MAES 53: The Tables Turned
The Tables Turned
“How I hope there will be good news in them - orders to seek out the enemy - something like real wartime sailoring - with a squadron this size it would not be unusual - rather than skirmishing about for a parcel of miserable slavers…”
“Perhaps the miserable slaves may be worthy of consideration too,” observed Stephen.
“Oh, certainly; and I should very much dislike being a slave myself. But Nelson did say that if you abolished the trade…” He broke off, saying, “However,” for this was one of the few points on which they wholly disagreed.
-The Commodore, pg. 206-7, Norton Press paperback.
-
But his voice changed entirely as they neared the slaver: the stench grew worse, the water still more filthy, and he fell abruptly silent at the sight of two small girls, grey and dead, going over the side. For a moment they were disputed by sharks hardly longer than themselves, until a huge fish, gliding from under the keel, tore them apart…
Stephen who had known some shocking prison infirmaries, lunatic asylums and poor-house wards, had a professional armour; so, from his voyages in a slaver, had Whewell; Jack had none - the gun-deck amidships in a hard-fought fleet action, the slaughterhouse as it was called, had in no way prepared him for this, and his head swam.
-The Commodore, pg. 235-6, Norton Press paperback
0~0
He returned to the Bellona, took off all his clothes, stood long under a jet of clear water…
The water wasn’t helping, Jack thought as he stood under the downpour from the shower. He still felt contaminated, filthy, as though he would never be clean.
Perhaps it was because this filth wasn’t on his person; it felt like it dwelled inside him. As much as he tried to ignore it, he kept hearing echoes of his own voice over the years, defending slavery, quoting Lord Nelson, telling Stephen he should not like to be a slave himself, yet on the whole he saw little wrong with it.
Part of his earlier reasoning - or so he tried to excuse himself - was that he’d never before seen slavery in this particular form. The slaves he’d seen had mostly been well-cared for, biddable and quiet. Although some had shown the mark of beatings, this was no great shock to a man who had been raised in the Royal Navy, where many men bore the marks of harsh beatings. In his mind, beatings were only given as punishment for crime or disobedience.
True, he had heard stories of the most outrageous abuses, but these had always been abstract to him, and probably exaggerated, he’d privately thought. After all, reports of the Navy’s use of the cat were often embellished. Surely not even half the tales about the darker side of slavery could be true?
But it seemed they were. When he’d seen the two little girls being fed to the sharks, his mind had superimposed the faces of Sarah and Emily Sweeting over the corpses’ features, and he had felt a powerful nausea rise in his throat.
Jack had never seen anything - and prayed to never again see anything - so very like his image of Hell as the bowels of that slaver. For all his experience in warfare, he’d not had the least idea of the crimes certain men were capable of committing toward each other. As he’d looked over the faces of the young men among the slaves, his mind had gone again and again to his son, Sam Panda.
What if this very thing had happened to Sam? What if Sam had been taken by slavers? What if Sam had been forced to live a life like this? What if Sam’s strong young body had been trapped in an airless hellhole, had caught some one of the many diseases rampant there, had wasted away to nearly nothing, and ended up as food for sharks, the only testament to his life, his very existence a brief notation of financial loss on some slaver’s ledger?
And to think I once defended the whole institution, Jack thought, feeling tears prick his eyes. To think Lord Nelson could have…is it possible he knew no more about it than I? He was such a kind man…It didn’t matter. No matter who else supported this, Jack knew he would never again do so; not even the tolerable sorts of domestic slavery he had seen. As Stephen had once said, abuses of the situation were far too easy.
Stephen. That was another thing that weighed on him. Jack knew Stephen hated slavery with a passion - he had seen him fly out at men who supported slavery and owned slaves. Jack had always wondered at the depths of his rage. He wondered no longer. When he’d called the master of the Nancy back over and made him clean up below, it had taken every ounce of self-control he possessed not to kill the man on the spot.
He was also amazed that Stephen had never handled him more sharply over certain things he’d said. For all that Stephen usually became harshly passionate over the subject, the most he had ever said to Jack were mild rejoinders and questions. Perhaps it was because Stephen knew that Jack could not possibly know the full truth about slavery, and knew too, that if he had known, he would be nearly as passionately abolitionist as Stephen himself.
Well, he was right about that, Jack admitted. When he began this mission, he had seen the prevention of the slave trade as a wholly unimportant, but necessary chore. A ruse so that the squadron sent to invade Ireland would have no reason to suspect they would be opposed by anyone. It had been a distant second on his list of priorities, the first object being, of course, getting away from the African coast and sailing off to stop the French. Now, the two points of his mission carried equal weight. He must certainly depart in good time to intercept the French squadron, but he’d be damned if he didn’t capture every slaver he could lay his hands on before that date.
It was an abrupt reversal of feeling, and it had a strong effect. Yet Jack knew his resolution was the right one because it gave his heart some ease, helped ameliorate his sense of guilt over his past beliefs. It was not so often that he felt compelled to change his mind, his way of thinking on matters that had gone unquestioned his whole life, and although he did not relish the experience, he knew it had been necessary.
Little did he know, he would soon be undergoing another reversal, one far more personal and with more immediate effects.
0~0
In all their years together, it had mainly been Stephen who tended Jack’s health. This was only right and proper, as Stephen was the doctor and Jack dealt with a good deal of necessary hazard to life and limb in the pursuit of his calling.
Yet there had been times Jack had tended him, such as after Mahon, when Stephen could not bear to be tended to by anyone other than Jack, Bonden and Killick, and often grew savage even with them. Then not much later, on their voyage home from Calcutta, when Stephen had been so overcome with fever after operating on himself that Jack had found it necessary to remain by his bedside, knowing Stephen would be greatly embarrassed to have anyone but Jack remain by him when he was in such a state, and knowing that it was simply not wise to allow anyone else to hear certain things he had to say.
There were other incidents, not nearly as life-threatening as the first two, and during all of those times - yes, even after Mahon - Jack had always felt confident regarding Stephen’s prospects of recovery.
But the yellow jack, having come on so quickly, having brought Stephen so low in such a short time, and having reduced him to this…it was altogether different.
He’d thought Stephen looked a little odd when they’d called him in to advise them on their official letter; he’d been surprised when Stephen had found it necessary to ask what ‘expediently’ meant, but merely thought him unusually distractible. Then he had not answered, and Jack and Tom had watched in shock as he’d suddenly begun gasping, hand over his heart.
Jack had realized what was wrong even before the surgeon’s mates told him that Doctor Maturin had come to William Smith and asked for a diagnosis. He had caught the yellow jack himself years before, though in him it had been only a mild infection, with the usual fever, headache, chills, aching pains in his limbs and back, loss of appetite, nausea and some vomiting. His was among the lesser cases, and he had recovered in scarcely a fortnight.
While Killick bustled about readying what Jack had ordered, Stephen had reached for his hand. Jack had clasped it, noting the shaking.
“My dear, you have no need to give up any part of your cabin for me. I told Smith to prepare mine when I first began to suspect. I did not want to worry my shipmates with the idea of infection, and although I personally do not believe it to be infectious from one person to another, I am by no means infallible and I may be wrong. Have you not considered that you might…?”
“Infection be damned,” said Jack firmly. “I had a touch of the yellow jack in Jamaica when I was a boy: I was salted. Besides, it ain’t infectious.”
Stephen had tried to insist, but Jack would not be overborne. Even by the time all was made ready, Stephen could barely stand, and Jack and Killick had to support him to the cot, pull his clothes off him and help him into the swinging bed.
When Stephen asked Smith to describe the disease in detail, Jack discreetly listened in. He’d been hoping that Stephen would pass through this as quickly and easily as he had himself all those years before, but as Smith explained the stages of the yellow jack in great detail, Jack felt a growing uneasiness and certainty that Stephen would not be so fortunate.
His suspicions were proved correct. Stephen’s decline was rapid - by the third day Jack would not have known him, his behavior was so altered. Not that this was altogether a bad thing, Jack thought as he wrung out a cloth and laid it on Stephen’s brow. Before now, Stephen’s pride and snappish manner had made any nursing of him quite difficult. But in this the yellow jack’s symptoms were almost welcome, as Stephen had neither the wit nor the will to protest.
Jack had taken over almost all the nursing duties in regard to Stephen. Smith and the other assistants had the entire ship’s company to tend to as well as Stephen, and they had made it quite clear to Jack that good nursing made all the difference in such cases. Jack thanked God that he had Tom to rely on for running the ship, and that at this time there was very little he needed to continuously do in his role as commodore. He could, with a clear conscience, spend hours at Stephen’s bedside, and for the first time in their long friendship, he could tend to Stephen without protest.
Jack had never thought there was such pleasure to be had in simply taking care of another person. If anyone had told him that he would be happy to help a man sit up so that he could vomit the most vile-smelling black matter into a bowl rather than all over his bedding - if he had been told that his heart would throb in a very unusual manner when he gently propped someone’s head up to give them a drink - he would have thought it ridiculous. Yet it was true. He would have done so for any man had he been called upon, but with Stephen it was different. Jack had long felt himself to be deeply indebted to Stephen, and increasingly guilty that he was not able to repay him in the only way Stephen desired, with being allowed to take every chance for discoveries in natural philosophy. Stephen had spent nearly two decades of his life following Jack around the world, sewing him back up, keeping him from making terrible mistakes, supporting him in all his misfortunes, and it seemed to Jack that he paid Stephen back with little more than refusals to allow Stephen the chance of indulging his own pursuits.
True, orders always came first, but Jack still felt guilty for the necessity. But although he could not repay Stephen in that manner, at least now he was truly caring for him in turn. It would not even cause the sort of moral superiority Stephen so dreaded, knowing that Jack had done this for him. Stephen’s delirium, Jack suspected, would ensure he would remember little of what went on.
For delirious he was. Jack often saw him lying in his cot, face blank, eyes fixed on the ceiling while tears poured from his eyes. He heard him moaning in discomfort at all hours, and once, in one of his more lucid moments, he had clasped Jack’s hand, pressed it to his face and wept, “Oh Jack, it hurts. I hurt everywhere. Make it stop, brother, please.”
“How might I do that?” Jack had replied gently.
Stephen had shaken his head, rocking from side to side in the cot, and Jack, remembering his own experiences, had carefully turned Stephen over onto his front, pulled away the sheets and began rubbing his back and shoulders, kneading the slender muscles, trying to ease the aches that accompanied the disease, worse than any influenza. Stephen had groaned into his pillow as Jack worked, but they were sounds of relief, and once he mumbled something that sounded like, “Yes, Jack. Keep on, just like that.” Which Stephen would never have said if he had been in his right mind. He’d never been one to ask for help so unselfconsciously.
Jack could not repeat this often, though Stephen constantly claimed he hurt. Soon his skin yellowed and the great purple splotches began to spread. Jack knew from Smith that this was blood rising to the skin like a bruise, and that any firm contact with the area might worsen it. Jack handled Stephen as though he were made of frail glass, touching him only when necessary and as gently as possible.
Jack knew the men thought he was mad to stay so close to Doctor Maturin. Even Killick, who saw Stephen as an authority second only to God in all matters medical, was not willing to stay near him any longer than necessary, not believing the disease was not infectious. Certainly any ignorant man looking at Stephen would think that whatever strange disease he had must certainly be deadly, and catching.
Yet Jack knew he would have stayed by Stephen regardless. Even if he had not survived the lesser form of the disease and so been granted immunity from all its variations, he would have stayed. Even if medical science had proven the illness could be transferred direct from one person to another, he would still have remained, and been honored to do so.
For this was Stephen he was tending to, his dearest friend, his heart’s brother, the man he loved more than any other on land or sea. Jack now knew something that had escaped him before, for all the time Stephen had spent at his bedside, tending to him through illness and injury. It is impossible to care for someone in such a way, and not love them. And if you already loved them, that love only increased, became sharper, more evident, and not just because of the threat of possible loss.
Had Stephen ever felt as helpless as this? Jack wondered. Had Stephen ever felt that he would happily have taken Jack’s place, if only his suffering would be eased? Had Stephen ever felt such desperate, terrified love for him as Jack himself felt for Stephen now? The third stadium of the disease was perhaps not far off, and if Stephen began showing the signs, Jack knew he must necessarily face the idea of Stephen’s dying. The thought alone was enough to nearly stop his heart. He did everything he could for Stephen, sponging his limp body along with the loblolly boy, giving him water whenever he was capable of drinking, turning him onto his side to vomit into a basin so he would not choke on the foul stuff his own body was producing.
And Jack played his violin.
It was the only other thing he could think of to do, particularly when it was no longer wise to touch Stephen without necessity. He tried playing their old pieces at first, but they sounded hollow without Stephen’s cello booming along with him, and so he quickly turned to improvisation.
He hoped Stephen could hear him well enough to recognize the messages he meant his music to carry, the feelings that he could never put into words. Be strong. Don’t let this defeat you. I’m here for you, for whatever you need. I’d go anywhere, do anything if it would save you. You are stronger than this. I’ve seen you face death before and never flinch. Don’t give up. Think of your daughter, and everything else you have to live for.
Above all, he used his music to convey the message: Don’t leave me. Dear God above, Stephen, don’t leave me. Fight this and win.
Stay with me, my love. I can’t do without you.
0~0
When Smith and Macauley had congratulated Stephen on his recovery and departed, Jack entered to find Stephen lying back with his eyes closed. His skin was still horribly yellow, the purplish blotches beginning to show a faint green around the edges. His eyes were sunken, his face and body skeletal. Yet all this was inconsequential in the knowledge that the frail body lying like a bag of bones in his cot was alive, and would go on living.
Jack reached down with his fingertips and stroked Stephen’s cheek. His eyes fluttered open and he said, “Jack. Good day to you, now,” In a raspy whisper. Jack filled the glass and held it to Stephen’s lips. He drank thirstily, with more energy than Jack had seen for many a day, and the sight warmed his heart.
“They tell me you shall get on quite well, if we can keep you fed,” Jack offered jovially. “You’ve a lot to make up for in the matter of victuals. Is there anything you would like in particular?”
“Portable soup and water for now. I daresay it shall take my stomach a while to grow accustomed to taking food in, after so long purging itself of poison. Perhaps some fruit as well, pineapple sounds quite good, if there is any about.”
Jack called Killick to fetch the food, and while they awaited its arrival, Jack asked, “Stephen, can you feed yourself? I see your hands are still shaking a little.”
Stephen gave him a sharp glance, and for a moment Jack thought he had been laid by the lee again, that Stephen’s pride and preference for self-sufficiency were already returning. But Stephen only sighed and said, “I should be most grateful for your help, brother, if it would not trouble you. I fear I would drop a laden fork or spoon, and then there would be the trouble of changing the sheets and cleaning up.”
“I should be most happy, Stephen. Thank you,” making it sound as though Stephen was the one doing the favor. “I should not like to ask Killick to help clean up again; he has been run near ragged looking after you. Smith always said we should clean up the black vomit as soon as may be, and I’m afraid I was not always so quick with the basin as I should have been. The poor man’s spent a good deal of time on his knees scrubbing and helping me change out the sheets. He’ll be grateful for your consideration, and-”
“Jack, stop for all love.” Stephen said firmly. When Jack looked warily at him Stephen said, “I know full well I cannot manage myself just yet. I would be most grateful for any assistance you may offer and Killick as well. You need not try to keep me in good humor by dancing around my condition.”
Jack flushed and looked down. “I’m sorry Stephen, truly. It’s only that-” he cut himself off abruptly, his ears reddening.
“Only that I have been crabbed and fractious with you both before now, even when my condition was far better?” Stephen finished, smiling a little. “I daresay I shall be that way soon enough, as my strength returns and there are simple things I can do for myself again. For now, I find I am quite content to be fussed over, and if I must be tended to, I should prefer it be you, Jack. Make no mistake; I know who has been tending me so well these past days. I daresay I may never know all you did for me, but I know enough to know that if there is one person aboard to whom I owe my continuing existence, it is you, my dear Jack.”
“It was my pleasure Stephen,” Jack murmured, reaching out to stroke his face. “And I do not exaggerate. I never thought tending to you would make me so happy. It is not that I am glad you were ill, understand, only that since you were ill I was happy to have the chance to care for you, as you have often done for me. I never thought there was such joy to be found in it. Tell me Stephen, have you ever…?”
Stephen knew what he was asking. He caught Jack’s hand, stilling its comforting motion.
“Yes, brother,” he said simply. “I have.”
“How I hope there will be good news in them - orders to seek out the enemy - something like real wartime sailoring - with a squadron this size it would not be unusual - rather than skirmishing about for a parcel of miserable slavers…”
“Perhaps the miserable slaves may be worthy of consideration too,” observed Stephen.
“Oh, certainly; and I should very much dislike being a slave myself. But Nelson did say that if you abolished the trade…” He broke off, saying, “However,” for this was one of the few points on which they wholly disagreed.
-The Commodore, pg. 206-7, Norton Press paperback.
-
But his voice changed entirely as they neared the slaver: the stench grew worse, the water still more filthy, and he fell abruptly silent at the sight of two small girls, grey and dead, going over the side. For a moment they were disputed by sharks hardly longer than themselves, until a huge fish, gliding from under the keel, tore them apart…
Stephen who had known some shocking prison infirmaries, lunatic asylums and poor-house wards, had a professional armour; so, from his voyages in a slaver, had Whewell; Jack had none - the gun-deck amidships in a hard-fought fleet action, the slaughterhouse as it was called, had in no way prepared him for this, and his head swam.
-The Commodore, pg. 235-6, Norton Press paperback
0~0
He returned to the Bellona, took off all his clothes, stood long under a jet of clear water…
The water wasn’t helping, Jack thought as he stood under the downpour from the shower. He still felt contaminated, filthy, as though he would never be clean.
Perhaps it was because this filth wasn’t on his person; it felt like it dwelled inside him. As much as he tried to ignore it, he kept hearing echoes of his own voice over the years, defending slavery, quoting Lord Nelson, telling Stephen he should not like to be a slave himself, yet on the whole he saw little wrong with it.
Part of his earlier reasoning - or so he tried to excuse himself - was that he’d never before seen slavery in this particular form. The slaves he’d seen had mostly been well-cared for, biddable and quiet. Although some had shown the mark of beatings, this was no great shock to a man who had been raised in the Royal Navy, where many men bore the marks of harsh beatings. In his mind, beatings were only given as punishment for crime or disobedience.
True, he had heard stories of the most outrageous abuses, but these had always been abstract to him, and probably exaggerated, he’d privately thought. After all, reports of the Navy’s use of the cat were often embellished. Surely not even half the tales about the darker side of slavery could be true?
But it seemed they were. When he’d seen the two little girls being fed to the sharks, his mind had superimposed the faces of Sarah and Emily Sweeting over the corpses’ features, and he had felt a powerful nausea rise in his throat.
Jack had never seen anything - and prayed to never again see anything - so very like his image of Hell as the bowels of that slaver. For all his experience in warfare, he’d not had the least idea of the crimes certain men were capable of committing toward each other. As he’d looked over the faces of the young men among the slaves, his mind had gone again and again to his son, Sam Panda.
What if this very thing had happened to Sam? What if Sam had been taken by slavers? What if Sam had been forced to live a life like this? What if Sam’s strong young body had been trapped in an airless hellhole, had caught some one of the many diseases rampant there, had wasted away to nearly nothing, and ended up as food for sharks, the only testament to his life, his very existence a brief notation of financial loss on some slaver’s ledger?
And to think I once defended the whole institution, Jack thought, feeling tears prick his eyes. To think Lord Nelson could have…is it possible he knew no more about it than I? He was such a kind man…It didn’t matter. No matter who else supported this, Jack knew he would never again do so; not even the tolerable sorts of domestic slavery he had seen. As Stephen had once said, abuses of the situation were far too easy.
Stephen. That was another thing that weighed on him. Jack knew Stephen hated slavery with a passion - he had seen him fly out at men who supported slavery and owned slaves. Jack had always wondered at the depths of his rage. He wondered no longer. When he’d called the master of the Nancy back over and made him clean up below, it had taken every ounce of self-control he possessed not to kill the man on the spot.
He was also amazed that Stephen had never handled him more sharply over certain things he’d said. For all that Stephen usually became harshly passionate over the subject, the most he had ever said to Jack were mild rejoinders and questions. Perhaps it was because Stephen knew that Jack could not possibly know the full truth about slavery, and knew too, that if he had known, he would be nearly as passionately abolitionist as Stephen himself.
Well, he was right about that, Jack admitted. When he began this mission, he had seen the prevention of the slave trade as a wholly unimportant, but necessary chore. A ruse so that the squadron sent to invade Ireland would have no reason to suspect they would be opposed by anyone. It had been a distant second on his list of priorities, the first object being, of course, getting away from the African coast and sailing off to stop the French. Now, the two points of his mission carried equal weight. He must certainly depart in good time to intercept the French squadron, but he’d be damned if he didn’t capture every slaver he could lay his hands on before that date.
It was an abrupt reversal of feeling, and it had a strong effect. Yet Jack knew his resolution was the right one because it gave his heart some ease, helped ameliorate his sense of guilt over his past beliefs. It was not so often that he felt compelled to change his mind, his way of thinking on matters that had gone unquestioned his whole life, and although he did not relish the experience, he knew it had been necessary.
Little did he know, he would soon be undergoing another reversal, one far more personal and with more immediate effects.
0~0
In all their years together, it had mainly been Stephen who tended Jack’s health. This was only right and proper, as Stephen was the doctor and Jack dealt with a good deal of necessary hazard to life and limb in the pursuit of his calling.
Yet there had been times Jack had tended him, such as after Mahon, when Stephen could not bear to be tended to by anyone other than Jack, Bonden and Killick, and often grew savage even with them. Then not much later, on their voyage home from Calcutta, when Stephen had been so overcome with fever after operating on himself that Jack had found it necessary to remain by his bedside, knowing Stephen would be greatly embarrassed to have anyone but Jack remain by him when he was in such a state, and knowing that it was simply not wise to allow anyone else to hear certain things he had to say.
There were other incidents, not nearly as life-threatening as the first two, and during all of those times - yes, even after Mahon - Jack had always felt confident regarding Stephen’s prospects of recovery.
But the yellow jack, having come on so quickly, having brought Stephen so low in such a short time, and having reduced him to this…it was altogether different.
He’d thought Stephen looked a little odd when they’d called him in to advise them on their official letter; he’d been surprised when Stephen had found it necessary to ask what ‘expediently’ meant, but merely thought him unusually distractible. Then he had not answered, and Jack and Tom had watched in shock as he’d suddenly begun gasping, hand over his heart.
Jack had realized what was wrong even before the surgeon’s mates told him that Doctor Maturin had come to William Smith and asked for a diagnosis. He had caught the yellow jack himself years before, though in him it had been only a mild infection, with the usual fever, headache, chills, aching pains in his limbs and back, loss of appetite, nausea and some vomiting. His was among the lesser cases, and he had recovered in scarcely a fortnight.
While Killick bustled about readying what Jack had ordered, Stephen had reached for his hand. Jack had clasped it, noting the shaking.
“My dear, you have no need to give up any part of your cabin for me. I told Smith to prepare mine when I first began to suspect. I did not want to worry my shipmates with the idea of infection, and although I personally do not believe it to be infectious from one person to another, I am by no means infallible and I may be wrong. Have you not considered that you might…?”
“Infection be damned,” said Jack firmly. “I had a touch of the yellow jack in Jamaica when I was a boy: I was salted. Besides, it ain’t infectious.”
Stephen had tried to insist, but Jack would not be overborne. Even by the time all was made ready, Stephen could barely stand, and Jack and Killick had to support him to the cot, pull his clothes off him and help him into the swinging bed.
When Stephen asked Smith to describe the disease in detail, Jack discreetly listened in. He’d been hoping that Stephen would pass through this as quickly and easily as he had himself all those years before, but as Smith explained the stages of the yellow jack in great detail, Jack felt a growing uneasiness and certainty that Stephen would not be so fortunate.
His suspicions were proved correct. Stephen’s decline was rapid - by the third day Jack would not have known him, his behavior was so altered. Not that this was altogether a bad thing, Jack thought as he wrung out a cloth and laid it on Stephen’s brow. Before now, Stephen’s pride and snappish manner had made any nursing of him quite difficult. But in this the yellow jack’s symptoms were almost welcome, as Stephen had neither the wit nor the will to protest.
Jack had taken over almost all the nursing duties in regard to Stephen. Smith and the other assistants had the entire ship’s company to tend to as well as Stephen, and they had made it quite clear to Jack that good nursing made all the difference in such cases. Jack thanked God that he had Tom to rely on for running the ship, and that at this time there was very little he needed to continuously do in his role as commodore. He could, with a clear conscience, spend hours at Stephen’s bedside, and for the first time in their long friendship, he could tend to Stephen without protest.
Jack had never thought there was such pleasure to be had in simply taking care of another person. If anyone had told him that he would be happy to help a man sit up so that he could vomit the most vile-smelling black matter into a bowl rather than all over his bedding - if he had been told that his heart would throb in a very unusual manner when he gently propped someone’s head up to give them a drink - he would have thought it ridiculous. Yet it was true. He would have done so for any man had he been called upon, but with Stephen it was different. Jack had long felt himself to be deeply indebted to Stephen, and increasingly guilty that he was not able to repay him in the only way Stephen desired, with being allowed to take every chance for discoveries in natural philosophy. Stephen had spent nearly two decades of his life following Jack around the world, sewing him back up, keeping him from making terrible mistakes, supporting him in all his misfortunes, and it seemed to Jack that he paid Stephen back with little more than refusals to allow Stephen the chance of indulging his own pursuits.
True, orders always came first, but Jack still felt guilty for the necessity. But although he could not repay Stephen in that manner, at least now he was truly caring for him in turn. It would not even cause the sort of moral superiority Stephen so dreaded, knowing that Jack had done this for him. Stephen’s delirium, Jack suspected, would ensure he would remember little of what went on.
For delirious he was. Jack often saw him lying in his cot, face blank, eyes fixed on the ceiling while tears poured from his eyes. He heard him moaning in discomfort at all hours, and once, in one of his more lucid moments, he had clasped Jack’s hand, pressed it to his face and wept, “Oh Jack, it hurts. I hurt everywhere. Make it stop, brother, please.”
“How might I do that?” Jack had replied gently.
Stephen had shaken his head, rocking from side to side in the cot, and Jack, remembering his own experiences, had carefully turned Stephen over onto his front, pulled away the sheets and began rubbing his back and shoulders, kneading the slender muscles, trying to ease the aches that accompanied the disease, worse than any influenza. Stephen had groaned into his pillow as Jack worked, but they were sounds of relief, and once he mumbled something that sounded like, “Yes, Jack. Keep on, just like that.” Which Stephen would never have said if he had been in his right mind. He’d never been one to ask for help so unselfconsciously.
Jack could not repeat this often, though Stephen constantly claimed he hurt. Soon his skin yellowed and the great purple splotches began to spread. Jack knew from Smith that this was blood rising to the skin like a bruise, and that any firm contact with the area might worsen it. Jack handled Stephen as though he were made of frail glass, touching him only when necessary and as gently as possible.
Jack knew the men thought he was mad to stay so close to Doctor Maturin. Even Killick, who saw Stephen as an authority second only to God in all matters medical, was not willing to stay near him any longer than necessary, not believing the disease was not infectious. Certainly any ignorant man looking at Stephen would think that whatever strange disease he had must certainly be deadly, and catching.
Yet Jack knew he would have stayed by Stephen regardless. Even if he had not survived the lesser form of the disease and so been granted immunity from all its variations, he would have stayed. Even if medical science had proven the illness could be transferred direct from one person to another, he would still have remained, and been honored to do so.
For this was Stephen he was tending to, his dearest friend, his heart’s brother, the man he loved more than any other on land or sea. Jack now knew something that had escaped him before, for all the time Stephen had spent at his bedside, tending to him through illness and injury. It is impossible to care for someone in such a way, and not love them. And if you already loved them, that love only increased, became sharper, more evident, and not just because of the threat of possible loss.
Had Stephen ever felt as helpless as this? Jack wondered. Had Stephen ever felt that he would happily have taken Jack’s place, if only his suffering would be eased? Had Stephen ever felt such desperate, terrified love for him as Jack himself felt for Stephen now? The third stadium of the disease was perhaps not far off, and if Stephen began showing the signs, Jack knew he must necessarily face the idea of Stephen’s dying. The thought alone was enough to nearly stop his heart. He did everything he could for Stephen, sponging his limp body along with the loblolly boy, giving him water whenever he was capable of drinking, turning him onto his side to vomit into a basin so he would not choke on the foul stuff his own body was producing.
And Jack played his violin.
It was the only other thing he could think of to do, particularly when it was no longer wise to touch Stephen without necessity. He tried playing their old pieces at first, but they sounded hollow without Stephen’s cello booming along with him, and so he quickly turned to improvisation.
He hoped Stephen could hear him well enough to recognize the messages he meant his music to carry, the feelings that he could never put into words. Be strong. Don’t let this defeat you. I’m here for you, for whatever you need. I’d go anywhere, do anything if it would save you. You are stronger than this. I’ve seen you face death before and never flinch. Don’t give up. Think of your daughter, and everything else you have to live for.
Above all, he used his music to convey the message: Don’t leave me. Dear God above, Stephen, don’t leave me. Fight this and win.
Stay with me, my love. I can’t do without you.
0~0
When Smith and Macauley had congratulated Stephen on his recovery and departed, Jack entered to find Stephen lying back with his eyes closed. His skin was still horribly yellow, the purplish blotches beginning to show a faint green around the edges. His eyes were sunken, his face and body skeletal. Yet all this was inconsequential in the knowledge that the frail body lying like a bag of bones in his cot was alive, and would go on living.
Jack reached down with his fingertips and stroked Stephen’s cheek. His eyes fluttered open and he said, “Jack. Good day to you, now,” In a raspy whisper. Jack filled the glass and held it to Stephen’s lips. He drank thirstily, with more energy than Jack had seen for many a day, and the sight warmed his heart.
“They tell me you shall get on quite well, if we can keep you fed,” Jack offered jovially. “You’ve a lot to make up for in the matter of victuals. Is there anything you would like in particular?”
“Portable soup and water for now. I daresay it shall take my stomach a while to grow accustomed to taking food in, after so long purging itself of poison. Perhaps some fruit as well, pineapple sounds quite good, if there is any about.”
Jack called Killick to fetch the food, and while they awaited its arrival, Jack asked, “Stephen, can you feed yourself? I see your hands are still shaking a little.”
Stephen gave him a sharp glance, and for a moment Jack thought he had been laid by the lee again, that Stephen’s pride and preference for self-sufficiency were already returning. But Stephen only sighed and said, “I should be most grateful for your help, brother, if it would not trouble you. I fear I would drop a laden fork or spoon, and then there would be the trouble of changing the sheets and cleaning up.”
“I should be most happy, Stephen. Thank you,” making it sound as though Stephen was the one doing the favor. “I should not like to ask Killick to help clean up again; he has been run near ragged looking after you. Smith always said we should clean up the black vomit as soon as may be, and I’m afraid I was not always so quick with the basin as I should have been. The poor man’s spent a good deal of time on his knees scrubbing and helping me change out the sheets. He’ll be grateful for your consideration, and-”
“Jack, stop for all love.” Stephen said firmly. When Jack looked warily at him Stephen said, “I know full well I cannot manage myself just yet. I would be most grateful for any assistance you may offer and Killick as well. You need not try to keep me in good humor by dancing around my condition.”
Jack flushed and looked down. “I’m sorry Stephen, truly. It’s only that-” he cut himself off abruptly, his ears reddening.
“Only that I have been crabbed and fractious with you both before now, even when my condition was far better?” Stephen finished, smiling a little. “I daresay I shall be that way soon enough, as my strength returns and there are simple things I can do for myself again. For now, I find I am quite content to be fussed over, and if I must be tended to, I should prefer it be you, Jack. Make no mistake; I know who has been tending me so well these past days. I daresay I may never know all you did for me, but I know enough to know that if there is one person aboard to whom I owe my continuing existence, it is you, my dear Jack.”
“It was my pleasure Stephen,” Jack murmured, reaching out to stroke his face. “And I do not exaggerate. I never thought tending to you would make me so happy. It is not that I am glad you were ill, understand, only that since you were ill I was happy to have the chance to care for you, as you have often done for me. I never thought there was such joy to be found in it. Tell me Stephen, have you ever…?”
Stephen knew what he was asking. He caught Jack’s hand, stilling its comforting motion.
“Yes, brother,” he said simply. “I have.”