intelligent. Well bred, educated, kind-hearted and generous. Perhaps she was just what the Doctor ordered to combat the blue devils that had plagued his friend for the longest time. A short, harsh bark escaped Stephen’s mouth and surprised even himself.

Cat looked up at the sound. ‘Doctor Maturin? Are you unwell?’ she inquired gently.

‘No child, just amused,’ said Stephen, very informally, smiling and forgetting her title altogether. ‘When you moved this way to offer your most generous assistance, did you notice the Captain still out and about?’

‘No, he was in his tent,’ Cat said, blushing noticeably in the fire lit night. ‘I, eh… I did not intend to pry; of course that would be inconceivable, it was just that I… well, that is to say I…’ She hung her head and sighed.

Stephen waited.

‘I heard him,’ Cat whispered. ‘He, um, well, he snored. Quite loudly too; it was a prodigious great roar. So I imagine he is asleep in his tent, wouldn’t you say that would be the most logical explanation, Doctor Maturin?’

Stephen nodded, a smile still lurking in his eyes. ‘Yes, I am well aware of Jack’s rather audible manner of sleeping. We have shared a sleeping cabin on many a voyage.’

‘How does…’ Her Grace covered her mouth with her hand and whispered through her fingers, her eyes darting from left to right. ‘How does Mrs. Aubrey cope?’

‘As I understand it, but far be it from me to divulge, of course, Mrs. Aubrey has seen fit to give up coping altogether,’ Stephen confided in her. ‘My dear friend Jack is an excellent mariner, child, and blessed with extreme luck in naval battle, but on land he is… how shall I put it… exuberant, full of life, the good-natured, gentle soul that he essentially is, were it not for the fact that Lady Luck seems to reverse his fortune the minute he sets foot on English soil. It is uncanny. Are you at all acquainted with Viscount DeBurgh?’

This sudden change of tack surprised Cat, but she recovered immediately. ‘I cannot say I have had the pleasure of being introduced to the gentleman,’ she said, drawing herself up straight and suddenly sounding every inch the haughty Duchess. The shy young woman had all but disappeared, and the sudden transformation left Stephen Maturin blinking for a moment in honest wonder. The girl was more faceted than a diamond. How interesting.

‘Well,’ he resumed, clearing his throat and ruminating for an instant on how to proceed, ‘the long and short of it is that Mrs. Aubrey has thrown herself into the power of… has abandoned all her… has… well in short, Mrs. Aubrey has left her husband. She lives with the Viscount now, at his estate. She has taken the children with her, as I understand it.’

For a moment, Cat stood very still, shock registering on her face. ‘She has?’ she said, and then she turned sharply to resume her duties. ‘Oh but that is just simply… beyond me… how could anyone…’ she whispered in a contained burst of righteous indignation, while she lovingly wiped the boiling hot foreheads of the sick men.

She spoke very softly, but Stephen heard, and he knew enough. Duchess of Marlborough or not, the girl was smitten. Just as smitten as his friend, and now all he had to do was make sure that they spent enough time in each other’s company and nature would run its course. He was sure of it. Jack was not the moral figure his men loved to make him out to be; no, Jack was as red blooded as they came, both within and without the Navy. And Cat, well, she appeared to him a passionate creature, and no doubt quite the match for his friend’s ardent temperament. He allowed himself another smile, inwardly this time, as he remembered how magnificently they had played together in the great cabin. Yes, they would do well together; there was no doubt in his mind.

There was of course the little hurdle of class, apart from the fact that Jack was still married. Even if he wouldn’t be, it would be inconceivable that marriage could ever take place between a mere Naval Captain and a Duchess. Perhaps if Jack had gotten that Baronetcy that had been vaguely promised him when he commanded the Mauritius action (the one that was so sadly botched by Lord Clonfert, that silly, ambitious, vainglorious man), and if he’d been able to hoist his pennant, and if he were unattached, perhaps then there might have been a slim chance. A very slim chance. But as it stood, a… special friendship was probably all they could hope to entertain.

Still, there would be benefits to the connection. Stephen ticked off the gains on his mental fingers, his cold and calculating secretive mind working overtime. If Jack and the Duchess would enter into a liaison, it would work miracles for Jack’s standing among the other Captains on the list. The Admiralty board would not be able to deny him anything; Cat’s own uncle had sat on that selfsame board for countless years and was still enormously influential. And indirectly, Stephen would benefit as well; his work for Sir Joseph Blaine would be so much easier if he could continuously travel with Jack, who understood his ways perfectly. But what would stand to benefit most from any such connection was, of course, a heart, and in direct connection with that, a mind. The heart and mind of his dear friend Jack, the heart and mind that had suffered so greatly from all the misfortunes encountered on dry land.

Chapter Sixteen

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