My Name is Resolute (8 page)

I peeked into the parcel. It was a cake or loaf of some kind. It smelled fruity and tangy. “It is Patey’s,” I said. “From the dancing.”

Patience laid her hand on my arm. Fresh scabs covered her knuckles. I looked from her hand to the loaf to the woman. The women around us shushed and gathered close. Wretched hunger painted all their faces gray as a tombstone. My eyes rested on Patey’s, and she nodded to me.

“It is—to share,” I said, too softly. I repeated it louder, feeling my heart sink as I said the words. I could have gobbled the whole thing. I had just been thinking that I did not want to share it, even with Patey, rather steal it for myself and eat the entire cake. And here stood twenty-one other people to take a bite. I stuck my thumb into the loaf and pulled off a chunk about an inch wide. I held it to the closest person. For a moment I wondered if they would come for it and beat me and take the thing, but each one waited, silently. Because they were gentlewoman-like about it, I did my best at making the same-sized pieces. When each person had had a token amount there were about enough crumbs left for three more. I pressed a hunk into Patey’s hand.

“I do not want it,” she said.

“You eat dat, girl,” came a voice. Others chimed in. “Don’t spare you’self. You take some!”

I took a bite of my piece. It tasted sweet but strange. “It is not bad,” I said. “’Twould be much helped by rum and hard sauce.” Some of them thought that was wondrously funny, and many women laughed.

Then one came to Patience and put her hands comfortingly on Patey’s head. “We know, girl, what dat cake cost. You keep t’inking how you save all our lives with it.”

I said, “There’s one extra piece. Who shall have it?”

The woman who held Patience’s head said, “Give it to dis girl, here. Keep her heart strong. When you eat dat, girl, you takes all our hearts in with it. Dat keep you.”

I looked at the African woman more closely as Patience dutifully sat up and chewed on the morsel of cake. She was the woman who had gone up the ladder with Patience, but she had not come down with cake, or with bruises. She must not have dared to steal some, too.

After that time, the system of feeding and airing prisoners changed. There were so few sailors left whole from the surprise attack that to man the
Castellón
had left the
Falls Greenway
shorthanded. Both ships moved slowly under half sails. Often they brought us abovedecks and left us for hours at a time. I heard one of the English tell a lady that she would get a larger share of food by some mopping. I think it was not a question but an order, for they put us all to cleaning and scouring. They sent me around with a raveled rag to polish the brightwork.

Much as I rubbed, not much changed, but I cared not the least. What mattered was that I was above and fed and could feel the air on my face. In short order I grew to love the sea spray and the sight of dolphins running alongside us, even the rocking of the ship as she moved through the water. There was a certain front-to-back, side-to-side sway that felt as comforting as a hammock on a summer day. Our friend the African slave woman had told us her name. Her slave name was Cora, but she said her real name was Cantok. She said to call her Cora until she died, to pray for Cantok so the spirits in heaven would know who I meant. She calls me “Miss Resolute” and Patience is “Miss Talbot,” instead of “Missy,” which is proper. It was convention that made that rule, rather like not scratching yourself in public, for I think she is not as old as Patey, and could be our friend and playmate if we were all back at Two Crowns. Cora can read as well as Patience and she has sworn us not to reveal that, too. It is quite a responsibility keeping someone’s life inside my heart and not letting any of it slip out my mouth, so I must think about things I say. Captivity was closing my lips.

CHAPTER 4

October 29, 1729

I had almost forgotten we were sailing north, until one day August approached me again. It had been a fortnight since I had seen him last, and he had changed. His face appeared gaunt and hollows had sunken his eyes. The eyes themselves held no sparkle but were dull and lifeless, withered as if the spirit in him had fled and naught was left but the skin. I turned away from him and worked my rag around the knob on the captain’s door.

“You’re alive?” he asked.

“I am,” I said. “Are you? You look as if the duppies have taken your soul to hell and left it there.” I said that because I wanted to hurt him for being a traitor. He had seemed so robust while boasting about signing articles.

“Maybe they did. So many was—butchered. Like swine.”

“I heard one of the English say the ship was trapped.”

“Bloody—I have never seen so much blood.”

“And did you fight?”

He gulped, trying not to gag. “Spaniards.”

“With pistol and cutlass? You fought?” I could not imagine August, slight and gangling, brandishing a cutlass and flying from a yard.

“They made me clean up the deck. Sharks, you know, circling for days. Hark, though, I have
my
share of rum, now. As good quantity as any sailor,” he said, nodding and forcing himself to smile.

“La, August. Are you really my brother? Maybe a good quantity of rum is the difference between what’s called ‘fierce’ and plain ‘
fear.
’” He turned and made away, but his steps lacked levity. I called after him, “Someone has beaten Patience and blackened her eye. You tell them to leave her be, Seaman Coxswain Second Class.”

A few days later I was still scrubbing brass as the sun began to sink; I filled a bucket with seawater from a tackle apparatus, off the port side. I had grown nimble at the task. While dropping a bucket was simple, hauling one up without spilling its contents was no small thing. So long as I pulled slowly I kept most of the water in. I was after my task as the setting sun turned the moisty air to green and then gold. Through the mist where sea and sky became one brassy cloud, I spied a ribbon of black laid on like a mark from a tarman. Not long after I saw it, a fellow rushed past me, put his dirty paw on that brass doorknob I had just shined, and called out, “Captain? Cay off the port amidships. We’re in sight of the outer reef.”

“Halloo, good man,” I called to the sailor as he returned. “What coast is that?”

The man sneered at me but he said, “Cay Largo.”

Panic took me. Where was Cay Largo? Was this the northland we had come to? The end of our travels and the beginning of some new villainy? Although shipboard life was not comfortable, Patience had endured no further beatings, and our food rations had neither been shortened nor improved. I took my bucket of water and returned to the deck as if to mop with it. Looking in before I poured it, I saw a tiny fish had come up in the bucket, a wee striped fellow. I chased him through the water and caught him against the side, lifting him from the water. His fine gills strained for air and his mouth opened and closed as if he were wishing water to flow through him as usual. The working of him was as exquisite as any clockwork toy in my bedroom, and infinitely more delicate.

I put the fish back into the bucket and carried him to the side. “It is not for us, to be in familiar waters, wee fish,” I said. “Go to my mother at the big house of Two Crowns on the lee side of Meager Bay, Jamaica. Tell her I am coming. Tell her to pray for us.” I lowered the bucket over the side, and said to the fish, “It is a long way. I will pray for you, too.”

The cries of seabirds, the freshening smell of tidewaters, and the greening of the sky swelled some longing inside me as I had never known before. I held the rope as long as I dared. I imagined that I could see the fish leaving the wooden coffin in which I had caught him and making for a southerly current. The orange of the horizon deepened. A rush of gold light painted the wood of the ship and a thickening fog softened the world to my eyes. The only thing before me with sharp edges was the bucket in my hands. Across the water I saw not merely the small cay of land but in the distance a heavy cloud perched on the surface of the sea. A foul odor came in whiffs, but the pissdale was not far from where I stood and some sailor stood before it, so I returned with my bucket to my task.

One of the captive men motioned to me. He gestured with the hob of kindling he carried. “See here, girl,” he said. “Don’t suppose you caught any tatties in that?”

Ach. He was Irish. I decided to pretend I could not tell. “No, good man,” I replied. “I am made to clean brass knobbings from morn till dark.”

“Well, see ye add some to season the pease, as we got no fresh water left nor any salt other than what crusts the splinter of dried beef at the bottom of the pot.”

“You want to make soup of ocean water?”

“Just a nogginful. It helps the taste.”

A small iron cauldron hung from a trammel over a brazier in the center of the deck. Patience and Cora knelt beside it. Under the watch of an English sailor, Cora was holding a dagger, cutting calabash in chunks and slipping them in it. A whole pineapple roasted in the coals, giving off a delicious fragrance. I hoped Patience would fare more kindly now, and cooking was a good chore for her, for perhaps she would get a little squash rind or dried beef suet that fell into a folded sleeve. I meant to ask them if they had seen the cay afloat in the mist on the water, but for a moment, I stared at the world in this strange golden light.

The sun was reaching the horizon and had painted the entire ship in shades of amber. The brass fittings appeared to be solid gold. Light flashed off the captain’s glass window like liquid fire.

At once from overhead a voice called, “Dogwatch to the deck! Mast on the wind
ward
!” He sang the last word, lengthening it long as all the other words he had said.

We girls shrank against a hogshead and a bale of something wrapped in rough cloth and tarred, as we were surrounded by sailors, all peering this way and that. Finally came the ship’s captain with his long glass. He climbed halfway up the mainmast to the wide step built there, and hanging by one arm looked through the glass all about the area. When he returned to the deck, he motioned to several of the crew.

I knew them by now. The captain’s name was John Hallcroft. The quartermaster was Percival Dinmitty, and the boatswain went by Aloysius though I never heard whether that was a given name or surname. They circled right next to where we knelt by the fire brazier. Patey, Cora, and I shrank down and did not move, trying to become but shadows upon the deck.

Captain Hallcroft said, “It’s a ship of the line. Looks French. We’ve no one left to man her even if we take her.”

“We’ll take ’er, Cap’m,” said Aloysius. “Our men are stouthearted to the last.”

I watched the captain as those bragging words made play upon his face. I could see that the man Aloysius had little thought other than fighting and plundering, while Captain Hallcroft held responsibilities in mind. Even a girl young as I knew that for this ship, just as the ships that came to Meager Bay, there was a master someplace back in England who’d paid for the rights to her cargo. It was a risk to what he now carried to take another ship without adequate defenders. I wondered, would the others take us instead? He pursed his lips and tapped the glass with the fingers of both hands as if he were playing it like a flute. “No. We’ll make way. Strike the sails and drop the small anchor.”

I was well away from the men who had argued over tossing me overboard on the Saracen ship; indeed, Hallcroft was not one of those. Hearing that, I believed I was fond of Hallcroft. Perhaps he had been one of many kind and gracious captains who discussed cargoes in my pa’s study. Then I remembered that
I
was the cargo, and I seethed with hate.

Dinmitty cleared his throat and spat on the deck, narrowly missing Cora’s skirt hem. “There’s no’ a drap o’ clear water left. Rations will go to half tomorrow. If we don’t move along smart, they’ll stay on half for four days, then a quarter.”

Hallcroft nodded. “As you say, then. We will make for land in a few days. For now have the men heave to.”

“And what, sir, if they don’t let
us
pass? Men on short rations—”

“Strike sails, Aloysius.”

Aloysius was disappointed, but kept his face pinned so that no one could have claimed he had disagreed with the captain. I caught it, though. How a stern visage could make even a dull person of good use. A great bustling ensued about us as everything aboard this ship, whose purpose in creation was meant for movement through water, was brought to halt. The stoppage was so abrupt that even the towed canoe, the shallop from which they had boarded the
Castellón,
bumped nose first into the aft hull. The
Castellón
languished far to the rear. It had been unable to keep time with the
Falls Greenway
and was not even a concern at the moment.

Night was falling and a French ship of the line was approaching. These were two facts on every tongue, and though they meant little to me, I feared they made all about us so wary that we keened our eyes toward the far horizon, trying to see what fate that could bring us. Perhaps, I thought, this meant a vessel large enough to take down these English rogues. We had gone from the hands of Saracens to these men, and rough though they might be, we were far better off. What would French sailors be like? And would they return us to Jamaica or take us to France? The English struck the colors and shrouded all the sails, sending men to man the guns but wait with the hatches shut.

“Strike that lamp!” someone called, and the single lantern on board was doused.

The Irish prisoner who had asked me for the salt water shoved us aside and poured my bucket of salt water on the brazier, sending a plume of smoke into our faces. Hallcroft himself shouted, “Damned fool! The smoke will be seen!”

“Aye, sir. I should have put a plank on it. My apologies!”

I watched him with open mouth. The man was lying! He had done it for a signal, I would swear on a Bible.

Dinmitty turned to another sailor and said, “Get the prisoners below and lock them up. Take that little one,” he said, pointing to me. “One sound from any one of them and cut out her heart and feed it to the sharks.”