I was up early with Sebastian, sewing on the sails, ready for the sunrise that didn’t come. The sea and sky were covered with a gray fog that lay across the deck like a winding sheet. It was in my hair. It chilled my bones and I realized that my aches ached worse with the cold and wetness of it.
Around me the crew was already at work. The guns were polished and checked, the boards scrubbed, the railings rubbed.
“We keeps the Sea Wolf rubbed up even in fog,” Sebastian said.
“Seems like time wasted,” I said.
“We has our duties. If’n we slack, the cap’n’ll be on us. There’ll be punishment, ye can lay to that.”
I stole a glance at him. Skelly had told me that Sebastian liked to talk. I chanced a remark.
“I find it strange that a woman captain can control a crew as she does.”
“May be.” Sebastian pulled himself another strand of hemp and threaded his needle. “They respect her and fear her. Ye have not had time to see her in battle. She is a wild beast. Or when she is angry. I seen her chop off a finger when it went a place it should not have gone in her presence.” He paused. “There’s not another captain can smell out a treasure like she does. There’s greed in the crew. It’s worth being ruled by a woman if’n the rewards are good. They be’s grateful for that, and more.”
The sail I was stitching was fog damp and the needle slippery. I struggled with it. Sebastian leaned across me and gave it a last push through the wet canvas. He went on.
“Aye, they gots a lot to be grateful for. No other cap’n would have a one o’ them. They be’s half blind, half crippled, one handless, one footless. One can’t talk, one can’t hear and Gummer, he be’s older than the ocean. And who but Captain Moriarity would a’ taken me, me, a dwarf?” He gave a small chuckle. “I tole her a dwarf was lucky on a ship. Good news for me that she be’s superstitious. I tole her I had the Light of Foresight and she believed me. ’Twas true. I have. We be’s all loyal to her. There’s not a man would fail her.”
I peered in front of me.
A sailor was leaning overboard, lowering a leaded weight through the fog and into the water, calling out “three fathoms,” then “four fathoms,” then three again.
“We be’s extra careful when the fog lies on the sea,” Sebastian said. “There be’s hidden dangers hereabouts. Ye can run up on shoals or break yer hull on a sunk wreck. Like the Isabella.”
“She broke her hull?”
“Aye, but she made it to shore. Cap’n has informers. We know where she be’s lyin’ and what’s aboard her.”
“The informers will be rewarded?” I asked tartly.
“Oh aye. Ye can be sure o’ that.”
We sewed for a while without talking.
By noontime the fog lifted and the sun appeared.
I found myself secretly examining every pirate that passed us by. Who was it who’d tried to get in the captain’s cabin last night? Had it been that one with the limping leg? Or this one, with the pustules, red and oozing on his cheeks? Should I tell Sebastian? No, he’d likely report to the captain and who knew what she might do.
Now and then I’d stretch my legs to ease them. Once Sebastian said, “Stand up, Mistress. Take a step or two. There’s no need for ye to cripple yerself.”
I stood gratefully.
Mr. Forthinggale came upon me as I stood, bending my back, stamping my feet to flow blood into them. “Get back to work,” he said. “You’re not on board for yer pleasure.” Before I could answer Sebastian said, “I tole her to stand, Quarter. She be’s no good to me if she’s squirmin’ around like an eel on a hot rock.”
The quartermaster humphed, then strode away.
William, where are you? If only I could talk to you, tell you my fears, ask you. Ask you what the captain says to you when I am not there.
I saw no sign of him, not all the morning long nor when we stopped for maggoty hardtack and dried beef in the middle of the day. There were limes and we each took one.
“Suck on it,” Sebastian said. “ ’Twill keep away the scurvy. ’Tis a new and remarkable discovery. Have ye seen scurvy, girl? If’n ye did ye’d chew that lime, skin an’ all. ’Tis worth a bit o’ sourness in yer mouth.”
I took a bite and felt my eyes water and my throat curl up. Sebastian began to tell me about scurvy, how it makes your gums go black and your teeth fall out. How it rashes you all over your body and how you go out of your mind at the end and see mermaids in the rigging and Davy Jones inviting you down to the depths to sup with him.
I could not keep my mind steady, nor my heart that longed for William.
Sebastian stopped talking and looked closely at me with those green knowing eyes. “He be’s in the wheel-house with the cap’n; Finnegan says she’s learnin’ him how to measure the distance sailed from day to day and how to chart the ship’s position.”
I nodded. My throat stung and I didn’t know if it was with tears or with the bitter juice of the lime. Captains did not teach ordinary seamen, or cabin boys, unless it was for a reason. Unless they had future hopes for them. Unless they were keeping them.
The ship moved sluggishly, the sails empty.
“The fog eats the wind,” Sebastian said. “No wind, no speed.”
We sewed all day. My fingers were raw. I sucked them and did not complain.
The rip I was working on was almost closed.
“Am I useful to you?” I asked Sebastian.
“Aye,” he said. “You be’s as useful as Blunt was. He was a grand worker afore a shell from the Barbary Blue blew out his belly. He lay on the deck here wi’ his guts squeezin’ through his fingers. ’Twas good for me that I got a replacement.” He looked slyly at me, then said, “Aye ye’re useful. I’ll be tellin’ the cap’n.”
I did not see William. He was not at the table when we went for food at sunset. I did not see the captain either.
There was soup with potatoes in it and a scrap or two of yesterday’s fish. There was ale and water.
I ate little.
There was no reading to the captain that night. When she came in the cabin she took the key from the pocket of her trousers and locked the door. I feigned sleep as she took care of her needs, laid her hand on the Celtic cross, got into bed. She was humming a tune that was unknown to me. I wondered what she was thinking and of whom, and what it was that had put her in such high spirits. I thought I knew, but the thought hurt too much and I let go of it. At least she wasn’t with him now and I could be thankful for that. Soon her humming changed to her small fat snores and I knew she slept.
I ached all over. The unguent did not help.
But I, too, slept at last. And if someone tried to get into our locked cabin I did not hear it.
Morning came. I worked all that day and the day after that. Nights I read aloud from The Tain.
On the third day we passed at a distance from a bare rock that rose out of the sea like a monstrous sleeping whale.
“Turtle Island,” Sebastian said. “You’ll not be marooned on that one, Cate.” He had come to calling me Cate in a friendly way which made our work together more tolerable.
I gazed at Turtle Island, my heart beating too fast. Would I ever again hear the word island without this breath-stopping panic?
William passed by one time, rolling a barrel of water. I thought quickly. “I never see my friend William,” I said to Sebastian in my most carrying voice. “I miss him every day.”
William paused. “Sebastian,” he said. “I think o’ my friend every minute. But it must be endured.”
“Are ye speakin’ to me?” Sebastian asked. “Better get on wi’ yer work.”
“Aye,” William said.
I watched him till he was out of sight.
“’Twill not be good to be smarter that Captain Moriarity,” Sebastian said. “She has no likin’ for disobedience.”
“What disobedience do you speak of?” I asked and he fixed me with his green stare, shrugged and went back to his stitching.
I got to recognize some of the crew as they stopped to exchange words with Sebastian. Horn, who spoke with such difficulty that he mostly signed with his small, calloused hands. Catman who was friend to the ship’s black cat, the wild creature that would not let anyone else touch her. Claw, so called for the metal apparatus he had in place of a hand. I kept a watch out for the man with the missing finger that the captain had cut off when he used it inappropriately in her presence but did not see him. Magruder, leering and squinting, made every excuse to stop and stare greedily at me.
“I might mention to the cap’n that you doesn’t have enough work to do,” Sebastian told him once and Magruder said, “Aye, ye better do that, ye mealy little midget.”
“Go,” Sebastian said. “And next time ye come this way, do not stop.”
Then, one night when Sebastian’s weather string had warned him of a savage storm fast approaching, William and I met by chance, alone on the rolling deck. The Sea Wolf pitched and yawed. The sea around was fierce, frosted with white foam that spat at the ship. Wind tore at the reefed sails, trying to loose them. The crew was busy, battening hatches, tying down anything the storm might take. Rain drummed on the deck.
First he was only a shadow, coming toward me.
Then he was William.
We clung to each other. There was little time for words. Someone could come at any minute. There was just the warmth of our kisses that mixed with the rain beating on us. “Me love. My darlin’ girl,” he whispered. On the island, when we came out of the sea, we’d been wet like this. Those kisses and those holdings had been the sweetest.
I ran my hand through his hair, felt under my fingers the thin line of scar on his face, stood tiptoe to kiss it.
“I don’t think I can bear it.”
My words were muffled against his chest.
“Shh, shh. We have to keep on livin’. We have to do anything, say anything to hang on. The voyage will end.”
A sob rose in my throat. “What if she decides I am to be marooned again, alone? She will never let you go.”
“If she tried to keep me ’twould be in vain. I’d jump after ye. Beelzebub himself could not stop me.”
There was an urgent whisper behind us that was almost lost in the wind.
“Get yerselves away! Puce and Skull be’s comin’. Hurry!”
There was no time for a goodbye word. We moved quickly in opposite directions.
Back along the deck, fighting the force of the gale I saw Sebastian.
He stood with his arms wide, his back to the wind. In one hand he held his knotted string. “Aye,” he said. “I told cap’n ’twould be a storm to remember. ’Tis true. But ’twill not be a hurricane. There is no eye. Me and my string can always tell.”
It was a savage storm, two days long.
When it was over the ship had a battered look to her and the crew started again, scrubbing and cleaning and polishing. The bilges were full of water and needed pumping. Sails were spread to dry.
Sebastian and I worked on wet canvas, so heavy that it numbed my legs. “Me own short legs be’s an advantage,” he said. “They bend on themselves easier.”
Nights I read to the captain. I thought perhaps the night reading would make her softer to me but that did not happen. It was when she chose Gulliver’s Travels that it became apparent to me that she did not know how to read. She had tired of The Tain and said, “Pick another book, Catherine, and continue.”
“Which one, Captain?” I asked. “The one there, with the green cover,” she said impatiently. The title, Gulliver’s Travels, was writ plain across the front.
“Aye, that ’un,” she’d said. “What is it called?”
I told her and explained what it was about.
“ ’Twill do.” She said nothing more. Captain Moriarity was not one to expose a frailty. But I knew. I tucked the knowledge away in my mind. It might be useful.
Every night we had the same routine. We slept in the clothes we had worn that day. She used the commode, I went to the cradle at the back, hanging out above the ocean as the ship bucked beneath me like a horse I had one time ridden. Sometimes she washed her face and hands with water. Sometimes she did not. I could use a bucket of water that Gummer placed outside the door to wash myself.
Every night she ran her hand over the painted cross on the door and muttered words that I could not hear. Every night she touched the lid of the box that I knew held William’s hair and once I saw her take out the lock of his hair and press it to her lips. She shuttered the lamp. She did not wish me goodnight and I did not bid her a good night either. Soon I heard her snores, like high-pitched whistles, like the sound of a repetitive high note on my flute. She never mentioned my music nor invited me to play it. I could not anyway, not even for myself now. The tips of my fingers were so raw and painful that they bled at the slightest touch.
Each morning I took my place with Sebastian on the deck. One day we met up with a small merchant vessel sailing in the opposite direction. I looked at it and wished with all my heart that William and I were on board it, heading for Port Teresa.
“Cap’n won’t be stoppin’ to plunder that ’un,” Sebastian said. “Even though it be’s a young chicken waitin’ to be plucked, Cap’n be’s after bigger prizes.”
First the Reprisal, I knew. Then the Isabella.
Every morning the wild black cat slunk past us carrying a dead and bloody rat in its teeth. “It be’s lookin’ for Catman,” Sebastian said with a chuckle. “It likes to be givin’ him presents. There be’s plenty more where that one came from.”
Around us the men worked, repairing, splicing ropes, checking the cannons, polishing and sharpening their knives and their cutlasses for the battles to come.
“ ’Tis good they have plenty to do,” Sebastian said. “They gets bored if’n there’s no fightin’ and no booty and little to occupy them. They needs to have a bit o’ fightin’ to spur their spirits and a goodly plunder to keep ’em happy.”
It was the very next day that the lookout spotted a sailing ship and called it out.
I recognized it from a distance and I was overcome by a mixture of sorrow and vindictiveness at the sight of it. My father’s ship that he had loved. My father’s ship with Herc as captain.
Captain Moriarity strode along the deck and stopped where we sat.
“A word with ye, Sebastian,” she said.
Sebastian slid out from under the sail and stood, flexing his legs, stretching his arms. The two of them moved away but I heard the captain ask, “What are the portents, Sebastian? Have ye consulted them?”
“They are good, Cap’n,” Sebastian said. “We are in unison with the sun and stars. ’Tis Monday, a good day for a battle. I see a conundrum, and an unanswered question. But in the end ’twill go your way.”
“So be it,” she said. “I am accustomed to getting my way.”
She shouted an order and the false English flag was run down the masthead. Quickly, quickly, as if it had been waiting for the opportunity, the Skull and Crossbones swooped to the mast top and screamed its business to the wind.
I took a deep breath. Whatever was to happen next would happen.