I lie there for a while and then I get up and stagger over to an alleyway. I get in there and I lie back down 'cause I'm so dizzy with the force of his blow that I can't stand right. I put my hand to my eye and feel that it is already beginning to swell. In a while I get up and go to the Pig.
When I get there, I don't go inside but instead go around the back to Bob's work shed and take his wheelbarrow from where it leans against a wall. I set off rattlin' back down to Skivareen's, and when I gets there, I puts the wheelbarrow back in the shadows of the alleyway. I can hear Gully rantin' and ravin' inside, and I sits down to wait.
He's thrown out into the street at about two o'clock in the morning, barely conscious. The Lady Lenore comes flying out soon after, but I manage to break her fall.
I bring the wheelbarrow up next to him and I say, "Come on, Gully, we've got to get you home. Up now." I put my hands under his arms and help him to his feet.
"Moneymaker?" he says, his voice all thick and stupid. "Where you been?" He tries to focus on me, but he can't. "Lenore?"
"I've got her, she's safe. Over here now, Gully." I get him between the handles of the barrow and eases him back. I need him far enough forward with his weight over the wheel so that I'll be able to lift him. There. That's good. "Lie back, Gully. Lie back and sleep."
He does. Soon he snores.
I lift my skirts and untie the lengths of rope that I had tied there. I tie each of his ankles to the wheelbarrow handles then I tie one end of a piece of rope around one wrist and pull that arm over the side of the box and I take the rope underneath and wrap it around the wheel housing a few times and then bring it up on the other side to his other wrist. I tuck in the ends so they will not drag.
Then I take the small ball of rags that I had put in my pocket and I pinch Gully's nostrils shut and when he gasps and opens his mouth, I crams the gag in.
There. Time to go. I sling the Lady Lenore over my shoulder and I grab the handles and lift. Not too bad. I've got about two hundred yards to the water. I can make it.
I rattle off down the street and the jarring motion of the hard wooden wheel over the cobblestones wakes Gully and he looks about in confusion. He notices that his hands and feet are tied and he starts struggling.
"I knows how to tie the knots, Gully, as I've been to sea. The more you struggle, the tighter they'll get." He struggles anyway, mumbling into his gag.
My eye is almost completely swollen shut, and now I can't see out of it at all.
"You hit me, Gully, you did. You was my partner and was supposed to look out for me, but you didn't. What you did was take me to that place where I didn't want to go and try to make me do something I didn't want to do, just so's you could buy more of that green stuff."
Gully's shaking his head back and forth.
"You prolly don't even remember doin' this to me, Gully, right? I see you shakin' your head, but you did it, Gully, you put your mark on me, and you'll do it again the next time you get drunk and I can't let that happen, I can't. I got to get rid of you, Gully. I'm sorry, but I do."
At this, his eyes grow wide and he cranes his head about to look where we're goin' and he sees that we're goin' toward the water. The look in his eyes changes from one of confusion to fear. He makes a loud sound into the gag and redoubles his thrashing about. It don't do him no good.
'Cause of my tiredness and my throbbin' eye, I'm startin' to ramble and sometimes I make sense and sometimes I don't.
"What's it gonna be like if I lose me eye, Gully? If my Jaimy comes again for me, will I lift my face to him and show him a gaping empty eyehole? Or an eye that's all filmed over, disgustin' milky white, staring out all blind at nothin'?
"You don't know this about me, Gully, but in some quarters I'm known as Bloody Jack 'cause I killed two men by my own hand. Yes, it's true. It's also true that they had it comin' just like you got it comin', Gully, but it still weighs heavy on my soul."
The fear in his eyes has been replaced by pure terror. He cranes his head and twists his neck around again and sees that we're about halfway to the water. He makes mewling sounds.
"You know, Gully, it's such a shame. We had a really good act. People really liked us. Good people, not like those scum back there. And, yes, I know you're sorry and you'll make it right and I know you'll say that we'll get the act back together again and it'll be like it was, but we won't, Gully, 'cause you'll just get drunk again and mess it up."
I stop and put the barrow down for a second to rest. "Surprised I can do this, Gully? Well, I'm little, but I'm strong, I am." Then I lift him up again and we press on.
His eyes get bigger and bigger and he looks frantically about for some passerby to save him, but there ain't nobody out this late, and if we do run across someone, well, I got a story already cooked up: Poor Dad, when he's like this, it's the only way we can get him home. What a trial he is to poor Mum, Sir, you can well imagine...
"Yes, Gully, it's a shame. You were a great fiddler, you just weren't much of a man."
Gully groans in despair as we roll up onto the planks of the wharf. We go on for a while and then I pulls up next to the eighty-eight-gun HMS Redoubt, looming up there above us in the gloom of the early morning. I put down Gully and the barrow.
"Ahoy, the quarterdeck!" I shouts up.
An officer steps out on the gangway and says, "What do you want?"
"Beggin' your pardon, Sir, but this here gentleman has expressed a desire to return to sea."
The Officer of the Deck barks out a short laugh. "He has, has he? He looks like he's right tied up in knots about it."
"Aye, Sir. He is Gulliver MacFarland, a prime seaman and a British citizen—Scottish, he is—so you won't anger the locals by takin' him. He was foretopman on the Solstice—that much is true—the rest he tells you will be lies."
Other men are called and they start down the gangway. Gully, his fear of death gone, looks at me with cold hatred.
"They're finally getting the Hero of Culloden Moor, ain't they, Gully," says I. "I found out about that, too. You warn't the Hero of Culloden Moor, you warn't the hero of nothin'. You only found glory at the bottom of a bottle. What a fool I was."
The sailors come and stand around Gully. "You are sure he is a Scotsman?" says the officer.
"Yes, Sir," says I, and reaches down and pulls out the gag and a torrent of curses pours out of his mouth, thick with a Scots accent. "See?" says I, and I jams the gag back in. Gully's curses turn to gurgles.
"He is Scots, for sure, but what do you expect to get out of this?"
"Nothing, Sir, just a good English girl doin' her duty for King and Crown. And for the good of the Service, like."
"Wait. Did he do that to you?" The good officer puffs up in outrage.
Ah, the eye. It must be a sight. "Yes, Sir, but he was out of his mind when he did, so don't hold it against him. I would, however, warn you that he is more slippery than any eel. Perhaps if you held him in the brig till you sail?"
"We'll hold him," he says grimly and turns to his men. "Take him."
"Wait, Sir. One more thing." I go over to Gully and open his coat and take out his bottle of the greenish liquid. I lean over and look down at Gully's eyes as I say, "He has a problem with the drink, Sir. I would deny him his rum ration, at least for a while." I can imagine what Gully is calling me right now, but nothin' gets by the gag cept a gargling sound.
The Bo'sun takes the bottle from my hand and uncorks it and sniffs at the neck. He makes a face. "Wormwood. Rotten Frenchy wormwood. Rots the brain. Might as well drink lye!" He throws the bottle over the edge of the wharf and we hear it shatter on a crossbeam down below.
The men untie Gully and pull him upright, one good strong sailor on either arm. They leave the gag in.
I take the fiddle case from my shoulder and am about to hand it over when the officer says, "Ah no, Miss. No fiddles. The Captain can't abide them and won't let any aboard."
I sling the case back over my shoulder and look at Gully, and this time his eyes show only a deep, deep sadness.
"Sorry, Gully, I really am. But I'll take good care of the Lady Lenore for you, and if we ever meet again, I'll give her back to you."
With that I pick up the wheelbarrow and I turn and take it back to Bob's shed.
The sun is coming up when I see Amy runnin' toward me when I turn up Beacon Street. Annie is with her and their relief at seein' me back is gone the instant they see my eye. Amy's mouth opens but nothin' comes out.
"Sweet Jesus," says Annie. "We got to get her to Peg right off!"
There is a kind of thick juice comin' out from between the slit of my eyelids. Please God, don't take my eye.
I'm led into the kitchen. "Oh, my poor little girl," moans Peg. She puts her hand on my forehead and looks at the eye. Her hand feels wondrous cool and soothing. "Sylvie! Go down to the apothecary shop and get three ... no, five leeches! Quickly! Abby, to the icehouse! Run!"
Peg wets a towel and takes me to her room in back. "Get in here. We can't let Mistress see you like that. Stretch out on the bed." I take off the Lady and I lie down, gratefully.
"Who did that to you?" she demands. "I swear I'll have the man that did that..."
"He's gone away, Peg, and he won't be back for a long, long time," I says, and falls into a deep, deep sleep.
Much later, when I swim back into something close to wakefulness I feel a cold ice pack held to my eye. I open the other eye and see that it is Amy who is holding the compress. I fumble around and find her other hand and hold it to me. "Dear Amy," I whisper, "thank you."
Then I hear Peg say, "All right. Let's take a look." With my good eye I see her squinting at my other eye. "The swellin's down. Let's get 'em on her."
With great joy I find I can see a little out of my hurt eye—just a little slit of light, but it's something. Peg brings something black and shiny and wiggling over into my sight and puts it down, cold and clammy, on the top of my cheekbone, close to my lower eyelid.
"One there, and one over here ... and two up top..."
I see that Amy's look of tender concern has been replaced by one of stern disapproval. "I told you something like this would happen," she scolds. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
I considers this for a bit. "You know," I says, as I feel the leeches' rasping mouths workin' their blood-suckin' way through my skin, "I'm thinkin' of giving up show business."
Chapter 40
Amy thinks it might be a good idea to get me out of the school for a few days, what with my eye and all, and I think it is a great idea, so we go to Dovecote for a few days this weekend. I spent all Friday in bed, claiming to be sick, and when Mistress came in to check on me, I flipped over on my side and pressed my bad eye to the pillow so she wouldn't see. Amy makes our excuses to Mistress and this time there is a coach and we take it. The coach is anything but comfortable and we get bounced around something awful—I'd much rather have ridden Gretchen—but we chatter and laugh and soon the journey is done and we are dropped at the big house at Dovecote.
We drop our bags in Amy's room and I go over to the mirror and squint at myself in it. Not too bad—the leeches did their job in getting the purple bruises out. Now it's just a few smudges of yellowish tinge.