The Madman’s Daughter. Megan Shepherd

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       NINE

      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.

      I memorized his gestures as he stitched the wound closed. His movements were like a long-acquired habit, something he did so often, his hands could practically think on their own. When he was younger, he used to build fires in my room’s small fireplace with the same certainty of action. For Montgomery, work came as naturally as an afterthought – it was keeping up his strong front that required concentration.

      ‘Has he been awake?’ I asked.

      ‘Off and on.’

      ‘Did he tell you what happened to him?’

      Montgomery started on the next stitch, tugging the skin tight. He paused to toss me the old bandage, which I added to the pot. The billowing water turned a murky shade of brown. ‘He remembers a little more each day. Yesterday he told me he was a passenger on the Viola, bound for Australia, but it took on water from a cracked hull some twenty days ago.’

      ‘Twenty days! Was he the only survivor?’

      ‘He gets confused when I ask questions. But in his sleep, he says as much.’ His eyes flashed. ‘He’s asked about you.’

      I nearly knocked over the boiling pot. ‘Me? What did he ask?’

      ‘Who you were. Where you were going. What a pretty girl was doing on this kind of ship. It seems you made quite an impression.’ There was a flicker of jealousy in Montgomery’s voice that made me focus on the pot, studying the rising steam.

      ‘What did you tell him?’

      ‘The truth,’ he said. ‘You’ve come to find your estranged father.’

      ‘So СКАЧАТЬ