Cinnamon and Gunpowder (4 page)

The wool was the same color as his hat and the same gauge as the cables of his scarf. Indeed, I noted that many of the crew wore some item that Mr. Apples must have knitted.

I made my way again down the companionway and abaft to the narrow pantry hold. With a lantern before me, I took stock of that chamber and felt desperate. Meager materials and these were they:

In sacks:

heavy cornmeal, with scattered weevils

wheat flour, coarse

rice, polished

garlic, cured

raisins

dried figs

some type of white bean

walnuts

dried anchovies

coconuts

black pepper

In barrels:

hardtack

molasses

lard

vinegar

limes

potatoes, buried in sand

rum

Madeira wine

panch

ale, bitter

honey, gritty with wax and what may be wood chips

herrings, whole, pickled in vinegar and garlic

In boxes:

gunpowder-cured meat, which the men call “Mary Sweet,” tough as tarpaulin

onions, under hay

what must be cheese, waxed in balls

coarse grey salt

tea, pressed into cakes and smelling of the earth

These are the desolate contents of the hold; by far the most arresting are the rats, so bold and so many. I understand now the captain’s predilection for tiger pelts, whose lingering musk must offer some deterrent.

Certainly there are staples here to feed the horde, but proper ingredients for cuisine? Butter, cream, mushrooms, fruit, ice, spices, fresh meats, eggs, preserves, crisp vegetables, sugar, bacon, sausage, sherry, etcetera—neither a scrap nor a drop of these. No herbs. Not even a carrot. Lord help me.

Concerning the cured meat, I’ve tasted it and I’m confident it is not pork. Though the tang of the gunpowder makes it hard to be certain, I think it is horse. I made the mistake of asking why the men call it Mary Sweet and was treated to several choruses of this song:

Mary Sweet was potting meat

when she fell into the grinder.

She poured right in and filled the tin

and that is where you’ll find her.

Mary Sweet is given out once a day, and though the men complain about it, they look forward to it almost as much as to their wine rations.

Not far from the provisions, in a narrow hold, among unused torches and short lengths of rope awaiting splicing, Mr. Apples keeps a wicker basket full of scorpions. I had opened the basket and nearly stuck my head into it to discover the source of the faint odor of rotten oranges and dust when Mr. Apples grabbed the back of my neck.

“Don’t want to do that,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Ain’t food. Stick to the pantry.”

I will obey. His rationale for such an unusual husbandry remains a mystery to me. There are, no doubt, many things twitching in the shadows of this ship that are best left alone.

Although I’ve wandered the ship considerably, I have not found my fellow prisoner. There are only half a dozen locked holds on the lower deck that might contain him, but I cannot go about knocking on doors and shouting without drawing undue attention. Despite my eagerness, I must pace myself. In my agitation, I’ve taken to running circles in my little cell. I wish I could say it calmed my nerves, but at least it distracts me for a few moments.

A few minutes ago, Joshua peered in, perhaps to see if I was recovered from my beating. I asked if he might bring me a crust of hardtack; having vomited my oats, my stomach was grumbling. He shook his head and tapped his ear. I assured him that no one would notice nor care if I had a bit of hardtack to dip in my panch. But Joshua shook his head again and cupped his hands over his ears.

With a sigh, I accepted that Joshua is deaf and mute. I mimed eating a small thing, and he disappeared and returned with a few dried figs. Bowing my head to thank him, I contented myself with them. It was just the sort of luck I was getting used to: here was the only person on the boat whom I thought I might trust not to slit my throat, and there was no easy way of communicating with him. I might as well engage my boot in conversation.

When he saw my pen and log, though, he showed great interest. After I had him wash the lampblack from his hands, we established that the boy can scrawl most of the alphabet, but few written words are known to him. He can read lips with some accuracy, but only granted ample light and patience. Two hours passed almost pleasantly as we ruined several pages of paper with jottings and sketches. During this time we arrived at a simple method of instruction: I write a word, he shakes his head if he does not know it, and then I proceed, by drawing and aping, to teach it to him.

If I am to be interned, I suppose it is good that someone should benefit—someone besides that hurricane they call captain.

Like all men of good breeding, Ramsey practiced verbal continence. When entertaining, he was a fine and theatrical orator. But during the mundane moments he spoke only when necessary, and, as his silences proved, little is truly necessary. Those who served him learned to take direction from the slope of his shoulders and the tone of his sighs.

Therefore, the rare moments when I saw Ramsey lose his composure stand out in my mind—as when he threw the doll into the fire.

I was haunted at the time by the vacancy in the house. Ramsey was a notorious bachelor, and, when we were not hosting, the silence itself marched the halls like a grim mistress. I was young, my Elizabeth and our unbaptized son were but a year in the grave, and my mind was wont to linger on morbid things. I concocted a story: I convinced myself that Ramsey had, himself, lost a child.

It’s not uncommon for a young man to feel familial with an employer, and a charismatic man like Ramsey, a man of such poise, well, it’s clear to me now that I came to think of him as an uncle of sorts. At least, I was trying to learn from him how to be a solitary man—to appreciate the nobility of a quiet room.

It was early fall when I found the doll in the woodshed. A nasty influenza had indisposed most of the servants, and Ramsey had sent them to their quarters rather than listen to their sniffling. This left me to fetch my own wood. I wasn’t used to the chore and, while selecting logs, I stood too quickly and cracked my head on the sloping roof. Amid my raining curses there fell, from behind one of the beams, a toy soldier—a fine one with genuine silver buttons and a canvas uniform besmirched with mildew. The owner had fashioned a sword out of snipped tin and bound it tightly to the wooden hand. The doll seemed so out of place that I was afraid for a moment to touch it. If an actual child had plopped to the floor among the logs, I would not have been more stunned.

I immediately recalled a conversation I’d had with a woman at the market a few weeks earlier. She was a nursemaid, with a rheumy-eyed tyke on her hip. She spotted me picking through the parsnips and approached as if she knew me. “You’re Ramsey’s man, aren’t cha?”

I said I was.

“Aren’t you the lucky one? Fine house, isn’t it? Oh, I know; I lived for five years there, tending to the boy.”

Putting her finger to her nose, she winked at me with such import that I thought for a moment that I was talking to a prostitute. “But that’s between us and the turnips, eh?” She laughed, then, and sauntered down the lane, the infant on her hip watching me unkindly over her shoulder as she went.

I had dismissed the incident, but as I stood staring at that doll, it came back to me, every word.

That night I placed the doll on a windowsill so I might consider it as I worked. It was my intention to return it to Ramsey in a manner that would express to him my deep empathy for his evident loss. I was puzzling over how exactly to do this even as Ramsey ate in the dining room.

I was preparing a caramel sauce for his pudding when Ramsey, as he sometimes did, came into the kitchen to compliment me on the goose-liver and leek pie. The soldier in the window caught his eye immediately.

“I found this curious object—” I began, but Ramsey snatched the doll and pushed past me, gnashing his teeth.

He burned his hand opening the oven and pitched the toy into the coals. Flames licked it up at once. He looked not at me, nor spoke, as he stormed from the kitchen. I took my reprimand from this display and never mentioned it again to anyone.

That’s not to say I forgot it. In fact I was deeply moved by the situation as I now understood it. Ramsey had had a son, by whom I couldn’t begin to guess. It was clear to me only that the son had died. Before sleeping at night, I recalled the tiny silver buttons dripping so eagerly in the heat, the round head smoldering, the tin sword gripped tightly till the last.

It made me admire him all the more for his stoicism. In loss, Ramsey and I were family. Mabbot’s merciless pistols have orphaned me again.

Mr. Apples, knowing that many things creep in the pantry, has given me a jar to hold any weevils or earwigs I sift out of foodstuffs. These the strange man will feed to his scorpions.

It strikes me with a shiver, as I write this now, that the pantry rats might be, themselves, a provision of a kind. I would not be surprised if these barbarians kept them as miniature livestock to satisfy the occasional craving for fresh meat. The thought dries my tongue and I begin to think, as I often do when faced with unpleasantness, of ways to gently and swiftly dispatch myself. But I am determined, if for no other reason than to spite the witch, to survive, indeed to stand victorious at the end of this ordeal.

How, though, to make a genuine meal from such a heap? Saint Paschal, attend to me and give me help.

Monday, August 23

Early this morning, I heard someone stumble right outside my locked door, then Mr. Apples yelling, “Damn your bones! You’re as graceful as a potato.”

To this a gentleman replied, “Give me a moment. It’s the gout. Makes my legs stiff.” This was no pirate. He had a proper accent, sounds that evoked the first curls of cream in strong tea, with the distinctly woolen-at-the-edges quality of a veteran pipe smoker.

Was this not my comrade? I rose and saw that the crafty fellow had secreted another message underneath my door. Gout indeed! The message proves that he is a valuable ally. It reads: