Page 53 of A Flash of Golden Fire

He kept looking at me. He appeared to consider whether to say anything more.

“Are you all right, White?” he asked finally.

I didn’t know quite what to tell him. Except that I wasn’t all right at all. In so many ways.

“My hands,” I whispered. I showed him.

“Christ Almighty,” he said and crossed himself before taking a step closer. “You need tending. Let me get Faraday.”

Faraday was a retired navy doctor who had come aboard theArrowat one of her visits to Tortuga. Captain Martin had bribed him with a bag of coin to join his crew as he’d needed a surgeon.

“You don’t have to,” I said. “I know everyone’s scared of me.”

Martinéz gazed at me for a long moment. “We ain’t scared, exactly,” he said. “Only confused and a bit cautious. You can’t blame us for that. You don’t know what that looked like from where we were. I still don’t understand what happened.”

“If it makes you feel better, neither do I.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better at all.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Are you a witch, Simon? Is that what you are?”

The word rang in my ears with all of its power and prejudice. I didn’t want to believe that word applied to me. I averted my gaze and didn’t answer.

Martinez sighed. “Anyway, I’m getting Faraday.”

I didn’t bother to reply. I went back to staring at the wall and wondering what I was going to do. Surely they’d send me off theArrowat the next port. Nobody’d want me now.

Martinez left, and soon Faraday came, accompanied not by Martinez but with Hillier. The surgeon pulled a wood crate over and took a seat.

“Hello, White.”

I glanced at him. Faraday was an average-sized man, with a snub nose that gave him a juvenile look, although he must have been in his mid-thirties. He had blue eyes and soft hands, and he’d treated me for lice, when I’d first come aboard, with more than average sympathy.

“Let me see those hands then.”

I showed him.

“Well now. That looks painful.”

The hurt was considerable, but I deserved to suffer for what I’d done.

“I’ve brought some linen cloths to wrap your hands. Best to keep the dirt out and leave the wound open to the air,” he said. He reached for me. “May I?”

I nodded.

He took my wrists and examined them, turning them over to check the backs, peering through his thick glasses.

“Any other burns on you?”

“Don’t think so.”

Faraday wrapped my hands loosely with the clean linen. He tied the strips in knots on the backs of my hands.

“There. That will keep them protected. You should have some willow bark tea for the pain,” he said with a kind smile.

I was staring at my cloth-covered hands when I heard Captain Martin’s voice. “He can have that in my cabin.”

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