The Madman’s Daughter. Megan Shepherd

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СКАЧАТЬ bit through the thread. ‘No, he isn’t dangerous.’ He stood, wiping his hands on a rag, and came to the hearth. Steam made sweat bead on his forehead. I was suddenly aware of the intense heat in the small galley, and that we were, with the exception of the sleeping castaway, alone. ‘He’s the gentleman type. You saw the silver buttons. Probably never had a true day of hard work in his whole life.’

      ‘Still, he survived a shipwreck.’

      Montgomery brushed his hair back, studying me with those deep blue eyes. ‘What has you so interested in him?’

      The tone in Montgomery’s voice made me stir the water faster, aware of the red creeping up my neck. Lucy would have said something coy. She believed the way to keep a man interested was to make him jealous, but Montgomery wasn’t mine to begin with, and he had no good reason to be jealous of a half-dead castaway, silver buttons or not.

      ‘He had a photograph,’ I said into the pot. ‘Did you find it?’

      Montgomery reached to the shelf behind me, between the larder and block of salt. A trace smell of spiced brandy clung to his hands. He pulled down a scrap of crumpled paper and handed it to me. The photograph, waterlogged and torn beyond recognition.

      I could only make out an overcast brown sky, the vague shape of people. I glanced at the castaway. What had it meant to him?

      ‘The helmsman spotted debris in the water this morning,’ Montgomery said. ‘We’re getting close to the island. It’s just a matter of days now.’ His voice held the relief of reaching home after a long voyage. But there was an undercurrent of worry. ‘I don’t like the thought of leaving him here, especially without a doctor aboard. That wound will get re-infected without treatment. And if he can’t convince the captain he can pay, once we leave there’s no telling what will happen. They don’t owe him anything.’

      The castaway muttered something in his sleep and tossed around in the cot. I brushed my hair back, stealing a glance at the black stitches in his leg. ‘You want to take him with us,’ I said, reading Montgomery’s thoughts.

      His jaw tensed indecisively, but he shook his head. ‘It crossed my mind, but no. Your father doesn’t allow strangers on the island. There’s nothing to be done for him.’

      ‘He’s been in a shipwreck. Father will take pity on him.’

      Montgomery shook his head harder. ‘It was a foolish idea. Forget I said anything.’ He took the pot off the grate and set it on the cook’s table. ‘Watch him for a moment, if you would. I have to check on the animals.’

      ‘What if he wakes?’

      A corner of his mouth turned up. ‘Say hello.’

      And he left me with the castaway, the wooden spoon, and my thoughts drifting in and out of the swirling steam.

      A few days later I stood on the sun-bleached deck, squinting into the rigging, chewing on a fingernail. I was studying the monkey. It studied me back. Bribing the captain to spare the monkey’s life had been easy – apparently he valued a few bottles of Father’s brandy over being right. But getting the creature down was now my problem. And with our arrival imminent, I was running low on time.

      ‘Monkey, look!’ I held up my father’s silver pocket watch. One of the crew had told me monkeys liked reflective objects, but I dangled the watch for the better part of an hour with no results.

      Balthazar and Montgomery chuckled behind me.

      ‘Be quiet!’ I chided. ‘You frighten it, Balthazar. And you too, Montgomery. It remembers you wanted to shoot it.’

      ‘Have you tried a banana?’ Montgomery offered.

      I scowled. ‘I haven’t got a banana. And unless you do, clear out!’

      Laughing, he went back to tending the caged animals. I folded my arms, puzzled and frustrated. I’d been methodical in my attempts to get the monkey down. First I tried setting a trap, then luring it into a cage with food, and then climbing into the rigging until the boatswain and the whole first watch tried to look up my skirt. Nothing had worked.

      I slid the watch into my pocket and watched the monkey swing effortlessly from bowsprit to boom, graceful as a bird. Its skill was astounding. It never missed, never hesitated, never doubted. I was overcome with an urge to try myself, though I knew it was impossible. I’d learned enough from Montgomery’s lessons and Father’s books to know we weren’t built for climbing and swinging, though humans and monkeys had the same basic limb structure. The only major differences were the double-curved spine on a human and the flexible ligaments in a primate’s feet. Both easily alterable through surgery. My mind wandered, curious whether science would ever find a way to make us as graceful as animals.

      ‘Don’t you wish you could do that?’ I called to Montgomery over my shoulder. ‘It’s like it’s flying.’

      There was no answer. I turned, but Montgomery had gone below. In his place was the castaway; awake, upright, watching me from across the deck. Surprise drenched me like a splash of cold water.

      The sun blisters on his face had faded, though the gash on the side of his face was a constant reminder of the shipwreck. He’d cut the tangles out of his dark hair, and it now fell just below his chin, unfashionable but at least clean. Only a whisper remained of that haunting apparition, and now he was merely flesh and blood and bone and bruises. He looked naturally lean, so his gauntness was even more pronounced, yet there was something undeniably strong about him.

      He waved.

      I hesitated, and waved back.

       TEN

      The next afternoon I found a lidded bowl full of live worms and roaches outside my door with a note written in a gentleman’s handwriting. It wasn’t in Montgomery’s hand, and none of the sailors could write, so it took little reasoning to determine who it was from.

      Monkeys adore insects, it said.

      I went above deck, set the teeming bowl under the rigging, and removed the lid. One roach saw its chance to escape and crawled up the side, but I flicked it back in. I hid behind some crates, settling in to wait, but heard the sound of the ceramic bowl moving within only a minute. The monkey was so engrossed in the bowl that he didn’t even notice when I sneaked up behind him and slipped a collar around his neck. I let him finish eating before putting him in his new cage.

      Monkey secured, I found the castaway sitting in the corner of the forecastle deck outside the boatswain’s hold, his back to me, leaning over an old backgammon board balanced on top of a barrel. He was studying the game’s red and black tokens by the fading sunlight. They were set all wrong. He didn’t seem aware of the sailors throwing him angry glances for taking up space on the deck.

      I studied him as carefully as he studied the game. Despite the gash along his face, there was something undeniably attractive about him. Not handsome in a classic way like Montgomery, but more subtle, deeper, as if his true handsomeness lay in the story behind those bruises and that crumpled photograph. Something to be discovered, slowly, if one was clever enough to decipher it.

      ‘They say you’re mad,’ I said.

      His СКАЧАТЬ