Kage Baker: Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key

Mrs. Waverly found that going about in her shift was altogether so comfortable and convenient, in the intemperate heat, that she declined to wear anything else. John fashioned himself a crutch to hobble about with for necessary purposes, but mostly he lay still as he had been bid, with his bandaged leg propped up on a roll of sailcloth. He watched Mrs. Waverly’s bare ankles twinkling about, and observed keenly as she bent over to stir fish-broth simmering in the pot they had salvaged, or crouched to rub fish oil into the leather of her shoes. His leg hurt a bit, and itched powerfully as the wound began to heal, but she treated him as tenderly as though he were at death’s door. John was altogether a happy man.

Mr. Tudeley, on the other hand, was quite flustered. The first day or so he avoided looking at Mrs. Waverly at all, averting his eyes from her whenever possible.

The second day, however, he dispensed with his own shirt, announcing that Society might require a man to be miserable in the heat, but he was damned if he was going to sweat in the sun like a roasting ham. He burned quite painfully red as a consequence.

He took to swaggering, too.

“Well, here’s the damned salt beef,” he announced, setting down a keg he had hauled up from the beach. “I declare, gentlemen, I am developing a prodigious appetite for meat. It must be the free air; for in Spanish Town I was so dyspeptic, I could scarcely stomach dry biscuit without a glass of wormwood cordial first. I find my natural appetite wonderfully revived. Perhaps you’d be good enough to cook us a dish of stewed beef, ma’am?”

“That’s not beef,” said Sejanus. “That’s one of the powder kegs.”

“Damn your eyes, can’t you see the salt?” Mr. Tudeley pointed to the white encrustation along the staves. He grabbed up a hatchet and, before anyone could stop him, broached the keg with it. “Oh,” he said in disappointment, as the black stuff trickled out like sand. “I suppose it is gunpowder after all. Well, no matter. Perhaps now we’ll be able to shoot some of the goats.”

“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Waverly, coming to look into the keg. She frowned. “What you took for salt is saltpeter , Mr. Tudeley. It has leached out in the seawater and spoilt the powder.”

“Damn,” said John, and parenthetically added “Excuse me, ma’am. Are they all like that? And there I went to all the trouble of fetching up that swivel gun.”

“It is of no consequence,” said Mrs. Waverly, looking serene. “I shall simply prepare more saltpeter.”

As one man, they stared at her. “Where’d you learn to do that?” said John.

“In my travels with my late husband,” she said, and smiled, and declined to explain further.

It turned out that if Mr. Tudeley and Sejanus took the boat out to a certain rock just offshore, that was white as snow with birdshite and hot as a griddle, and spent a hellish hour or so chipping away enough of it to fill a bucket, half the work was done. John lay back in the shade, watching them complacently.

“Will you have a little more rum, Mr. James?” Mrs. Waverly inquired, bending down to him.

“Why, yes, ma’am, that’s mighty kind of you,” said John. She presented him with a coconut-shell full and settled down by him, taking care that her thigh pressed against his own. But she sat otherwise upright and proper, with her hands folded in her lap, gazing out at Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley as they worked.

“I must commend you on your admirable restraint, Mr. James,” she said. “In all the while we have been here, you have not attempted anything in the least improper. This despite the necessity of a state of dress that would be deemed immodest in London, and the prodigious quantities of rum you have been obliged to imbibe for medicinal reasons.”

John considered her narrowly, wondering what she might be about. He had a swallow of rum and thought carefully before he replied.

“Well, ma’am, it’s not that I ain’t been tempted. You’re a beauty, by thunder; but there’s such a thing as loyalty to friends, ain’t there? You was with my shipmate Tom. He was gently born and all; why, he knew princes. And here’s me, a bricklayer’s apprentice from Hackney. I ain’t such a fool as to suppose I could supplant the likes of him.”

“Not supplant ,” said Mrs. Waverly, with a sigh. “None shall ever replace dear Tom in my affections. But he is—oh, how can I pronounce the hated word?—dead. And you and I have been through a great deal together, Mr. James. I do hope that, when my period of mourning is concluded, you will not allow delicacy to prevent you from making so bold as to consider me more than your friend.” And she placed her hand on his leg, pretty close to Wapping Dock and Walls.

John had a stiff drink of rum while he tried to reason through the exact meaning of her words.

“Well,” he said cautiously. “We’ll see, I expect. Well! H’m. So. Was there a Mr. Waverly, then?”

“Briefly,” she said. “And then I met a gallant cavalier. Poor Tom had been improvident with his inheritance; he was therefore obliged to live by his bravery and his wits, and I with him.”

“Where’d you learn to make saltpeter, really?”

“Flanders,” Mrs. Waverly replied, with a slight shrug. “We were besieged. One made do with what one could improvise. But what of you, dear Mr. James? Had you a wife or sweetheart in London?”

“No—oo,” said John, “At least, no wife. There were girls and all. None that’ll be missing me.” He thought briefly of the girl he had lost in Panama, and winced.

“There is no claim on your heart then?” Mrs. Waverly leaned back and lay down beside him, smiling into his eyes.

“Er,” said John. “No, ma’am.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Mrs. Waverly, and kissed him, slowly. She pressed him back and he yielded to her push, feeling his heart pounding. He groped to pull his shirt down in front, but her hand was somehow there in the way, and everything was going along splendidly when he raised his eyes and saw a black face laughing at him from the branches above. A young girl, very pretty, with long black ringlets trailing down and wicked mischief in her eyes. She wore a pink cotton gown. John saw her clear as he saw Mrs. Waverly, and he was seeing Mrs. Waverly close and clear indeed.

His eyes widened and he caught his breath, just as Mrs. Waverly sat up abruptly.

“Oh, dear,” she said, in tones of real irritation. “The others have returned.”

John leaned up on his elbow and saw Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley had quitted the rock and were just now stepping ashore, bearing their malodorous prize. He looked up into the branches again, but the young girl had vanished.

“How tedious,” muttered Mrs. Waverly. Yet she received the bucketful when Mr. Tudeley brought it up to camp, smiling graciously as though it contained the first strawberries of the season, and promptly carried it off to distill it with wood ash.

“And how is the brave hero?” Sejanus inquired, selecting a couple of coconuts from the pile they had gathered.

“Well enough,” said John crossly.

“Poor hero. Did we interrupt your courting?” Sejanus drew his cutlass and sliced away the top of one coconut, as easily as opening a jar. He tossed it to Mr. Tudeley, who had collapsed gasping in the shade, and opened the other for himself.

“No,” said John. “And none of your business anyhow, whatever we was doing.”

“Suit yourself,” said Sejanus. He had a long drink of coconut water.

“But that little black miss that was so taken with you at Tortuga was hanging about,” said John, with a spiteful grin as Sejanus choked.

“What do you mean?” he inquired, when he had wiped coconut water from his nose and chin.