“That was my intention. I have finished all my chores in the kitchen. Anything else can wait for morning.”
Speaking quietly, he told her of his trip to Plymouth and finding Homer Bennett, retired and disgruntled. “I didn’t even have to mount a major campaign to get him to agree,” he told the woman seated across from him. “I perjured myself and promised him a tidy house.”
“No perjury there. The wives of the men who have been cleaning out the shipyards have done duty on the house. I had some furniture and Lady Telford had more pieces.” She couldn’t help her chuckle, there on Brian Hannay’s deathbed. “Yes, Lady Telford! She has even been to the Hare and Hound for tea.”
“My word,” he said, sufficiently amazed.
“Of course, the chairs and table in the shipwright’s house are from that horrible Egyptian period; you know, the one following Lord Nelson’s Battle of Abukir Bay.”
“Horrors,” he said. “I was there at the battle, a newly minted surgeon, but none of us encouraged the furniture.”
She was ready to laugh, but Mrs. Hannay, her face ghost-white, her eyes huge in her head, tiptoed into the room, one baby in her arms and a serious little boy grasping her skirts.
Without a word, Douglas relinquished his seat and found a footstool for the Hannay’s son. He walked around the bed and pulled up a chair beside Olive.
Mrs. Hannay looked at her husband, gently touching the bandage on his head, and then turned her attention to Douglas. “T’captain said t’mast was unstable. Drat the man! Why did he sail?”
The question couldn’t be answered by anyone in the room.
Mrs. Hannay continued, as if she were talking to her man lying there before, the one who couldn’t speak and would likely not make sunrise. “Brian, ye told me there was something owt with the mast and yardarm, and thatCaptain swore he would take theMaidto Dundrennan for repairs next week.” She sobbed out loud. “Because there is no shipyard here!”
She bowed her head over her infant. Olive motioned to the little boy, who came around the bed and climbed onto her lap. Olive kissed the top of his head and held him close.
They sat in silence. The only sound was the suckling baby, once Mrs. Hannay opened her bodice, after a look of apology in Douglas’s direction. When the boy in Olive’s arms slept, she carried him through the open door and into the arms of an older woman. Olive returned, standing behind Douglas and resting her hands so gently on his shoulders. Too soon, she gave him a little pat and sat down.
When Mrs. Hannay left to put the baby to bed, Douglas turned to Olive. “A shipyard would have made the difference,” he whispered.
“It will for others,” she assured him in her forthright way. “Don’t borrow a problem that never was yours.”
She was right. “Easier said than done,” he admitted.
“Tell me more about Plymouth,” she said, her eyes on Brian Hannay, who had begun breathing deeper and deeper, and then stopped, before resuming more shallow breaths.
“He will do this now until he dies,” Douglas whispered. “Plymouth? The most amazing thing happened. I paid a visit to Carter and Brustein’s Counting House, wanting to shift around some funds. I told old David Brustein himself about the shipyard, and do you know, he is now an investor too.” He smiled. “Obviously as certifiable as Nancy Fillion. I asked him why, and he said that Jews know something about being driven from their homes and killed. Ten thousand pounds, Olive. Ten thousand! And now Nancy’s eight thousand, plus some of my own. I believe we can do this thing.”
She took his hand, which meant he had to lean closer and kiss her cheek.
“Stay with me, Olive,” he said again.
She stayed with him until after midnight and into the middle watch, that time when, from his experience with death, fiercely wounded men seemed to give up. At Douglas’s mental two bells, a pause, and two bells more, Brian Hannay’s shallow breaths turned into one long exhalation that went on and on until it wore itself out.
Douglas looked at his timepiece from habit. “I call it at two of the clock,” he said to Mrs. Hannay, who had returned hours earlier, both children asleep. “I am so sorry I could do nothing.” He gestured toward her husband’s wide-open eyes. “You or me?”
When she shook her head, he closed the first mate’s eyes. As the new widow began to shake and weep, Douglas took his prescription tablet from his satchel and wished he could brush down the hairs standing tall on his back at the fearsome sound. He scribbled date, time of death, and cause, signing his name. Mrs. Hannay could take this around to the minister when she felt up to it, and he would record in parish records the conclusion of Brian Hannay’s too-brief life.
His services were no longer needed. In mere minutes, the female relatives of Brian Hannay assumed command. He assured the widow that she owed him not a pence, which news brought relief to her ravaged face. He stood another moment by the still form, wishing with all his heart that men did not have to die this way. He did what he always did and planted a kiss on the man’s forehead.
“It would surprise you how many men called out for their mothers at the end,” he remarked to Olive, trying to sound casual, even as his heart broke for the thousandth time. “I always do that.”
Olive took his arm as a matter of course when they left the Hannay’s tidy home. He looked up at the moon, the samemoon he had stared at from a frigate’s deck. It had become his habit to come on deck when he could, after death, to contemplate the moon and stars and know that other surgeons like him probably did the same thing, wanting to howl out their frustration at too much injury, not enough skill or medicine. He couldn’t have explained the moon’s cleansing power to even someone as bright as Olive Grant. Only other surgeons like him, working in a tiny sickbay with death all around, could understand the curative powers of the moon.
She tugged him toward his house, but he tugged in the other direction, until they stood at the entrance to the shipyard, tidy now, free of debris and other decade-long clutter. Both massive gates to the graving docks were closed, keeping out the high tide. All it wanted was a shipwright, and he had found one.
“Lady Telford gave me a huge key to that long building there,” Olive said, pointing. “I opened it—well, Charlie MacGregor did—and what do you think we found?”
His mind was mush; he shook his head.
“Lumber, and lots of it. Probably not enough for a yacht, but enough to begin.”
