Page 57 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

The only right thing was the hand holding his, and the other hand occasionally mopping his sweaty brow and pressing an ale-soaked rag to his lips. And eyes like the watery sea.

Chapter Fourteen

Below deck, even outside the priest hole, day and night had little meaning. Each time an engorged leech fell off Bash’s ear and rolled down his cheek or neck, Maggie noted that another couple of hours must have passed. The bells rang to change the watch, but she didn’t heed them. She only had attention for Bash.

Would removing the whole ear have been less painful? Was she prolonging his torment only to meet the same outcome in the end? Would he thank her for interfering if he had the chance, or be angry because she’d chosen for him when he’d have preferred the quickest solution?

She hoped he’d be glad, but either way, Maggie wasn’t sorry. She doubted she would ever be sorry, unless he died as the Butcher had threatened, and that she would not allow.

If the Butcher had returned to spy on her patient’s progress, she hadn’t noticed him any more than the bells. She dozed in fits and starts when Langley’s snoring would permit it, stirring every time Bash so much as twitched.

He was still running a fever, and as often as she could, Maggie rinsed a linen cloth in the bucket of cool water Langley had brought in for her to mop Bash’s clammy brow. When his eyes fluttered open, there was no recognition in them, only an agony that made her ache with second-guessing. His breaths came in rapid, shallow gasps, and once, when she leaned forward to wipe his face, he grabbed her wrist with surprising strength and begged, “Put a bullet in me.”

“Langley,” she snapped, and the boy bolted up in his hammock, completely alert. “The hashish?”

He grinned and went straight to a cupboard, quickly returning with a small, rolled cigar which he lit off a nearby candle.

“Here you go, Nav, suck that in nice and slow.”

It smelled foul, but Langley patiently held it to Bash’s parched lips, and his breathing seemed to ease after a few excruciating minutes.

When it was clear Bash had passed out again, Langley rocked back on his heels and took a drag of the tiny cigar himself. “Seems a shame to waste it,” he explained. “Good stuff, hashish. Ever tried any?” He offered it to Maggie, but she shook her head.

“No,” she said with a self-conscious laugh, wiping Bash’s hair off his forehead and smoothing the creased lines between his brows. Mercy, she hoped this treatment worked and didn’t add to the patchwork of scars he already carried.

Langley giggled to himself, enjoying the hashish. She only hoped that in his oblivion, Bash was feeling half so fine.

He would still be beautiful with or without the ear, with or without another scar, so long as he was hers.

Hers.

Even without imbibing, the medicinal smoke seemed to be turning Maggie’s own nerves to confidence. As every new leech drank its fill, the angry, purple swelling abated and the ear shrank down to size, leaving Maggie more convinced she’d done the right thing. Her plan would work because it had to.

But would it work before the Butcher or the quartermaster called time up?

When morning came, she knew it must be morning because Langley had fetched her a bowl of Roo’s infamous loblolly, and Maggie was grateful to scarf it down. After having missed at least two meals already, her stomach was burning with a ravenous hunger.

“Kind of funny, innit?” Langley said, digging into his own breakfast with gusto. “Even on the merchant ship, I ate better than home. I’m the youngest of twelve, and anyone who thinks a girl won’t throw a punch over the last crust of bread ain’t never met one of my sisters.”

Maggie smiled, trying to imagine Ellen fighting her for anything. Eleven sisters like Ellen wouldn’t be so bad, but eleven little Maggies would add up to a reign of terror. “I hope all eleven weren’t sisters.”

“No, but four was enough.”

“Are all your brothers sailors?” She said sailors, but she meant pirates.

“Mostly, though I ain’t been home in a while, mind. Ben and Charlie were ’prenticed to a ship builder. And the youngest ‘afore me was sent to the Virginia colony. But for the rest of us, it was the army or the sea.”

“I despise Red Coats,” Maggie sighed with a ferocity she hadn’t even realized she possessed. At Langley’s curious head tilt, she added, “No offense.”

He grinned. “We chose the sea.”

She nodded, marveling at how little the Scottish versus English divide seemed to matter here, aboard the ship.

“Do you miss them?” she asked. She missed Ellen and Jory something fierce and couldn’t imagine the loss of nine more siblings in the bargain.

Langley pondered the question with a wistful expression. “Not so much during mealtimes,” he concluded. “Truth, in some ways Nav here’s been more a brother to me than my real brothers ever were. He’s about the same age as Isaac there in Virginia. Better temperament, though. ‘Levi,’ he always said—that’s me Christian name—‘you’re a scab, but you’re my scab, and I’ll crush anyone tries to pick you.’”

“I never had any brothers,” Maggie admitted. “I used to wish I did, but now I’m not so sure.” She laughed, and Langley laughed with her.