Never Land the First Fish

Chapter Four, Part 1

Everything hurt. Julia didn't want to open her eyes--didn't think she could open one of them, but a sharp pain in the vicinity of her bladder and the queasiness in her gut hinted that she'd be lying in her own mess if she didn't make it to a chamber pot, now.

Experience had taught her not to make a sound. Athol always drank himself into a stupor after beating her, and if she moaned or even breathed loud enough to wake him, he'd carry on what he had started.

She pushed back the sheet and rolled to her side so she could wriggle off the bed feet first. She was still in her clothes, but she must have been conscious enough last night to take her shoes off. Just as well. Stockinged feet hitting the floor would be quieter.

When her hip hit the wooden board along the side of the mattress, her eyes flew open, though she immediately shut the most bruised, wincing. This wasn't her bed, but in the half light, she couldn't see where she was.

She continued edging over the side, and her feet hit the floor far sooner than she expected. Definitely not her bed.

Cautiously, taking some of her weight on the painful arm, she stood, and grabbed for the wood before her eyes to keep from falling. The whole room tipped and swayed, and her stomach lurched with it.

There! A cupboard under the small window. With luck, that would hold a chamber pot, and the need was desperate.

She took a step towards it, and tripped on something on the floor. As the sleeping man woke, grumbling, she fell to her knees on top of him and lost her battle with her nausea. He bucked under her, swearing with creative venom. The relief that it wasn't Athol dissolved as she met his furious eyes. She slithered off him, shrinking into the nearest corner, arms clasped over her head to protect it.

The room continued to rock and sway, almost as if they were on a ship. At the thought, a few random memories of the previous day emerged, and she cautiously lifted her arm and peeped out from beneath it.

The vomit-covered man before her, sick dripping from his ear and his hair, holding the spot on his back she must have bruised on her way down, first looked horrifically incensed, but when he met her eyes he took a step back, and said, very quietly, "You can feel easy in your mind, Lady Julia. While your husband might have given you reason to cower, I will not. Even if you were to hit me first, my lady."

Lord Joseph Gildeforte. She remembered him bursting into the cottage to rescue her from Athol. The journey to Bristol. The inn. The people searching for her. That's right. They were on Lord Maddox's ship in the Bristol docks.

He leaned down to the cabinet, reached for the chamber pot, and passed it to her. It was blessedly clean. "You may have need of this again, I presume? I've heard some people fall victim to mal de mer even sitting safely in dock. I've never had such a malady, myself."

Gildeforte padded in his stocking feet to the porthole and looked out. "Good God! Lady Julia! We are underway! There is nothing but sea out there."

He strode to the cabin door and yanked it open. "Maddox," he called. "Maddox! Where are you, man?"

Julia could hear him stomping down the passageway, muttering at volume, "What in the bloody... can't just pull up anchor and not tell a man... quite compromised... If Lady Julia weren't married already, she would be now, and so would I. What a wretched thought."

The sea? Julia couldn't even think about that now. She shuffled over to close the door so she could attend to her needs, but through it she could hear Gildeforte yelling, even louder than before, "MADDOX!!!! YOU BLOODY BASTARD! SHOW YOURSELF!"

She used the chamber pot for its usual purpose, then found she needed to vomit again. After that, she collapsed on the mattress on the floor, trying to avoid the puddles left by her previous upheaval, too miserable even to lift herself into the relatively clean bed.

With luck, she would die of her injuries before the mal de mer killed her.

She could still hear Gildeforte shouting, and a thumping sound – a fist on a cabin door, she thought.

"Maddox! You have to turn back to port!"

Another voice, roaring. ""Who the hell--! Gildeforte. It is you. What are you doing on my ship?"

"More to the point, what are you doing on your ship? You are supposed to still be toasting the good health of Sally Grenford and long-lasting virility of Toad Wellbridge. For another three days at--ah. I see."

Bloody Wellbridges. Julia couldn't even escape them while dying of seasickness halfway across the Atlantic Ocean.

Gildeforte recovered his usual sarcastic tone, but his words still cut through the thin partitions into Julia's cabin. "In fact, I see entirely too much. Put a pair of pants on and tell your captain he must turn around and go back to port at once. You may escape the Duchess of Wellbridge's sickeningly sweet happiness at your leisure once I am back on dry land."

Maddox shouted his response, and his anger sent her stomach spasming again. ""God damn you, Gildeforte. Give me one reason why I shouldn't have you tossed overboard to swim back to England. Or Ireland, more likely, if we got away on the early morning tide."

Gildeforte's reply was the first of the argument she couldn't make out; he was mumbling and his voice had lowered. Until Lord Maddox's voice rang out again: "Who the hell have you got with you?

"Why does that matter?" Gildeforte replied, while Julia crawled as far as the chamber pot to fill it to capacity. She eyed the cabinet in the hopes it might have another. Not that she had the energy to reach it.

She pushed the full receptacle away as Gildeforte's voice approached. "Trust me, my friend, you do not want to be mixed up with what's behind that door. Nor do I, in truth, but I've rather stuck myself with it for the moment."

"Out of my way," Maddox shouted, and Gildeforte's startled, "Maddox, your pants!" coincided with the cabin door crashing against the wall. Julia managed to move her head enough to see a naked and furious Maddox, filling the doorway. "Lady Athol Soddenfield? You've brought HER aboard my ship?"

Gildeforte looked over Maddox's shoulder. "That is why you must turn the ship around now."

Julia disagreed. She wanted dry land, but any place would be better than England, where her family would make her return to Athol.

Julia couldn't help it. She retched again.

"Bloody hell." Maddox stuck his head back out into the passageway and shouted, "Harrison! Bring a bucket of water and an empty bucket. Sea-sick passenger in cabin 2!"

Her stomach, already battered by Athol's fists, protested yet another heave. She clung to awareness by a thread—but they were discussing her fate, and she wanted to be conscious for it.

"Just a minute," Gildeforte grumbled. His footsteps retreated, and he returned to lift her so that she curled over the empty chamber pot he held under her nose. His hands were gentle, but his voice strident as he continued to argue with Maddox. "I only wanted to hide her. You weren't meant to be sailing for three days. I didn't think you'd mind."

Maddox's voice rumbled overhead. "Her face is badly bruised."

Julia sighed as the last of the spasms subsided, and the hand holding her hair back from the pot in her hands gently stroked the side of her face. "She's bruised all over. She insists that nothing is broken and wouldn't let me call a doctor. She's afraid of being handed back over to her husband."

"Is that what she told you?" Maddox gave a short laugh. "No chance of that. Athol Soddenfield is dead, and special constables are searching high and low for his murderess."