Although women were the ones usually accused of excessive gossip, Chris could debate that assumption. Royal Navy officers on ships at anchor in a harbor were some of the most relentless passers of stories to be found.
Of course, they spent much of their port time in pursuit of provisioning chores: gathering water from Freetown’s clear spring, foraging for livestock to replace what had been depleted over the previous months; and seeking bushels of vegetables that would keep at least a while in the holds of the ships. And, of course, the ships’ carpenters must needs visit the blacksmith to replace the many bits vital to keeping their ships afloat. The men traded news among the ships’ companies, and that news filtered up to the officers.
He should have anticipated the good-natured innuendos about his chicken fence repair adventure. But still, Captain Bellingham’s question caught him off guard. They’d met at the bottom of the steps to the government house and had a few spare minutes before the Prize Court judges would re-convene.
Arnaud cocked his boot against the bottom step and leaned toward him. “What’s going on between you and the vicar’s daughter?”
A trickle of sweat wended its way down beneath his hot uniform jacket and light linen shirt. Nothing but full naval uniform could be worn to the prize hearings. “Please, Arnaud, don’t tell me there’s gossip spreading already?”
“Better you know now and can stubble it before it gets out of hand.”
Chris doffed his uniform hat and wiped beads of sweat from his hair. “I…I pulled the gate to Miss Berry’s chicken yard too hard when I was looking for the Rev. Berry, and all of her flock escaped into the streets.” He hung his head a moment before continuing. “My carpenters and I went to the vicarage yesterday and repaired the falling down gate and fence.” He held his breath at the end of his explanation and hoped that would be the end of it. Arnaud would accept his very plausible explanation. There was nothing between him and the vicar’s daughter…nothing to explain. Nothing.
Arnaud’s reaction took him by surprise. His old friend placed his hands low on his thighs and then stood, laughing so hard, tears leaked from the corner of his eyes. “Even I don’t believe you. Let’s get this drubbing by the Portuguese judge over with, and then we’ll adjourn to the nearest inn to come up with a better explanation than that one.”
Chris’s insides churned. If everyone assumed the worst about him and Miss Berry, he’d have to do some sort of damage control to protect her reputation, and soon. He never would have thought repairing a chicken gate could land a man in so much hot water. What a tangle.
Inside, away from the fierce West African sun, he and Arnaud settled on one of the hard courtroom benches. Once the judges began explaining the contested points of the slave ships they’d taken, he had a hard time following along. He was still reeling from the thought that two people with nothing in common might have their future choices snatched away, all in the name of respectability. The whole idea was unfair.
Miss Berry was a bright, beautiful young woman with her entire life ahead of her. He couldn’t help glancing down at the empty sleeve pinned to the right side of his uniform. She did not deserve to be stuck with a man like him. There had to be another way.
Rachel slantedthe brim of her bonnet to better shade her eyes and picked her way along a refuse-strewn street at the edge of the harbor. She sucked thoughtfully on the smooth, flat river stone her mother had placed in her hand so many years ago just before she’d died along the hellish march away from her father’s barracoon.
Flanked by two of her male students and Tenneh for protection, Rachel was off on her way to her weekly medicinal provisioning trip to the apothecary. Run by a former ship’s surgeon, Dr. Alexander Peregrine, who years before had worked aboard a slaver’s ship, the establishment offered a mix of both African and English medicinal supplies.
There was African ergo and rye, used for midwifery, and sometimes precious jars of honey. The doctor’s honey supply came from as far away as beekeepers in Lagos and Nigeria. He negotiated with traders and captains to keep him well stocked. Rachel used the sweet, sticky concoction, when mission funds allowed, to sparingly treat the worst of infected wounds.
The few white doctors in Freetown refused to treat black women, so Rachel was sometimes called upon to help out with difficult births.
Dr. Peregrine kept his tidy shop at the end of the ramshackle street that ended at the dock from which Freetown’s fishing fleet embarked early each morning. When the boats returned about three in the afternoon, the town folk would crowd the dock to vie to purchase from among the best catches of the day.
She’d come early to avoid the crowds, and take advantage of the coolest part of the day. His crude carved wooden sign with the mortar and pestle symbol was missing. She was disoriented for a moment, because that sign had been in his doorway ever since she could remember. She’d been coming to see Dr. Peregrine since she was a small girl. The sign’s image had proclaimed to his mostly illiterate patrons that his shop was a place of healing.
Now, a blown glass globe, tapering from thin on the ends to a thick rounded orb in the middle, swung in a slight sea breeze off the harbor. The strange container held a bright red liquid of some sort that caught the rays of sunlight like a faceted jewel.
She walked in through the door propped open by several thick books piled on the floor and squinted her eyes to adjust to the dark interior after walking outside in the bright African sun. Behind the counter, a wide-shouldered man hunched over a microscope, intent on looking at smears of the local water, seeking the source of the deadly fevers that swirled through Freetown. Since fever seemed to rise with the miasma of the swamps, he’d confided in Rachel that he was convinced whatever the source, it had to be in the waters in the harbor, the creeks, and the rivers.
Which meant that any day of the week she came by for a supply of healing herbs or compounds, he could be found puzzling over samples beneath his microscope.
The shelves behind him were filled with neatly labeled jars: powdered rhubarb; Epsom salts; sulfur; lavender water; chamomile; ipecac; willow bark tea for the pain of fever; and the precious cinchona powder for treating fever. The object on the highest shelf had fascinated Rachel as a child when Mrs Berry, her adoptive mother, had brought her along on her trips to the apothecary. Miriam Berry had served as a medical assistant for the mission before chronic dysentery finally claimed her.
The circular cardboard box on the top shelf contained grain and dram counterweights for the small hand-held brass balance that sat polished and ready on the counter. Shining glass bottles, tubes and beakers filled another shelf. Hidden behind the counter were drawers filled with carefully organized wooden-handled flat metal pallet knives. On the counter rested his stone mortar with glass pestle.
Many of the curatives on his shelves were supplied to him by merchant ships trading between Africa and South America. The former ship’s surgeon performed favors for the captains and crews of the many ships that frequented Freetown’s harbor. In return, they brought him barks, herbs, and sometimes honey from the other far-flung ports they visited.
The remainder of the shelves crowded every bit of available wall space in the tiny shop and were laden with heavy volumes with obscure Latin names. Over the years, the Scottish surgeon had rewarded Rachel’s curiosity with an education in medicinal purposes to rival that of her mother’s. Her mother had believed a young woman’s duty was to learn housekeeping and needlework, but she often looked the other way when Rachel fled her chores to seek out Dr. Peregrine’s apothecary.
Rachel had believed all those years she was sneaking away without her mother’s knowledge. But now she wondered if Miriam had seen the need for her to learn the healing arts as well.
When he finally raised his head from the telescope, his eyebrows raised at the sight of Rachel and Tenneh in the doorway. Her students, Mingo, and Eli, waited outside the door.
“I suppose you’re going to take up my valuable time again with your infernal questions.” He settled his fists on his hips, and his heavy brogue reeked of contempt she knew he didn’t really mean.
“Have you changed your trade without telling us?” She ignored his combative stance. “We may have to take our business elsewhere.” She put a teasing tone into her voice.
“What? Oh…the show globe.” He waved his massive paw of a hand at the glass container hanging in his doorway, swaying slightly in a freshening breeze off the harbor. “Captain Vrowen brought me one from Amsterdam. Said he didn’t feel like this was a proper apothecary without one of those in the doorway. Don’t see what difference it makes. I still treat him the same way for the clap.”
“Doctor…” Rachel frowned and slanted a look at her young helper, Tenneh.
