Doing No Harm (10 page)

“Hardly matters,” Douglas told her. “I’ve heard twenty-five years’ worth of quarterdeck sermons by any number of captains. Let me recommend Job chapter 19, verses 25–26.”

“You must know it by heart.”

“Aye.” He closed his eyes, remembering far too many burials at sea. “I can recite it from memory.”

“And I’ll have a verse too. Perhaps I shall sing.”

So it was that tiny Deoiridh Tavish, her brother watching from an upstairs window, received a lovely burial in a beautiful garden. The minister might not have deigned to attend, but the yard was full of Olive Grant’s pensioners grouped around the flower garden and the little hole.

His ribs pained him too much to lower the box into the grave, but two of the old men he was beginning to recognize did the honors, carefully tamping down the dirt. Olive Grant nodded to him when it was his turn and he stepped forward, thinking of so many other times.

“ ‘For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God,’ ” he said, wishing all funerals could be in such a lovely setting.

He stepped back into the circle of mourners and Olive Grant took her turn. He admired her hair, all orderly now, and the handsome plaid draped over her shoulder. As she began to sing, he felt a tiny bit of callous chip away from his heart, never mind that such a thing was medically impossible.

He shouldn’t have worried about the tears coursing down his cheeks. A surreptitious look around showed him to be in good company as Olive Grant sang Handel’s lovely alto solo from
Messiah
.

“ ‘He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; and He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.’”

She sang, her voice pure and true. She clasped her hands at her waist, economical and tidy, and cocked her head slightly to one side, her eyes so kind. Douglas felt his own battered spirits settle down. For the first time in forever, his high-held shoulders, always tense, slowly relaxed. He knew something wonderful was happening to him; what it was, he had no idea. If he had been the creative type, he would have thought an august, cosmic hand had just turned a page in his book of life, leaving behind the pages of war and tumult. But he wasn’t the creative type, Douglas Bowden reminded himself.

All was calm when she finished, even the gulls by the fishing boats silenced for once, giving smaller spring birds the chance to be heard. When Olive looked in his direction, he patted his heart, which made her tear up, for some reason.

The old people filed away until just the two of them remained in the garden. Douglas heard the upstairs window close, so he knew Tommy Tavish was back in bed.

“Thank you for doing this, Olive Grant,” he said. “I’ve been nothing but a bother to you since I came to town.”

“I daresay Tommy Tavish would call you a blessing,” she said. She knelt and patted the little mound among her spring flowers, flicking away an imaginary weed and smoothing down the soil. “I believe I will plant blue flax here, and perhaps some heather.”

“I promised Mrs. Tavish a headstone,” he told her. “Who should I see?”

“Will McCorckle, two doors down,” she said quickly. “I would say that we have been the bother to you, Mr. … Douglas Bowden.”

“If that is so—and I do not believe it for a minute—I’ll give Tommy two more days and—”

“And then what?” she finished. “Send him back to starvation? And Mrs. Tavish? What of her?”

“It’s your village, not mine,” he said quickly, and then was immediately ashamed of so cavalier a comment. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

She had turned away, and he didn’t blame her.
It isn’t my problem
, he thought and felt the tension return to his shoulders. He didn’t know what to say, so he watched the pleasant sway of her skirt instead.

She stopped walking but did not turn around. When she spoke, her voice was still kind. “If you feel up to it, Mr. Bowden, take a walk around Edgar and really look. Supper will be at six of the clock, as usual. Don’t overexert yourself, though.”

He did as he said.
She called me Mr. Bowden
, he thought, irritated with himself.
And so I was, drat the matter
.

He didn’t expect to see anything different from his previous sorties up and down the High Street, most memorably running with a bleeding boy in his arms, and more recently staggering back to the only refuge he knew in Edgar, wounded himself because he had never been much of a fighter. If the Royal Navy had required men like him to board enemy vessels with a cutlass in hand, Englishmen would probably be speaking French now.

The thought made him smile and then laugh a little, driving away those carrion birds that circled ships after battle in places like the China Sea and flapped around him in his dreams. He touched his bound ribs, pleased to feel no worse than he expected. His eye and cheek would be a colorful green soon, and then purple, but it would fade.

It was that time of the afternoon when even a quiet village like Edgar grew even more silent. The sun warmed the cobblestones and the few dogs about were content to loll in the warmth and give him no more than a passing glance, almost as if they were already used to him.

He walked to the little bay and stood there, seeing distant sails of fishing boats returning. He counted no more than ten boats on the horizon, a smaller number than the expansive docks were originally built for. This was no busy fishing port any longer. Where had the men and ships gone?

He stopped at Mrs. Cameron’s house, thankful he had remembered to put more coins in his pocket for the two women. Mrs. Tavish was sitting up in bed now. She gave him a ghost of a smile and took his hand when he told her of Deoiridh’s funeral.

“I’ll see to a small headstone before I leave Edgar,” he promised her. “Maybe her name, dates, and a little verse?”

Mrs. Tavish nodded.

“Any verse in particular?”

“Miss Grant will know,” Tommy’s mother whispered.

“I expect she will,” he replied, touched at everyone’s reliance on Olive Grant. “Tommy is doing well. I will probably shorten his splint tomorrow and let him sit up. We might even take soap and a cloth to him.”

Poor Mrs. Tavish didn’t know what to say to someone such as him, even as simple and ordinary as he knew himself to be. She had likely been cowed and abused all her life. Mrs. Cameron curtsied as he handed her more coins and assured him she was buying nourishing food for them both. He probably could not expect more.

And then he was out the door. A cautious glimpse inside the Tavish house showed no evidence of the man.
Good riddance
, Douglas thought and continued his walk.

He walked beyond the village in the direction he had come only two days ago. His attention had been claimed by Tommy at the time, but now he looked and was saddened by what he saw.

He saw a small dry dock, something familiar to him from years of pulling into Plymouth and Portsmouth, where the dry docks had been massive and always full of ships in various stages of construction or repair. This one lay idle and empty with its two brickworked cradles, or graving docks, and bilge blocks and hinge-shores holding up nothing. The gates of one coffer dam were closed and sound, though, allowing no water inside the enclosure. Also closed tight was what he assumed was the machine shed, probably housing pumps and wheels and stays that could be thrust from the brick frame cradling the infant ship and kept level so the builders could do their work.

He walked onto the dock, peering down at the brickwork, impressed with its soundness. The dry dock with its way, down which a finished vessel would slide into the sound, would never have been large enough for a frigate or a ship of the line, but he knew a yacht or a similar-sized craft could be built most handily here.

Where was everyone? Was this what Olive Grant wanted him to see? Did she expect him to wave a wand and have a work force appear?

The fishing fleet was coming up the bay’s estuary now. He watched the boats with their clouds of seagulls. Soon the herring and whatever else was caught in these waters would be swung onto the dock and into troughs, where people such as Tommy and his mum would clean, scrape and gut, and prepare for larger markets. The gulls would hang about for the scraps and the day would end.

There appeared to be no other revenue source in Edgar. No wonder the little village was on starvation rations.
This still isn’t my problem
, he assured himself.

True or not, he walked back more slowly, savoring the sight of the pretty little village still keeping up appearances, rather like an old lady from a good family who had fallen upon hard times.

He stopped at the dock to watch the first boat swing its nets over the gunwales, where the catch was guided into the troughs. Women and children stood ready with their knives. He thought he would buy some fish for Miss Grant, maybe as a peace offering for being stupid and unmindful. It couldn’t hurt. He made his way carefully down the slippery ladder.

He recognized the first woman because he had removed a fish hook from her little son’s wrist. She had brought the squalling, squirming lad to Miss Grant’s Tearoom the evening of that first long day. It had been the work of mere seconds to poke the barb the rest of the way through (not a popular option), cut it off, and withdraw the shank.

“I’d have done it meself,” the woman had assured him, “but I was worried about them wee blood channels.”

“Vessels,” he had corrected automatically. “’Twas wise of you to bring him to me.”

The boy had given him a kick in the shins for his pains, something Douglas was not used to from his years in the fleet, but it hurt less than his eye or his ribs did now. The fishmonger had been less pleased with her son, but it was easy enough to convince the woman that the kick was a natural reaction from a little boy who didn’t understand strangers messing with his arm.

Her name. Her name. What was her name?

She seemed to know what he was thinking. “’Tis Mary,” she said, as she picked up a knife as wicked as any blade he ever owned.

“How did you know I couldn’t remember?” he asked, curious.

Her answer both put him to shame and gave him a resolution. “Not many folks take an interest in us Highlanders,” she said with no malice. “We’re easy to forget, but it’s Mary Patterson.”

“I stand reproved and corrected,” he told her. “Mary, how is your boy?”

“In trouble as usual again, but with no shooting red streaks, which you told me to look for,” she replied promptly.

“Then you’ve done the job,” he replied. “Mary, I know you’re busy, but I have a question.”

“Then ask it,” she said, her eyes on the fish piling up.

“That dry dock. What happened?”

She gave him that patient look that seemed to be the sole purview of women. Miss Grant had already used it on him a time or two. “I’ve only been here two years, with the other Highlanders, but it was Boney.”

“Napoleon? I don’t understand.”

“Captain over there says it was a bonnie dry dock, with some twenty men working, and a few boys,” she told him as she picked up the first fish. “War comes, and they could make more money in Glasgow shipyards.”

“All of them?”

“Aye. The ones who didn’t leave for t’dry docks took the king’s shilling, or joined your own Royal Navy, or were bludgeoned into service by the press gangs.”

He understood Edgar’s bleak prospects, but he had to ask. “And no one returned?”

Mary shrugged and her hard eyes softened for a brief moment, so brief that he would have missed it, if he hadn’t been concentrating on her face, determined to remember her name now. Just that little glimpse into her heart told him she had lost someone to the war.

“No one returned. All dead or working elsewhere.” She gave him a shrewd look then. “I’ll wager you went to sea because of Boney too.”

“Sort of,” he told her, coming closer. “My mam died and Da was too busy for me. I was twelve.”

She gave him a look of empathy that bound them together—ordinary folk, whether surgeon or fishmonger. “Ye understand then. It was our lot, too, same as yours.” The look turned faraway and reminded him of Tommy Tavish. “ ’Course, we were driven from our homes. Didna want to come here.”

She had reduced all his years and skills to her own level. Cooper’s son or fishmonger, maybe this was his village. He nodded to her and started up the ladder, uneasy with the idea because he had no plans to stay.

“Hold there a moment, sir,” Mary said, widening the gulf again with “sir.” A few quick strokes, a rustle of paper, and she handed him two gutted fish, neatly packaged and bound with twine.

“I shouldn’t.”

Her expression dared him to refuse. “Ye fixed my wee lad,” she reminded him. She waved her wicked knife in front of her, reminding him forcefully of the times he had done the exact same thing to threaten squeamish sailors.

Douglas took the fish from her.

“It’s not enough, is it?” she asked, and he heard the anxiety in her voice.

“Quite enough, Mary,” he told her, wondering where, on a simple stroll through a village, he had picked up a lump in his throat. “I’m paid in full.”

With a wave of her hand, speckled now with iridescent fish scales, she turned back to her work.

“I am not staying here,” he muttered under his breath, fully aware that his resolve was almost as slippery now as the waterfront. Tommy Tavish needed to heal quickly.