The House of the Four Winds: Book One of One Dozen Daughters Read online

  “Well, I can’t put Dobbs in chains,” Dominick said exasperatedly. “If anyone would have stood for that, we would have set him adrift with the others.”

  “You could have him watched,” Clarice said quietly. “Him, and the men who voted to make him captain. I am certain Mr. Emerson could tell you their names.”

  “All we need is another—”

  Just then Jerrold Robinson entered with a mop and a sloshing bucket. “Begging your pardon, Captain Moryet”—Jerrold was unable to stifle his grin of delight—“but I didn’t know you and the other gentleman would be here. Kayin says I’m to scrub the deck right and proper, until anything that doesn’t shine, squeaks.” He beamed at Clarice, then leaned his mop against the bulkhead and tossed the contents of his bucket to the deck. In a moment, the cabin was awash with seawater.

  “Very … efficient,” Clarice said, watching Dominick struggle to keep a straight face.

  “Indeed,” Dominick agreed. “And we will leave you to your work. I shall be in the common room if you need anything, Jerrold.”

  “Yes, sir, Captain Moryet!” Jerrold said enthusiastically.

  “I think he believes he is in the Royal Navy,” Dominick said, when they were out in the corridor.

  “I think he must enjoy your captaincy more than you do,” Clarice agreed.

  “It is an office I had hoped to attain by more legitimate means.” Dominick gestured for Clarice to precede him.

  “I know you are tired of being asked the question, but now you are captain, and—” She broke off as they passed one of the sailors. Now I shall have a chance to learn everyone’s name, she thought randomly. And make friends without fearing I am earning someone a flogging.

  Dominick opened the door to the common room. It was still enough before dinner that it was deserted. She thought of David Appleby with a brief pang of sorrow. But at least if his life had been a misery, his last days had been spent in gentle hands with gentle care.

  “I would like—” Dominick broke off, looking stricken. “I am going to need a cabin boy, I suppose. I was about to say I would like a mug of tea, but I can hardly go to Mr. Emerson and demand one.”

  “He would chase you out of his galley for lèse-majesté,” Clarice agreed solemnly. “And part your hair with a ladle into the bargain. Why not ask him if he will give up Jerrold to be your cabin boy? I think Jerrold would be delighted to enhance your dignity among the crew. And it is certainly a step up from … scullion?”

  “I think I’d rather have a less eager acolyte,” Dominick said, laughing. “Even if it is only a temporary post.”

  “How so?” It seemed that Dominick was finally going to broach the subject that she desperately wanted to discuss: What do we do now?

  “We have very few choices,” Dominick said seriously. “We’re outlaws now. There’s no real way to disguise Asesino. Or any of us, really.”

  “But—”

  Dominick shook his head, as if he’d already guessed her next words. “Say the longboat never makes port. Say we sail into harbor in Cibola, and Reverend Dobbs never says a word about what happened here. Say that all our crew walk free and take berths on other ships, as I would urge them to do if I dared. We would be safe only for a little while. When the Asesino is reported missing—as she will be in time, for the Cornhill Society will investigate her disappearance before paying out the assurance money—anyone discovered to have been of her crew on this last voyage will be questioned closely. A record is kept at the Charterhouse of our roster—it is one of the documents a ship must provide to be indemnified. When a ship vanishes, the souls lost with her go upon a watch list. Once someone who sailed upon our “lost ship” is found, he will be made to tell all he knows. And in that moment, we are all outlaws. Hunted men. If we are not to turn pirate in truth, our only hope is either to find a haven so far from the Cornhill Society that we’re never discovered, or—”

  “Or find a treasure great enough to convince the Admiralty to pardon you all,” Clarice said firmly. “It can certainly be done. Pardons are bought and sold like turnips—or so I hear.”

  “Yes, perhaps,” Dominick said gently, though she could tell he did not believe it was possible. “But meanwhile, we can’t simply sail into Cibola, so this evening I will consult our charts and choose a new destination. If nothing else, we can find some deserted isle where we can lay up for a while and decide our fates. All we need is—”

  Suddenly the door flew open. Dominick and Clarice both sprang to their feet.

  “Dom—I mean, Captain,” Kayin said.

  “Close the door,” Clarice said sharply. “If it’s bad news, keep it quiet.”

  “It won’t be quiet for long,” Kayin said grimly, doing as she said. “I’ve told Geordie I’ll sew his mouth up with sail twine if he breathes a word, but—”

  “About what?” Clarice asked.

  “He was doing an inventory of stores,” Dominick said, dawning horror in his voice.

  “That he was,” Kayin said. “Best you come and see for yourself.”

  * * *

  Clarice had never been down in the hold of the ship. The floor beneath her feet was faintly damp and covered with straw. All around, in the moist, odiferous darkness, stood wooden crates, and barrels, and chests; anonymous cloth-shrouded bundles and piles of canvas and burlap sacks. They were stowed in labyrinthine balks and spires, secured with nets and straps and pulley ropes.

  I shall never look at goods in a shop in the same way again, Clarice thought. Now that I know what they went through to get there.

  Kayin and Dominick carried lanterns. As they reached where Geordie stood, the light of the lantern Kayin carried fell upon the new purser’s face. Clarice felt her heart sink at his woebegone expression.

  “Found four more like it, Kayin,” Geordie said forlornly. “Didn’t have the heart to go on.” He gestured to a tall pile of sacks. Clarice could see that several had been cut open. Sand had spilled from the breaches across the deck.

  “That should be our flour,” Dominick said quietly.

  “Aye,” Kayin said. “And this”—he kicked the side of a barrel, which rang hollowly—“should be salt pork. I wonder how many of them were in on it?”

  “In on what?” Clarice asked blankly.

  “It is a common enough practice, Clarence,” Dominick said. “The captain, or the purser, takes the money he is allotted to buy provisions, pockets most of it, and buys bad or meager supplies. To make it look as if he is not doing that, containers full of wood or sand or sawdust are loaded in place of what he should have bought.”

  “But can’t the crew complain to the owner?” she asked.

  Kayin laughed harshly. “As if the likes of us would be let to see him! Oh, they like their gold well enough—so long as they don’t have to see where it came from. But there’s worse.”

  He led Dominick to a line of enormous casks that were lashed to the bulkhead. The most vital provision a ship carried was water, for the desalinizing charms that could turn a barrel of seawater into a barrel of fresh were prohibitively costly. “Green wood.”

  Even Clarice could see that the barrels were leaking.

  “How—” Dominick swallowed hard. “How much is left?”

  Kayin met his eyes squarely. “Enough for a fortnight, if we go on half rations. After that, we must have water.”

  There is no landfall to be made within that time, Clarice thought, feeling suddenly cold.

  Command was like rulership, and her father had always said a crown was a heavy weight to bear. In that moment she saw the truth of it, as Dominick’s shoulders sagged momentarily with the realization that Kayin was waiting for orders.

  Then Dominick straightened and smiled. “Then we have no problem at all,” he said easily, “for the destination I have in mind—I was showing it to you earlier today upon the chart, Clarence, if you recall?—is barely a week’s sail from our present position. And I dare to swear we can reach it faster if we try. There is no need at all to go
on half rations, though I will tell Dr. Chapman and the others that we must save all our freshwater for drinking.”

  She saw the fear in Kayin’s and Geordie’s faces ease and made sure her own countenance gave nothing away.

  “We’ll be there before you know it, Cap’n,” Geordie said. “But … what am I to do…?”

  “Inventory what there is,” Dominick said. “Make a list. There’s a few days’ worth topside, is there not?”

  “Aye, Mr. Emerson’s most particular about having his victuals to hand,” Geordie said eagerly. “Three days’ worth. Maybe four. He was always—” Geordie broke off for a moment. “He was always fighting with Mr. Foster about it,” he finished quietly.

  And now we know why, Clarice thought. And I imagine the sailors Mr. Foster sent down to fetch Mr. Emerson’s provisions went into the sea this morning—one way or another.

  “Then we won’t starve and we won’t thirst,” Dominick said with firm cheer. “If Mr. Emerson needs anything from stores, one of you two fetch it for him. I shall make an announcement when I’ve had time to go over Geordie’s tally, but in the meantime, I won’t have anyone panicking. So I must ask you to keep what you have discovered to yourselves.”

  “Oh, that should be a simple matter,” Kayin said darkly.

  * * *

  Supper in the captain’s mess that night was an unreal occasion.

  Gone was the atmosphere of tension as Sprunt swilled his liquor and Dr. Chapman and Reverend Dobbs baited one another with exquisite indirection. Tonight—despite the discovery in the hold—the atmosphere was one of celebration.

  In honor of the occasion, Clarice had come dressed in “Mr. Swann’s” best: embroidered silk weskit and fine lace-trimmed shirt instead of her plain and serviceable everyday broadcloth and linen. She’d even unpacked her best coat, the one of bottle-green velvet with gold silk lacings and yellow silk facings.

  Dressing had taken her longer than she’d expected, for the coat had needed brushing and the lace had needed careful handling. She had mourned the absence of a decent mirror, but the one she carried with her was tiny and her cabin had none. When she was finally as presentable as she thought she could make herself, she departed for the captain’s mess and found she was the last to arrive.

  The lamps were lit, and the compartment looked just as it always had. Kayin and Geordie looked a little uncomfortable at their sudden promotion. And one soul who should have been there was missing.

  “Where is Reverend Dobbs?” Clarice asked as she settled into her place.

  There was a brief silence.

  “Our minister of God has been called to a period of quiet meditation in his quarters,” Dr. Chapman said blandly. “I do not believe he will be joining us at table for the duration of the voyage.” He attempted to accompany this speech with a gesture, caught himself, and winced.

  “You locked him up?” Clarice blurted. Hadn’t Dominick said just this afternoon that he could take no action against Dobbs?

  “Caught him down in the hold,” Kayin said bluntly.

  “I suppose all of us know—” Dickon broke off as the door opened to admit their dinner, carried, on this special occasion, by Mr. Emerson himself, accompanied by Jerrold Robinson.

  “There you are, Cap’n,” Mr. Emerson said proudly as he set the soup tureen on the table. “All right and tight. And a chicken to go on with. On account of the occasion.”

  “And the crew?” Dominick asked.

  Mr. Emerson beamed. “A pleasure, sir. Good thick stew and honest biscuit—no more of that gruel! Plenty of meat in ’er, too. And a double ration of grog, just as Geordie here ordered. Or p’rhaps, I should be calling him Mr. Lamb now? Him being an officer now.”

  Dr. Chapman chuckled.

  Geordie blushed. “Oh, no, Mr. Emerson. My mother would say it was a liberty. I couldn’t possibly.”

  “You must feed the crew as you would feed us, Mr. Emerson,” Dominick said. “I’ll have no one under my care go hungry if I can prevent it. I’ve been hungry myself,” he added, in such a low tone Clarice did not think anyone was meant to hear.

  “Anyone does a better day’s work on a full belly,” Kayin said, sounding satisfied.

  Once Mr. Emerson had left, Jerrold poured the wine. Kayin regarded his glass with suspicion, then drank its contents down in one gulp as if it were medicine, clearly trying not to make a face.

  “Latch the door, Dickon,” Dominick said quietly, and Dickon got up quickly and barred the door. Once he had seated himself again, Dominick resumed, “I am sorry to bring up such subjects at our meal, but we all know our situation—and I may rely, I am sure on Jerrold’s discretion…”

  “Oh, yes, sir, Captain Moryet!” Jerrold said.

  “I am entirely certain the good reverend knows it as well,” Dr. Chapman said with grim relish. “And knew it before he made his ill-advised journey to the nether regions of our fair vessel to ‘discover’ it.”

  Dominick cleared his throat. “That is not the issue at hand,” he said tactfully. “There is a deeper mystery here. As you all know, it is another three weeks before we could have hoped to reach Cibola. Geordie tells me our food would have been gone before that—it would have run out already, I think, if not for the starvation rations the crew has been kept on—but the thing that concerns me is the water. It, too, would have run out at least a week before we would have reached our purported destination.”

  “This is, as you all know, my first time at sea, and while I cannot claim to be a sailor, I am not a fool,” Clarice said slowly. If Dominick did not want her to mention this, he could interrupt her before she continued, but he didn’t. “Sprunt never meant to sail to Cibola at all. He meant a mutiny to occur—and he timed it pretty neatly, too. Dominick, if you had died that night instead of him, what would have happened next?”

  Dominick thought carefully for long moments. “The mutiny would have failed, I think. We were hard-pressed already when you came to our timely rescue. Captain Sprunt would have resumed his command and executed the surviving mutineers.”

  “Which would have been most of the crew,” Dr. Chapman said dryly, reaching for his wineglass with his good hand.

  “He might pardon a few,” Dickon said. “Asesino can be sailed with perhaps half the crew she carries—as we now have to. We must all pray the weather continues clear,” he added with a faint grim smile.

  “And his navigator would be dead,” Clarice pointed out. “And there would be no one to wonder at the course he took. You would not know, would you, Dickon?”

  “Not in the least,” Dickon said promptly.

  “And no one would breathe a word of reproach against such a lucky captain.” Privately Clarice thought that the catalog of disasters he’d survived didn’t make the late Samuel Sprunt lucky so much as a lightning rod for misfortune. But there was no reason now to say so.

  “Only he never meant to make port in Cibola and tell that tale,” Dr. Chapman said.

  “No,” Dominick said slowly. “He meant to go precisely where I am taking us.” He paused for a moment, then smiled. “And that answers one question. Wherever we are bound, there is both food and water there. So we may all rest easier.”

  “Except we’re all pirates now,” Geordie burst out suddenly. “My mother won’t like that. She won’t like that at all.”

  “And I suppose you’re planning to write home and tell her so?” Kayin asked with heavy sarcasm. “It’s plain to see there’s no room in your head for common sense—it’s too full of facts and figures.”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Dominick said firmly, as Geordie opened his mouth to vigorously defend himself. “After we have made landfall.”

  * * *

  The talk continued through dinner—chicken and potatoes, a side dish of vinegar cabbage, buttered carrots, and pickles—most of it to do with the ship. Kayin spoke of this thing and that thing that must be mended, improved, or changed. Though Clarice could follow few of the particulars of their discussion
, she hardly cared. Even Dr. Chapman offered suggestions, and if they were not to his taste, Kayin was not shy about telling him so: “—for it is plain to me you’ve been an officer all your life,” he said.

  That made Dominick grin and make some incomprehensible joke that made Kayin shout with surprised laughter.

  When the dishes were cleared away, the port and the walnuts were set out, and for a change Clarice did not rise to her feet to leave. Even facing an uncertain future and sailing to an unknown destination, the atmosphere around the table was so much freer and cleaner than it had been when Sprunt had presided that she wanted to bask in it a while longer.

  What a great difference, for good or ill, one man can make. It is something Papa always said, but it is so very different when you see it for yourself.

  Dominick called for a pitcher of ale as well—to Geordie’s and Kayin’s obvious relief—and said they might smoke if they wished. Both Kayin and Geordie began enthusiastically filling their pipes; Dickon extracted a plain silver snuffbox from his pockets and took several pinches, sneezing violently after each. Clarice reached into her cuff for her cigar case, one of the many props she used to turn herself into Clarence, for the chiefest art of disguise was misdirection. She offered the case to Dominick, who shook his head with a smile.

  “It’s a vile, disgusting, dirty habit that shortens men’s lives,” Dr. Chapman said sourly.

  Clarice stood to take a light from one of the lamps above the table. “Spoken like a true man of medicine,” she teased, puffing the narrow cylinder alight. “You would have us all living on nuts and berries if you could.” She allowed her mouth to fill with the bitter, fragrant smoke, then blew it out. She’d come to enjoy the taste—so long as she didn’t actually inhale it. The one time she’d tried that, she’d coughed until she’d gagged.

  “You’d all be healthier for it,” the doctor grumbled, though he reached for the port at the same moment.

  The port had made only two circuits of the table when Dominick got to his feet. Everyone else rose as well, just as they had for Captain Sprunt, and Clarice thought Dominick looked a bit taken aback to be receiving the same deference. Then he rallied and said, “Gentlemen, I leave you to your pleasures. As for me, it has been a long day and it will be an early morning, and so I bid you good night.”