Megan Shepherd - The Madman’s Daughter

Unable to resist, I tore away from Balthazar. He called after me not to look, but I felt compelled to, dragged forward by an invisible hand. I slipped quietly among the sailors, catching glimpses between their swarthy frames.

Montgomery rolled the body carefully to its back. It was a young man, a little older than me, unconscious and so battered and beaten by the sea that I couldn’t believe he had survived. His hand clutched a tattered photograph as though, in his last hours of consciousness, the image was all he’d had left to cling to.

I blinked, paralyzed by the image of that bruised hand holding a photograph. A coldness stole my breath. I had been drawn by morbid curiosity like a vulture to carnage. But this wasn’t some lifeless corpse – it was a person, with a heart and a hope. Alive.

I drifted along the outskirts, keeping my distance, almost afraid that if I stepped closer, my curiosity would once again take control of my limbs. I glimpsed a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his leg. I imagined him alone and desperate in the dinghy, tending to his wound and wondering if he was going to die out there.

Montgomery’s lips silently counted the young man’s pulse. ‘Fetch some water!’ he called.

A sailor shifted, giving me a clear look at the castaway’s face. I’d never been one to turn away from blood, but my heart twisted at the sight. A crusted and seeping gash ran down one side of his face, just below his eye. Sun blisters covered his cheeks and forehead. His salt-stained dark hair tangled like the seaweed that washed up at low tide in Brighton. His eyes were closed.

It struck me he was almost a ghost, straddling the fine line between the living and the dead. I wanted him to live, to see again whatever was so important in that photograph, as if it would make up for my morbid fascination.

The rain came harder now. A sailor pushed past me with a flask. Montgomery held it to the castaway’s lips, but he didn’t wake, so Montgomery poured the water over his face instead. A slight moan. A cough. And then the castaway jerked awake, blinking, rain streaking down his face. His wild eyes darted back and forth.

‘We found you at sea,’ Montgomery said. ‘Can you speak? What’s your name?’

But the castaway shook his head, muttering something I couldn’t make out, clutching the photograph so hard it crumpled. He grew more agitated with each breath, kicking and tearing at some invisible demon. The gash on his face reopened, and a line of dark blood rolled down his neck.

‘Calm yourself!’ Montgomery threw his weight on him. The castaway was no match for his size, but delirium made him fierce, and Montgomery had to struggle to hold him down.

‘Sea madness,’ Montgomery said. ‘Balthazar, get the chloroform.’

The castaway clawed at the deck, nearly grabbing my foot. Montgomery jerked his chin at me. ‘Get back, Juliet!’ he yelled.

But all I could do was shuffle back a few inches, wondering what was happening in the young man’s mind. He seemed to think he was in some other place. But then his eyes found mine and he stopped struggling, like the mad fog had lifted. Like he remembered something – no, recognized something. An odd sensation tickled the back of my neck. Did he recognize me? I’d never seen him before in my life. His desperation was familiar – I had only to look in a mirror to recognize that – but he was still a stranger. His lips formed a few voiceless words that drew me closer, fascinated, wanting to hear, wanting to know who he was.

‘Juliet, I said stay back! He might be dangerous.’

Montgomery’s voice broke the spell and I tore my eyes away. All the sailors were staring at me. I shrugged hesitantly, as curious as they were.

Balthazar stumbled up beside me, clutching a glass bottle and cloth soaked with chloroform. The castaway took one look at Balthazar’s hulking form and started straining again. He twisted out of Montgomery’s grip and slammed a fist so hard against the deck that the weathered boards splintered. My lips fell open. That sort of strength came only with powerful delusions. He didn’t know what was happening, I realized. A part of him had slipped away out there in the open sea. He let out one hoarse yell before Montgomery thrust the cloth over his mouth and nose and he slumped to the deck.

The captain sank to a knee to rifle through the castaway’s pockets. Montgomery frowned as he handed the cloth back to Balthazar and glanced at me, a question in his eyes: What was it about me that had made the castaway go silent?

But I was as much at a loss.

‘Might as well pitch him back overboard,’ the captain said, turning out only empty pockets. ‘You saw him. Mad. Can’t have a madman hanging about.’

‘If you throw him overboard, that’s murder,’ Montgomery said tensely. ‘And I doubt you’d be saying that if you’d found money in his pockets.’

‘Ain’t murder if he can’t pay.’

‘You’re not throwing him overboard.’ Montgomery’s voice was hard.

The captain sat up, eyeing him with something like a challenge. ‘You going to take him with you, then, boy?’

Montgomery hesitated, giving Balthazar an uneasy glance before turning back to the captain. ‘Look at his buttons – silver. He comes from wealth. Give him a few days to regain consciousness, and I’m sure he’ll offer to repay you generously.’

Balthazar wrapped an arm around my shoulders and started to lead me away. My feet went with him as if of their own accord, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from the castaway. The gash across his face, the bruises on his bare arms from being tossed about at sea. He seemed so eager to cling to a slip of life. He was a survivor, like me.

Montgomery attended to the castaway day and night. A rumor circulated that the young man didn’t remember his own name, or how he’d been shipwrecked, or if he was the only survivor. The captain lost patience and threatened to throw him overboard again, but Montgomery slipped the captain the last of our coins in exchange for setting up a cot for him in the galley. It was one of several places on the ship I wasn’t allowed, but after a few days without seeing Montgomery or hearing more than snatches of gossip about the castaway, I couldn’t stay away.

The galley was as dark and damp as the inside of a rotting cellar. The only light came from the cooking fire and a few lit candles. The sailors had laid the young man next to the chimney, where the bricks would keep him warm, but in sleep he looked as cold as death.

Montgomery glanced up when I entered. We both knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. Rather than scold me, he handed me a dirty cloth and nodded toward a copper pot on the hearth. ‘Boil this. Add a few drops of chlorine to the water. The vial’s next to the fire.’

Our hands grazed as I took the cloth. My skin still tingled with the memory of our fingers intertwined.

‘I hear you’re quite the doctor,’ I said, adding a few drops of chlorine to the pot. Steam billowed in the dank space around me.

Montgomery carefully peeled back a bandage on the young man’s leg, airing the wound. It oozed with angry white pus. ‘Hardly. Your father says I’m useless.’ He reached for a bottle of Elk Hill brandy and splashed some onto the scraped flesh. The castaway moaned but didn’t wake.

The boiling water tumbled over itself in great bubbles, and I submerged the soiled cloth in the pot with a wooden spoon. ‘My father used to call everyone useless, from the scullery maid to the Dean of King’s College. You’re far from useless.’ I stirred the pot slowly, throwing glances at the castaway’s face in the candlelight. ‘How is he?’

‘He’ll live.’ Montgomery picked up a needle and a length of black thread. ‘If we’d found him a day later, maybe hours, he might not have been so lucky. I’d hoped this would have healed, but it got infected. Not a damn clean thing around here.’ He pinched the skin around the scrape and punctured it with the needle.