Cast Off (2 page)

To get the color of blood right, you got to use madder root. It's got the stain of earth but not the heat of cinnabar. You can't use real blood for blood 'cause it goes brown when it dries. I know 'cause I tried.

Making red madder paint takes too much time, so you got to buy it. First there's growing, drying, stripping, and pounding. Then the color-maker cooks the pulp in a barrel for a couple of years. After that he mixes it with some alum and potash powder. Add some oil, and you got paint.

Once, on Java where I'm from, I saw a tiger slink into a rice field and kill a slave boy. Next day, I painted a picture of it. For the blood, I colored the boy's throat with red madder. Let it drip off my brush onto his chest and sarong. I can see that painting like it's right in front of me, even though it's lost six thousand sea miles away on Java. For the tiger's body, I mixed vermilion with lead white to get orange and cut the coat with black charcoal. But 'twas red madder that covered the animal's teeth.

If I was painting the sky tonight, I'd use bone black. When I ask the cook right, he makes it up for me. Holds back a few splinters from a cow's shin or a pig's spine and chars 'em in a tight oven.
Voilà
, as the Frenchies say. Night.

I'd dirty the sky with umber, though, for clouds and mist, and spray it with lead-tin yellow for the lights of Amsterdam pissing into the heavens.

“I'll only be gone a couple of hours, Bram.”

Pa and me stood at the bow rail of the
Golden Lion,
far and away the biggest ship in the Amsterdam harbor, looking out at the wharf.

“Don't worry about me,” I said. “I'll be fine.”

“Take you with me if I could,” Pa said.

“I know.”

He would, too. But it's against the law for
mestizos
—mixed-race bastards of Dutch fathers and East Indies mothers—to step foot on Dutch soil. And Dutch soil was what we was looking at. Two years back, when Ma died and I'd no family to take me in, the captain said I could come aboard only if Pa swore I'd never leave the ship anywhere north of Africa. Pa don't break promises.

He pulled off my knit cap and rubbed my hair. We wore the same sailor's slops—short baggy trousers, open-collar shirt, short jacket, and neckerchief—and we had the same freckles on our noses, but that was all. His colors was ginger and white, and mine was black and tan.

“Paulus! We're getting old down here,” yelled a sailor from a skiff waiting below us.

“Right,” Pa said, handing me back my cap. He wasn't one for chitchat.

He climbed over the rail and down the side of the ship for a night out with his mates. I watched 'em steer around other boats moored in the harbor 'til they got to the dock. The ship's figurehead, a gold lion, kept lookout with me.

“What are you looking so happy about?” I said to it. “No legs with a stick up your rump. You're stuck here good as me.”

“Come again, Broen?”

First mate Willem Van Plaes slinked up behind me like a skeleton with skin, all bones, with black eyes sunk in deep round holes. His cuffs and collar was fine lace, like he tried to hide his ugliness with fancy bits. Second to the captain and he'd caught me talking to wood animals.

“Beg your pardon, sir, I was—”

“What of my chair, Broen?”

This morning he'd asked me to make him a seat for his cabin. I hadn't started.

“I was just going below to work on it now, sir.”

“Good. I expect it finished this evening.”

Which meant I'd be up all night. But there'd be no arguing with him. When the cat o' nine tails came out of the bag for whippings, 'twas almost always on Van Plaes's orders.

“As you wish, sir.”

He climbed over the rail without sparing me another word, his frilly trimmings flapping in the breeze.

Jeronimo Lobo and little Louis Cheval was next to go. Lobo was Portuguese and a gunner, and Louis was French and looked after the animals. Both was new to the ship.

“We are going out,
Monsieur
Bram! To ze alehouses of Amsterdam for to drink and see ladies. You must come with us!” Excitement—or maybe goat spit—made Louis's straw hair stick up.

“Easy, little Walloon.” Lobo hung an arm around the kidkin, gold earbobs flashing. I'd lay five florins the ladies of Amsterdam would be glad to see
him
tonight. That cove had the whitest teeth I'd ever seen. And none missing.

“I told you already, wolf, I am
Fran
ç
ais
, not
Walloon
.” Louis spit over the rail to make his point.

“My deepest apologies,
Seigneur
Cheval,” Lobo said. “Perhaps you will allow me to pay for my insult with a beer.”

“
Mais ouis!
” Louis said, cheerly again. “Come with us,
Monsieur
Bram!”

He called me sir, 'though I was only twelve years to his nine. To Louis I must seem full grown. But which one of us was free to go drinking tonight?

“Leave Broen alone, Louis,” Lobo said. “From what I hear, he never leaves the ship.”

“Why is that,
monsieur
?”

“Yes, why, Bram? Don't you like our company?” Lobo said.

“Too much to do,” I said.

“We
all
'ave much to do,” Louis said to me, then whispered to Lobo, “I think 'ee does not like us.”

Louis was wrong, but I couldn't set him straight. I'd have to let him and Lobo think I was some grum ruffian, like the rest of the crew did. I stood there trying not to look as peery as I felt, when Midshipman Johann Majoor came up to us. He was a muscly cove, pink faced and puffed up under his own sway. At fifteen, Majoor was an officer, a job he earned by being born into the right family. Majoor knew the rules about me, even if Louis and Lobo didn't.

“You're not thinking of leaving the ship, are you, Broen?” Majoor said.

“No, sir.”

“Good. And I'm afraid I've bad news for you, Lobo,” Majoor said. “You need to help load the last of the cargo before you're free tonight. Captain's orders.”

Lobo did a decent job of acting like he didn't care, but little Louis's eyes filled with water.

“Come, my man,” said Majoor, holding out his hand to Louis, “how'd you like to get drunk with the officers tonight?”

Even if I'd gone with them, I'd still have been alone. To Pa, I was a boy; to Louis, a man. To Midshipman Majoor, I was a drudge. Among the Lions was men from every Christian country, and some heathen lands too, each with his own ugly story.

But out of all the criminals, ex-slave traders, and family run-outs, 'twas me alone who had no place to go.

Albertina waited for us by the open front door.

“
Seigneur
De Winter,” she said, using the French title reserved for the wealthy. Albertina knew how to butter his roll. She wouldn't have lasted all these years in our house if she didn't. She took the chamber pot from me and stood at attention, back straight, bosom out, as if she were holding a royal banner and not a bowl meant for catching human soil.

“Albertina,” he said, eyeing her from his impressive height.

He hung up his cape, hat, and stick but didn't bother changing his tall boots for buckle shoes. Father had been handsome once, a stern, broad-shouldered man with a full head of black hair that grew past his shoulders. I knew because his marriage portrait hung on the wall where we dined every day. But the red meanness that had always been inside him now showed in the hard set of his thin lips and the glower of his bloodshot eyes.

I inhaled. He smelled like a tavern, of ale and tobacco. His linen collar was stained, his black doublet wrinkled. Despite the cool air, he was sweating.

“Is supper ready?” he asked.

“Yes, Father. Would you like to eat now?”

His reply was to stride past me into the parlor. Tina caught my elbow and gave it a squeeze. My heart squeezed back.

Father sat at the center of the table and glared at his glass while I topped it off with more wine. He downed half of it, then wiped his pointed beard with two fingers.

I sat across from Father while Albertina served us, looking over his shoulder at the wall where his wedding portrait hung, and beside it, the empty space where my mother's had been. He took hers down the week after she died. I'd searched the house from loft to cellar and not been able to find it. He must have sold it. Or thrown it into the canal. I could remember her voice and the softness of her neck, but I'd lost her face.

“Olipodrigo,
seigneur,
” Albertina said as she spooned stew onto his plate.

“I can see that.”

“Petra wanted to make you a special meal. All your favorite foods.”

“Hm,” he grunted. He drank the rest of his wine and Albertina refilled his glass. Then she sat down at the table herself.

I breathed in the meaty richness of olipodrigo and the sweet tang of cabbage salad. Hunger pained me, but my stomach wouldn't untwist until Father approved the meal.

As if he could sense my distress, he took his time unfolding his napkin and draping it across his lap. Finally he lifted a piece of meat from the pile on his plate. Hen. He held it in front of his face, examining the flesh and bone. A blob of sauce dripped down his hand and onto the salad, staining the white mound. He sniffed the meat, frowned, and put it into his mouth. His frown deepened into a scowl of disgust.

He spit the mashed-up hen back onto his plate.

“
You call this food
?”

My face burned. Had the stew not cooked long enough?

“Forgive me, Father.”

I sneaked the tip of my little finger into the sauce at the edge of my plate. Pretending to wipe away tears, I tasted it. Not raw. Delicious.

“Perhaps if you tried a second bite?” I said, daring to look at him. He scowled even harder at me. “Or another helping. I'll give you mine—”

“You contradict me?”

My fingernails cut my palms. “No, Father.”

“Come.” He pushed back from the table.

I exchanged a look with Albertina. What choice did I have? I followed Father to the front room, where he paced in front of the fire. On a small table, a Chinese porcelain figurine faced the wrong way. I'd forgotten to turn it. Three laughing pigtailed boys all in a perfect row and one out of line. I yearned to straighten it.

“You've no talent in the kitchen. Let us see if that simple head of yours can remember some basic mathematics. Tell me, girl, when a man invests forty thousand florins in Leiden textiles bound for Java, and the ship founders in the forties, how much money has he lost?”

What madness was this? “Father?”

“How much money has he—
Look at me when I speak to you!
” He grabbed my chin and yanked my face up.

“Forty thousand florins,” I squeaked through locked teeth.

“So there is something in that head of yours! Now tell me, if a man invests sixty-five thousand florins in a second ship, this one carrying nutmeg from Banda, if this second ship goes down in a storm, how much money has he lost?”

My jaw throbbed in his grip. Any harder and he'd rip it off my face. “One hundred five thousand florins total, Father.”

“Well done!” he thundered. “And now I want you to truly impress me. If a man invests the remainder of his fortune,
eighty thousand florins,
in a third ship, and this ship is captured by Barbary pirates,
how much has he lost
?”

It was a trick. The answer he wanted wasn't a number, though I'd no better idea. I glanced down. Henry Hudson's yellow eye glinted at me from under a chair. “One hundred—”

“
No
!” He shoved me and I staggered back toward the open fire. “He has
not
lost one hundred eighty-five thousand florins. He has lost everything!
Everything
.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me so close to his face that I could smell his sour breath. “Do you understand me?” He shook me. “Do you?” His spittle sprayed my cheek.

“I believe I—”

“You believe
nothing
! You
know
nothing!
This
”—he let me go and picked up one of the figurines—“is gone.” He threw it against the wall, where it shattered. “And
this
,” he said, grabbing an ivory tobacco box and smashing it too. “And
this
!” He spun toward the cabinet and used both hands to push it over. Silver, ivory, porcelain, and glass tumbled from the shelves, and the cabinet crashed on top of the rubble.

“I'm sorry!” I stumbled back, the fire nearly scorching my skirts.

“You are not sorry enough
!
”

He backhanded my face.

Hot tears blinded me. Oh, he was strong! I ran my tongue over my lip and tasted blood. Father lunged at me with a raised fist. I threw my arms over my head so my shoulder caught the blow.

“Gone!” he screamed. “All gone!” He whipped around, hands tearing at his hair, his red face a wet mess. I'd seen him in a fury before, but never one like this.
“Gone
!
”

This would be no ordinary beating.

He grabbed the poker from the fire and pointed it at me, nostrils flared, chest heaving. I stared at the orange tip, rooted to the ground. His mouth moved but I heard only the rasp of my own breath.

“I've nothing left,
you sullen,
stupid, useless
—
!”

He drew the poker back, ready to drive it through me. Knuckles white around the handle, arm atremble.

I opened my mouth. The orange tip blurred.

“Nothing!”

I choked. The orange tip plunged.

“Petra!”
Albertina screamed.

Her voice unbound me. I ducked, and glowing iron seared the air where I'd stood a moment before. Father staggered, caught his balance, and aimed to swing again. My heart flung itself against my ribs.

“Petje!”
Albertina held open the front door.

I jumped over the rubble.

“Go!
Go!
” she urged.

I raced down the red brick walk along the canal, ignoring the few people on our street who gaped at the wild girl in her leather house slippers. Father wasn't far behind—the rap of his footsteps spurred me on faster. I sprinted across a footbridge over the next canal, away from the lights that spilled from the Indigo Barrel, a favorite alehouse of my father's. I stayed in the shadows, slinking by the House of Sorrows almshouse until I crossed another bridge over the next canal into the apple market, empty now but for a few pieces of rotten fruit. Glancing over my shoulder, I skidded on a chestnut. Father roared, much closer than I thought he could be:

“Petra De Winter!”

I pressed my back against a stall to catch my breath. The market was too open. The narrow streets of the old part of the city would give me better cover. I knew my way there—until this year when I turned twelve I'd gone to junior school in an ancient house not far from the Old Church.

I sprang from the shadows and headed east, past shuttered shops with families visible in the windows of the upper floors. Some of the winding streets were little more than arm's-length wide. I checked each one to be sure no one was coming down the other end. For I'd more to fear than my father. The Night Guard would be on patrol now that the sun was down. If one of them spotted a girl running through the streets, they'd catch her and bring her home.

My feet were silent in their slippers, but I could hear heavy boots somewhere nearby. The streets were
too empty
—I could find no place to hide here in the heart of the city. But beyond was the waterfront, swarming with sailors but also full of dark corners where I could stay until Amsterdam's ten o'clock curfew and then make my escape into the black night. I turned north.

Just ahead was the Dam, a big square with the New Church on one side and the half-built Town Hall on another. From there I could see boats in the Amsterdam harbor.

“Petra!” Father shouted.

He sounded near. I darted right, into a dark lane lit only by red lamps above the doors of the houses.

“Hey, girlie, you looking for a job?”

A woman with a powdered face and a black patch shaped like a heart pasted next to her eye leered at me from a doorway.

“No, I—”

An arm slipped around my shoulders. “What's a little miss like you doing so far from home?” said the sailor whose arm it was.

“Let go!”

I'd stumbled upon a part of the city Albertina had never let me visit, and now I understood why. I threw off the arm and ducked away, doubling back the way I'd come, and ran full speed all the way to the waterfront.

Everywhere I looked, casks and crates were stacked high, each marked with the name of its ship. Boats filled the harbor, their silver masts spiking the night sky like quills on a porcupine's back. A long row of gangplanks lined the pier. Sailors sprang easily down the wobbly boards, laughing. Others milled around the cargo, chatting while they kept guard. The air smelled of wood smoke, tar, salt water, and bilge. I made for the nearest tower of boxes.

A strong hand grasped a hunk of my hair.