Читать книгу The Little Jane Silver 2-Book Bundle - Adira Rotstein - Страница 10

Doc Lewiston

Back in the dingy environs of Sharky’s Pub and Alehouse, a plump, bespectacled man in a dishevelled powdered wig fidgeted in his seat as he regarded the hulking figure of the boatswain.

“You must be Ned Ronk,” he said nervously, in a thick Scottish burr. “My name is Lewiston, Doc Lewiston, ship’s surgeon onboard the Panacea.”

Ned Ronk looked the surgeon over, disregarding his fidgetiness, assuming it had to do with the tightness of his breeches.

Though his breeches were unusually tight, it is true, the real cause of the surgeon’s discomfort was the order from his captain to participate in an act of sabotage against a group of perfect strangers who’d never done him any harm. No matter that the victims would be pirates, the principle of the thing still sat uneasily with him.

Doc Lewiston truly wished to like the man before him, but something about Ned Ronk just rubbed him the wrong way. His surgeon’s intuition, which had saved so many a man’s life at sea, was awake within him now. He knew this was not the right sort of person for the captain to be dealing with. Not the right sort at all. But the captain would stubbornly insist on this man, and Lewiston could scarce deny him now, now that the end was so near.

Lewiston knew he cared for the captain more than he strictly ought to, yet it galled him sorely that all his efforts to cure the poor man had so far been stymied by the captain’s condition. If only he could affect some positive change in the captain’s health. Was that too much to expect?

He had begun well enough, he supposed. A young surgeon, bursting onto the scene in the first heady days of the Napoleonic Wars, filled with the desire to distinguish himself in the grand theatre of war. Lewiston had proved himself a capable battle surgeon to sailors who alternately cursed and revered his name. In the thick of the fight he worked feverishly, moving from one bed to the next, barely sleeping, labouring in the dim light of holds while cannons boomed overhead, deaf to the cries of the wounded. Such distractions did not slacken his pace, as he rose energetically to all challenges, untouched by the conflict around him. He returned from war to find himself the toast of the Admiralty, applauded by his peers, and decorated by a grateful British Empire.

But now that the battle was over and he was left to think, the real war began within him. Now every broken veteran he saw ragged and begging on the street set him to wondering if he had worked on the man. Images of surgeries he’d performed would flash through his mind unbidden. He longed to talk to such men, if only for some reassurance that he had really helped them — instead of just buying them a few more years of suffering and sorrow. Only now that it was all over, did the terrible sacrifices demanded so casually of the men seem so unfair, the empire they served both greedy and ungrateful.

Yet, parts of it had been exciting. Rail at it as he might, the danger had brought a keenness to his senses. There was a pleasure in the freedom of living moment to moment that made the ordinary life of a country surgeon seem dreadfully dull in comparison. He found he no longer cared for his wealthy patients and their repetitive complaints. That was part of the reason he went back to serving on ships. The other was that after so long, it was really the only thing he felt competent at. So he went on serving on different vessels, none for too long, until he met the captain.

They had a perfectly symbiotic relationship, the captain and he. The captain was a man driven by the passion of a singular purpose, and as long as Doc Lewiston was with him, he had a passion and a purpose, too, even if it was a borrowed one.

“Oi, there, pint of ale over here!” Ned Ronk motioned to the barkeep, interrupting Doc Lewiston’s thoughts.

Better get down to business and back to the captain’s bedside, thought the doctor.

“The captain wanted very much to be here in person, of course,” Doc Lewiston said carefully, “but his health is delicate at the moment.”

Ned Ronk nodded impatiently, accepting this. “When will the Panacea attack?”

“The Panacea will catch up to you a day’s sail north of Jamaica, northeast of Smuggler’s Bay. That ought to give you two weeks to foul up the works on the ship as best you can. Now, the captain just wants to make sure the itinerary hasn’t changed since the arrival of your first letter. Bright and Silver’ll be trading the Colombian coffee beans here in Habana, then travelling to a few more ports along the coast of Hispaniola for other goods. That should take no more than a week, am I right?”

“Aye.”

“Then it’s out to sea, looking for small ships to plunder en route to Jamaica, where they’re to go to Port Royal to take on a shipment of untaxed rum for a friend in Savannah. Am I correct?”

“Right, right. It’s all as I said. Now, where’s me wages?

“Steady on. The captain just wanted me to remind you how important it is that all acts of sabotage remain untraceable. If anyone catches on that you’re our man, the danger—”

“I knows the danger!” Ned snapped. “Just give over me wages!”

Doc Lewiston removed a small leather satchel from his pocket. “It’s only half,” he warned the boatswain as Ned grabbed it from his hand.

“Half!”

“The other to be given, as per the captain’s instructions, when your task is complete and you have delivered the Pieces of Eight and her crew to the Panacea.”

“Blast your hide and your ship to boot! Why wait until the boat’s left harbour? Simple tar I may be, but not stupid! You says they’re pirates — why not nab them here where you’ve got a jail to hold ’em, and save yourselves a world of trouble? Here, on Hispaniola Isle you have the army on your side. Out there, all’s we got is the fish to help us.”

“The Spanish Army is on the island of Hispaniola, my friend, not the English,” Doc Lewiston reminded him.

“Then let ’em get pinched in Jamaica instead.”

Doc Lewiston fidgeted a little again, realizing the boatswain had a good point. He was ashamed that Ned Ronk had cottoned on to a hole in the Captain’s stratagem that had not been apparent to him, despite his own superior education.

The boatswain favoured the doctor with a sly look. “Unless there be something he’d rather keep from the law on the islands and the bosses back in England?”

“I honestly have no idea, one way or the other,” Doc Lewiston answered truthfully. “I’m no tactician. The captain only tells me as much as he reasons I must know.”

It occurred to Doc Lewiston then that if this Ned Ronk could so easily betray Bright and Silver, it took no great stretch of imagination to suppose the boatswain might turn against Lewiston’s own captain should the fancy strike him. A man of such changeable loyalties required a deft hand to manipulate. He wondered if the captain, in his current weakened condition, would be up to the task. “If you have any reservations about your mission,” Lewiston added uneasily, “I’ll have to conduct them to him myself.”

“No, that ain’t needed,” said the boatswain, and the surgeon relaxed. “No skin off my rosy nose if what your boss’s up to ain’t above-board. All I wants to make sure of is me own protection. Bright and Silver’ll be none too pleased when they catch on they been tricked. I’ll do what you ask, but you tell that captain of yours from me, those two oughta be dispatched right quick if he knows what’s good for him.”

“Uh, yes, of course,” muttered Doc Lewiston and raised his mug of ale to his mouth to hide his frown of dismay.

By God, just what was he getting himself into?