Deborah Hale - The Bonny Bride

“I’ve no time to stand here arguing with ye, Jenny. Ye’re going below.” With that, he grasped her around the waist and hoisted her effortlessly over his shoulder.

“Put me down, Harris Chisholm!” Jenny flailed her feet and pounded in vain on his back. Her cries filled the narrow companionway. “Let me go this minute, ye great ruffian!”

To restrain her squirming, Harris adjusted his hold on Jenny, bringing one hand to rest on the swell of her backside. The pressure of his hand set a tight, tingly sensation quivering deep in the pit of her belly. It fueled her anger and outrage. “Let me go, or I’ll have Captain Glendenning throw ye in the brig!”

Pushing open her cabin door, Harris tossed Jenny unceremoniously onto her berth. “The captain has worse ruffians than me to contend with just now.”

“What blather are ye talking, Harris Chisholm?”

“It’s no blather. There’s pirates in the gut and they want to board us. I have to go above and do what I can to support the captain.”

“Pirates?” Jenny felt her insides twist in reef knots.

“When I shut yer door,” Harris ordered, “push yer trunk against it. Douse yer light. Don’t make a noise and don’t come out till I tell ye it’s safe.”

He had the door half-shut when Jenny called out. “Harris, for God’s sake, be careful!”

Turning back for a moment, he fixed her with a fervent look. “I’ll protect ye to my last drop of blood, Jenny.” The flimsy deal boards slammed shut behind him.

With trembling hands, Jenny pushed her trunk against the cabin door. She doubted it would hinder anyone really determined to enter. Following Harris’s instructions, she put out the cabin light and felt her way back to her berth. Crouching there in the dark, she concentrated on the noises filtering down from the deck, trying to piece together what might be happening.

She heard angry shouts but could not make out the words. Then a musket shot rang out. Jenny whimpered a desperate prayer for Harris and the crew of the St. Bride. Some heavy object rolled across the deck. More gunfire. Someone cried out in pain. Suddenly a noise like a hundred claps of thunder exploded above Jenny’s head. With a shriek, she pulled the bedclothes over her head. Her imagination boiled with lurid images of what pirates might do to a defenceless young woman.

“I can’t let them corner me here,” she muttered to herself. Better to meet her fate out in the open, where she could run—throw herself into the sea if it came to that. Nothing could be worse than cowering in the bowels of the ship—trapped.

Jenny was well down the companionway when she heard a loud cheer ring out from the deck. She emerged just in time to see a pair of small sloops making for the northern shore. Pretty pitiful pirates. Jenny gave a derisive laugh, giddy with relief. Then she caught sight of several crewmen, huddled in a knot. It took her a moment to realize they were ministering to a wounded comrade. The only visible part of the victim was one booted foot, limp and prostrate.

“Harris!” Jenny shrieked, elbowing her way through the press of sailors in a most unladylike manner. Harris lay there, motionless on the deck. His eyes were closed. His mouth hung slack. Blood soaked one arm of his shirt.

Casting herself down on the deck beside him, Jenny wrested his head into her lap. With trembling fingers, she stroked his face.

“Ye can wake up now, Harris,” she coaxed. “The pirates are gone. We’re all safe and sound. Open yer eyes for me, like a good fellow. Ye’re giving me a rare fright.”

Desperately Jenny searched the crowding faces until she found Captain Glendenning’s.

“What happened to him, Captain? He’s not dead—” her voice broke “—is he?”

“Dead?” The captain gave a scratchy chuckle. “Whatever gave ye a daft idea like that, lass?”

Suspecting an unconscious, blood-covered man to be dead hardly qualified as daft, Jenny wanted to snap. Too overcome with relief to get the words out, she settled for casting Captain Glendenning a black look. She continued to stroke Harris’s face in hopes of reviving him. His skin felt cool beneath her fingers—the chill spread to Jenny’s heart.

“What happened?” she finally mastered her voice to ask.

“It was them swill-sucking bottom feeders.” The first mate jerked his head in the direction of the rapidly retreating pirate sloops. “Had the gall to open fire on us when the captain wouldn’t give ’em leave to board.”

Captain Glendenning pressed a bloodstained wad of canvas to Harris’s upper arm. “A ball winged young Chisholm here. Bleeding bad, but not serious. Just grazed the flesh, so we won’t have to cut the ball out. Cauterize it with hot pitch and—”

Jenny winced. “Must ye?”

“Aye, miss.” The first mate bared one brawny forearm to reveal a wicked-looking scar. “The pitch hurts some, but it beats letting the wound go putrid.”

“That’s enough out of ye, matie,’ the captain barked. “Can’t ye see Miss Lennox is getting a mite green around the gills.”

“If the wound isn’t serious, what’s he doing laid out cold on the deck?” Jenny demanded.

“Oh, that…”

“Will this help, Miss Lennox, ma’am?” Thomas Nicholson appeared with a small bucket of water and a cloth.

“Thanks, Thomas.” Jenny lavished upon him her warmest smile of gratitude. “Could ye hunt me up a drop of spirits, as well? It might help to bring Mr. Chisholm around.”

The boy looked doubtfully at Captain Glendenning.

“Don’t just stand there, lad.” The captain fished in his pocket and tossed the boy a heavy ring of keys. “Do as the lady says.”

“I thought the garrison from Halifax had routed out this nest of vipers,” grunted the master when young Nicholson had scurried off. “Either they made a bollocks of the job, or there’s a new crowd moved in. Lucky for us, I brought along a wee surprise for our friends.”

He nodded toward a squat little cannon lashed to the port railing. “Picked her up cheap at a foundry in Glasgow. Only a wee four-pounder, but handy enough against barracuda like that lot. Chisholm was helping haul her into place when he got hit by the musket fire. Took a clout on the head when he fell.”

Jenny pressed a wet cloth to Harris’s face. His grayish pallor alarmed her. “Shouldn’t he be waking up by now?” she asked no one in particular.

“He’ll come to when he comes to.” The captain shrugged far too casually for Jenny’s liking. “This may be as good a time as any to apply the pitch,” he added. “While he can’t feel it. That’ll bring him around, if anything will.”

It seemed to take an eternity for the cook, of all people, to prepare the hot pitch. In the meantime, Captain Glendenning ordered his men to look lively and see the barque safely through Canso before sundown. Jenny was left to keep her solitary vigil over Harris, kneeling on the hard deck with his head pillowed in her lap. Thomas Nicholson had brought her a small jug of rum, but Jenny couldn’t make up her mind to use it. Much as she wanted to satisfy herself that Harris was all right, by seeing him conscious, she shrank from the prospect of waking him in time for Captain Glendenning to cauterize his wound.

Hadn’t the poor man enough scars? Jenny mused as she ran gentle fingers over the puckered pink stripes on his firm jawline. She wondered how he had come by them. From her earliest memory of him, Harris had borne these. Only recently had she come to realize they had marred his character as much as his appearance. A warm tear rose unbidden in her eye and fell onto his cheek. Harris gave a slight twitch but did not wake.

Sailing toward the setting sun, the St. Bride edged out of Canso’s tight passage into a wider waterway. Jenny suddenly realized she’d been too preoccupied to take a good look at her new homeland.