Cast Off (9 page)

One month underwater. One month in the dark. One month in the bilge.

But also one month with no new bruises, no swellings, no loose teeth.

In those long hours I'd learned many things. I'd learned that ships leak, no matter how much oakum plugged their cracks. I'd learned that splinters from rope were impossible to pluck out, no matter how
fine the
needle. I knew what time the bells signified and the difference between the first dog watch and the last dog watch. From Bram's sketches I knew all the ship's parts and some of the men. I knew how to tie a becket hitch and how to flemish a line, and I could mend a torn sail well enough to earn Bram the nickname “sew sew boy.”

I'd grown used to the hard, salty food. I'd even grown used to the rats; they were much smaller than Father, after all.

But I missed air.

By day I worked at whatever task Bram brought down for me, and by night I crawled up through the surgeon's quarters to the galley to steal food. Portholes were kept closed while the ship was under way, even in calm weather. When there was no one sleeping in the sick bay I stuck my face up to a grate and breathed.

Which was why, when Bram came in the middle watch and offered to take me outside, tears sprang to my eyes, and my hands shook so I could hardly straighten my shirt laces.

Bram had lookout duty. With little wind and no need to change course, only the officer on watch would be awake on deck navigating the ship with the helmsman out of view in the steering house. Bram assured me that so late at night, the rest of the crew on duty—some sixty-five men—would be asleep at their posts. When he climbed the mast to his post in the crow's nest, I'd go with him.

“There's a new moon and no stars tonight. No one'll notice you in the dark. Or if they do, they'll think you're Louis. We should be safe enough so long as we're quiet,” Bram said.

“I won't make a sound,” I swore.

“It's just like climbing a tree,” he said. “And when you get to the top, there's nothing but sky and air for miles.”

Sky and air for miles!

We passed through the orlop deck, which was directly above the hold. Except for my visits to the barber-surgeon's office and the cook's galley, I hadn't been on the orlop since the night I met Bram. We made our way through the long crew cabin, threading among sailors in hammocks strung with hardly an inch between them. Even on a night like tonight, with all the grates open, the air was sour soup. I could only imagine what it was like for the soldiers, trapped half a deck lower with no grates at all.

From the orlop, we climbed through a hatch to the waist, the middle portion of the upper deck that was open to the sky. The sleeping crew on watch there were wedged between cannons called big guns. No one stirred as we snaked among them, little more than shadows, to the forecastle deck, at the front, or “bow,” of the ship. The fo'c'sle was where the crew worked and took leisure. From Bram's drawings I knew that its mirror at the back, or “stern,” was the quarterdeck, a place where only officers and important passengers were allowed to go.

I took in great heaving lungfuls of sea air.

“What are you doing?” Bram whispered.

“Breathing,” I said.

“Well, do it quieter.”

A fine mist hung in the air and clung to every rope and rail. The only sounds were the creaking of the hull and the occasional flop of a loose sail in the light wind.

Bram pointed aft where Majoor stood at the rail on the quarterdeck, dimly lit by a horn lantern. Bram had explained to me that as officer on watch, it was Majoor's job to oversee the steering of the ship. If the
Lion
needed to change course—unlikely in this calm—Majoor would wake the men on watch so they could adjust the sails and he'd call the order to the helmsman in the steering house. One of the oddest things I'd learned about ships was that the person doing the steering did it from a narrow cabin with no view of the sea. The officer on watch would tell him to head east or west or north or south a few degrees and he'd move the whipstaff accordingly, the whipstaff being a pole as tall as a man that shifted the ship's tiller that in turn moved the ship's keel—a piece of wood shaped like a fin that was attached to the ship's bottom, which, when moved, shifted the ship's course.

It was all very odd indeed.

I crouched down behind a pile of rope.

“Hoay, Mister Majoor!” Bram called.

“That you, Broen?”

“Aye, sir.”

“O'Brian'll be glad to see you.”

There was a thud, followed by a shadow rising from the deck at the foot of the mainmast. O'Brian had come down from his post.

“Think I'll look out from the foremast tonight, Mister Majoor,” Bram said. “
Bene darkmans,
O'Brian.”

“
Bene darkmans,
” O'Brian said, yawning. He handed Bram the spyglass before shuffling off.

Bram stowed the glass in his belt and whispered into my ear, “Hop onto the rail, take hold of the rigging, and climb it like a ladder.”

The rail was a wood fence around the edge of the ship that kept people from falling overboard. Climbing onto it was easy enough. There were plenty of ropes—
lines,
I corrected myself—that I could hold on to.

Swaying gently with the motion of the
Lion,
I studied the rigging, a grid of rope that stretched from the rail to the top of the mast. At least I assumed it went to the top, since the mast disappeared in the mist far above our heads. I reached out and tugged on the rigging. It moved.

I glanced down at Bram, who gave me a thumbs-up. Whatever Bram claimed, climbing the rigging would not be like climbing a tree, since trees didn't tend to do things like bounce.

Bram gave me a little push. “Go on,” he mouthed.

I put one foot onto the rigging and felt it sink. But I imagined the view from the clouds and willed myself to keep going. First one hand, then the other. And now the second foot.

The rigging swung in toward the mast, and I squeezed my eyes shut, praying my nose wouldn't break with the impact.

To my relief, I stopped well short. I let out my breath and began to climb, one hand, then one foot at a time.

After a few minutes, I felt Bram grab on below me. It was slow going. I'd no trust in the lines; they moved too much. Unused to this heavy work, I grew tired.

I looked down, past Bram to the deck. He'd told me that the masts were close to a hundred feet tall. I'd traveled perhaps ten.

One hand, one foot. One hand, one foot. Every muscle wound tight as a corset string. My arms began to shake and then my legs too. I looked down again. Twenty feet now, eighty more to go. Bram hung easily, waiting for me to take another step. I stopped.

“What's the matter?” Bram whispered.

“I—I'm not strong enough. I don't think I can do it.”

“Little Louis climbs all day. If he can, you can,” Bram said.

I burned with shame. Freedom was some eighty feet up, but I couldn't get there because I was weaker than a nine-year-old boy.

“I'm coming down,” I whispered.

“But Miss P—”

I ignored Bram's quiet protests and climbed down as fast as I could. He'd no choice but to let me.

Once we reached the deck, I fled through the orlop and down to the hold. Down, down, down. Away from air and mist and sea.

“What happened up there?” he said. “It's no worse than a tree.”

“I wouldn't know. I've never climbed a tree,” I told him.

“Never? Never once?”

I held my tongue, and he looked at me with scorn, or perhaps pity, which only magnified my shame.

“We'll go again another night, Miss Petra.”

I shook my head.

“As you wish,” he said. “But don't think of trying again unless I'm with you. It's too dicey.”

As if I would try again. As if I
could
try again.

“Promise you won't go up without me.”

It was an easy promise to make.

In a battle between hunger and humiliation, hunger wins. After my failure at the mast, I wanted nothing more than to curl up with the rats in their nests—which they rebuilt no matter how many times I swept them away—until I shriveled into some unidentifiable piece of cargo, too wooden for food, too fleshly to be of use.

It took about ten hours for my stomach to reject that plan. Ten hours until the ship's biscuit in my pocket threatened to bore a hole straight into my empty stomach and the salt beef I'd stowed in a gun crate called my name.

With a full belly came humility. And resolve. I was weak. I could grow stronger.

In the morning when the crew was working at their loudest, I shifted cargo and hung thick lines from the beams in the ceiling until I had a gymnasium like the Greeks used to train their athletes. Well, perhaps not so like the Greeks', but good enough to train a puny girl to climb a mast. The next morning, and every morning thereafter, while the crew banged the deck clean with holystones, I climbed and jumped and swung, picturing the look on Bram's face when I told him I'd never climbed a tree. He thought me a wealthy girl of leisure. Wealthy, I might once have been; leisured, I never was; strong enough to climb the mast, I'd be.

Having a goal gave purpose to my days, and I relished my sore muscles. I cried less and my hands stopped shaking.

At night I left my lair to forage. After four weeks, I scarcely gave my trousers and short pigtail a second thought, except to marvel at the freedom they gave me each time I climbed a ladder without tripping over my skirts or ran a comb over my head in seconds instead of minutes. In spare moments, of which I had countless down in the hold, I counted the ways in which it is preferable to be of the female sex. The list stood at zero.

About a fortnight after I built my gym, I crept into the sick bay to check my patients. I called them mine, though they knew me only through fevered dreams. A young sailor slept deeply, his broken leg splinted and propped on a sack of sawdust. I pressed the inside of my wrist against his forehead—cool—and moved to the next bed.

Diederick Van Assendorp sweated in a fitful sleep after a day of flux. The commander of the soldiers was a big man with a wide scar that ran from his ear to the corner of his mouth and gave him a fierce look even at rest. I held his head and gave him a little barley water. He never opened his eyes.

Caring for the sick, doing whatever odd jobs Bram had for me, these were my attempts to earn my passage. But my patients didn't know I cared for them, and only Bram knew about the work I did. Should I be caught, I'd have only my maleness for protection.

Perhaps there was more I could do, work that was mine alone that would prove my usefulness and earn me goodwill. I looked around the filthy sick bay. My candle gave enough light to see dirty rags, scalpels, piles of hair and other bits. The room needed a thorough fumigation.

It was a place to start.

And from there? The orlop was packed with sleeping men; I could spend no time in those quarters. But outside was another matter. Bram and I had proved I could move about without being noticed if the weather was right. There were plenty of lines to straighten, sails to patch, metal to polish.

Also, plenty of air.

I'd promised Bram I wouldn't try to climb the mast without him, and I'd keep that promise. But surely he wouldn't mind too much if I made myself useful, so long as I was careful.

And if he never knew, how could he mind at all?

I snuffed my candle, then tiptoed through the crew's quarters and crawled under men sleeping shoulder to shoulder in their hammocks. The smell there was thick enough to stick to the back of a spoon. I hurried up to the waist.

The night was cool and clear. I glanced toward the bow at the fo'c'sle deck. Full of men, all sleeping. Behind me on the quarterdeck, First Mate Van Plaes stood watch in shadows, his boney face aglow by lantern light. I could make out his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, but he couldn't see me, hidden behind a sail. I tilted my head back, squinting up the mast where I knew the crow's nest would be, though it was too dark to see the small platform. One night after I grew strong enough, I'd climb the rigging like a proper sailor and gaze all the way to the horizon.

I kept my eye on Van Plaes as I crept from shadow to shadow, coiling a tangled line, adjusting the tarpaulin cover on a cannon. When I reached the bow, I took a bundle from inside my jacket—what was left of my girl clothes. I'd used some of the material to make my trousers and shirt. Now I took the rest and cast it into the sea. I felt nothing but relief. These clothes were the last things that connected me to my former life.

Well, nearly the last. I unclasped the gold cross my father had given me when I took my First Communion at five. He'd had it inscribed with his name, as though to remind me that his power in my life was second only to God's. The Dutch Reformed Church was my father's religion, my mother having left the Church of England to marry him. I had no special affection for the necklace and none at all for my father. I drew back my arm, ready to cast the thing into the sea, but then I thought that the necklace was the only thing of value I owned. If I ever reached Batavia, I might be glad to have it for barter. I put it on again, tucked out of sight inside my shirt.

Back down to the galley. Happy Jan's kitchen would have impressed even Albertina. A fine layer of sawdust coated the floor, ready for whatever dripped on it in the morning. Knives, spoons, and bowls were clean and neatly stowed. An oiled pot gleamed in the hearth over a banked fire, and the brick oven was swept of ash. There were rations here for three hundred men. Surely no one, not even the meticulous Happy Jan, would notice what I'd taken.
Stolen
, I reminded myself. I loaded my pockets with food for the morrow—ship's biscuits, hard as lead but filling, and salt pork.

A bowl of speckled eggs sat on a shelf, ready to be coddled for the captain's breakfast. Fresh food! Food that hadn't been preserved in salt or hardened with time. My mouth watered at the thought of an egg sliding cool and raw down my throat. There were nine in the bowl. Would Happy Jan miss one?

I reached out a hand—

“What you doing in my kitchen?”

I'd never seen Happy Jan, but I'd had a picture of him in my mind based on his name and immaculate kitchen. He'd be plump and rosy cheeked, with a fringe of white hair and a heavy limp from an old battle wound. His jacket buttons would shine and his breeches, newly tarred and waterproof, would freshen the kitchen with the scent of pine.

Except Happy Jan was as tall as Father and even broader. His forearms, which I could see because he wore no jacket and his shirtsleeves were rolled, were corded with muscle. In the glow of his lantern, his dark skin shone like eggplant, the whites of his eyes gleamed like butter. Columns of small scars carved ladders in his cheeks.

Happy Jan looked anything but happy.

But I reminded myself that my looks also belied my name. With a pigtail, short baggy trousers, and loose shirt, I looked like a ship's boy. Like Louis Cheval's blonder brother. Why shouldn't he believe the ruse? I widened my stance and slouched, just as Bram had taught me.

“Beg your pardon, Mister Happy Jan, sir,” I said. “I'm here for my master.”

Happy Jan narrowed his yellow eyes at me. “Your master?”

My brain scrolled through the roster of men I'd seen in Clockert's cabin during my spying sessions.

“
Seigneur
Van Swalme, sir.” Isaack Van Swalme came to Clockert to trim his remarkable beard every Tuesday and Friday, and his authority on the
Golden Lion
was greater even than the captain's. So long as Happy Jan didn't already know Tixfor, Van Swalme's manservant, I should be safe.

“Where's Tixfor?”

Luck had turned her back on me. But I'd an excuse ready.

“Tix is in the sick bay, sir. He's got flux.”

“Flux,” Happy Jan repeated.

“Yes, sir.” I held my breath.

“Why you come in here, then?”

“For . . . for an egg, sir.
Seigneur
Van Swalme is having trouble sleeping and he was hungry.”

The extravagance of eating eggs in bed in the middle of the night clearly offended Happy Jan. “These are the captain's eggs.”

“Aye, sir.
Seigneur
Van Swalme hoped the captain could spare—I mean, my master wanted to know if the captain could maybe give him one.”

I had to mind my tongue. My educated speech could give me away as easily as my straight back.

Happy Jan stared down at me, and I prayed the light was too dim in the galley for him to see the bulges in my pockets. Then he held his hand over the bowl, skimming each egg in turn, making his selection. At last he extracted the smallest, careful not to jostle the others, and held it out on his calloused palm.

“Thank you, sir.” I stopped myself from curtsying just in time. “Compliments from
Seigneur
Van Swalme.”

Happy Jan curled back his lips, revealing teeth that were filed into sharp points like rows of daggers. Any piece of flesh that passed between those lips would come out bloody—if it came out at all. He leaned toward me until my nose was but an inch from his mouth.

“Go.”

I needed no second invitation. I fled the galley to the hold, and my heart didn't slow until I collapsed onto a crate.

I'd done it! Happy Jan might have thought me a thief, but he'd thought me a boy thief!

I rolled the egg between my palms. The shell was warm. I gave it a sharp one-handed crack against the edge of the crate, threw back my head, and swallowed.