The Madman’s Daughter

He winced. I was hurting him, I realized.

I let go. Blood and reason flooded back to my head. I hadn’t meant to grab him. Instinct had made me do it. And now he would think … what would he think?

The ship righted, and Montgomery sat up, his lips still parted. A line of red half-circles marked his arms from my fingernails. His eyes were wide.

‘Blasted storm,’ he said, a little gruffly. He was breathing as heavily as I was. ‘How’s your head?’

I touched the back of my skull absently, still dazed from being so close to him. ‘Just a bang.’

He pulled his damp shirt back on, hiding my nail marks. A bloom of pink spread over his neck. ‘I should probably check on the animals.’ He seemed suddenly unable to look me in the eyes. ‘Try to sleep if you can.’

He disappeared into the forecastle hatch, leaving me alone with Balthazar. The big man stared into space, then gave a shudder that sent seawater spraying, like a dog. He smelled of wet tweed and turpentine. I doubted I smelled much better.

I realized I knew almost nothing about this man who hung at Montgomery’s heels like a shadow. It was impossible not to be intimidated by his size and looks, despite how gentle he was with the animals.

‘You’re a native of the island, aren’t you?’ I asked. He seemed surprised that I addressed him and remained mute through the next lurch of the ship.

‘Aye, miss,’ he grunted at last.

‘So you know my father, the doctor? Henri Moreau?’

Balthazar pulled his legs in to his chest. His eyes darted nervously. ‘Thou shalt obey the Creator,’ he said.

‘Creator? God, you mean?’

‘Thou shalt not crawl in the dirt. Thou shalt not roam at night.’ He rocked slightly.

I peered at him uneasily. His words had the ring of commandments, but none I’d ever heard. ‘What are you talking about, Balthazar?’

‘Thou shalt not kill other men,’ he said, rocking harder. The ship dipped suddenly and I grabbed the wall for support. Balthazar no longer seemed aware of the storm. He rocked faster, eyes glassy.

‘Who told you all this?’ I asked. ‘My father?’ His recitation had the feel of Father’s commanding influence all over it.

‘Stop saying these things,’ I said. ‘Please. Calm down.’ My thoughts raced. Did the natives see my father as some sort of supreme ruler? Father had scorned religion, so I couldn’t imagine he would permit such ridiculous chanting. I wanted to ask Balthazar more, but he leapt to his feet and hurried from the room without another word.

The storm lasted through the night and into the morning. When the Curitiba returned to its normal rocking, I stumbled above deck to gasp fresh air and feel warm sunlight. The foremast boom had buckled under the weight of the canvas sail, which now cracked and whipped in the heavy breeze. The dogs sprawled in their cages, quiet for once, under a waterlogged canvas tarpaulin. They didn’t lift their heads as I passed. Only their eyes followed me.

Montgomery and Balthazar stood on the quarterdeck, peering into the rigging.

‘Is the ship still seaworthy?’ I asked.

Montgomery jerked his chin toward the sailors, who fought to tame the sail under the captain’s slurred curses. ‘We won’t sink, but we won’t go far if they don’t fix the sail. Anyway, we have our own problems.’ He looked back into the rigging. On the top spar, a dozen yards above us, was the monkey. ‘His cage shattered in the storm.’

‘Can’t one of the crew climb up to fetch him?’

Montgomery glanced at the foresail. ‘They won’t bother themselves for an animal.’

I studied the complicated puzzle of rigging, spars, and sails, looking for a solution. But wherever a man might cut off the monkey’s passage horizontally, it could always move vertically.

‘You’ll have to wait for him to come down,’ I concluded.

‘Not possible. Captain’s given me no choice.’ His face went serious and he made a gesture to Balthazar, who shuffled to a stack of crates and came back with a rifle. He handed it to Montgomery.

The blood drained from my face. ‘Don’t you dare shoot it!’ I said.

He shook his head a little too forcefully. ‘Captain says the monkey’s added weight can affect the sails.’

‘That’s not true. It’s basic physics. You know that, Montgomery.’

‘Very scientific of you, but it won’t make a difference to the captain.’ He split the barrel and checked inside. ‘Balthazar, go belowdecks for a few minutes.’ Balthazar nodded, grinning naively, and shuffled off to the forecastle hatch. Montgomery clicked the barrel back into place. ‘You should go as well, Miss Moreau.’

‘I shan’t. I’ll talk some sense into the captain.’ I pointed at the rifle. ‘And don’t even think about using that.’

‘Miss Moreau, wait.’ His voice begged. ‘Juliet!’

I ignored him and crossed the deck. While trying to tame the loose sail, the men had torn a gash down its center, and the captain cursed something furious.

‘Captain Claggan, a word, please.’

He whirled on me with bloodshot eyes and breath like a tannery. His nose and cheeks were splotched with broken blood vessels that made him look like the devil himself. ‘What do you want?’ he bellowed.

I took a step back. The deckhands glanced my way, their faces hardened. I’d find no support there.

‘I asked you what the devil you want!’

‘The monkey,’ I said, getting irritated. ‘It weighs too little to do any damage. The laws of physics—’

‘Physics! Devil take you, lass! I’ll shoot the wretch down myself. And you, too, if you don’t mind your own business!’

I wasn’t used to being threatened by a bony drunkard, and it didn’t sit well with me. Anger stirred deep in my bones. At just sixteen, I had already had a lifetime’s experience with men like him. The last one ended up without use of his hand. The river of anger flowed from my capillaries into veins and straight to my heart, lodging there like a hardened bit of glass. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d brought my palm across his face.

The crew went silent. The captain touched his cheek, blinked twice, then stumbled toward me with black rage. Suddenly Montgomery was beside me. He snatched my hand and tucked the rifle under his arm.

‘Is there a problem, Captain?’ he growled. In an instant Montgomery had turned into a hulking animal, powerful and dangerous.

The captain’s bloodshot eyes steadied on the rifle. Montgomery casually adjusted it so it pointed at his gut. The captain hesitated, then spit a thin mess of tobacco a few inches from Montgomery’s feet. ‘Keep your little bobtail below where she belongs.’

I gasped at the insult, but Montgomery squeezed my hand so hard I couldn’t think of anything else. ‘Our apologies for the disruption,’ he said, his blue eyes cold. ‘It won’t happen again.’ He pulled me to the side, where I leaned against the rail, shaking with anger.

‘Did you hear what he called me?’ I said, face burning.

‘He’s a liar and a drunk, so what he says is of no consequence to us.’ His hand tightened over mine. ‘I’m less concerned with your reputation than your safety. Men like him are dangerous. He may be checked by Balthazar’s size and by my rifle, but he could do anything to us out here, Juliet, and no one would know.’

His large fingers swallowed my own. He could have let go, for we were quite safe now.

But he did not.

I cleared my throat. His presence had a way of making my anger dissipate, but in return it set loose a swell of other feelings. ‘I should thank you, then.’ I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself. What to say.

He still didn’t let go of my hand. He took a step closer, interlacing his fingers in my own. I swallowed the nervous jitters rising in my throat.

‘I suppose I’ve made this voyage very difficult for you,’ I said. My voice shook, but the thought of silence was more frightening.

‘As I said, I’m glad you came.’ His eyes held mine, leaving little doubt as to his meaning. Montgomery wasn’t one for games.

My corset felt even more constricting than usual. I wanted to rip the stays apart and fill my burning lungs with air. His touch was thrilling. His whispered words, I’m glad you came, turned my insides molten. Emotions were a puzzle, something to be studied and fitted together carefully. But the edges of this puzzle didn’t fit within the lines I knew. I focused on the loose white thread on his cuff rather than on our intertwined hands.

‘I’ve thought of you over the years, Juliet,’ he said, his voice low as he brushed a blowing strand of hair out of my face. ‘More than I should.’

Juliet, he’d called me. He’d dropped the pretense of using my surname. I studied the waves beyond our hands, trying to work out the equation of my emotions. Since I’d seen him again, in that room at the Blue Boar Inn, there’d been a tightness inside my chest whenever he was around, like string lashed around my heart. I felt it tug at his little gestures that brought me back to our childhood. I felt it at his kindness to Balthazar. At the way circumstances had forced him to grow up too quickly. At the way he made me feel safe, for the first time in years, and yet passionately alive. It was something I could never have felt with Adam or any of those silly boys.

The waves’ caps blurred into a dizzying blue mass. I felt myself swaying and gripped the rail. My corset was bound too tightly. Blood wasn’t flowing to my brain. I didn’t know how to process these feelings. Safety. Warmth. Affection – God, I wasn’t a little girl anymore – maybe it was more than just affection.

I pressed my fingers against my eyes and looked back at the waves. A strange sight: a dark mass against the sea. I blinked to clear my head.

A hundred feet away from us a battered dinghy bobbed, half sunk. I squeezed my eyes shut.

‘Juliet, are you all right? Did you hear what I said?’

But when I opened my eyes again, I saw that the dinghy was real.

So was the hunched body inside.

EIGHT

‘Captain! There’s a man adrift,’ Montgomery yelled. I dug my fingers into the chipped rail. The dinghy was quickly taking on water, sinking lower and lower.

‘Could he be alive?’ I gasped.

‘Doubtful. Must have been drifting for days. We’ve been at sea nine weeks and haven’t seen another ship.’

The captain shuffled over, cursing loudly, and shoved me aside as he peered over the rail. ‘Bloody devil,’ he muttered, and signaled to the first mate. ‘Turn us alongside her!’

A red-nosed young deckhand helped Montgomery lower some line, hand over hand, so fast that watching made me dizzy. As the ship swung to aft, the sinking dinghy drew closer until it knocked against the hull. The waterlogged body lay curled in the bottom, a hideous display. The tatters of a coat, bleached and salt stained, covered his upper half. Torn trousers ended midcalf over bare feet that were scarcely more than bones. What would we find under the clothes? A bloated corpse? Bleached bones scoured clean by salt and sand? I found myself leaning dangerously far over the rail.

‘Larsen, you’re lightest,’ Montgomery said. The deckhand swung a leg over the side and disappeared. I waited tensely with the group of sailors. Even the monkey watched from high in the rigging. A cloud passed overhead, stealing our sunlight. A few fat raindrops fell on my face.

Suddenly, a rough hand took my wrist and pulled me away. Balthazar. He led me to the sheepdog’s cage, where we could watch from a distance, sheltering us from the coming rain with a canvas cloth.

‘Thank you,’ I muttered, hugging my arms, though I still wanted to be watching from up close.

‘Montgomery says a lady must be protected.’

I looked at him askance. If Montgomery and Balthazar thought I’d never seen a gruesome image before, they were mistaken. I wasn’t that kind of lady. I started to say as much, but Balthazar seemed proud, as if he was protecting a proper young woman, so I kept my mouth shut.

A murmur spread through the men like spring rain, and I strained to hear. I caught only one word, but it was enough.

Alive.

I itched to move closer, but knew I should stay with Balthazar. Another sailor climbed over the side. The line jerked wildly, held fast by the second mate and his watch crew. At Montgomery’s signal, they pulled. Several feet of line came up. The sailors hoisted up Larsen along with the castaway. The unconscious body fell upon the deck, dripping with seawater. The crew swarmed closer.

Unable to resist, I tore away from Balthazar. He called after me not to look, but I felt compelled to, dragged forward by an invisible hand. I slipped quietly among the sailors, catching glimpses between their swarthy frames.

Montgomery rolled the body carefully to its back. It was a young man, a little older than me, unconscious and so battered and beaten by the sea that I couldn’t believe he had survived. His hand clutched a tattered photograph as though, in his last hours of consciousness, the image was all he’d had left to cling to.

I blinked, paralyzed by the image of that bruised hand holding a photograph. A coldness stole my breath. I had been drawn by morbid curiosity like a vulture to carnage. But this wasn’t some lifeless corpse – it was a person, with a heart and a hope. Alive.

I drifted along the outskirts, keeping my distance, almost afraid that if I stepped closer, my curiosity would once again take control of my limbs. I glimpsed a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his leg. I imagined him alone and desperate in the dinghy, tending to his wound and wondering if he was going to die out there.

Montgomery’s lips silently counted the young man’s pulse. ‘Fetch some water!’ he called.

A sailor shifted, giving me a clear look at the castaway’s face. I’d never been one to turn away from blood, but my heart twisted at the sight. A crusted and seeping gash ran down one side of his face, just below his eye. Sun blisters covered his cheeks and forehead. His salt-stained dark hair tangled like the seaweed that washed up at low tide in Brighton. His eyes were closed.

It struck me he was almost a ghost, straddling the fine line between the living and the dead. I wanted him to live, to see again whatever was so important in that photograph, as if it would make up for my morbid fascination.

The rain came harder now. A sailor pushed past me with a flask. Montgomery held it to the castaway’s lips, but he didn’t wake, so Montgomery poured the water over his face instead. A slight moan. A cough. And then the castaway jerked awake, blinking, rain streaking down his face. His wild eyes darted back and forth.

‘We found you at sea,’ Montgomery said. ‘Can you speak? What’s your name?’

But the castaway shook his head, muttering something I couldn’t make out, clutching the photograph so hard it crumpled. He grew more agitated with each breath, kicking and tearing at some invisible demon. The gash on his face reopened, and a line of dark blood rolled down his neck.

‘Calm yourself!’ Montgomery threw his weight on him. The castaway was no match for his size, but delirium made him fierce, and Montgomery had to struggle to hold him down.

‘Sea madness,’ Montgomery said. ‘Balthazar, get the chloroform.’

The castaway clawed at the deck, nearly grabbing my foot. Montgomery jerked his chin at me. ‘Get back, Juliet!’ he yelled.

But all I could do was shuffle back a few inches, wondering what was happening in the young man’s mind. He seemed to think he was in some other place. But then his eyes found mine and he stopped struggling, like the mad fog had lifted. Like he remembered something – no, recognized something. An odd sensation tickled the back of my neck. Did he recognize me? I’d never seen him before in my life. His desperation was familiar – I had only to look in a mirror to recognize that – but he was still a stranger. His lips formed a few voiceless words that drew me closer, fascinated, wanting to hear, wanting to know who he was.

‘Juliet, I said stay back! He might be dangerous.’

Montgomery’s voice broke the spell and I tore my eyes away. All the sailors were staring at me. I shrugged hesitantly, as curious as they were.

Balthazar stumbled up beside me, clutching a glass bottle and cloth soaked with chloroform. The castaway took one look at Balthazar’s hulking form and started straining again. He twisted out of Montgomery’s grip and slammed a fist so hard against the deck that the weathered boards splintered. My lips fell open. That sort of strength came only with powerful delusions. He didn’t know what was happening, I realized. A part of him had slipped away out there in the open sea. He let out one hoarse yell before Montgomery thrust the cloth over his mouth and nose and he slumped to the deck.

The captain sank to a knee to rifle through the castaway’s pockets. Montgomery frowned as he handed the cloth back to Balthazar and glanced at me, a question in his eyes: What was it about me that had made the castaway go silent?

But I was as much at a loss.

‘Might as well pitch him back overboard,’ the captain said, turning out only empty pockets. ‘You saw him. Mad. Can’t have a madman hanging about.’

‘If you throw him overboard, that’s murder,’ Montgomery said tensely. ‘And I doubt you’d be saying that if you’d found money in his pockets.’

‘Ain’t murder if he can’t pay.’

‘You’re not throwing him overboard.’ Montgomery’s voice was hard.

The captain sat up, eyeing him with something like a challenge. ‘You going to take him with you, then, boy?’

Montgomery hesitated, giving Balthazar an uneasy glance before turning back to the captain. ‘Look at his buttons – silver. He comes from wealth. Give him a few days to regain consciousness, and I’m sure he’ll offer to repay you generously.’

Balthazar wrapped an arm around my shoulders and started to lead me away. My feet went with him as if of their own accord, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from the castaway. The gash across his face, the bruises on his bare arms from being tossed about at sea. He seemed so eager to cling to a slip of life. He was a survivor, like me.

NINE

Montgomery attended to the castaway day and night. A rumor circulated that the young man didn’t remember his own name, or how he’d been shipwrecked, or if he was the only survivor. The captain lost patience and threatened to throw him overboard again, but Montgomery slipped the captain the last of our coins in exchange for setting up a cot for him in the galley. It was one of several places on the ship I wasn’t allowed, but after a few days without seeing Montgomery or hearing more than snatches of gossip about the castaway, I couldn’t stay away.

The galley was as dark and damp as the inside of a rotting cellar. The only light came from the cooking fire and a few lit candles. The sailors had laid the young man next to the chimney, where the bricks would keep him warm, but in sleep he looked as cold as death.

Montgomery glanced up when I entered. We both knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. Rather than scold me, he handed me a dirty cloth and nodded toward a copper pot on the hearth. ‘Boil this. Add a few drops of chlorine to the water. The vial’s next to the fire.’

Our hands grazed as I took the cloth. My skin still tingled with the memory of our fingers intertwined.

‘I hear you’re quite the doctor,’ I said, adding a few drops of chlorine to the pot. Steam billowed in the dank space around me.

Montgomery carefully peeled back a bandage on the young man’s leg, airing the wound. It oozed with angry white pus. ‘Hardly. Your father says I’m useless.’ He reached for a bottle of Elk Hill brandy and splashed some onto the scraped flesh. The castaway moaned but didn’t wake.

The boiling water tumbled over itself in great bubbles, and I submerged the soiled cloth in the pot with a wooden spoon. ‘My father used to call everyone useless, from the scullery maid to the Dean of King’s College. You’re far from useless.’ I stirred the pot slowly, throwing glances at the castaway’s face in the candlelight. ‘How is he?’

‘He’ll live.’ Montgomery picked up a needle and a length of black thread. ‘If we’d found him a day later, maybe hours, he might not have been so lucky. I’d hoped this would have healed, but it got infected. Not a damn clean thing around here.’ He pinched the skin around the scrape and punctured it with the needle.

I memorized his gestures as he stitched the wound closed. His movements were like a long-acquired habit, something he did so often, his hands could practically think on their own. When he was younger, he used to build fires in my room’s small fireplace with the same certainty of action. For Montgomery, work came as naturally as an afterthought – it was keeping up his strong front that required concentration.

‘Has he been awake?’ I asked.

‘Off and on.’

‘Did he tell you what happened to him?’

Montgomery started on the next stitch, tugging the skin tight. He paused to toss me the old bandage, which I added to the pot. The billowing water turned a murky shade of brown. ‘He remembers a little more each day. Yesterday he told me he was a passenger on the Viola, bound for Australia, but it took on water from a cracked hull some twenty days ago.’

‘Twenty days! Was he the only survivor?’

‘He gets confused when I ask questions. But in his sleep, he says as much.’ His eyes flashed. ‘He’s asked about you.’

I nearly knocked over the boiling pot. ‘Me? What did he ask?’

‘Who you were. Where you were going. What a pretty girl was doing on this kind of ship. It seems you made quite an impression.’ There was a flicker of jealousy in Montgomery’s voice that made me focus on the pot, studying the rising steam.

‘What did you tell him?’

‘The truth,’ he said. ‘You’ve come to find your estranged father.’

‘So you don’t think he’s dangerous?’

Montgomery tied off the last stitch and bit through the thread. ‘No, he isn’t dangerous.’ He stood, wiping his hands on a rag, and came to the hearth. Steam made sweat bead on his forehead. I was suddenly aware of the intense heat in the small galley, and that we were, with the exception of the sleeping castaway, alone. ‘He’s the gentleman type. You saw the silver buttons. Probably never had a true day of hard work in his whole life.’

‘Still, he survived a shipwreck.’

Montgomery brushed his hair back, studying me with those deep blue eyes. ‘What has you so interested in him?’

The tone in Montgomery’s voice made me stir the water faster, aware of the red creeping up my neck. Lucy would have said something coy. She believed the way to keep a man interested was to make him jealous, but Montgomery wasn’t mine to begin with, and he had no good reason to be jealous of a half-dead castaway, silver buttons or not.

‘He had a photograph,’ I said into the pot. ‘Did you find it?’

Montgomery reached to the shelf behind me, between the larder and block of salt. A trace smell of spiced brandy clung to his hands. He pulled down a scrap of crumpled paper and handed it to me. The photograph, waterlogged and torn beyond recognition.

I could only make out an overcast brown sky, the vague shape of people. I glanced at the castaway. What had it meant to him?

‘The helmsman spotted debris in the water this morning,’ Montgomery said. ‘We’re getting close to the island. It’s just a matter of days now.’ His voice held the relief of reaching home after a long voyage. But there was an undercurrent of worry. ‘I don’t like the thought of leaving him here, especially without a doctor aboard. That wound will get re-infected without treatment. And if he can’t convince the captain he can pay, once we leave there’s no telling what will happen. They don’t owe him anything.’

The castaway muttered something in his sleep and tossed around in the cot. I brushed my hair back, stealing a glance at the black stitches in his leg. ‘You want to take him with us,’ I said, reading Montgomery’s thoughts.