FOURTEEN
SEAN
Enough to eat, a place to sleep. The rocking of the ship that made the passengers and even a few of the sailors ill didn’t bother Sean at all.
He was used to the sea, to his brother’s currach. He remembered the roll of the waves, higher than any house in Maidin Bay, the rush of salt water slapping against the sturdy boat.
Once he had even been swept out and under just outside the bay. He had opened his eyes to see a green world filled with bubbles, and then light as he came to the surface, gulping and choking, and felt Francey’s fingers grasping him first by the hair and then by the sleeve of his jersey to drag him up and up and finally into the currach.
He’d had a bald spot on his head all that fall, and Nory had teased him that he looked better without that mop of red hair.
Nory.
If only he could tell her about the things that had happened to him.
He worked from halfway through one night until late the following night. He remembered Mam saying,
“I work from dark to dark.”
He could almost see her, hands on her hips, angry. But he couldn’t even see the dark, couldn’t see the day.
He was in the galley with only the flame from the lamps to brighten it, or in the passageway to bring tea to the families that were rich enough to have their own cabin. It was Garvey who went up on top and told him when the sun was shining or the rain spitting.
What Sean did was stir pots of soup for those rich families who had shoes and rings, unlike the poor wretches that he caught glimpses of between the decks. There were two different worlds on the ship, almost like the green world of water he had seen against the clear world of air up above.
The pots he stirred were never empty; they were filled with shreds of meat, and old vegetables still covered with some of the gritty soil they’d been taken from, and water they kept adding to the top.
He dipped endless ladles into those pots to pour into thick white bowls and then brought them to rich men’s cabins. Sometimes he and Garvey dipped their fingers into the soup to pull out a small chunk of yellow turnip as it floated by, or a cabbage leaf. Their fingers had blisters, but it was worth it to have their stomachs filled, as long as the cook didn’t see what they had done.
The cook was a massive man who ate more than six passengers put together, and chewed endlessly with his great toothless mouth open and soup running down his beard. He threw knives and plates, and kicked and punched at anyone nearby when he was angry.
Sean felt a sharp clout on the back of his head. “You can dream with the fishes,” the cook said. “I’ll send you up top with the garbage to be thrown overboard.”
Sean bent his head. “Yes, sir.” He wondered if the cook could do such a thing; he shuddered as he thought of that green world and the blackness underneath as he was pulled down into it.
Quickly he filled bowls with tea, black as the tar on their old currach. He darted around the cook as he took three of the bowls on a tray and left the galley to bring them to the book cabin. He called it that because the man who stayed there with his wife and daughter was always bent over a huge book, mumbling and nodding, and next to him was a young girl who had a book of her own. Younger than he was, eight maybe, and she could read.
The woman was still sick when he knocked at the door. The room smelled of vomit, and she shook her head wearily. “No tea,” she said in English. “I can’t look at it.”
Sean thought there was something wrong with the woman anyway. A walking stick was propped up near her bunk.
But the little girl wasn’t sick. Sean couldn’t imagine her sick. She looked up from her book, curling a piece of her hair around her fingers. “Tea,” she said, looking down at his bare feet.
The man held out one hand for his bowl, still reading, and Sean went toward him to stand there, looking down at that book covered in the softest material with letters running across the page.
Just then the ship lurched and the tray of tea bowls slid. Sean caught them just in time, leaning into the man, but as he looked down he saw that a drop of tea had splashed on the page.
The man saw it too. He looked up at Sean, blinking, almost surprised to see him there. Then he rubbed his sleeve across the page, blotting the mark, which had spread into a line covering some of the letters.
“I’m sorry.” How angry he would have been if it had been his. And could the cook send him into the green water that tilted just beyond a tiny round window in the man’s cabin?
Thrown overboard with the garbage.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, almost stuttering.
The man looked up at him, his eyes large in back of eyeglasses. “You’ve covered King Herod with tea,” he said. The sound of his voice was different, almost like Lord Cunningham’s in Maidin Bay. English.
“King Herod,” the man said again. “A terrible ruler from the biblical days.”
“I don’t understand,” Sean began, and remembered quickly to add “Your honor.”
The man ran his finger over the damp page. “See it? Herod.”
Sean could hardly breathe. He did see it. It jumped off the page at him. The
H
of it, the
D
at the end. And then he did something he couldn’t believe. He reached out and touched the word:
Herod.
“If you look beyond it,” the man said, “you’ll see the word
King.
”
Sean nodded, then backed away from him, still holding the tray, and went into the hallway. It wasn’t until he reached the galley that he realized he had forgotten to give the man his tea.
He thought about going back, but he couldn’t do that either. He’d take the chance that the man had forgotten too.
And he knew those two words,
King
and
Herod
. He’d never forget them, never. And when he brought the tea next time, maybe he’d see another word.
He wondered if Herod was an Englishman.
And then he thought of Patch and his mam, and Nory still back in Maidin Bay. What would they think if they knew how happy he had been for a moment?
FIFTEEN
NORY
Nory lay on the straw mattress, her nose and cheek pressed against the rough wood of the berth, while above her a lamp swung on its hook, the flame so low it gave almost no light. But even that tiny bit of light was better than nothing. Most of the time the ship bobbed so much that they weren’t allowed any light, and the cabin was completely dark.
She ran her hand over her stomach. Some of the others were still sick, but she was better now, much better, and Patch hadn’t been sick at all.
Nearby a baby was crying. In the dim light Nory could see the mother holding the little one. Bits of cloth were strung on a string over their heads. Filthy cloths for the baby.
Fuafar.
The woman must have seen her looking at the cloths. “There is no place to wash them,” she called across the berths. “I can only let them dry and put them on her again.”
Nory shook her head.
“There’s not enough water,” the woman said, rocking the screaming baby, “and if I use salt water it will burn her. My poor baby. My poor Bridgie.”
Nory leaned back. She had a memory of Patch as a baby, shrieking for Mam. Poor baby. Mam had died just after he was born. She remembered Maggie dipping her finger into a precious bit of sugar and then into Patch’s mouth. He had closed his eyes then, at last asleep.
She looked down at Patch, his eyes closed now too, his thumb in his mouth. She ran her hand over his soft hair and pulled Lally’s old coat up over his thin shoulders.
Suddenly the baby stopped crying, and everything seemed still for just that moment. But almost immediately came the sound of coughing, and Granda talking to Mr. Casey in the berth above, and a woman calling for her husband, and someone else being sick. And above it all was the endless roll of the ship with the timbers creaking and the planks groaning as it plowed its way through the ocean.
In the midst of all those other noises was a voice she had heard before, a voice that cried out in pain. It took her a moment of thinking. Who was it?
And then she realized. It was the girl with the plank, the girl who had stolen the money, she was sure of it.
She sat up in the bunk and rolled over Lally, hesitating. She hated to put her feet on that bare floor. During the night someone nearby had been sick. She made sure the cut on her foot was covered as she stepped onto the slippery wood.
Around her were bunks, one after another, so close she could have held out one arm to touch the person in the next.
Where was that girl?
The motion of the ship was stronger now, and the wooden plates of the deck under her feet shifted with each wave, separating, then joining together again. One of the plates opened under her slightly and just as quickly shut again, catching her skirt in its grip.
She reached out to catch her balance on the edge of the nearest berth, then bent over to yank at the bottom of her skirt. It didn’t give. But just then a wave, fiercer than she had felt before, smashed into the side of the ship.
Her skirt came free as the plate of the floor opened again with a faint whoosh. She pulled it up around her ankles and stood there holding an upright bar, peering through the dim cabin to see if she could find the girl.
At that moment the hatch was opened and a beam of light played against the wall. The steward, his head upside down over her head, called, “Cookstoves lighted. Fight over them and the captain will make me close the hatch again.” His voice sounded stern, but it was Garvey, the friendly man she had called
your honor.
Nory went back to help Patch climb down from the bunk, and then Granda, too, from above her.
“Go ahead,” she told them, feeling the hunger in her stomach. “I just want to . . .” Her voice trailed off. Wanted to find the girl, that was what she wanted to do. The thief with the dark curly hair who had stolen her food, stolen money from the ticket seller, but had found that plank of wood for her.
Patch and Granda climbed the steps, wooden bowls from Mrs. Casey in their hands. “I’ll bring you stirabout,” Patch called down to her. “I’ll give you the most.”
She blew him a kiss, still watching for the girl. Even with twenty people gone up on top, there were so many people in that space.
But again she heard the cry of pain, and at last she saw her, a swirl of dark hair under an old coat. Probably a stolen coat, she thought.
She reached for the girl’s shoulder and watched her turn. Even in that small bit of light she could see that the girl’s face was dark with a yellow cast, and she was moaning still.
Yellow. What had Anna called that?
“Do you know who I am?” Nory asked, but the girl’s eyes were glazed, the whites of them as yellow as her skin.
Nory sat on the very edge of the straw watching as the girl’s eyes closed again.
What would Anna have done?
She remembered that dark disease, and Anna had told her the patients always died, faces black and bloated. But there was another sickness where the skin was more yellow than black. Nory leaned forward. Wasn’t the girl’s face more yellow than dark? She had the seeds for that, safe in her bag on the very inside of her bunk. Buttercups, dried and waiting to be boiled.
Boiled on the makeshift stove on the foredeck.
Nory pulled the coat up higher over the girl. “Wait,” she said.
She went toward the stairs, but there was a ragged line in front of her. “Please,” she said, trying to push through.
Someone pushed back, but she had her foot on the step and managed to climb, pushing away the hand that reached out to grab her sleeve. “I need help,” she said.
“We all need help,” someone answered bitterly.
She almost fell, but Garvey looked down on them from above. “Let the girl up,” he said.
Then she was on the deck, blinking in the light, thanking him. “Someone is sick,” she told him, “and I need to boil water for buttercups.”
“Yes, your honor,” he said, smiling at her. “But you’ll not find buttercups here, with the sea spread out in every direction.”
“I have the buttercups. It’s a cure,” she said, wondering if it really was.
She begged a place in the line ahead of Granda and waited to boil water for the girl.
SIXTEEN
SEAN
He awoke to the rolling of the ship, to the rough bulkhead he slept against, remembering he had dreamed of yellow flowers. He thought now of the castle ruins outside of Ballilee. On warm summer days the fields were filled with the small flowers. It seemed right to him that a castle would have that gold and silver: buttercups against the sparkle of stone.
Garvey had been telling him a story about buttercups. Someone had cured a young girl who had been ill with the yellow sickness.
“A pert thing, that healer,” he had said. “Every morning she pushed her way up out of the hold against a dozen bigger and stronger than she was. Boiled water and mixed it with the dried buttercups.” Garvey’s thin face had broken into a smile as he slapped Sean’s back. “Called me
your honor
once.”
Sean remembered Anna who cured. Anna had a wrinkled face and knobby hands, and leaves and powders. She was teaching Nory all about them.
Thinking about Anna reminded him of Mam and Patch and gave him a terrible burning in his chest. What he thought about, what he couldn’t stop thinking about, was the book cabin and the Englishman bent over that huge book. What would it be like to hold the book in his own hands, to find the two words he had seen, and to look for a third word and a fourth?
From his place in the corner under a shelf he suddenly realized that everything had come to life. The cook was sharpening his knife against a leather strap with a great swishing sound as his small gray eyes swept across the galley. Garvey, legs spread for balance, stood in front of a heap of turnips, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Someone else stirred the endless soup.
Sean scrambled up, sliding out from under the table in back of the cook. But the cook turned quickly on his thick legs. “Sleeping all day?”
Sean saw the flash of silver and ducked away as the knife punctured the wood of the bulkhead over his head and hung there. He didn’t move fast enough to miss the cook’s meaty hand as it came around to hit the side of his head.
There was a quick throb of pain, then a distant ringing in his ear, but he managed to mutter something about the Englishman’s tea. “I’ll take it to him now.” He wanted to raise his hand to his ear but wiped his hands on his jersey instead.
He darted away to fill the bowls and escaped to the passageway. For a moment he stood there holding the tray with one hand as he touched the side of his ear and felt the wetness of blood. Then he knocked at the cabin door. All was quiet and he began to think no one was inside.
He reached for the knob, beginning to feel his heart thump. Perhaps they were on the deck; perhaps it was a fine morning. He remembered late spring mornings in Maidin Bay when the sky was filled with a rosy color as the sun lifted over the land in back of them.
There was no one in the room, and the woman’s walking stick was gone. He slid the tray onto the berth, glanced at the shelf where the book lay, and then quickly looked back at the door. His hands felt as clammy as they had when he used to gut fish for Liam.
What would happen if he touched the book? They would think he was a thief. He would be beaten, he was sure of that, and perhaps the cook really would throw him overboard. And who would know if the cook dragged him up to the deck at night?
But still he reached out and ran his fingers over the soft leather on the back of the book. Almost without thinking he pulled it toward him and opened it.
There were too many pages to find the words he knew, he could see that almost immediately, but he looked for the letters in those words, and the letters of his own name.
“What are you doing?” a voice said.
Sean spun around, almost dropping the heavy book, felt his heart reach up into his throat. He hadn’t even heard the cabin door open.
It was the girl. His mouth was suddenly so dry he couldn’t say anything. He looked at the door in back of her, but it seemed so far away that he couldn’t imagine taking those few steps around her to escape back into the hallway.
“You can’t read that book,” she said in English.
“I was just . . . ,” he began, hearing his voice, which didn’t even sound like his own.
“You can’t read at all, I think.” She took a step forward. “How can that be?”
He noticed that her cheeks were red and her curls twisted. She reminded him of Nory when Nory was eight or maybe nine. “I know the letters,” he said slowly, thinking that she would surely tell her father. But if she didn’t, if by some miracle he managed to get out of that cabin, he’d never go back in there again. He’d ask Garvey to bring the tea for him instead.
She pushed at her hair. “It’s windy outside,” she said. “My mother is afraid of it, but I like to look at the water. It bunches up and up, and just when it seems as if it will go over the ship it flattens out again.”
She walked around him now and it seemed as if he’d be able to escape, but she picked up her own book. “It’s called
Aesop’s Fables,
” she said. “I could teach you some of the words.”
He shook his head again, looking back at the door. “That’s all right.”
She waved her hand. “No one will mind.”
He thought about the door just a few feet away, but she was waving the book at him. “Look at the cover,” she said. “Aesop is the name of the man who told the fables. They’re all about animals: foxes and crows and cranes and wolves. The foxes and wolves are always bad.”
He took a step forward as she opened the book and began to read, running her fingers under the lines. She read in a loud voice, sometimes stumbling a bit over the words.
He was caught up in the story of a fox who was trying to get a piece of cheese away from a mouse. He saw the letters of the fox turn into a word, and the ones for mouse and cheese as well. And then that first story was finished and she began to read one about a wolf who was chasing a lamb.
Sean watched as she read that story, trying to grab on to the words. Then suddenly he remembered. The cook would be waiting. How long had he been gone? He could feel the rush of fear in his throat again.
“I must go,” he said, backing toward the door.
He backed away from her, then opened the door and went out into the passageway.
He turned and there was the cook, blocking the way.