Of Noble Birth (36 page)

Alexandra nodded as Mrs.
Wright glanced her way before continuing, “You’ll rise at five
o’clock every morning and begin by lighting the fires. Then you’ll
carry water up for the family’s baths. After your breakfast, you’ll
sweep the carpets downstairs and dust the main entry
hall.”

Mrs. Wright spoke quickly,
sounding as though she were attempting to fit an hour’s worth of
instruction into the time it took to reach the kitchen, and she
seemed to remember more and more things as they went
along.

Alexandra struggled to
absorb the onslaught of information, listening to every word with
rapt attention. Now that she had established herself in the duke’s
household, the last thing she wanted was to lose her position
before she found out what she had come to learn. Trenton and the
others were counting on her. And no one wanted to find Nathaniel
more than she did.

As they reached the bottom
of the stairs, another servant approached, looking more than a
little distraught. “Mrs. Wright, the tweenie has run off. I guess
Cook had a few harsh words for her yesterday, and she popped off in
the middle of the night.”

The housekeeper groaned.
“The girl was so homesick, she was no good to us anyway. Very well,
Janet. Alexandra is here now. She can help out in the kitchen until
we find someone to replace Ruth.”

“The stove has yet to be
lit,” Janet complained. “And it needs to be black-leaded. At this
rate, we won’t have hot water by the time Cook wakes.”

“Then get it done.
Alexandra will help you in a moment.”

Janet frowned but went to
work, and Mrs. Wright turned to face Alexandra. “His Grace demands
a great deal from his servants,” she warned, lowering her voice,
“so until you’re properly trained, try to remain as inconspicuous
as possible. Lower your eyes and step out of the way if he should
come upon you while you’re performing your duties.”

She raised her brows, as
if questioning whether or not Alexandra understood her, and
Alexandra nodded. “Your cleaning is to be done by noon each day,”
she went on. “The afternoons are spent darning socks, mending
clothes, or helping Cook. Now get along. Janet needs you. A good
French cook is hard to come by, and Madame Plume is a fussy
individual. I’d rather avoid a tirade this morning.”

So would I,
Alexandra thought. The last thing she wanted was
to have someone in authority angry with her on her first
day.

“Come to my quarters at
bedtime for further instructions. Any of the other maids can tell
you where to find me,” the housekeeper said as she moved
away.

The kitchen was already a
beehive of activity. Everyone had a purpose and knew exactly what
it was and how to do it, except Alexandra. She looked for the girl
Mrs. Wright had instructed her to join, and found Janet kneeling in
front of a coal-fired range, busily polishing its steel bars with
emery paper.

A pail of cinders at her
feet indicated she had already swept out the inside.

Alexandra knelt next to
her, overwhelmed by the myriad instructions Mrs. Wright had rattled
off. She remembered well enough that the duke was someone to be
feared, but she didn’t need the housekeeper to tell her that—she
thought him dangerous already.

The morning meal was a
brief affair of bread and milk, shared only with the other maids.
They gathered around the large table in the kitchen shortly after
eight o’clock and ate in silence, then scurried off to finish their
work by noon.

The rest of the day
revolved around work, work, and more work, interspersed with meals.
Dinner lasted a mere twenty minutes, after which Alexandra spent
the afternoon mending shirts and socks. Supper consisted of cold
meat, bread, and cheese. Beer was served all around, and for the
first time that day, Alexandra saw the other maids, fifteen of them
total, talk and laugh.

At bedtime Alexandra
visited Mrs. Wright’s room just off the large kitchen, as she had
been told. It was after nine o’clock, but some emergency with Cook,
over pan drippings no less, had kept the housekeeper late. When
Mrs. Wright finally arrived, she sent Alexandra off to bed with the
promise that they would talk the following evening.

Carrying a single tallow
candle, Alexandra stumbled up the long flight of stairs to the
attic. Fortunately, the girl with whom she shared a bed was already
asleep and didn’t stir when Alexandra unpacked her box. She put her
belongings in the two drawers allotted for her use in the chest
next to the bed, and snuffed out the candle.

Six other girls shared the
same small attic, but Alexandra gave them no mind. She slid into
bed in her clothes and lay, tense and expectant and too preoccupied
to worry about the lumps in the thin mattress or the chill of the
unheated room.

For she was only biding
her time, waiting until the entire house fell quiet.

The boat jerked along as
the oarsmen guided it toward a dozen mastless vessels sitting like
huge ducks with heads buried in the shallow water. The hulks loomed
before Nathaniel as he glanced wistfully back at the docks, envying
the men who were busily engaged there, free to do as they
wished.

A lavish carriage drew to
a halt at the edge of the wharf, causing Nathaniel to clench his
jaw. He had no doubt as to the owner of that conveyance. Though he
could not make out the golden crest emblazoned on each door, he
knew that the duke and Clifton had come to watch the final nail
being driven into the coffin they had prepared for him.

“Is this yer first time in
such a place?” asked another prisoner, a man with a black patch
over one eye. Five convicts crowded the small boat, along with an
armed guard and two oarsmen. The prisoners could overpower the
three guards easily enough, Nathaniel knew, except they were
double-ironed and unlikely to do anything to cause their own
drowning.

When Nathaniel nodded, the
stranger laughed. “If yer like most newcomers, ye’ll fall sick
inside a year.”

Nathaniel was not
impressed. He shrugged, but offered no retort.

“See this eye? I lost it
in a fight aboard the
Warrior.
That’s ‘er, five hulls down. The fightin’ gets
pretty rough.” He grinned. “A one-armed man would ‘ave reason ter
fear.”

“Not if you were me.”
Nathaniel gave him a scorching stare, refusing to be intimidated,
and eventually the man turned to the prisoner on his other
side.

“Ye ‘ave reason to fear,
too. Ye look no older than a lad. Once it’s dark, the big men
who’ve been around awhile prefer lads like you with fair ‘air and
blue eyes.”

Nathaniel nearly laughed
aloud at One-eye’s bully tactics, except that they weren’t funny.
He was entering a whole new world, one less than a mile from the
life he knew, yet oceans apart. No one escaped from the hulks,
except through death. Whether that was because of the chains they
wore, or the despair that weakened both mind and body, Nathaniel
did not know.

He’d have to reserve his
strength and be alert for any opportunity. Greystone and Clifton
had not seen the last of him. Somehow he would survive.

Squinting up at the prison
barges, Nathaniel grimaced. The place smelled worse than a common
lodging house. The tide was out, leaving the hulks sitting in mud
for ten hours out of every twenty-four. With the marshes nearby and
a pond the tide reached only during winter, there was no flux to
carry away the stagnant water. The smell of dead animals combined
with the stench of the waste dumped off the ships to create a
cesspool that reeked for miles around.

The ships were rotting,
that much he could tell, but what really concerned him was that the
prisoners inside them probably fared no better.

Swatting at a fly buzzing
near his neck, Nathaniel watched one of the rowers jam his oar into
the muddy water to steer the boat toward one of three large vessels
clustered together.

The name
Retribution
was painted
in faded red letters on the side of the first hull. Nathaniel knew
the moment he saw it that he had arrived at his new
home.

The men with the oars laid
them down, and together with the guard, steadied a rope ladder that
dangled before them. Then the shackled prisoners climbed slowly
aboard.

The
Retribution
had originally been a
thirty-two-gun ship captured from the Spanish, Nathaniel heard
One-eye boast. But it was a hellish place now. Only splintered
stubs remained where masts had towered into the sky. The wheel was
gone, and the deck, once polished and clean, lay beneath grime at
least an inch thick. Vermin droppings filled every nook and cranny,
evidence that the prisoners had ample company.

Instinctively Nathaniel
raised his eyes to the sky. Thick clouds covered the descending
sun, but gold, purple, and magenta hues shimmered through. He was
relieved to see horizon. That, at least, remained
unchanged.

A man who referred to
himself as the overseer, and another named Sampson, who held the
designation of clerk, met the new prisoners. The overseer was
obviously the man with supreme authority; Nathaniel soon learned he
did not live on the ship, but came at sunrise and left at sunset
each day. The clerk appeared to be a fellow prisoner who enjoyed a
certain measure of power and greater freedom on the ship than his
companions.

While the prisoners were
temporarily unshackled, Sampson demanded they strip and bathe in a
tub, which had been delivered by other convicts. By the time it was
Nathaniel’s turn to step into the cold water, it was black from the
grease and dirt of the previous four bathers. He desperately longed
to scrub the grime from his body, but he could hardly force himself
to step into the filthy water.

Except that he knew he had
no choice.

Once Nathaniel had bathed,
no matter how profitless the ritual, the clerk provided him with a
coarse gray jacket and breeches. Fortunately, they were clean. Two
other prisoners were given used garments that looked as though they
hadn’t been washed since their last wearing. When one man dared to
object, Sampson grabbed a pistol from the nearest guard and shoved
it in his mouth.

“Dead men don’t know if
their clothes are clean or dirty,” he warned. “Given a day or two,
they’ll look no different anyhow.”

The glitter in the clerk’s
eyes betrayed his eagerness to enforce his words. The prisoner
pulled on the garments without another word while Nathaniel
wondered who or what gave Sampson his power.

When leg irons were once
again fastened about their ankles, the overseer spoke. “If you obey
without question, work hard, and keep to yourselves, you will be
left alone. Anyone who attempts to escape, or cause insurrection,
will be eliminated immediately. Life here is just that simple.”
Turning to Sampson, he added, “Have them join the others. I’ll be
in my cabin. I’m starving.”

Though Nathaniel had
expected the worst, he was still surprised by the appearance of the
three hundred and fifty men who already lived aboard the
Retribution.
They were a
lean, sickly lot, with scraggly beards itching with lice, and many
wore only rags. Some had no shirt, shoes, or stockings.

They stood at attention
for a brief ceremony, which consisted of Sampson reading the rules
and the punishment affixed to each infraction. The rules were long
and varied, but the punishment was always the same: flogging,
flogging, and more flogging. Then the prisoners filed below for
their evening meal.

The dining room contained
nothing but wooden tables and benches. No cleaner than the deck, it
was dank and smelled strongly of mildew. Four portholes shed just
enough light to lend a hazy glow to the room, much like smoke in a
tavern. The lanterns that hung overhead cast dim circles on the
floor that moved as the hull rocked.

With only ten tables, the
men had to eat in shifts. The bulk of the prisoners were herded
beyond the dining room into the sleeping areas. Nathaniel and the
other new convicts were allowed to join the first shift.

Nathaniel was famished and
more than eager to receive his meal—until he saw what it was. A
detestable souplike substance called “smiggings,” it was made from
boiled beef thickened with barley and was served in a tine bowl.
The smell alone nauseated him. The others ate ravenously, but
Nathaniel’s soup went untouched, and again he felt the clerk’s eyes
upon him.