Pain. And a pulling at my throat that I think was the feel of a scream that had gone on too long. Burning behind my eyes and wet at the side of them that had dried into an irritating salty itch. The world swayed under me again, but too violently to be the now-familiar bob of the Lyre, unless we were being tossed in a storm.
God, it was hot. I kicked the covers with my legs, pulling with the side of my body that wasn't in screaming agony, trying to get them off, off, but someone kept putting them back on, wrapped up to my ears, tight around my neck, scratchy and constricting.
"...make her sweat it out..." someone said, but all I wanted was a goddamn ice-pack and a few hours alone, asleep.
"Fever," someone said, and I seized on the voice, swallowing hard to wet my throat. I knew that voice. 'Tis the year 1805, my hand to God.
"People died of fevers in 1805," I said, and it didn't sound like a sob, it didn't. My voice was cracking. I wanted ice chips. Don't invalids get ice chips? "This isn't fair. I had a flu shot."
"Shot?"
"And Hep A and B, and vaccines. HPV! My arms looked like a cork board. I was going to go to Paris," I said, lips dry and numb. Chapstick. I wanted chapstick, but even that small convenience was gone, forever lying at the bottom of the Atlantic, the waxy chemical cylinder dissolved into oily blobs by the unforgiving salt water. "I was going to drink French wine. I was going to make love to a Frenchwoman. I can't die of a flu!"
"She's delirious," someone said softly, apologetically. Voice warm and familiar. I turned my face towards it, wanting the affection, wanting the comfort. "Do not take any heed of her words, she does not mean to say what she does. More tea, Surgeon."
Something hot and wet at my lips, soothing but too much for my abused stomach. It tasted astringent. Astringent; that was a strange word, like lemon glass cleaner or something. It tasted like drinking furniture polish.
Before I could be sick, I swirled back down into blackness.
* * *
I lost track of time in the grip of the fever. The world throbbed grey around the edges, boarded and measured in bouts of shivering frigidity and sweltering heat. I was lucid in spells, but enough to insist on the Surgeon cleaning my wounds with boiled water and rum, using nothing but the cleanest bandages torn from the fabric of my beautiful, lost dress, in having one of the sailors stitch the wound on both the palm and back of my hand with a needle that had been sterilized in a candle flame and thread that had been soaked in boiling water.
An eccentric I may have been to them, but an eccentric whose wishes were complied with. Sailors had died for hurting me; the rest of the crew wasn't about to take their chances with their annoyed captain over my peculiar requests.
I don't know how long I lived on the diet of willow bark tea and ship's biscuits. I couldn't keep anything else down and refused simple fresh water. Probably to my own disadvantage – tea is a diuretic, I knew, and to recover I would need fluids: water, juice, milk. But there was no juice and milk too precious to drink in the quantities I required.
And I had already sworn never to drink water ever again. Even the thought of it made my already sensitive stomach roll.
Eventually I spent more time awake than asleep, and I silently blessed my father's foresight to insist on all the shots I'd had. I had no doubt that it was them and not the ship's Surgeon's skills that saved my life. Eventually the smell of my own unwashed hair and the sweat dried into the sheets of the bed were enough to drive me out of the cabin and me out into the fresh, crisp air of the deck, allowing young Mr. Fletcher in to clean. I was wrapped in the jacket and a blanket. The air made me light-headed, the sunlight hurt my eyes, but god, it was good to see the sky again.
I made my shaky way over to the rail, leaned over it cautiously just in case my stomach decided to rebel against the lift and dip of the deck. I had somehow managed to retain my sea legs, so all I got instead was a refreshing face full of sea spray. It was cool and clean and wonderful. I hung over the rail long enough for my face and the fringe of my hair to get thoroughly soaked by the spray. I straightened, wiped the moisture and residual grime off my face with a corner of the blanket and turned around to watch the activities of the ship.
I wasn't quite up to exerting myself yet, but just standing and watching I could do.
Every pair of eyes that had been drilling into my back immediately turned down and returned to whatever task their owner was engaged in.
Huh.
I had been a curiosity before, but now it looked like I was a danger. Someone had been blabbing things they shouldn't, and it had gotten me hurt worse, brought the wrath of Captain Goodenough down on the rest of his superstitious crew, and ended up with two of the men killed. Maybe some of them really did believe that I was a mermaid. My rail-leaning just now had probably only reinforced this illusion. Maybe some of them really did believe it was the bad luck of rescuing me that got Lord Nelson – the hero of the British fleet – killed.
I was vaguely aware of the history of the battle behind us, and the square in downtown London named after the fallen hero. I was pretty sure he'd be dead whether the Lyre had been part of the action or not. But of mermaids and bad luck and women on board I knew nothing.
And for all that I knew, maybe it was true. Maybe if they'd been there...
I turned my eyes back to the water, lips a thin line, biting at the insides of my own mouth, and watched Spain skim past.
* * *
The wind was bitter by the time we reached Great Britannia's shores. It was the end of December, 1805, and ice clung to the Cliffs of Dover like white lichen.
The skin of my hand had healed, a long thin line of angry red welts and scar tissue that I knew would eventually harden and turn as white as the cliffs. But while the skin had scabbed over – mostly due to my incessant hygienic insistence – the muscle beneath wasn't appearing to re-knit itself, and the bones were shattered beyond growing back in straight lines. The ship's surgeon had splinted and set it as best as he could, but it seemed like it would all fuse into a useless lump, eventually. It probably was most of the way there already.
The injury was beyond what this century's medicine could repair.
This left my right hand a useless and unattractive claw of curled fingers and ugly scars. The skin was sensitive, I could still feel thinks, but my ring and pinky fingers sat at an awkward angle and my middle finger had no sensation at all. Only my thumb was still mobile, spared from complete uselessness by the providence of the angle of the stab wound.
I spent a lot of time with my right hand in my jacket pocket. The jeans were too tight to allow my hand to hide there. I spent considerably less time wishing for a good plastic surgeon. There was no point in wishing for something you couldn't have.
I stood at the nose of the ship, claimed now as my habitual post, mimicking the figurehead below. Only she really was half a fish. The men who had attacked us had been sailors from the Lyre, and now they were dead sailors. "Already there is talk," Captain Goodenough had said. It had been a hard shock to realize what effect 'talking' could have in this century.
Speaking of the devil; the Captain came up and leaned against the rail to my right, folding one arm along the rail to support his weight, the free hand reaching out to take my mangled one. With gentle fingers he pushed back the sleeve that I had yanked down over my knuckles. The bandages he pushed up too, but I had tied them loosely anyhow. There didn't need to be there to stop blood or keep out debris. They were only there for my vanity.
His thumb ran over the white line, jumping and jagged, that ran diagonally from my index finger knuckle to the bump on the outside of my wrist. His hands were warm and dry, evidence that they'd been in his pockets on his journey across the ship to stand beside me. His touch was inquisitive and kind, and if I'd pulled away, he would have let go. He always did. The wind was biting my cheeks, somehow getting icy fingers under the cowl I'd made from one of the grey blankets from my bed and the popped collar of the jacket, whipping it into my eyes.
The pretty dress from Gibraltar had been ruined by blood and shredded for bandages. I was happier to be in the jeans, at any rate. They were far warmer than the muslin and shift would have been. The corset was under the bed in the cabin I still shared with the Captain.
I wondered, and not for the first time, if it was proper for him to be sleeping in the hammock in front of the door every night - a bachelor and a maid alone in the same room. I wondered, too, if it was to keep the other men out, or to keep me in.
"Would you like to go below decks?" the Captain asked, as he had asked every afternoon since we'd started heading to the colder climes.
"Thank you, no," I said, which is how I had replied every time, too. "I want to see where we're going." I was still looking forward. I wanted to curl my fingers around his, the soft, constantly moving touch, the heat, and I was near to trembling with the effort of making my useless fingers try to shift. Nothing happened. Or maybe I was just shivering.
"Miss Franklin, your illness has not totally passed."
His concern was genuine, though I wondered if he meant the fever from the injury or my strange out-of-time behaviour. He must have been worried, too, about the appearance of me, the strange sea-woman. He must have heard all the whispers y now, all the theories, ass the superstitious stories. What if he'd started to the believe them?
And how much was I reinforcing them, the little niggling doubts, sitting swaddled at the nose of the ship day after grey day. Did look like I was yearning to return to the waves? I wasn't.
I was yearning to return home.
I had to stay above decks, in case a plane went by overhead, in case another ship passed by, one that wasn't wind-driven, in case... just in case.
The warmth of his presence was reassuring, however, and I was starting to look forward to the few moments every day when he managed to snatch time away from his duties to come watch the horizon with me, and the brief few hours in which we shared easy dinners and casual banter in his cabin before we retired to separate bunks. Or berths. Was it a bunk or a berth on a ship? Or just a bed?
I wanted to disagree with the Captain's observation about my well being, but coughed instead, proving him right. It was a burning tug in my chest, harsh against an already overly abused throat. If I hadn't abused all the convenience and privilege of the twenty first century's medical advancements and universal health care before travelling, perhaps I would have actually died out here, but I had survived. Just barely.
The brief thought of a sea burial had me pulling the blanket tighter around my shoulders. Being dropped into the sea, sewn into sailcloth, with no chance of ever fighting my way back to the surface...
I felt the touch of fabric against my sensitized fingertips and finally looked down at my hand. He was tugging a snug glove over my hands, carefully arranging the fingers over the clawed knuckles.
"What's this?"
He shrugged. "The men who repair the sails can sew; I thought, perhaps, you would like a souvenir of your dress. These were the last of the clean cloth." He reached out and helped me tug on the other glove. They were made of the thicker cream coloured fabric of the shift. The left glove was a bit loose, and the right a bit tight, but both cut down on the frigid grip of the winter air. Small pearl buttons, also obviously salvaged from the remains of the dress, nipped the gloves in tight around my wrists.
He didn't say what I knew he was thinking. A souvenir of the dress though they may be, he'd really had the gloves commissioned because he thought I'd like something to hide my hand once we got to land. Or he was embarrassed by the grotesque look of my appendage and wanted to disguise it. Either way, my hand was to be hidden in London.
London.
There was no way that the modern world could hide from me in London, I was sure. The fort at Gibraltar was barely the size of a few city blocks. It's not hard to convince that many people in an area that small to play along. But London was huge – I would get to London, yes, and all of the subways and cars and telephones and fast food would be waiting for me.
A camera crew would jump out from behind a lorry and yell "surprise!" My parents would be behind them, laughing and smiling. My university friends would be filming my reaction so they could embarrass me on social media.
I jammed my gloved hand into the pocket of the brown jacket and fingered the edge of my cell phone. I could get a new phone in London. I could call my friends, tell them not to worry. I could do interviews, the lone survivor of tragic flight number whatever. I could get compensation and with that money a plastic surgeon and a therapist that specializes in Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Somebody would be there to take care of me, to get me safe and healthy and home. Somebody who didn't think he was a (admittedly charming) nineteenth century naval Post Captain.
Until London, all I had to do was hold on and wait, and not think, not think, not think.
"You said, when we got to London, you said there was someone you wanted to-- something you wanted to say--"
"It can wait," the Captain said gently.
He's changed his mind, I thought suddenly. I don't know why that made my stomach drop. Whatever he was going to say, before I was fucked up for life, back when I could still effing smile, he changed his mind. What does that mean? Am I going to be abandoned once we hit the city? Every cripple for herself? Oh my god, I don't... I need... I can't do this century alone, there's no way they'd---
"Happy Christmas, Miss Franklin," Captain Goodenough said, breaking into my whirling, panicked thoughts. He leaned down and pressed a soft, dry kiss to my cheek. After so much careful not-touching and polite, firmly visible guiding gestures, the improvised intimacy of the gesture was powerful enough to make something inside me try to shake off the enforced numbness in which I had swaddled all of my feelings.
I shoved it back viciously.
And yet, the deliberate skim of the side of one of his fingers under the edge of the glove, pressing against my pulse sweetly, tentatively, dare I say hopefully?
I wasn't supposed to be flirting, and I was furious with myself. A couple knocks to the head, a traumatic life-or-death-experience and I'd gone and gotten swoony for a guy who's only touched me like, half a dozen times, for god's sake.
This was ridiculous.
* * *
I never actually thought I'd ever sail up the Thames in a fully rigged sailing war ship. But then, I never actually thought I'd ever end up half crippled in 1806, either.
It was January second by the time our ship tiptoed into port at the Nore on the Thames, and was tied off at the dock beside other ships of the fleet, similar in design and size, but far worse for the battle they'd suffered through. Some were already hauled into what appeared to be a sort of temporary dry dock to make them fit enough to sail to the real repair docks, the Captain explained. Some had planking covering shot holes, or men in the ropes hanging like monkeys to sew up patches in the sail cloth, to re-string the cables. One ship was draped with stately swags of black cloths.
"There," Captain Goodenough said, standing beside me at my customary post on the nose of the deck. But he was pressed closed, far too close, I thought, for propriety. His right hand was touching the back of my left one lightly, where no one behind us on the ship could see it. His index finger was sliding up and down my pinkie, and he tapped the back of my hand every time he wanted to direct my attention to something he pointed out. It felt ridiculously intimate. He indicated the black-festooned ship. "That is the HMS Pickle. That was the boat that returned Lord Nelson to his people."
He sounded genuinely sorrowful that his commander had passed away. In fact, every man on the ship seemed affected. I wondered what kind of miraculous, charismatic man this Nelson must have been to inspire such unrivalled loyalty from his sailors, even down to the lowly Mr. Fletcher. The boy was actually standing by the rail, crying.
"I thought sea burials were what was done," I asked, confused. "Shouldn't he have been dropped in the water?"
Captain Goodenough shifted a bit, slightly uncomfortable as always at my bluntness. "Lord Nelson is a national hero. He... deserved to be returned home."
"Ah," I said. "But, I mean... wouldn't he have... smelled?"
"He was transported in a cask of brandy got at Gibraltar."
I couldn't help the slightly hysterical giggle that passed my lips. Pickled on the Pickle. How appropriate. I didn't say it, though. I'd already offended the deceased but greatly loved British hero enough for one conversation.
I felt a little wild, a little off kilter. The bobbing that I had become so accustomed to had ceased now that we were in port, and beyond the wharves I saw no telephone wires, no skyscrapers, no evidence that this was the twenty first century. The Eye of London, the Gerkin, the Shard, all of it was missing. Big bloody Ben wasn't there either, and I can't quite figure out why that surprised me. Giant tower clocks seemed like something that they should have had 200 years ago. But it was missing, a gaping hole in the sky line where it should have been standing proudly, sticking it's metaphorical tongue out at me, chiming out nyah nyah, I exist on every hour. I couldn't even begin to understand the London skyline without the iconic clock, no more than I could imagine Paris with no Eiffel Tower, Egypt with no Sphinx, Japan with no Floating Torii.
But here I was. And here Big Ben wasn't.
Either I was really here, now, or really mad. I couldn't decide which seemed like the better course to take. As if I actually had any sort of choice. Being crazy would make things so much easier...
I clamped down on the disappointed void of not-belonging and forced my lips into a weak smile. "And what now, Captain Goodenough?" I asked.
"Now, we buy you a dress for a funeral," he said earnestly.
"You can't keep buying things for me," I said, my modern sensibilities squirming again. How on Earth did Georgian women put up with the men having total control over their money and lives? I hoped that I wouldn't have to find out; there had to be some end to this... this farce in sight.
There had to.
"Then you are in possession of coin that I was previously unaware of?" Captain Goodenough asked with that familiar raised eyebrow and sly smile. This was how I liked him best, teasing and clever. That smile made the small terror at being trapped here, when I was, subside just enough to let my breathing return to normal.
I shook my head, but even that gesture was redundant. The Captain knew I was broke.
"Until you are able to reimburse me, I do not mind providing for you, Miss Franklin," he said. "It is my duty; I rescued you and so I must take responsibility for your welfare. And I will admit, Miss Franklin, it is not an unpleasurable duty." The tips of his ears went red again. They'd been doing that a lot, lately. Mostly when he was being what he considered blunt, and what I thought was kind of circuitous and sometimes slightly backhanded. "I find your speech and manners... refreshing."
"I'm glad you said that. I was afraid you were going to use a different adjective there. 'Annoying', 'revolting', 'uncouth'..."
"You could never be revolting, Miss Franklin," he whispered, lifting my mangled hand and carefully, considerately kissing the back of it, lips warm even through the glove. One of his fingers brushed the sensitive underside of my naked wrist, dipping below the cuff of the glove for a fraction of a second.
I shivered. This time I was pretty certain it wasn't the cold.
There was something sort of gratifying about this long, slow sort of courtship. Because I knew, now, that it was courtship. It was nothing at all like letting a girl buy you a drink, giving her bedroom eyes, and then going back to hers to screw. This was thoughtful, patient, and considerate. Captain Goodenough honestly and truly cared about my comfort, my choices, my conversation. He knew me - as well as anyone could be themselves after such a trauma - and he liked me.
It was his gentle attention, I think, that kept me sane. I used his grip on my hand to reel him a bit closer, standing up on my toes to press a shy kiss to his cheek. Truth was, I liked him too.
When I first realized what he'd been doing - the dresses, the dinners, even taking me through on-deck reels when the weather was sunny enough for the sailors to break out their fiddles and dancing shoes - I freaked out. Was he using a position of power to try to take advantage of me? I wondered. But no, of course not. He'd had three months of opportunities to do that. This wasn't a sex thing, this was a romance thing. And I hadn't been romanced by a dude in, jeeze, a decade?
I wasn't opposed - I was pretty much into whoever was into me, and screw the labels - but it'd been a very long time since I'd seriously entertained being with someone who identified male. Since I'd decided to just go along and see what happened, I'd found my admiration for the Captain growing. He looked soft and frankly kind of pretty to be a Regency-era naval sailor, but when he was in command, snapping orders around the deck, there was a flash and fire to his deep brown eyes that was frankly a bit sexy.
And since then, his firm care and quiet competence became a bit attractive. I found myself thoroughly enjoying our evening discussions about the natural world and preference in reading, in geography and my personal area of expertise, the Classics. Yeah, I know, Dad wanted me to study something useful and not a bunch of two-thousand year dead poets and tyrants. At least legends and myths don't change so the Captain and I were on the same page when it came to Homer and Herakles.
And I had never had to go this slow before. I really wanted to go for his lips, that pretty bow-shaped pout, but feared that it would be too forward. Especially on the deck of the ship he Captained, watched as we had to be by at least some of his crew. So his cheek it was. But even then, it seemed like that innocent press of lips to his smooth-shaven skin was scandalously forward of me. He pulled back, and his and his face was now the same shade as his ears.
"Okay," I said. "You can take me shopping." And I could use the excuse to scan the city for anything that was temporally out of place.
He frowned, that endearing little eyebrow vee reappearing. "O-K?" he repeated. "You say this often; I take it for an affirmative, or a confirmation of wellness, but what does it mean, exactly?"
I laughed, startled by the sudden weirdness, the blatant reminder that I was not where I belonged.
I circled the thumb and forefinger of my good hand and extended the other three fingers out straight. "O-K," I said. "Zero Kills. It's military parlance; means that there were no casualties on our side. That everything is good and fine and everyone is in one piece. It's... yes, it's an affirmative or confirmation."
He repeated the gesture, so tentative and so damned out of place paired with his fussy blue dress frock coat that I couldn't help myself and laughed.
It felt good.
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