Cast Off (19 page)

The floor pitched wildly and a bowl full of bloody rags flew off my table. I ignored it and finished stitching a wound on a sailor's cheek. “Next!” I called.

Before another man could shuffle over, two sailors burst into the cabin carrying an unconscious mate between them. “Clockert! We've a man down here. We need you right away, sir!”

Clockert didn't look up from a soldier whose scalp he was refitting to his skull. “Jochims's table, if you please, gentlemen.”

“Master, it's serious,” one of them urged.

“Jochims's table,” Clockert repeated. “I shall be with your friend momentarily.”

The sailors laid the man on the table in front of me. In place of a bandage, his face was covered with someone's discarded shirt and what I could see of his hair was blackened with soot. But there was something awful and familiar about the color of the ginger strands on his bare chest. My stomach clenched. I looked down his body, his unnaturally still body, and my gaze stopped at the tool belt he wore around his waist.

My breath caught in my throat as I unwrapped the shirt from the man's face. First one side, then the other.

Paulus
.

I placed a trembling hand on his chest. Nothing.

“Noooooo.”
An inhuman groan from the doorway.

Through my tears I saw Bram sink to his knees.

September 1663, Cape of Good Hope, Africa

The
Lion
dropped anchor in Table Bay, the only tall ship in the harbor. We was stopped for the first time in five months. The rocking made me sick.

I leaned on the bow rail, facing shore. Dung-brown houses made shadows on the wet sand that looked like piles of ash. Next to 'em, fat Dutch farmers and their skinny Malay slaves worked the vegetable fields: on their knees, stuffing seeds in the dirt. Row after row after row.

De Ridder gave orders to hoist the secret code flags that told the VOC commander onshore we was the
Lion
and not some enemy in disguise. The commander must've liked what he saw, 'cause he gave us a ten-gun salute. The Lions all whooped and cheered. 'Cept me.

'Twas the crew's first leave since Amsterdam and they was all worked up. Louis tugged on my sleeve. “Come with us ashore,
Monsieur
Bram. We will see real lions—not like this one 'ere,” he said, pointing to the figurehead.

“No thanks, Louis,” I said, even though this was Africa and I could get off the ship if I wanted to. I just didn't want to.

“You sure, Bram?” Lobo asked.

“Some other time.”

A cold wind blew. I tugged my hat lower, pulled my jacket tight across my chest like I could use it to cover over the hole inside. It'd come when my ma died. I'd almost lost the feeling of it in the months after we left Amsterdam, but now 'twas twice as big as before.

I took my leave of Master Clockert in the sick bay. The injured men had either died or recovered in the weeks since the disastrous battle with the
Lusca
. Barometer Piet had gone back to a crew quarters with eighteen fewer men. The soldiers had lost twenty-four.

I'd tried—and failed—to rouse Bram from his misery over Paulus. I'd sat with him in our cabin—in silence when he didn't want to talk, which was most of the time. I'd brought him stories of the daily doings of the crew—who won and lost at dice, who passed a kidney stone, what became of the eye a soldier lost in the battle with the
Lusca
(sealed in a stone jar, preserved in gin).

I'd even performed a miracle of sorts and convinced Happy Jan to make Bram a cake. I waited to make my approach until after the rush of the midday meal when Happy Jan was at leisure on the fo'c'sle whittling some animal from a scrap of wood.

“Greetings, Happy Jan.”

“What do you want, Jochims?” he said without looking up.

“Nothing for myself, sir. It's about my friend Bram Broen. Perhaps you've heard—”

“What do you want, Jochims?”

“Well, I've been trying to cheer him up a bit, and I thought, perhaps, something sweet to eat might—”

“You want I should make Bram Broen a cake.”

“Oh no! Not you, Happy Jan, sir. I can do it myself, with your permission—”

Happy Jan bared his pointy teeth at me. “Nobody goes in my kitchen.”

That evening I brought Bram Happy Jan's cake. The next morning, it was still untouched.

One sunny afternoon I found Bram drawing in the waist. Spread around him, anchored by pebbles, were charcoal sketches, black-and-white slashes of demons and dreariness. I left and returned a few minutes later with his box of paint powders.

“I thought you might like a bit of color.”

Bram stared at the box and his eyes welled with tears. Then he collected his pictures and cast them into the sea.

But my failure with his paints gave me an idea. If he couldn't find joy in his artwork, perhaps I could find it for him. It took me several days, for I'd little spare time and no talent in this area, but when I found him looking out over the bow and presented him with my gift I felt some small pride.

“I have something for you,” I said.

I handed him the first picture and he turned it one way and then the other.

“It's the moon,” I said. “I'd nothing to use for color, but I thought it might cheer you to have a keepsake of natural, er, beauty.”

“Oh,” he said.

I handed him the next drawing.

“Stars?” he said.

“Precisely!” I gave him the last page. It was my best work.

Bram squinted at it.

“Can't you tell?” I asked.

He squinted some more. “Would this be a tree?”

“Yes!”

“And this?” he asked, pointing to the figure next to it

“A rabbit! Don't you see the long ears and the round tail?”

“I see 'em, sure, but what are those droopy things hanging off the front of it?”

“Those aren't ‘droopy things.' Those are the front paws!”

The old Bram would have laughed with me over my pitiful efforts. This Bram just sighed and handed back the pages.

Bram had been in his hammock, face to the wall, when I went to say good-bye. He'd sat up just long enough to wave and mumble a few words of farewell. I could only hope that time would do for him what friendship could not.

I'd failed as well in my mission to make myself indispensable. De Ridder had thanked me for my service, which he said was commendable, and then kept his word and ordered me off the ship for good. But I was in no rush to see the place where I would leave behind everything left on earth that was familiar to me.

“I'm told that Pieter Van Meerhof is a competent surgeon. In any case, his competency is less relevant than his ability to room and board you,” Clockert said, handing me an envelope. “Take this letter of introduction. In it I've given him a fair assessment of your skills.”

“Thank you, master,” I said.

I caught a ride with Gos and Goth, who were rowing to shore to exchange mail. They carried five months of crew's letters in huge tarred and leaded sacks, which they would leave onshore, under a rock etched with “Michael De Ridder,
Golden Lion,
Batavia.” I listened with half an ear as they explained that the next Holland-bound VOC vessel to stop at the Cape would pick up
Lion
's mail sacks and leave behind their own.

“See there, Al, that's the town,” Gos said, pointing to a line of houses that fanned the shoreline. The wound on his forehead from the battle with the
Lusca
had healed, leaving behind a red scar like a sickle moon above one eyebrow. It made him look permanently surprised. “The town's only about ten years old, so it's mostly just a few houses so far.”

“And a fort,” Goth said.

“That's so,” said his brother. “You got the town here and that's Table Mountain over there—the one with the flat top—and the smaller mountain just north of it—”

“Called Lion'th Head,” interrupted Goth.

“And the long hill—”

“Lion'th Tail.”

“Aye, Lion's Tail. And that's pretty much it. Not much to do here but the one alehouse.”

The twins rowed in silence for a few minutes, which was fine with me.

“Mind you be careful to stay in town. There's a hedge fence around it to keep out the Hottentots.”

“What's a Hottentot?” I asked.

“The black savages. They're called Hottentots 'cause of the clickety clacks they use instead of words. Sounds like they're saying
Hottentot! Hottentot!
”

“
Hottentot! Hottentot!
Keep away from 'em. They'll eat you alive,” warned Goth.

Hottentots were the least of my worries. My mind was full of Pieter Van Meerhof and whether he would hire me until another ship could take me farther east to the Asian lands or west to Brazil—anywhere but back to Holland. I couldn't think about parting from Bram and the other Lions when they left for Batavia in three weeks' time.

The beach was aswarm with Lions off-loading water barrels from a long wooden jetty, a bridge on beams that the men used to roll empty barrels from ship to shore. From there they would push the barrels to a freshwater brook for cleaning and refilling before loading them back on the ship. I'd miss out on the pleasure of drinking that new water.

I scooped up a handful of sand, cool and damp in the late winter sunshine, and let it spill through my fingers. After months at sea, I felt the solid ground moving beneath my feet and I fought to keep my balance.

A guard at the fortress gave me directions to Van Meerhof's house, one of several simple buildings that lined the shore with walls of unpainted wood under a thatched roof. I rapped on the door and smoothed my jacket and breeches while I waited. Oh, the filth! The clothes hadn't left my body in the five months since they'd replaced my dress and petticoats. To think that until then I'd never gone a day without fresh linen. My skin was brown from the sun but at least my face was clean—I'd scrubbed it with salt water—and my hair was neatly tied back. It'd grown long past my shoulders, but that was usual among sailors.

The door was opened by a plump native serving woman. She wore a Dutch dress and apron with a three-pointed cap to cover her hair. Her massive bottom stuck out behind her like a kitchen shelf.

“May I help you?” The woman spoke Dutch with a strange accent that sounded like she was swallowing her words.

“Good morning, miss. Albert Jochims here to see Master Van Meerhof.”

“Are you ill?”

“No, miss.” I explained that I'd been surgeon's assistant on the
Lion
and was looking for temporary employment. I took the envelope from my jacket and handed it to her. “I have a letter of introduction from Master Clockert, the ship's surgeon.”

She narrowed her eyes, looking me up and down from her considerable height. “The doctor is not available.” She began to close the door.

“Oh, but wait!” Pieter Van Meerhof was my only connection, my only prospect of work, of shelter. “Miss! Wait, please!”

The servant stopped.

“What?”

“Is the . . . is the lady of the house at home?”

Evidently, I'd chosen the worst possible thing to say. The woman's eyes and mouth twisted into little knots of rage.

“
I
am the lady of the house, you filthy swabber! I am Eva Van Meerhof.”