Captain Of My Heart Page 6

  He dropped his fork.

  “I hope you like Indian pudding!” Gulping, Brendan looked up. A plump, apple-cheeked little woman bustled about, clucking like a mother hen and briskly arranging salt and pepper and a pitcher of cold milk. She smelled like flour and had bright, birdlike eyes that didn’t miss a trick. “Our dear little Mira made it herself. She’s quite a cook, isn’t she? Here, help yourself,” she said, plunking a silver bowl down before him. “There’s plenty more where that came from!”

  That didn’t surprise him. Slowly Brendan picked up his fork, stared down at his plate—and choked back a tide of nausea. The woman—Abigail?—was smiling at him, hands steepled beneath her chin, eyes glowing with pride.

  Waiting.

  “Go on!” she urged.

  There was no way out. Steeling himself, Brendan cut a piece of the meat and slowly placed it in his mouth. It was cold, but it was good—and recognizable.

  Mutton, all right.

  “Isn’t that good? Here, you eat up. You’re awfully lean. We can’t have our guests leaving the table with no meat on their bones, now, can we?”

  She hovered about, humming and clucking and tsk-tsk-ing some more. Brendan took another bite of the mutton—a very small bite—chewing it as slowly as possible, prolonging the inevitable, and willing to make it last until Christmas if he had to despite the ravenous hunger it awakened in him. If only the woman would leave. He wished it with all his heart. He prayed. Anything, dear Lord, so that he wouldn’t have to eat that . . . that pudding.

  He was down to one last, pitiful bite of the meat when his prayers were answered from a most unlikely source—Ephraim. As the old man began bellowing from a thankfully distant corner of the house, Abigail, mobcap askew and petticoats flying, bustled out of the room with an “Oh dear,” and a “Here we go again,” and he was left—thank God —to himself.

  He didn’t waste a single precious minute.

  Quickly scraping the slimy mass that didn’t look like any pudding he’d ever seen into a quivering ball, Brendan shot a quick glance at the door, grabbed his plate, and slid it beneath the table where the dog waited so expectantly.

  Frenzied sniffing. A clang of the plate against the floor as the dog began to bolt the food. Then, silence.

  The animal backed out from beneath the table and, throwing Brendan a look of betrayal and disgust, slunk from the room.

  Brendan, frowning, lifted the tablecloth and peered under the table.

  The pudding was uneaten.

  Chapter 4

  William Davenport had been a Newburyport man who’d seen General Wolfe die on the Plains of Abraham, and it was something he never forgot. On his return to Newburyport, he’d converted his home into a tavern, hung a sign out front on which was faithfully carved and painted a bust of the famous general, and swung open his door for business.

  In the years since, Wolfe Tavern, at the corner of State Street and Threadneedle Alley, had become the most popular spot in town. The long, rectangular building hosted political, patriotic, and social gatherings, as well as travelers of all sorts. Here, men gathered to hear the latest news on the war, engage in spirited debates, or just amuse themselves with a game of cards. Back in ’65, when the local Sons of Liberty had terrorized Newburyport, roaming the streets and making the lives of those in favor of the hated Stamp Act terrible, it had been in Wolfe Tavern that they’d met. Davenport had died back in ’73, but the tavern had continued under the capable management of his sons Anthony and Moses, still offering stout drink and hearty food for weary traveler and townsman alike.

  It would have been safe to assume that it was the stout drink and not the hearty food—although that was certainly being consumed with equal ardor—that had drawn Annabel’s company after they’d brought the battered sloop into port with the help of two Newburyport privateers. Now the mortally wounded Annabel lay in her bed of riverbank mud, while every man Jack and officer of her crew—with the exception of her missing captain—sampled the fine food and drink for which the tavern was famous.

  Miraculously, not a soul had been killed or injured during the short but scrappy engagement with Crichton’s frigate. Oh, Dalby complained that his chest hurt when he breathed in—too much smoke had got into his lungs, he insisted—but aside from that, and a few scrapes and scratches here and there, Annabel’s crew had been lucky.

  Dalby sat now with a mug of ale before him and a plate of beef and potatoes growing cold beneath his nose, his shipmates, no doubt the rowdiest bunch of tars to put into unsuspecting Newburyport all week, surrounding him. The tavern was clean enough, with well-swept, wide-boarded floors scuffed by the heels of a thousand boots and shoes, a huge fireplace, and wainscoting painted an unpretentious shade of ocher. The light from a tin chandelier, set with spitting candles, cut through the smoke.

  His brow furrowing, Dalby scrutinized the other patrons. Men lounged at sturdy walnut tables drinking foamy mugs of beer and puffing on long clay pipes. Three tables away, a group of finely dressed gentlemen, either merchants or, more likely, shipowners, were engaged in a lively game of backgammon. A dog lay half asleep at their feet, and a seaman dressed in baggy trousers, torn shirt, and a threadbare vest sat on a stool sipping ale and conversing with a disreputable-looking man in buckskins and a fur hat.

  None of them looked to be ill . . . and his own companions had never seemed to enjoy better health. He eyed them with increasing annoyance. Liam’s laughter was growing louder with every tankard of cherry rum he downed, and Dalby knew it would only be a matter of time before he picked up the fiddle propped against his chair leg and struck up a lively jig. Across from him sat John Keefe, his flowing silver hair caught in a leather tie. McDermott had his nose in a book, and Amos Reilly and George Saunders were guffawing over something Liam had said.

  Dalby’s pinched mouth anchored itself in a frown. He stared down at his plate; it was the only one that had any food left on it, and his companions were all eyeing it like a pack of half-starved wolves. If the captain, God rest his soul, were here, he’d have finished it off. But the captain was gone. Dalby bit his lip and blinked back tears, wondering if life was worth living. The captain was gone, Annabel was a wreck, and his beef didn’t taste right. Probably spoiled. As if to affirm that assumption, his stomach lurched and he had to swallow tightly to quell a quick flood of nausea.

  A hearty whack across the back from Liam nearly brought the beef straight back up. “God Almighty, Dalby, ye’re spoilin’ the fun! First time into port in three weeks and ye’re sittin’ there lookin’ like it’s the end o’ the world. Cheer up, would ye?”

  “My stomach hurts.”

  “Yer stomach hurts? Then here, ’ave s’more ale, ’twill make it feel better.” Liam dumped a flood of it into Dalby’s half-empty mug. “What’s this? Not drinkin’, either? God Almighty, what’s the bloody matter with ye, laddie-o?”

  Anyone in his right mind would know better than to ask Dalby what the matter was; it was something they’d all learned not to do. But Liam, in his cups, had grown careless.

  “I told you, I have a stomachache. Probably from the beef. It’s gone bad, I just know it has. And that ale tastes suspicious, too. How do I know where it’s been? How do I know it wasn’t in someone else’s mug before mine? How do I know that person didn’t have the smallpox, or a fever—”

  “What’s that, Dalb?” Reilly yelled. “Don’t want your supper?”

  “Heck, if you don’t want it, slide it over here and I’ll take it!” Keefe cried.

  Reilly leaped up, knocked Keefe’s hand away as he reached for Dalby’s plate, and grabbed it for himself. Keefe responded with a hard punch to Reilly’s jaw. Reilly howled and drew his own arm back to return it, and Liam casually yanked the plate away before the dispute could get any worse. “Look at ye, fightin’ like a pack o’ curs over a bone.” He curled his brawny arm around the plate to guard it and plunged his fork into a greasy slab of beef. Popping it into his mouth, he chewed loudly, washed it down with
rum, and stabbed another chunk. “And over a hunk o’ meat that Dalby says ’as gone bad. Fer shame, lads! Fer shame!”

  “Dalby’d say it’s gone bad if they carved it off the pig right here in front of him.”

  “Pig? You pillock, beef comes off a cow. The kind with udders.”

  “Ye mean like the ones that serving wench has?”

  “You keep your eyes off her, Reilly, you hear me? I saw her first!”

  “The hell with ye, Keefe! I spoke for her first!”

  Dalby lunged to his feet, so angry the cords in his neck began to vibrate. “How dare you all sit here and talk about food and drink and women when our poor captain is dead and drowned? How dare you!”

  They all stared at him.

  “Now, Dalby.” Liam plucked his napkin from the table, swiped at his jaw, then tossed the cloth back to his plate. “The cap’n’s goin’ to be just fine. Ye don’t see me worryin’, now, do ye?”

  “Just fine?” Dalby wailed, and made a sudden grab for his chest. He mustn’t holler like that. It wasn’t good for the heart. Taking several deep breaths to calm himself, he faced Liam angrily. “That’s easy for you to say now, but you sure weren’t so confident about things yesterday, if I remember right! The captain’s not just fine, and you know it! We all saw him get swept out to sea by the current!”

  “Cap’n can swim,” Saunders grunted, reaching for his mug.

  “But it was cold last night!”

  “It ain’t cold, it’s summertime.”

  “Aye, the seas are still warm.”

  “This is not the Indies!” Dalby wailed. “And what if a shark got him?”

  “Ain’t enough fat on the cap’n’s bones. Shark’ll spit him out.”

  “Not enough fat? Hah, not enough meat, either,” Liam said, stabbing another chunk of beef. “Always told him to eat more. Too damned thin fer his own good. Course, if he had some stoutness to him, he wouldn’t’ve tumbled off o’ the ship in the first place. And if he had some fat under his hide, he wouldn’t have t’ worry about stayin’ afloat—”

  “—or keeping warm, either,” Keefe added, importantly.

  Dalby sat down hard. Oh, how could they sit here and joke about the captain like that? And Liam—Liam was the captain’s best friend, and had been ever since Brendan’s father, the distinguished old Admiral Merrick, had died and his widow had moved herself and her two children back to her beloved home in Connemara.

  “Ah, ye worry too much fer yer own good, Dalby.” Liam leaned back and crossed his massive arms behind his head, making his chair protest beneath his great, muscled bulk. “See what it’s doin’ to yer stomach? Ye’re makin’ yerself sick o’er this. Cap’n’s da was English, aye, but he’s got the luck of his Irish ma to see to him, and it’s never failed him yet.”

  Dalby bristled. “The only Irish luck I see here is yours. With the captain dead and gone, you’re in command now. You tell me who’s the lucky one!”

  Fortunately for Dalby, Liam’s temper was not easily ignited, for Liam was twice as big, thrice as strong—and half his age. He merely smiled, belched in happy contentment, and picked up his fiddle. “An’ would ye mind a-tellin’ me just what it is I’m supposed t’ command, Dalb?”

  Dalby’s mouth snapped shut. It would be a while before Annabel was seaworthy again—a long while. And the magnificent schooner that had been the captain’s dream . . . her drafts had died with her creator. Dalby turned his face away to hide the emotion in his eyes.

  Liam was an astute man, even with a quart of ale swimming in his belly. “Here now, Dalb,” he said, laying a big, square hand across the little sailmaker’s bony arm. “There’s not a soul on earth who cares for the cap’n more than I do. If I thought he was dead an’ gone, d’ye think I’d be a-sittin’ here drinkin’ away his memory? God Almighty! Why, I’ll bet ye my share o’ th’ next prize that any minute now, that door yonder’ll swing open and our Brendan himself’ll come strollin’ in—”

  As if on cue, the door did swing open and a tall figure stood silhouetted in the hot sunlight.

  “Captain!” Dalby cried, lunging to his feet.

  But it was not their gallant young commander who stood there, but a stranger with a freckle-dusted face that looked as if it would stand little, if any, sun, and unruly red hair curling out from beneath a floppy felt hat. There was no doubt that he was a seaman; probably an officer if not a captain, judging by the way he carried himself and rocked back on his heels. His eyes, magnified by spectacles that gave him an almost scholarly appearance, swept the crowd, crinkling in a smile as they perused each of the serving wenches. Yet in true Yankee style, he had no pretense—his jacket of pilot cloth had seen better days, and a strip of leather belted a pair of trousers rolled up to display white hose and scuffed, buckled shoes.

  Forgetting his stomach, Dalby squinted through the smoky air and tried not to stare, for the man looked awfully familiar.

  The newcomer took off his hat, raked a hand through his wild red locks, and grinned broadly as the serving wench whom Keefe and Reilly had been arguing over for the better part of the last hour flung herself into his arms with a squeal of glee. He caught her, kissed her full on the lips, and set her down, where she clung to his arm like a barnacle.

  “The nerve of him! We’ve been sitting here for a bloody hour, and he comes in here, just like that, and draws her in like a fish on a line.”

  “Says a lot for your charms, Amos.”

  “Be damned to ye, Fergus!”

  The serving wench, blushing hotly and giggling under the Yankee’s attention, nodded and pointed toward their table. They all watched as he strode purposefully toward them.

  “Ahoy, there,” Liam drawled, leaning back in his chair and setting his fiddle across his knees. “Have a seat an’ join us for a mug or two.”

  Matthew Ashton perused this odd group, his eyes lingering on the grumpy little man whose hand was pressed to his gut as though he were ill. He wondered briefly what was wrong with him to make him so silent and surly when his mates were obviously well into their cups. “Much obliged,” he said, accepting both the chair that the burly Irishman slid toward him and the ale Belinda set beneath his nose. Calling for another round for those around the table, Matt blew the foam from his ale and looked at each of the strangers over the rim of his mug. They were all staring at him. “You the crew from the sloop Annabel?”

  “Part of it,” the big Irishman said, extending a huge hand. “I’m Liam Doherty, first lieutenant. This here’s Dalby O’Hara. He’s sick, so don’t mind him. Oh, don’t bother movin’ away, ’tisn’t contagious. Dalby’s always got somethin’ wrong with him, but it’s all in his head. This here’s John Keefe—”

  “Jack Keefe, now!” Reilly cried. “Don’t ye know that once a man’s coin’s all gone, he’s just Jack again like the rest of us?”

  Liam shrugged, his grin splitting his broad and beamy face. “Jack Keefe, and this toothless cur by his side with the purple jaw is Amos Reilly. Yonder’s George Saunders, gunner, and Fergus McDermott, able seaman, who’ll need to be askin’ ye about the churches in town as he’s decided to join one after yesterday—right, Ferg? And God only knows where the rest o’ the crew is, though some are at the other tables, and others, I’d wager, probably seekin’ a warm bed with room for two.” Dalby was elbowing him again. “Oh, and our cap’n’s at sea,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “We expect him back any time.”

  “Oh?” Matt raised his red brows above the rims of his spectacles.

  “He is not at sea!” Dalby cried. “He’s dead! Dead and drowned!”

  “That makes him at sea, don’t it?” Reilly cackled, and slapped the table as laughter erupted around them.

  Matt eyed them all warily, thinking them a strange bunch indeed. “I, uh, take it he was a hard master,” he said slowly.

  Dalby lunged to his feet, stomachache forgotten. “He was the best master there ever was! Fair and just and honest. Brave and laughing and unafraid, right down
to the end. And he knew everything there was to know about ships, everything! He could design one as well as he could sail one—”

  “Aye, ye should’ve seen those drafts he drew up,” Keefe murmured, breaking an inch off his clay pipe.

  Dalby was heading straight for apoplexy. “Those drafts! Those stupid drafts! If it weren’t for them, he’d be safe and sound right now! But no, he had to find the best man in the colonies to build that ship for him. Said she’d need a good dose of Yankee know-how, else she just wouldn’t do. And now look what’s happened! If he’d just been content with Annabel, he’d be standing here right now—”

  “Like hell he would, Dalb,” Liam said, brushing bread crumbs from his shirt. “He’d have us out on some salty deck givin’ the Brits what for. He isn’t one to waste time ashore. Why, even when we made port, he’d stick aboard, workin’ on those damned drafts, fantasizin’ about this an’ that, wonderin’ if he should hang a tops’l above her mainmast or just let her go with the one on her fore.”

  “Oh?” Matt watched them over the rim of his mug with sudden interest. “And what did he finally decide?”

  “To put ’em on both.”

  “And studders outside o’ that,” Keefe added.

  “Topgallants, too.”

  “Good God.” Matt almost dropped his mug. “Wouldn’t that make her unsteady, hard to handle?”

  Dalby puffed his chest out like a banty rooster. “Our captain could sail a ship to the moon and back if he had to! If he wanted to string sails clear up to the stars, he could handle her!”

  Liam put a restraining hand on Dalby’s arm. “She would’ve been deep-drafted enough to take all the sail the cap’n asked of her,” he explained. “Brendan’s a wee bit reckless, sometimes even to the point o’ seemin’ empty-headed, but he’s no fool. He knows his business right enough when it comes to designin’ ships.”

  “Knew it!” Dalby cried, perilously close to tears. “Can’t you get it through your head he’s dead?”

  Seeing the telltale moisture in the little man’s eyes, Matt decided he’d let the game go on long enough. He took a long swig of his ale, leaned back, and told them the reason he’d come here—and who had sent him. By the time he’d finished, Liam was grinning down into his ale as though his captain’s survival had come as no surprise, and Dalby was all but sobbing in relief.