Song of the Silent Harp (39 page)

“Our fares are paid,” he said, his voice trembling with resentment. “We're
entitled to a doctor, and that's all I'm asking!”

“You're entitled to be strung up on the ratlines,” retorted Schell, pointing to the tarred ropes used as a ladder, “if you so much as open your mouth once more. As it is, you've earned yourself a night in the wheelhouse.”

“Oh, give over!” Leary blurted out. “I was going below tonight anyway, to check the lot of them. I'll go with him now instead of waiting.”

For an instant he thought Schell would refuse, would stick to his intention of locking the boy up. A muscle tightened at the corner of one eye, and the nasty scar seemed to pulse and blaze. But at last he gave a short nod of dismissal, telling the sailor, “Let him go. There's more important work to be done than wasting time with an Irish beggar boy.”

“Come on, you little fool!” Leary snapped, now angry with himself for stepping in. His impulsive defense of the boy would serve neither of them well.

Taking the lad by the arm, he half dragged him back up the deck, grumbling all the way. “Why would you be fretting yourself so over a stinking Englishman is what I'd like to know? What is he to you? Not worth incurring the wrath of a man like Schell, I can tell you.”

“Mr. Whittaker saved our lives!” The boy twisted in an attempt to tug himself free from Leary's grasp. “We can do no less for him.”

Leary looked at him. “What you'd best be doing is staying out of the captain's way from now on unless you've a mind to end up at the end of a lash! He makes no distinction for age.”

“He has no right to flog a passenger! I know that much!”

“You know nothing at all!”
Leary shouted, again grabbing him by the arm and bringing him to a stop.
“Nothing!
Schell is the law on this ship, and you are no more than a flyspeck to him. If you value your skin, you'll stay out of his sight!”

The boy was quiet for a moment, his piercing blue eyes making Leary increasingly uncomfortable.

“What kind of a ship
is
this?” he asked in a low voice. “Not what we were told, that much is certain.”

Leary flared, tightening his grasp on the lad's arm. “I don't know what you were told, boy, but you'd best listen to what
I'm
telling you. You'll do neither yourself nor your family any good by making trouble. Stay quiet and stay out of the way if you hope to see America.”

Leary studied the boy for a moment more, relaxing his grip slightly but still holding on to him with care.

“All right, come on now,” he ordered, somewhat mollified as he again started to tug the lad along beside him. “If you want me to have a look at
your Englishman, give me no more grief. And if you've more than a pea for a brain between your ears, you'll not show your face outside steerage again until you're told. This ship is a dangerous place for meddlesome children.”

The boy's gaze stabbed at Leary's conscience. For an instant he felt as if his defenses were being cut away, layer by layer, and his soul laid bare. Something in those eyes belied the youthful countenance, something old and wise beyond the lad's years.

Chilled by the thought that he had been seen for what he was, Leary gave the boy's arm a vicious yank and quickened his pace still more.

Nora pressed her clasped hands against her lips, her gaze going back and forth between the scowling physician and the semiconscious Evan Whittaker.

In his delirium, the Englishman had struggled so fiercely against the surgeon that Daniel had to help hold him down.

“Please, Doctor, can you give him something for the pain?” Nora ventured uncertainly, somewhat intimidated by the doctor's rough impatience.

Ignoring her, he straightened, his shoulders bent slightly to keep his head from grazing the ceiling. For a moment he continued to stare down at Whittaker's shoulder, his lined face twisted into a taut, resentful grimace.

“There's nothing for it but to take the arm.”

The words were spoken with such a resentment it almost sounded as if he were indicting Whittaker for his failure to heal.

The room swayed. Nora stared at the surgeon, then Whittaker.
“No…oh, no!
Please, there must be another way…some medicine—”

“I said I'll have to amputate!”
snapped the surgeon, still not looking at anyone but Whittaker. “It's his arm or his life.”

“But he's not aware enough to even have a say in it—”

The physician turned to look at her. “He
has
no say in it, woman, if he wants to live!”

Dear Lord, all this is happening to him because of us! It's so unfair; he saved our lives, and now…this?

“If you…if you amputate, will he live?” Daniel John's voice sounded thin, tremulous. Nora saw the dismay in her heart mirrored in her son's eyes.

The surgeon's lower lip rolled down even farther. “I can't promise that. He might live if I take the arm. But he'll die for certain if I
don't!”

Doesn't he care? Whittaker might be a stranger to him, but he is a doctor, after all.

Nora stepped closer to Whittaker, looking down on him. His face was tracked with perspiration and grime, etched with pain. She felt ill. Ill and sad. And guilty.

He did it for us. It's because of us this is happening to him.

“I'll have to go and get my instruments,” Dr. Leary said. “We'd best get to it right away. He's in bad shape.”

“Just be sure that's
all
you get. You'll be sober when you operate on him.”

Nora's head shot up at Daniel John's sharp words. The surgeon whipped around to face him, eyes flashing.

“I saw the shape you were in when you treated his wound.” The lad's voice was as hard as any man's. “You were
drunk!
I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't your fault the wound went bad.”

“Why, you!”

“You know I'm right!” Daniel John stood, stepping out from Whittaker's bunk to face the surgeon. “I'm only asking for your word that you'll come back sober. He's important to us.”

“He's English,” the surgeon sneered.

“He's our
friend,”
countered the boy. “He saved our lives. Now you will save his.”

Nora stared in wonder as the surgeon's angry glare slowly wilted, then dropped away entirely.

His shoulders sagged, his face went slack, and then he gave a short nod. “See to him until I get back,” he muttered gruffly. “I won't be long.”

As soon as the doctor walked away, Nora let go the tears she'd been choking back. Daniel John came to her, pulling her gently into his arms.

She could feel her son's trembling as she wept against his shoulder, but his arms were strong and his voice still steady. “At least this way, he has a better chance to live, Mother. That's the important thing—that he live.”

Wetting his shoulder with her tears, Nora desperately hoped that Evan Whittaker would feel the same when he awakened.

34

I hear all night as through a storm
Hoarse voices calling, calling
My name upon the wind.

J
AMES
C
LARENCE
M
ANGAN
(1803–1849)

M
organ Fitzgerald stood in the middle of his cell, wondering why the gaol was so uncommonly quiet tonight.

For more than an hour he had heard none of Cummins the gaoler's vigorous cursing, no prisoner complaints, no rattling of chains or slamming of doors.

It was as dark as it was quiet. Even the candle that usually lighted the corridor seemed to have been forgotten.

Outside, the wind set up a mournful wail, and Morgan shivered. A breath of dread whispered at the back of his neck—from the keening of the wind or the cold of the cell, he couldn't say.

Not for the first time since being locked up, he thought of the flask he had once carried. He'd given up the drink years before, while still a young man, once he saw himself headed down the same road as his father. Tonight, though, he thought he would not mind a taste or two.

He smiled grimly in the darkness. Had he known back then that his choices ran to dying with a noose around his neck or a tumbler in his hand, he might not have been so quick to smash the flask.

He was exceedingly bored. The candle he'd managed to badger from Cummins had burned itself up last evening, so he couldn't see to read or write. This would have been bad enough in itself, but it was more vexing than it might have been, thanks to that sly priest, Joseph Mahon.

The man had slipped a worn copy of the Scriptures inside his belongings. On the cover was fastened a note.

Now Joseph knew him well enough to know he could never resist a good tale. His vague message had been meant to pique Morgan's curiosity, and so it had.

Morgan,
the note had read,
there's a tale inside about a foolish fellow who thought he could escape God by running in the opposite direction. More than a little like you, I should imagine. I thought perhaps you might want to see for yourself the lengths to which our Lord will go to get our attention and change our course. His name was Jonah, by the way, if you care to look him up…

Morgan knew the story of Jonah, of course, but, partly to appease Joseph and partly out of idle interest, he had read it again.

And again.

Even now he found himself wanting to read it once more, at length. Something about Jonah and his great fish captured Morgan's attention in an odd sort of way.

At times, like now, he even found himself musing that this cell was not unlike the fish's belly—cold and wet and dark.

At any rate, he was eager for Cummins to bring his evening meal so he could nag him for another candle.

In the meantime, he wondered where the irascible rat who had become his nighttime companion was hiding himself.

Oliver,
Morgan had named him, in memory of Cromwell, of course. And wasn't the dull-witted rodent nearly as predictable as old Oliver himself had reportedly been?

Each evening just after Cummins left Morgan's plate, the rat would slink out of its hole and actually try to beat him to his supper.

For the first two or three days, Morgan had let the creature have the offensive mess in its entirety, for he could not stomach it. At that rate, however, he would have ended up too weak to attend his own hanging, and so he determined to teach the greedy Oliver some manners, making him wait until he himself arrived at the last few bites and set the plate to the floor.

Either the rat had tired of his paltry leavings, or else the gruel had finally killed him off. Morgan suspected the gruel.

The cursed tooth had begun to ache again this afternoon. Morgan wished he had the stomach to yank it out, but the thing was a piece of himself, and these days he was not eager to part with even a rotting tooth. If nothing else, the pain was a reminder that he was still alive.

He heard the jingle of keys and turned. The door opened to frame both Cummins, the gaoler, and Joseph Mahon, the priest, in the flickering glow from the candle Cummins held.

In the dim, weaving light the men's faces took on an eerie pall, giving them an almost spectral appearance. The gaoler's heavy-jowled face was set in a fierce, relentless expression, while the priest stared at Morgan with a peculiar, speculative look in his eye.

Morgan met his stare with a questioning look of his own, then turned to Cummins.

His shoulders tightened instinctively as the cold finger of doom began a slow descent down his backbone.

The question no longer seemed to be whether Whittaker would survive the amputation of his arm, but whether he would live long enough for the amputation to take place.

Daniel watched the Englishman with anxious eyes, his own face flushed with dread of what was to come. Whittaker had not spoken for over an hour, other than to moan or mumble something entirely incoherent.

Much to Daniel's relief, the doctor had returned in a short time, sober. With him he brought a number of ominous-looking medical instruments, the sight of which had made Daniel's mother quickly turn her head away.

Whittaker lay on a rough wooden table at the end of the steerage compartment. The surgeon, an apron bound around him, had just returned from scrubbing his hands in a bowl of hot water, water he had taken time to heat before returning. He snapped at a number of inquisitive onlookers, chasing them off to their own quarters with a string of curses and threats.

Now he stood, studying Whittaker. After a moment he raised his eyes to look first at Daniel, then at his mother.

“One of you will have to stay and help,” he said shortly.

Daniel's heart slammed hard against his ribcage. He looked at his mother's ashen face, swallowed, and said, “I'll stay.”

He didn't miss the pool of relief that instantly welled up in his mother's eyes. But, pressing her lips into a tight line, she shook her head. “No, Daniel John, I will stay. You—”

“Mother,” he interrupted, “I'm going to be a surgeon, remember? This is something I will have to do myself one day. I will stay with Whittaker.”

Their eyes held briefly; then she gave a slight nod and backed away, retreating to a nearby place against the hull.

“If he starts to wake up, give him as many drops of this as he can manage.”

Dr. Leary's graveled voice jerked Daniel's attention back to the table and Whittaker. Taking the small bottle the surgeon handed him, he asked, “What is it?”

“Laudanum. Opium. It'll ease the pain some.”

“Some? Don't you have anything stronger?”

The surgeon glanced up from assembling his instruments on a tray beside the table. “Even if I did, I wouldn't chance giving it to him, the shape he's in. His heart is battling for every beat. Pain never killed a man,” he finished curtly. “Too much opiate has killed more than one.”

Daniel swallowed down his growing panic. “I'd like to pray, please.”

The surgeon turned. “As you like.”

“I'd…I'd feel better about things if you would pray as well.”

“I'm not a praying man,” replied the doctor, turning away.

“And what kind of man are you, then, Doctor?”

Daniel's quiet question seemed to fluster the surgeon. Pretending to search the inside of his medical case, he delayed his answer. “A man who has seen far too much to believe in a God who hears prayer,” he finally muttered, turning back to Whittaker.

Daniel scrutinized the stooped, weathered-looking surgeon. Something in this man belied the gruffness he seemed so determined to project, and he found himself wondering if the doctor's hard exterior was as impenetrable as
he had first believed.

Daniel hesitated another instant, then bowed his head and closed his eyes. In a soft, not altogether steady voice, he prayed for the skill of Dr. Leary, for the success of the operation, and for angels to stand guard and minister to the unsuspecting Evan Whittaker.

“And I pray that when he awakens, Lord, he will forgive us for the tragedy we have brought upon him.”

Daniel opened his eyes, blinking at the sight of the knife the surgeon now held in his hand.

“Come around to this side,” the doctor ordered. “You scrubbed your hands as I said?”

Daniel nodded and crossed to the other side of the table, where the doctor had laid out the instruments.

He tried to swallow, but found his throat swollen shut.

“This is the saw I will need when I'm finished with the knife,” the surgeon said, pointing out each instrument as he reeled off their names.

“This other is the Hey's saw,” he went on. “Silk for sutures, here. Now, then, you stay close, hand me each as I ask for it.” He glanced at Daniel. “You all right, boy?”

Daniel moistened his lips, nodded.

The surgeon studied him. “You must not get sick on me, mind. You're sure you are up to this?”

Daniel dragged his eyes away from the instruments, looked at the doctor, and nodded stiffly.

The physician bent over Whittaker and set to work. “So you've a mind to be a surgeon yourself, then?”

“Aye,” Daniel replied in a shaky voice, his eyes widening as the doctor ripped off what remained of Whittaker's torn shirt, then flushed away the blood from the wound with a bucket of cold water.

“Tonight may just change your mind.”

Daniel's eyes went to the knife in the surgeon's hand, followed the movement of the blade as it targeted Whittaker's upper arm.

The room swayed. The table rocked back and forth.

Daniel panicked, sure he was about to be ill—or, even worse, that he might faint.

Then he saw the knife suspended in the air and the surgeon lift his head, frowning as he let go an oath. “It's the storm,” he growled, holding the scalpel poised until the rocking ebbed. “This ship is damned, that's certain! I told Schell, I told him he would pay…”

Daniel could make no sense of the man's wild muttering. But he knew well
enough the importance of a steady hand on the knife.

Grinding his teeth, he hugged both arms to his body, holding his breath as the surgeon began to cut.

Whittaker's eyes were still shut, but he screamed—a terrible, piercing scream.

Tightening his own arms around himself, Daniel screamed, too, a silent, suffocating scream that tore at the walls of his heart and made his chest swell until he thought it would explode.

Dimly he became aware of the doctor's rough demand. “The saw, boy!
Hand me the saw!”

Whittaker screamed once more when the saw met bone. Then his head lolled to the side as if he were dead.

The ship rocked, creaking and groaning, swaying like a drunken whale. The table danced on the floor.

The surgeon stopped, waited, then returned to his task. His face was flushed, slick with sweat, his eyes boring through the bone along with the saw.

The ship rolled, and Daniel pitched forward. He reached to steady himself and the table, to hold fast.

His stomach recoiled at the motion of the ship, the sight of the surgeon's blood-soaked apron, the sound of the saw severing Whittaker's arm.

Oh, dear Lord, I am sick…so sick…I mustn't retch…I mustn't faint…

Seawater streamed through the overhead vents, spraying the table, Whittaker, the surgeon.

Passengers shrieked. Prayers and curses were lifted, fighting to be heard against the squeal and crack of the ship's timbers, the crash of the waves.

The wind itself seemed to be screaming with pain as the surgeon finally separated Whittaker's arm from his body.

Daniel squeezed his eyes shut against Evan Whittaker's tragedy and cupped both hands to his ears to shut out the hellish sound of torment shaking the very hull of the ship.