Cast Off (3 page)

The
Lion
was hushed as she ever gets, what with 'most all hands being ashore. Later tonight, two hundred drunk sailors would come back singing. If I was lucky, Pa'd remember to bring me a beer.

I headed down the hatch to the carpenter's cabin, which was where Pa and me bunked, him as ship's carpenter, me as mate. Sometimes we worked in the room under the quarterdeck with the sailmaker, the smith, the cooper, and the other tradesmen who needed room to do their jobs. But there was enough space in our own cabin for small stuff. Our lockers was filled with tools, nails, and the like. We was well stored.

The first time I saw Pa's digs, I thought maybe he was a criminal and this was his cell. Growing up on an island like Java, sky, air, and water was as natural to me as breathing. Only prisoners lived in the dark with the stink of tallow wax and men who never took a bath. Now I knew Pa and me was lucky. Being head carpenter's an important job on a ship. 'Twas just us in the cabin.

The ceiling below decks was so low, tall men had to stoop. Me, I could stand straight, but maybe not one day. 'Twas dark in the cabin with just the porthole open and night coming on. I lit a lantern. Sniffed. Tallow wax.

I shook myself like a dog. Bleed and wound me if I was going to moon around just 'cause all the other coves was out and about. I took a pencil from my pocket and spread a scrap of brown paper on a sea chest. Made a quick sketch: three legs, a sturdy seat, and a short back.

It'd do.

Pa never drew things before he made 'em. Instead, he screwed up his face like he tasted sour beer and stood rubbing his chin until he worked the thing out in his head. But I drew everything first. That's when it turned real. On the paper.

'Twas a simple chair, just a stool with a back, but I rounded the legs and used the side of my pencil to shade it 'til it looked like life. After I built it, the chair would spend the rest of its days under Van Plaes's rear end. So while I could, I perched an albatross on its back. Wings spread.

I saw one once, up close. An albatross. The thing to know about those animals is they can fly two hundred leagues in a day without flapping a wing. Just riding the currents from winds and waves. Spread full out, their wings span the length of two tall men head to head,
maybe twelve
feet in all. When they get hungry, the birds pull those wings in tight and dive straight down like a harpoon to spear prey.

Albatrosses go to land to breed, but they don't stay there long 'cause they need ocean breezes to fly. And you never see 'em past the equator 'cause the currents aren't right up there. They always travel alone, and they like to follow ships. It's good luck to see one—they say
albatrosses hold
the souls of dead sailors.

On our way here from Batavia, this one bird, he followed us all the way from Cape Hope to Cape Verde. Flake-white body, wings like they was dipped in ink. The whole time we was in the Roaring Forties—twenty-foot waves knocking the
Lion
like she was no more than a skiff—this albatross floated behind us with nary a bump. But when we got up near Verde, we hit the doldrums. Not a breath of wind. And the albatross was as good as beached. He sat on the water like a duck on a pond, and so did the
Lion
.

After a week of going nowhere, things was getting a little close on board. Men was bored. Men was sick of eating fish. Everybody knew 'twas bad luck to kill an albatross, but Dirck Wiggernick shot him anyway.

He shot him with an arrow through the neck. The albatross just tipped over, right in the water. Didn't sink, didn't bleed. Just tipped onto his side. Captain ordered Wiggernick put in chains and the bird fished out for funeral.

The mighty bird didn't look so mighty lying on the deck with his long wings half spread and crooked. His little black eyes staring at nothing. I stared at the arrow in his gullet and my own throat closed up so I could hardly breathe. He looked like nothing more than a big fat goose.

The albatross can go anyplace in the world, so long as he sticks to the ocean. But if he stays too long on land or he flies too far north, he's a dead duck.

As for Wiggernick, he died a few weeks later when the wounds from his whipping festered. But then, so do most people.

“Hush!” Father said when I cried out.

His hands slid to my shoulders, weighing me down while he leaned on me, catching his breath. I opened and closed my mouth like a fish, my eyes stretched lidless.

“Stop. Please. Forgive me.” Guilt had hold of him now. Thickening his throat. Pumping up tears. It often went this way. Sooner or later, remorse would follow rage. My battered shoulder throbbed under his weight. I blinked back my own tears. “I'm ruined, Petje,” he wept. “Do you see that?”

Oh, I did. He meant penniless. But I felt the sting of my split lip, the ache of the old bruise on my cheek and the fresh one from tonight. I thought of the nights he'd stayed out, pictured the red meanness in his eyes, the hardness of his mouth.

Ruined.

I dropped to my knees.

Father lost his balance, and before he had a chance to reach for me, I was up and running around clusters of cargo. I circled barrels of herring and leaped behind a tower of crates marked
english cloth.
I could hear him stumbling after me—it had taken him no time to get back on his feet—and then—

“Pardon me, sir. Have you seen a young girl?”

Before long he'd have every sailor on the quay searching for me! I squeezed between two tall stacks.

“About this tall. Yellow hair. Her mother will be so worried.”

I had to move; my nook was open to view. I considered dropping over the side of the dock and hanging from one of the gangplanks, but my strength wouldn't last, and I didn't know how to swim.

Every box and barrel would be full. I'd nowhere to go.

“Pardon me, sir, have you seen . . .”

He was close now. Soon he would round the corner of my hiding place.

“Hoay, mates!” boomed a voice loud enough to carry over gale winds. “Anyone seen a little girl?”

“A little girl? Not unless you want to count Georgius here!” A chorus of laughter.

Ahead was a large bulky shape covered in sailcloth. I launched myself from my shelter, out into open space.

“Hey there, mate. What's that?”

I froze. Torches bobbed along the wharf, carried by sailors searching for me.

“Not the girl. Just a pile o' rope.”

I took off again.

I crouched with my back against the sailcloth, panting. Grasped the bottom of the cloth and ducked under it.

Inside, it was pitch-black and warm, and it smelled of . . . 
bird
? I cautiously reached out my hands and found metal bars. The cloth must cover cages with—

“Ow!”

Something had bitten my finger. I stuck it in my mouth and sucked on it. The beak had been big. A goose, most likely. So like a goose to bite whatever comes its way. A chicken would have gone for my toes.

I used my foot to explore the space around the cages. They seemed to be stacked on a pallet a few inches off the ground. I stepped onto the pallet to keep my feet from view.

“Look sharp, then, Lobo,” said a gravel-voiced sailor close by. “We just got this lot to get on board and we're done for the night. I still got a few coins in my pocket and I mean to spend 'em.”

He couldn't mean
this
lot, could he? Were sailors about to load the birds onto a ship—and me with them?

There was no way out without being seen—and given over to Father. But to stay meant
boarding a ship
. A ship where I'd no right to be, where the captain, should I be discovered as a stowaway, was perfectly within his rights to toss me overboard.

There was a small hole in the cloth, just below my eye. I hooked in two fingers and tore it a little bigger. If I hunched down, I could see two sailors, one old and one young, the old one a solid slab of oak with gnarled bark for skin, his young friend a shiny, slippery eel, tawny and black with rings of gold in his pierced ears.

“You say you made two East Indies passages with the captain?” the eel asked. He spoke good Dutch with an accent, a soft drawl that sounded of slow afternoons in the Mediterranean sun. Not French. Italian, perhaps, or Portuguese.

“Aye, that I did,” said the gravel-voiced oak.

“What do you make of the man?”

“Well, Lobo, let me ask you this.” The oak put his arm around his young mate. “You like yer gin?”

“Does a pig like his slops?”

“You mind watching your language?”

A laugh. “Hell, yes!”

“How about enjoyin' the company of a woman in yer bunk?”

“You can be sure of that,
amigo
.” Lobo grinned, revealing perfect white teeth in a brown face.

“Well then, you won't be too fond of our Captain De Ridder.”

“He's strict, is he? Runs a tight ship?”

“Tight as a witch's rump.”

Lobo looked disappointed. Then he pointed across the wharf. “What's all that noise, Piet? The soldiers loading heavy trunks and twice as many to watch them do it?”

“Those trunks over there?” Piet squinted in the dim light. “The ones marked
lion
and bound with lead?”

“Aye.”

“Those would be the trunks we ain't supposed to know about, seeing as how they contain the payroll of our fine employer, the Dutch East India Company. Three million florins.”

“Three million—”

“Gold, silver, and copper, mate. And every coin and bar stamped with the Company seal:
V-O-C,
” said Piet. “But don't you mind about it. Don't matter none if you're here with the birds or over there with one of them trunks strapped to your back. Them payroll boxes won't open for nothing and no one 'til we get to Batavia. You won't get even a quick look-see at them coins and bars. Not even a whiff o' their dust.”

“Pardon me, gentlemen. I'm looking for a lost child. My daughter. Have you seen her?”

I held my breath and shrank back to the other side of the pallet, as far from that voice as I could get in the small space.

“She's a youngster, no taller than this. Yellow hair? I don't know how I could have lost her. I need her back most urgently.”

Would Piet and Lobo mistake the anger in Father's voice for worry? A sharp pain pierced my big toe.
Chickens!
I bit my lip to keep from crying out, but the chicken squawked and flapped its wings. Its misery was contagious. The other birds honked and threw their bodies against the cages.

“Quiet in the hold there or I'll wring every one of your necks, the captain's table be damned!” shouted the old sailor called Piet. “Sorry,
seigneur,
we haven't seen your daughter.” Piet banged on a cage, which only vexed the birds more. “But we'll keep a sharp lookout for her, I promise you.”

There was a long pause during which the birds settled down. I could almost hear Father thinking.

“You're quite certain you haven't seen her?”

“Absolutely,
seigneur,
” said Piet. “We been here all night loading stores.”

“What about this cargo here? Might she be under the sailcloth?”

“I don't think so,
seigneur
. It's just chickens and geese under there. But you're welcome to have a look.”

“Thank you. I shall.”

Sweat ran between my shoulder blades. My tongue went numb. I could scarcely breathe as one side of the sailcloth was flung up and draped over the top of the cages. It was, fortunately, the opposite side from where I crouched. I peeked through the bars at the three men. Piet and Lobo, their faces a matched set of polite concern, and Father, dry eyes, furrowed brow. Clenched fists.

As soon as the air hit them, the birds squawked and beat their wings again.

“You see,
seigneur,
nothing but birds!”

The sailors dropped the cloth.

“Purse-proud goat walks away without even a thank-you,” said Lobo.

“Enough yapping, mate. Let's get this stowed before the taverns close.”

Now was the moment to slip away. To find a new hiding spot, and another one after that if need be, until it was safe to sneak out of the harbor. In the morning I'd flee the city and walk from village to village offering my services as a maid. Surely some farmer needed an extra pair of hands. Even an orphanage would be better than returning to Father's house, where it was only a matter of time before his rage got the better of his self-control.

“You got your end, mate? Ready now . . . hold fast!”

Forsooth, wherever I went would be less comfortable than my childhood home, and I would miss Albertina every day. Like as not, the farmer or the orphan-master would be just as cruel as Father, and what with hard work and little food, I'd be trading a quick death for a slow one.

Instead, I wrapped my arms around the cages and hung on tight.