Coming Home for Christmas (8 page)

 

Dawn came as they left the fisherman's hovel, both of them smiling as they heard the babies crying—such a pleasant sound after the terror of the past few days and nights.

“Life just keeps going on,” he said to his wife. He sat with her on the end of the dock, both of them dangling their legs off the pier. “Maybe she will name them Tomás and Laura.”

Laura giggled and put her arm around him. “You have a high opinion of yourself!” she scolded, but he knew her well enough to know she was teasing.

“I am also an amazing lover,” he joked back. “Probably the best in the Royal Navy.”

She swatted his arm. “And how often are you on land?”

“You have me there,” he said, ruffling her hair.

Thomas looked at the peaceful water. His back was to the mission, the smoke that still rose from smoldering buildings around the mission, the rubble everywhere and the incessant keening of Indians in despair. He could hardly imagine a more unromantic setting, but there was no overlooking the contentment filling him just sitting beside his bride of a few weeks.

“We can go back today,” he told her. “And look over there—isn't that the pinnace we came on?”

Laura shuddered. “Could we not take horses? We would be two days, three at the most.”

“The pinnace is faster and I have patients in San Diego, too,” he reminded her. “This is the life of a surgeon, Laura.”

She snorted, but was otherwise silent as he hailed the
pescador,
who was folding his nets into the boat, perhaps getting ready for a fishing run now that as much order had been restored to San Juan as anyone would see for a while. Life went on and the fish waited.

Hand in hand, they walked down to the beach. “Would you take us to San Diego?” Thomas asked.

The fisherman nodded, his face troubled. “Better south than north,” he said.

“It's worse there?” Thomas asked.

“That man over there told us more than one ship foundered off Mission Santa Barbara.”

“It's a tragedy,” Thomas agreed. “We can be ready any—”

The fisherman wasn't finished. “One of the vessels was a strange sight. Apparently, members of your navy had jury-rigged a coastal vessel.”

“Oh, Lord,” Thomas breathed, as the blood drained from his face. “But…Santa Barbara? It can't be the vessel I know. The
Almost Splendid
left San Diego weeks ago.”

The
pescador
shrugged. “Hard to say. I do know the British men had put into Santa Barbara two weeks
ago, because they were taking on water.” He sighed. “Everyone drowned in a rogue wave. How sad.”

His legs wouldn't hold him. Thomas sank to the sand and bowed his head.

H
e stayed that way a long, long while, hearing a great roaring in his ears and feeling an enormous urge to cry his heart out. These were men he had sailed with, cured of ailments, heard their complaints and shared the evils of war. And now they were dead, fish food off the California coast, far from home.

He couldn't cry though, not when people depended on him. He tried to rise, but found he could not, until Laura helped him. Unable to speak, he nodded his thanks, then glanced at her.

What he saw in her eyes took away his breath. He had never seen such devastation on another human's face. Jolted from his own sorrow, he grabbed her shoulders. “Laura! What is the matter?”

She sobbed and threw her arms around him, trying to grab him everywhere, as if he were smoke and would disappear if she did not try. She clung to him, her face muffled against the bib of his surgeon's apron, wailing as though her heart would break. It was foolish to expect
her to speak rationally; Scottish women did not behave like this. He held her just as tightly as she held him, knowing by now that her apparently fragile construction was an illusion. She was as strong as steel, every bit his equal.

He had no idea how long they clung together. When he opened his eyes, the fisherman was back coiling his nets, ignoring them as would any man who was “born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” So it was with Job; so it was with these citizens living in paradise on the Alta California coast, where the earth moved without warning.

His wife's wails ceased finally. She sagged against him and Thomas realized they were holding each other up.

“Dear heart, what is it? You didn't even know those men.”

She raised her tearstained face to his, cupping it with her shaking hands. “Tomás,
you
could have been on that ship!”

Dumbfounded, he stared at her. She was right; he hadn't even thought of that, so horrified was he by the death of friends and the agony that the Americans at Fort Astoria would never even know how badly their assistance was needed by the Royal Navy, farther down the coast. He was stranded in California for the foreseeable future.

Selfish man. He had only thought of himself and not of his lovely, sudden wife. His father would have been ashamed.

Laura sat down in the sand then, and he slumped beside her. He put his arm around her, swarmed by more emotions at once than he was capable of pro
cessing through his tired brain. Death on land and sea surrounded them both and here was this precious gift: Laura Ortiz, descendant of grandees and Spanish nobility, who loved him. She loved him so much that even the mere thought of his death rendered her inconsolable. He didn't deserve such devotion.

She was saying something else, but there was that roaring in his ears. He breathed deeply and slowly until the noise went away. The sound of water lapping against the fishing boats, a sound he was familiar with, restored his equanimity. He was able to listen to what his wife was saying.

“I don't know when it happened,” she was saying, her voice soft. She rubbed his chest. Her voice changed, and he could hear the shyness now. “Maybe it was even when you…when you did not take me at once, as was your right, once I was your wife.”

“I would never have done that, Laura,” he said.

She nodded. “I know. You were kind and you never had to be.”

He pulled her on to his lap because beside him wasn't close enough. “Probably the populations of large countries would not say I have been kind to drag you into…into this hell that is San Juan Capistrano.”

“Probably not,” she agreed and her Spanish practicality made him smile. “If you will recall,
señor,
I did not ask. I told you I was coming.”

“So you did, my love.”

He kissed her then, mindful of nothing except her. There was nothing tentative in his urge and nothing shy in her response. He kissed her lips, her neck and the warm space between her breasts, where her heart pounded. By God, he would have taken her right there on the
beach, if it hadn't been broad daylight. The fisherman was ignoring them—wise man—and Laura was breathing as heavily as he was. He owed what little restraint remained to him to his Presbyterian upbringing.

He held himself off from her. “I don't even pretend to understand any of this,” he told Laura, when he could sling foreign words together.

Was she always going to be better than he, in fraught situations? “Let us get on the boat and go back to your bed in San Diego,” she whispered in his ear. “Earthquakes can wait.”

So they could. While she waited on the fishing vessel, Thomas gathered together what remained of their medical stores, leaving most of them with the two Franciscans along with more instructions. He took one last ward walk through the refectory, assessing his Indians. Two were still no-hopers, but he felt sanguine about the rest.

Touched to his very soul, Thomas knelt, as Father Boscana directed, and let the priest pray his thanks to God and make the sign of the cross on his forehead with his thumb.

“I'll return in a few weeks,” he said, when he was on his feet again, blessed for his work and amply paid.

“Bring your wife, too,” the priest said.

As if he would ever travel anywhere without her again. Laura kissed him when he was seated beside her in the vessel's gunwales and whispered in his ear. “I love you. You know I am going to be seasick soon.”

He smiled and nodded. She was.

 

The fishing vessel only took them halfway down the coast to Mission San Luis Rey, a mission Thomas
was familiar with from a measles epidemic last year. “The fish are running and I cannot waste my time with you,” the
pescador
said. He was apologetic, but he was adamant.

He was even thoughtful. As he helped Thomas over the rail and handed him his medical bag, he gestured him closer, his eyes lively with good humor.

“
Señor,
this mission appears to be standing. The fathers at the mission will provide you and your wife with a fine room for the night. The walls are quite thick.”

Thomas blushed and looked away, then shook the fisherman's hand.
“Gracias,”
he said simply.

It was a fine little room with thick walls. The bed was narrow, and Father Peyri apologized to them both. “If you wish, your wife can sleep in an adjoining cell,” he said. He patted Thomas's arm. “And we will be honored to furnish you with horses for your return to San Diego tomorrow.” The priest looked at Laura. “We can do no less. Your husband aided us monumentally last year, when so many suffered from measles.”

“He is good that way,” she replied. “And, no, we do not need an extra room. Is there a bath? We worked so hard at San Juan Capistrano.”

There was a bath house and Laura used it first, coming back to their room with her hair damp, but in its usual braid, her shawl over her nightgown, her feet bare. By the time he had finished, she was already in bed, the nightgown spread across the foot of it. He hadn't been aware that she had freckles on her breasts.

Neither of them wasted a moment worrying about the narrowness of the bed, probably intended for priestly travelers from one mission to another. She had a few
practical questions, which he answered while he was caressing her breasts and then her trim waist, then lower. He had made a clinical observation a few years ago that Spanish women were nicely rounded—far more so than Scottish women. Laura was no exception, despite that air of fragility she had discarded forever the night that neither of them had slept.

He was gentle, but he knew she was ready. And practical, anchoring her legs around him so he couldn't fall off the narrow bed, no matter how strenuous their exertions, once she got into the rhythm and hang of lovemaking. Her breath was rapid and tender in his ear as she told him of her love again and showed him, with no qualms, no restraint, no fears about the future.

She protested when he left her body, tucking herself close out of more than necessity. Father Peyri had kindly left them a pile of blankets. When reason triumphed again, Thomas spread out those blankets and she unmade the little bed and added them to create a larger bed on the floor.

“Much, much better,” she said, when they were still tight together, but without the fear of falling.

The room was dark and he was post-coitally drowsy, but he enjoyed her usual conversation in the dark, particularly as it was punctuated this time with a low moan when he decided to familiarize himself with her soft mechanism that hardened and made her shift about restlessly, until she sighed and put her hand on him in turn.

 

Toward morning, he woke to her tentative exploration, which turned into a symphony that left them both sated and exhausted.

“Maybe you
are
the best lover in the Royal Navy,” she told him, her voice drowsy this time.

“Told you.”

She punched his arm at that, but she followed her brutality with a thorough massage of his body that ended only when Father Peyri tapped on the door and invited them to Mass and then breakfast.

In his four years in San Diego, he had been to many a Mass, but never one when he was so alive to the serenity around him, which seemed to begin and end in his beloved wife. When her expressive face grew solemn and sober, and she glanced at him and slid closer, he knew without words that she was thinking of his now-dead comrades, and what would have been his fate, had he left his two dying patients and sailed with the
Almost Splendid.

 

Ralph Gooding was on his mind in the late afternoon as they rode into the
presidio.
Laura was the far better rider, leading his horse for the last few miles as he abandoned all pretence of dignity and clung to the tall pommel and suffered. She helped him dismount and took his arm as they entered the
presidio
's small hospital.

Thomas sighed with relief to see Ralph lying there, his eyes bright with fever, to be sure, but alive still. He took a step back, jolted out of his pain, when his eyes registered in the late-afternoon shadows and he saw the man seated beside his patient.

He was dressed much as Thomas had dressed four years earlier, in a plain navy blue uniform, with only the chains and knots on the collar to proclaim him a surgeon in the Royal Navy. The uniform was much
worn, proclaiming a long cruise. The young surgeon stood up and held out his hand.

“Ah, you are Surgeon Wilkie.” He laughed. “I guess you did not look in the harbor, did you?”

Dumbstruck, Thomas shook his head. He groped for Laura's hand.

“His Majesty's frigate, the
Glenmore,
lies at anchor. Don't look so amazed! We've come to take you home.”

T
he
Glenmore
well and truly rode at anchor in the harbor. A glance at Laura's pale face told him worlds about her feelings. She probably had no idea what Surgeon Fletcher was saying, but her suddenly frightened eyes remained fixed on the man's uniform and what it meant to her world. The only reassurance Thomas could offer her at that moment was her hand firmly held in his. He hoped it was enough.

Fletcher had certainly noticed it. “Gone native, have we?” the surgeon said to Thomas in English, which brought a pithy oath from Ralph Gooding.

“Remember yourself, carpenter,” the new surgeon said.

“She is my wife,” Thomas said, suddenly hating Tobias Fletcher.

“This complicates matters,” Fletcher replied.

Thomas took a good look at the man: young, his uniform still fairly new, even after what must have been
a long voyage from the other side of the world. “Ever been cast ashore, Surgeon?” he asked.

A head shake.

“In a Spanish dungeon? Away from England more than a year or two? On your own?”

More head shakes.

“Then don't tell me about complications,” Thomas said.

The
Glenmore
's surgeon at least was wise enough to know when to stop talking. “And now, sir, I had better see to my patient,” Thomas said, moving the other surgeon aside. He took Ralph's hand, hot and dry and even thinner than before.

“Any more bleeding?” Thomas asked.

“Aye, once or twice.” Ralph tried to smile and failed. “Father Hilario took good care of me, but he is more prone to prayer than styptic.”

“A little of both probably didn't hurt.” He spent a long moment looking at the carpenter's widening tubercular lesion. With a chill, he noticed another one forming on Ralph's chest. “Can I get you anything?” he asked, almost wincing with the inanity of his question.

“A new body—barring that, no,” Ralph said. He tugged weakly on the surgeon's hand. “Just do this: let your pretty wife sit with me this evening.” He glanced at the other surgeon without moving his head. “I believe you are to have dinner aboard the
Glenmore.
” He sighed then. “Time to make plans for the voyage…home.” He closed his eyes.

“I still won't leave you here,” Thomas said, wishing he sounded more positive.

“You may not have a choice, laddie,” Ralph replied.

Tobias Fletcher's plans were precisely what the car
penter suggested. “You'll have dinner aboard the Glenmore now,” he said; it was no suggestion.

“I suppose I will,” Thomas murmured. He looked around for Laura and saw her in their sitting room. “Just a moment, please.” He went into their quarters and closed the door quietly behind him.

“He will take you away,” she said, trying to hold her lips in a firm line so they would not tremble.

“Not without you,” he assured her, holding open his arms.

She hesitated for a small moment, then reached for him in that all-encompassing way he already cherished, holding as much of him as she could, and he was not a small man.

“Not without you,” he said again, then made a monumental mistake. He held her off for a moment, to see her better. “Not unless that is your choice.”

He knew he would never forget the look she gave him. It was as though he had struck her. Her eyes grew wide as she carefully extracted herself from his embrace. Her face turned pale and then solemn.

“How could you even think that?” she asked, then added quietly, “Unless, of course, you
are
thinking that.”

“Oh, no, never,” he replied quickly, but the damage was done.

Fearful now, he watched her face as she calmly regained her Spanish dignity. She smiled, but there was no joy in her eyes, the joy he had seen in the last few days and nights, when they had worked as equals in San Juan and made love as husband and wife.

He didn't know what to say. He wanted to take her in his arms again, but he was afraid. “We'll…we'll discuss
this when I return from the ship,” he said, afraid to meet her gaze and magnifying his wrongs by his cowardice. “Would you…would you sit with Ralph?”

“You didn't need to ask that,” she said quickly, stung, because he was trampling on her pride.

“I'll be back soon, Laura. We'll talk then.”

Silence. She had shouldered past him and opened the door into the ward. He watched her a moment as she sat beside the carpenter, her hand in his.

“Well, then,” Tobias Fletcher began. He clapped his hands together, which made Laura jump. “To the ship, Thomas. I am certain you outrank me in years of service, but we are brothers in arms, after all. May I call you Thomas?”

No,
Thomas thought sourly.
You may call me a fool, you mushroom.
“Certainly.” In utter misery, he bared his teeth in a grin.

 

Thomas couldn't deny that his heart lifted to step aboard a frigate of his Majesty's Royal Navy again. The
Glenmore
looked hard used, as most frigates did this far from Portsmouth or Plymouth. He sniffed the air—foul, indeed, after the fragrant blossoms and pine-scented cooking fires of San Diego.

Captain Livermore introduced himself and invited Thomas to the wardroom, where the other officers were already at their dinner. He gestured toward the empty chair and the other officers began passing him their kegged beef and ship's biscuit. Funny. According to Tobias, they had been riding at anchor for two days and were still eating kegged beef. He took a little on his plate.

“Captain, you really should try some of the tuna and
ceviche, while you are here in port,” Thomas said, by way of small talk. “In fact, I can—”

Livermore waved his hand, as though dismissing a bad smell. “One of the local fishermen tried to cheat us with something he called tuna. 'Pon my word, it was brighter than a baboon's ass and he claimed it was cooked!”

“Oh, it was, Captain,” Thomas said. “Nothing tastes better than—”

“And what did he have the nerve to do next but try to sell me a bucket of raw fish, by God, octopus and squid marinated in goo! With limes yet! I sent him packing. Does he think we are idiots?”

I do,
Thomas thought. “That was ceviche, and it's delicious. I can arrange—”

“You've been here too long,” the captain said, overriding him again. “Good thing we arrived.”

“Aye, isn't it?” Thomas replied. He pushed away the spoiled beef in front of him. “I think I'll eat later, sir.”

“Just as well,” Livermore replied. “Tell me your story. That fat Franciscan in the ward spoke a little English, but what he said sounded too fantastic.”

“It wasn't, sir,” Thomas replied. He pushed back his chair and made himself comfortable.

 

For the next hour, he described the
Splendid
's encounter with a much-larger French frigate that mauled them and sent them limping finally into the harbor where the
Glenmore
was now moored. He described the year in the dungeons, and their change of fortune when Spain's alliance with France dissolved. He had to stop now and then to remember the English words.

“This autumn the first mate jury-rigged a coasting
vessel in hopes of seeking help from the Americans north of us at Fort Astoria.”

The Glenmore's officers looked at each other and chuckled.

“Thomas, we are at war with the United States now,” Captain Livermore said. “They're probably in irons in Fort Astoria!”

Thomas shook his head and continued his story of the
Almost Splendid,
foundering from a rogue wave after last week's earthquake. “They're all gone, sir, except for me,” he said, unable to keep the catch from his voice. “I'm only alive because I stayed behind with my two patients.” He looked at Surgeon Fletcher. “A foretopman died just a day after the ship sailed. And the carpenter remains as you see him. He's still too ill to travel.”

“I don't give him more than a week, at most,” Fletcher said. “You can leave him with that Franciscan, or your wife.”

Thomas couldn't help the dismay on his face at the surgeon's callous words. He looked around the table and saw no sympathy anywhere. “I cannot do that, Tobias,” he said quietly. “Could you?”

The other surgeon flushed and drew his lips into a taut line.

“Even if it is a direct order?” the captain asked, his voice genial, as though he spoke to an idiot.

Lord, I have landed among Philistines,
Thomas thought in disgust. “I, uh, have taken a higher oath, sir,” he said. “And I
am
married. I cannot just discard my wife.”

The silence that settled was unpleasant in the extreme. Thomas looked around again at stolid faces, British faces. He had sailed with men like these for
fifteen years, since he was lad of fourteen. It was as though he had never seen them before. “I know we are at war, but it is no hardship to take along my wife, especially since she is the best pharmacist's mate I ever had.”

To his embarrassment, everyone laughed. “She is,” he insisted, but quietly, because no one was listening to him.
Think, Thomas, think,
he ordered himself.
Be devious, you plainspoken sawbones. Remember that you are dealing with the English now, more your natural enemies than the Spanish ever could be.

He wasn't much of a liar, but he knew he could bend a truth well enough. He willed himself to calm and looked at the captain for a long moment. “Sir, she is no ordinary female, but the daughter of the
presidio
's
subdelegado,
a powerful man, indeed.”

He had to admit that
subdelegado
sounded massively more impressive in Spanish than mere royal accountant did in English. No need to tell them that his last view of the
subdelegado
was of a humbled man in chains, sitting in a squeaking oxcart, bound for either Mexico City or death at the hand of Apaches on the way.

“Indeed,” was all Captain Livermore said, but at least he had stopped laughing. “Where is this man?”

“He is on his way to Mexico City right now,” Thomas said without a blink. “He has been summoned and is under orders to appear before the captain-general at the first opportunity.” He glanced around; the officers seemed to be buying that, and why not? It was true. Here came the bend. “Ah, sir, it would be a breech of protocol for you to anger our allies, the Spanish, if you forced me to abandon the daughter of grandees and hidalgos.” Well, his lovely Laura looked as though she
was descended from Spain's elite; probably, she was. He was no genealogist.

The captain was silent, mulling that around. He poured himself more rum. “We entered the harbor here because of rumors of a frigate lost these past four years. And you are all that remains, eh?”

“And the carpenter. I cannot abandon him, either, sir. I have a duty to perform,” Thomas said simply.

“How much longer will he live?”

Thomas knew it was not a callous question, not from the captain of a warship far from England and sailing in questionable waters.

“A few days. My wife and I can probably sail by Christmas.”

“And if he is not dead by then?”

Thomas didn't answer, but gave the captain the calmest look he could muster, the one that set him apart as a surgeon and made him different.
I will not look away first,
he told himself.

Captain Livermore sighed and looked away. “And what are we to do in the meantime, Surgeon?” he asked. There was no overlooking his testy demeanor.

Learn to love ceviche and rare tuna, you dolt,
Thomas thought. “There is something. A week ago, this area had a terrible earthquake. I would like your permission for Surgeon Fletcher to accompany me and one of the priests into the back areas. I'd like to take whatever you think the
Glenmore
can spare from her medical supplies. There are people suffering.” No need for the captain to know that most of them were mere Kumeyaay Indians.

“I suppose we must,” the captain said, sounding amazingly put upon. “They are our allies.”

And people in need,
Thomas thought. “I also recommend that you put your carpenter in charge of repairs around the
pueblo.
” He smiled around the table at the wary faces. “Yes, these people are Popish, but they are kind. I've noticed through the years that seamen can turn a hand at nearly anything. Your help would do a great deal to foster relations with our allies, even on this side of the world.”

He knew he had the upper hand, invoking allies and diplomacy, even if no one in the world was destined ever to know about it.

“I suppose we must,” the captain said at last.

Thank you for your enthusiasm,
Thomas thought. “We must, sir,” he said firmly. “And my wife comes with me, when we sail.”

Captain Livermore smiled at that, but it wasn't a congenial smile. “If you can convince her to leave her own kind, sail into danger for a year, and, if my ears don't lie, settle in the land of chilblains, oatmeal and haggis, provided we survive.”

Put that way, Thomas had his doubts. Damn the man.