Day 7, evening
Day 7, evening
Day 7, Evening
"Morning, Nanette." Graham pulled me in close and kissed me. He smiled his sleepy morning smile and kissed me again. I’m not going anywhere today and neither are you. He growled playfully in my ear.
"How about I don’t go anywhere ever again?" I ran my hands down his chest, torso, hips and began stroking him to hear him moan.
"Yes, Nan. Yes." He moaned. "Be with me always. Darling, say yes." He continued to grow hard and hot under my hand.
"Yes. I’m here. I’m not leaving you again. I’m here." I kissed him and continued urging him towards climax. He moved on top of me and opened my legs, hard and ready to enter me. He pressed his body overtop of me and looked into my eyes.
"Tell me you won’t go to St. Georges next year. Tell me I won’t see them beating you. I won’t see them tear your clothes from your body. Tell me I won’t see you burn. Tell me I won’t hear you screaming for help. Screaming everyone’s name but mine. Tell me I won’t roar your name over and over again before the crowd strikes me down and I’m too late to take you home and keep you safe."
"No, Graham. Don’t go, Graham. Don’t go," I begged him.
"I told you I won’t have any more ‘no’s’ from you." He got up and opened the door. Magnus was there.
"You’re going to leave? I hate when you leave, Auntie. We both do. We like it when you are home with us."
"Captain!" Davies boomed as he stuck his head through the door. "Are you going to become a stranger now?"
"Davies, she’ll come back." Mary crowded in the door as well. She will come back. She wouldn’t lose my oldest son and then abandon me too."
The Wallingtons and the Lavignes, and the many other nobles I’d eaten dinner with and done business with crowded around, shouting at me. The children of the estate I’d vaccinated, even Helene, Angelica, and Yvonne were there asking how I could just disappear and abandon the family.
"Hope you find enough time out there to forget us all," Andrews hissed in my ear and walked out, slamming the door in my face.
****
I jumped awake. I was in my cabin. Watery gray light shone in my porthole window and the door of my cabin was closed. I never slept with the door closed. Brittle panic static shocked the back of my memories until I could reassure myself that I was simply in my own cabin and that I’d closed the door because there were now passengers on my ship. Still, I went to check the door. It was unlocked. I put my head against the door and breathed a sigh of relief.
There was a note tied to my wrist. It was folded in half and Izzy had written my name on the front. I untied the ribbon and opened it up. It read:
'You are safe. You have passengers on board. Izzy, Catherine, Bessie, and a baby named John Henry. Eat something.'
My hands shook as I read the small note over and over and over again. I wiped at my eyes, careful of the bruises and cuts, and reread the note. I was safe. Izzy had written that I was safe. The three words captivated my attention. I swallowed hard against the emotion and the tidal wave of relief those three words brought me.
On my desk was a plate of fruit, soft rolls, and a thermos of coffee. I took them back to my bed and ate and drank in enormous relief. I could feel my body release with the intake of food and caffeine. The ship was underway and I was concerned about that but Izzy wrote that I was safe. I am safe. I reread the words again and again and again.
Someone had taken off my boots and socks and over shirt. I was just in my leggings and sleeveless linen tunic. Once the plate was empty, I dressed in all my layers and caressed Izzy’s letter one more time before tacking it to my wall. I grabbed the empty plate and opened my door.
Bessie froze in the galley. “It’s Bessie, Captain. I’m Bessie. I’ll go get Lady Isabelle -- I mean Isabelle -- or Is-zy.” The girl fled up the steps. I must have really scared her. Izzy came down the steps barely a heartbeat later. I tried to stay still and nonthreatening.
“Where are you?” she suddenly asked.
“Izzy, what are you --”
“Answer the question. Where are you?” she repeated.
“On my ship.” I was confused.
“Who else is on the ship with us?” she asked. I started to protest again but that damn raised eyebrow stopped me.
“Lady Catherine, her handmaiden Bessie, and a baby. I don’t know the baby’s name.”
“John Henry.”
“John Henry,” I repeated.
"Do you know what year it is?” she asked.
“1649,” I answered.
“And where are we going?” she asked.
“Greenland.”
“What happened to your face?”
"Helene beat the shit out of me.”
Izzy seemed satisfied with my responses and took my empty plate from my hands. She instructed me to sit at the table and placed a glass of water and a steaming bowl of stew in front of me. “Eat,” she ordered. I was full from the plate of food in my cabin but wasn’t going to argue with her. “Now talk. What are you not telling me?”
I sat back and finally broke. I told her as much as I could. Between the sleep and the food and the dreams I couldn’t hold up any longer against the overwhelming emotions. All I was missing was the ‘Once upon a time in Bermuda.’ The scars were evidence of the burns. The burns were the result of the Puritans. The Puritans had come at me viciously and out of nowhere that day. 16 fucking 50, what a shitty shitty year. When the flames were lit, the man had tried to help. Graham was there, watching, and I had had no idea who he was.
I braced for the smell of smoke and riptide of voices but silence and a yawning emptiness was all I found inside.
After recovering I had only wanted to go home. Home was the single thought dominating my mind. I wanted to go home but I couldn’t go home with all the scars. My mother and sister would be scared if they saw the scars. I couldn’t go home looking as I did. Instead I landed in Bermuda again, decades before the stake. I was pissy and scared and sassed the British military upon docking and landed in prison…again. I was punished and released. That was when I found him, Graham Andrews in all his glory. My world wasn’t the same after that.
And this, Nanette, this is where our bed chamber will be. There will be a huge window where you can see the waves. The bed will be here… I’d never wanted a life more than the life I had with him. And that’s exactly what I made, a whole life with him on that small island. Voices from my nightmares crowded my thoughts and hemorrhaged guilt and shame and loss into my heart.
“I can’t ever go home – back there again. Never. It’s all over. It’s possible I’m not handling it well.” I pushed the stew away and put my head on the table. I couldn’t cry to Izzy about him. She hated him and rightfully so. I shouldn’t have even bothered her with that story. It wasn’t her problem. Izzy didn’t need my problems. You don’t tell Izzy your problems. She had enough to deal with in her own life: keeping our family together, planning her future, dealing with her own losses. She didn’t need me. I was the one who needed her. My burdens were not for her shoulders. This was something I would just have to handle on my own. Something that would sit cataloged next to a multitude of other griefs, eventually to become covered in dust and grasp painfully at me when I least expected it.
With a monumental effort I pushed thoughts of Graham and Bermuda far down under my soul. I refocused my attention on the coming day. Take a deep breath and sit up, Anne.
“You don’t need to worry. You have enough going on.” I stood. “I’m fine,” I said it as much to her as to myself as I walked up the stairs to see who the hell was piloting my ship.
Bessie was at the wheel. She wasn’t doing a terrible job and was somewhat reluctant to hand over the helm to me.
“Thank you. I’ll take it from here.” I wasn’t in a teaching mood today. I checked all the sails, the rigging, the heading, and sat down with some embroidery. The ship was in fine enough shape. The sun would set in a few hours and I’d work any course corrections via the stars. We were in a good current and the trade winds were strong. I was safe. Just like Izzy had written.
Since I’d gotten so much sleep I didn’t need to take my usual catnap after three hours. I sat calm and still in my captain’s chair and retreated into the scenery. Bessie lay in her hammock with one of Izzy’s books. Catherine followed her toddling baby around the deck. The young mother was exhausted despite her delight in the child and I recognized that the baby was ready for a nap. He was cruising along all the benches and trying to scale the railings and cried every time his mother pulled him out of mortal peril. I got up and dug out of the starboard bench an old piece of equipment, a pack and play. I’d stowed it there ages ago. It was a useful item to have when I needed to stow oddly shaped cargo and now it would be useful for its intended purpose: baby containment. I wrenched the old thing into shape and dusted off the little pad. Next I plopped the baby inside and tossed him some random safe objects to play with. He was trapped but outside, confined but content; the baby fell fast asleep. Catherine looked dazed at her sudden absence of responsibility. I put a light blanket over the kid and told her to sit down and relax.
Izzy eventually came up and handed food to each of the women and brought me a mug of coffee and a plate. It didn’t smell drugged or poisoned. What the hell. Who even cared anymore. I drank whatever might be in my cup, a little disappointed when it turned out to be regular coffee.
“I think you’ll feel better if you talk about it. Graham. And everything else.” Izzy sat down on the starboard bench.
“It’s alright.You don’t have to do this.” I couldn’t meet her gaze. As If I could really talk to anyone about Graham and the family I’d abandoned on that isolated Atlantic island.
“You mean be a supportive human being?” she insisted. I couldn’t handle her judgement right now. Dealing with the loss of an entire lifetime's worth of love and life was enough without having to manage her expectations of my behavior.
“I mean talk about someone you hate. You don’t need that.” She didn’t need that and I really didn’t need to see how much she hated him and hated me for loving him. I hated myself enough for the both of us.
“You said you had family, friends, and a business. That’s a whole life.”
“I know.” I adjusted the wheel and kept the ship with the wind.
“And you don’t feel anything about that?”
“I can’t feel anything about that.” It was done. I’d crossed that finish line at last. It was time to start putting it all away and move on. I wish my voice didn’t sound like that, so traitorous and thick with the words I wanted to say instead of the ones I was forcing myself to say.
“It’s really not healthy to push that kind of stuff down. Don’t you know that by now?”
“Izzy, please go take care of the others.”
“It’s not weakness to need help. It’s just being human.” Izzy kissed my cheek and walked away.
But I wasn’t human, was I? If I were human I’d be dead…and wouldn’t that be grand and wonderful for the whole entire world.