Cast Off (26 page)

“Sit down, Broen.”

'Twasn't easy following De Ridder's order with Oak sprawled in front of the chair like a bear rug that's not quite dead yet. I managed by stepping over him and falling on the seat, but that left my feet in the air and nowhere to put 'em.

“Oak, roll,” said the captain.

Oak snorted and rolled onto his back, leaving a few inches for me to stuff my feet under his rump.

That dog was heavy. And hot.

De Ridder'd called me to his cabin without telling me why. Now he eyed me from across his desk like he meant to take the measure of me. I tried to sit up straighter but 'twas hard with my feet stuck under his dog.

“Your father came to see me shortly before the battle with the
Lusca
. Did he tell you that?”

“No, sir.” But if Pa didn't tell me, it meant what he heard from De Ridder wasn't good.

“He asked if I would consider writing a letter on your behalf to the authorities in Amsterdam, a letter of support for the petition your father filed for a certificate of legitimacy.”

“Yes, sir. I know about the certificate.” My face burned. Nothing like hearing your captain say out loud that he knows you're a bastard.

“I told him no.”

I'd thought that spark of hope was dead in me, but it turned out it wasn't, 'cause I felt it get snuffed right there in De Ridder's office.
I told him no.

“I'd taken note of how hard you'd been working. It was impossible not to see the long hours you kept, the extra jobs you took on, the assistance you gave to crew who had no right to expect it of you. I was impressed, Broen, and if Paulus had come to me a month earlier I should have agreed forthwith. I held your father in great esteem. I want you to know that.”

So what changed his mind? What hap—
Petra
.

As if he could see inside my head De Ridder said, “And then Albert Jochims came out of the woodwork. You should know that I suspected your involvement from the first. I saw you on deck after the keelhauling, wet from the sea. Mind you, I didn't object to your helping Albert. The last thing I wanted was to see a twelve-year-old child seriously injured. But upon reflection, I realized that a twelve-year-old child would have needed help hiding on a ship with three hundred men for three months. And after that I began to wonder how you managed to make all that oakum.”

What could I say? There was no denying the truth. “I'm sorry, Captain. It's all for nothing now, though, with Pa being gone.”

“Actually, no, it isn't. The life of the petition extends beyond the life of the person who files it.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Just because your father died doesn't mean the authorities won't consider your claim.” De Ridder opened a drawer and took out an envelope, which he slid across the desk to me. “Go ahead. Open it.”

I did. Inside was a letter.

“Can you read, Broen?”

“No, Captain.”

“Then you shall take my word for it that what you hold in your hand is the letter of reference I told your father I would not write.”

I could still get my certificate
and
De Ridder was going to help me do it?

“I don't understand, sir.”

“Don't you? As you well know, Albert Jochims is Petra De Winter, a lone girl on a ship of men. Offering her your protection was the only honorable course of action you could take, and attempting to keep her presence unknown was in her best interest. Indeed, your idea to disguise her as a boy in the event that she was discovered was a stroke of intelligence I cannot fail to admire.”

I felt lower than a dog. The noble cove De Ridder wrote the letter for surely wasn't me. I stowed Petra for her sewing, not to protect her. And 'twas her idea to dress like a boy, not mine. But there was De Ridder, looking proud of me. And here I was, holding out on him.

He was the decent one, not me. And any day now he was going to have a mutiny on his hands.

After De Ridder dismissed me, I wrapped the letter in tar cloth to keep it watertight and stowed it in a pocket inside my jacket. Then I picked up Petra's rations from the galley and brought 'em to her in the sick bay. Clockert sat at his desk with an open book and a plate of toasted cheese. Petra was hunched over the worktable, ripping muslin into bandages. Her hands shook so bad she could hardly tear the flimsy stuff.

“Peas and salt pork again,” I said.

Petra looked up. She was red-eyed and there was bruises on her neck.

“What the—”

She shook her head. I clenched my teeth.
Tell me.
She cast an eye at Clockert.
Later
.

Clockert stood. “I seem to have forgotten a possession of mine in another part of the ship. If you'll excuse me.” He left.

I reached a hand toward Petra's shoulder but she swatted it away.

“Don't,” she said, her voice like coarse sand on wood.

“Who did this?”

She shrugged.

“Gos?”

She shook her head.

“Van Assendorp?”

“No. Please, Bram, leave it.”

“Miss Petra, we've had no secrets between us. Let's not start now.”

She seemed small. Smaller than she was at breakfast. Smaller than she was when she had the fever. Smaller than the night we met.

“Van Plaes.”

“The first mate?”

“You didn't know?” she asked.

“I would've told you if I did, wouldn't I?”

I sat down across from her at the table and she explained what happened, starting with her cod-headed idea to use Van Plaes to send a message to the captain.

I thought I knew all about the mutineers, but I missed their leader.
Idiot
. The captain's protection didn't count for much when his first mate was against him. And without Barometer Piet on her side, Petra's life was in danger above and below decks.

“You can't leave this cabin. Not ever. Not 'til we get to Java,” I said.

“I know.” Petra grabbed my wrist. “But if they do manage to get away, you must go with them. How many islands are there? Hundreds? Thousands? Pick one and get lost there.”

It sounded good, I had to admit. Find an island—an island that looked like home but without another soul on it. No one to ask who my pa was or judge me by the color of my skin. I wouldn't be a
mestizo
anymore. I'd just be plain Bram Broen.

“You must go with them,” Petra said again. “It's the only way open to you.”

I'd told her what I'd learned about the mutineers, and about Jaya and Lobo, in dribs and drabs whenever we'd had time alone. Now I told her about De Ridder's letter.

“I made my choice, Miss Petra. I can't go. I'm with the captain.”

Midshipman Majoor appeared in the sick bay the next evening. I shrank back in my chair while Clockert stood to receive the young officer.

“Good evening, sir. How can I be of service? You wouldn't be wanting a shave, would you?”

Majoor rubbed his hairless chin. “No, thank you, Master Clockert. Mister Van Plaes asked me to deliver a message. He said Jochims is to move his quarters to the orlop to berth with the other ordinary seamen.”

A cry escaped me. It was an execution order.

“The boy is here at my invitation,” Clockert said.

“Yes, well, Mister Van Plaes wants him to move. Tonight.”

Clockert put his hand on my shoulder. “I prefer the boy to remain here. I may have need of him.”

“Mister Van Plaes said you might object. He said to tell you it's the captain that wishes him moved.”

Van Plaes was almost certainly lying, and Majoor was only a messenger, but without proof, Clockert couldn't call him out on it, and the captain wouldn't want to involve himself in a petty argument between a trusted officer and a troublesome girl.

“I see,” Clockert said.

Majoor must have known of the hatred the men bore for me. He could sense something was amiss. He looked awkwardly around the cabin. “Right, then. I, uh, I'll be off.” He hurried out.

Clockert eyed me seriously. “I assume this change of quarters has to do with more than just your sex.”

“Yes, master.”

“I would warn you to stay as far from this matter with the VOC payroll as possible, as I myself have done, but I can see it's too late for that.”

“Very much too late,” I said.

I'd no choice. I stood and began to collect my few belongings.

“Wait,” Clockert said.

I looked up at the surgeon's tired face.

“It is a terrible thing to be without resources,” he said in a quiet voice. “To be without family, without fortune, and, most of all, to lose one's good name. Like you, Jochims, I come from a family of means. Give me some credit,” he said, holding up his hand when he saw I was about to interrupt him, “a girl does not speak as you do, does not read and write in two languages as you do, unless she comes from considerable wealth. In my case, my
family were
spice merchants. My grandfather was a member of government. My father was surgeon general of Holland. While my brothers prepared for a life in trade, I was to succeed my father in medicine. That is, until he ruined us through personal scandals I'm still too mortified to detail for you.

“I received news of his imprisonment and then my eldest brother's suicide while I was at university. Less than a year ago. I'm twenty-one years old—does that surprise you?”

It did. Clockert's pallid face bore no lines, his lank hair showed no gray, but his eyes were weary beyond his age.

Clockert continued without waiting for an answer. “We were left penniless. My background and unfinished education had prepared me for few areas of employment, and I was too ashamed of my family to return home. I told myself the best I could do for my mother was to find a way to eke out a living and send her my meager earnings. And so I went to sea.

“I've shared this sordid tale with no one. I share it with you now so that at least you will know there's a kindred spirit on board. One who regards you not according to your circumstances or by the actions you have been forced to take, but by the quality of the character you've displayed, which in your case is considerable.”

For a moment, I was too overcome to reply. I swallowed hard. “Thank you, master. You honor me with your confidence, and your good opinion of me is a great comfort.”

“I'm glad of it.” Before I could say anything else, Clockert sat down at his desk. “I shall expect you at six bells tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

It took only moments to finish gathering my things. I slung my ditty bag over my shoulder and headed for the crew's quarters.

I remembered the first time I'd seen this cabin, the night I stowed away. Nearly all the men had gone ashore and only Krause was there snoring off his drink. Now bodies filled hammocks in every corner and between the great guns that lined the hull.

O'Brian—an empty sleeve dangling from the shoulder where his arm used to be—spotted me in the doorway and whistled. The other sailors looked up, and a heavy silence fell. I spied the only free spot—the loudest, roughest, wettest place in the cabin—at the bow end against the outside wall. Moving my way among hostile men, my hard shoes echoed on the wood floor. When I reached up to hang my hammock, there was a rush of air by my head and a short knife twanged in the wall beside the hook. The breath left my body. Slowly I turned around.

“Target practice,” said a sailor with a gap-toothed grin.

And so it began.

While we sped toward the Indies, a sailor lost his lucky monkey knot. A filthy, frayed old thing, the lump of rope had been with him from his first journey as a boy and through every battle, storm, and sea thereafter. I knew this sailor. I'd held his hand while he cried over the death of his best mate during the fever. I tried to point out the hole in the corner of his ditty bag, but he wouldn't listen. The mutters and dark looks from the men told me that even if some of them believed I didn't steal the sailor's knot outright, my presence was the reason it went missing.

“Women and cats on board is considered bad luck,” Bram explained. At least now I understood why the crew put up with all the rats.

I blundered badly when I noticed Louis Cheval scratching his head.

“I washed it in the piss barrel three times!” he said.

“Would you like me to cut it for you?” I offered.

“Don't say that,
Mademoiselle
Al! Do you not know the rule ‘Cut neither hair nor nails at sea'?”

When a sailor fell down a hatch and split open his forehead, no one noticed he was drunk. They only saw me standing at the bottom of the ladder.

“Back off, mates,” Bram said, coming between me and the glowering group.

“You back off, Broen,” warned O'Brian. “Don't know why you're always hanging around this little trickster.”

“Was it a trick when she took your arm off to save your life? You might show some thanks,” Bram said.

“Show thanks to a snitcher? Besides, it was Clockert who took the arm off, not her. And the bad luck she brought us is probably why the gun broke off in the first place!”

True, Clockert had wielded the saw, but I'd done the stitching up after and held O'Brian's head when he cried upon waking. But nothing Bram said or did made a difference, except to direct some of the crew's dark looks at him as well as me. The crew were none too fond of him for taking my side, but unlike me, Bram had some protection: his maleness and the crew's respect for Paulus.

Even the soldiers wanted nothing to do with me. I made sure never to move around the ship alone for fear of being thrown overboard. I especially avoided Van Plaes.

I had another concern as well—being the only female aboard a ship of men who hadn't had feminine companionship for months. Bram moved his hammock from the carpenter's cabin and slung it next to mine so I would have the wall on one side and him on the other when I slept. But he couldn't prevent every curse and elbow. When I lifted my shirt in the privacy of the empty infirmary, my torso was a patchwork of purple, yellow, and green.

“I guess I don't need these anymore, Tina,” I whispered, unwinding the linen wraps I'd been wearing for so long. I kept on my male clothes, as I had no others.

Oddly, Happy Jan was kind. He gave me an extra helping of salted penguin and stared down the sailor who started to object. When he spooned the food into my bowl I noticed a fresh burn running the length of one forearm.

“That must hurt quite a bit,” I said.

Happy Jan looked startled, which made him seem only a trifle less fierce than usual. Few people ever spoke to him directly.

“Could be worse,” he said.

“Would you . . . What I mean to say is, I could bind it for you and give you some willow bark for the pain. If . . . if you wish.”

Happy Jan considered my offer, and I tried not to stare at the rows of scars on his face. While he thought, he pressed his lips together and I couldn't see his pointed teeth, a mercy I appreciated. At last he said, “Thank you. I would like that.”

I hurried to the sick bay for supplies and was back in minutes. Happy Jan left his mate to dole out dinner and we went up to the bow. He sat on one of the privy boxes while I assembled my medicines.

“How did you do it?” I asked, applying honey as gently as I could. “Taking a pan from the oven?”

“Aye,” he said. “How did you know?”

“There was a boy I knew in Amsterdam, a baker's boy. He could never remember to wear a mitt and so came to us every week with burns like yours.”

“Us? You were doctor's assistant?”

“No, not a doctor, my—” I stumbled over my words, so accustomed was I to lying about my past and who I was.

“You don't have to answer,” Happy Jan said. “We all have stories we don't want to share.”

We were both silent while I wrapped Happy Jan's arm in a clean bandage. I could only imagine the stories Happy Jan wouldn't wish to share after selling his own people into slavery.

“Thank you,” he said when I finished. “It feels better.”

“Happy Jan,” I said. “You know something of my troubles on the ship, I think. Most of the men despise me. Why are you so kind?”

All the air seemed to leave him then. Huge Happy Jan shriveled before my eyes. Hunched over on the stool, he rubbed his hands on his knees over and again.

“I have much to atone for.”

I was on my way to eat breakfast with Petra in the sick bay when Jaya found me.