Minerva's Voyage (12 page)

I looked on the ground for footprints, but the rain had scrubbed everything clean. I gazed at the bark of cedars, thinking that Fence might have scratched some kind of clue, and into the lacy, leafy canopy. I widened my search to the pink sand of the beach, and I examined the limpet rocks. Everything was as usual. Everything was empty of evidence. Sitting down in damp grass by the shore, I rubbed my head hard until at last, as the day began to darken, an idea popped into it. I went back into the deeps of the tall Bermuda forest, where the trees grew wild and private, as a bird swooped down and perched on my shoulder. Carefully, I uncovered the top of the chest, and sprung open the lid, afraid that I would find nothing. The bird flew away.

Nothing, nothing, I repeated to myself. I will find nothing.

But lo and behold, Fence's old black glove, never before separated from his right hand, was waiting inside. It was stuffed with palm leaves and its fingers pointed south, towards a stretch of water. Not to Virginia, which lay to the west. They hadn't gone there. Oh, my clever Fence, I hur
rahed to myself. Not a book learner or even a writer of the alphabet, to be sure, but no fool either. He had shown me the way. I would paddle south, across the watery expanse, to the next island, an island I had never ventured to explore before. But that's where Winters and Proule and Finney and the others went, dragging Fence along with them, I was sure of it now. I left the glove in the chest, and read the verse of the last unsolved emblem over and over till I knew it. Then I stuffed it under my jerkin. I would sail on the tide of tomor
row, and try to solve the cipher before I went.

C
HAPTER 21
H
ELLISH
H
EAD
B
ANG

On the ground. Just woken up, but still very drowsy. Godawful headache, like I'd been knocked over the head with a rock. I fell asleep again, for a few minutes or maybe more. When I awoke, I had sand in my mouth. I could taste blood in it. And there was a bad smell. I'd pissed in my hose. I turned over and felt around my head with two fingers. It was wet, but not from the sea. The wetness felt sticky and warm. Blood or brains were leaking out. I opened one eye for a second then shut it tight against the sun, which was searing. Something was licking the stickiness on my head. I was too tired to raise my arm again and push it away. I was too tired and headachey to reopen my eyes. I hoped to hell it was the ship's dog and not some ferocious beast. Maybe Tempest had swum over too.

Memory returned slowly. I'd left our island, having told only Piggsley goodbye. “I s'd come with you, Ginger Top, if I could,” he said, giving me a pat on the shoulder. I reckoned he wouldn't give me away, and I felt I needed to have someone in the know just in case I disappeared for good. So I wouldn't vanish from the face of the earth with no one to notice my passing. But when I told him I was going, he immediately asked me. “Who s'll I tell, lad, if you goes missing?”

I had none who cared over in England should I van
ish. And no one here except him. “Nobody, Master Piggsley, nobody at all.”

I fleetingly wondered whether I should say he might inform Mistress Oldham of Plymouth Town, but dismissed the idea as soon as it bubbled into my brain. “Good riddance to stinking rubbish,” she would likely respond, her idea of a fitting epitaph.

He walked me down to the shore and shook my hand like a gentleman, calling me a good soul. “And if we be'ant to meet agin in this life,” he said, “we s'll meet in the next, never fear.”

I hand paddled over to the island south and slightly west of ours. The wind was high so I bent low, gripping the broad plank I rode on between my knees. Piggsley and I had found the plank, washed up from the
Valentine
, on the shore. Sprays of salt water drenched me as I went. The sea got into my mouth and I choked on it. Coughing, I fell off the plank. I scrabbled around for it, but it was already behind me, swept back by the waves, so I had to swim to the island, which was still a long way off. The tide was pulling me the other way. My clothes were dragging me under. I wrenched off my jerkin and the emblem went with it, down into the depths. Lucky I'd solved it. There was no way I could dive after it. My arms were too painful from all the paddling and swimming. I was close to drowning. Tempest the dog had swum up behind me. He barked twice, as if to urge me on, and pushed me once, with his paw.

I made it to shallow water, scrambled up and waded to the land. Sobbing with exhaustion and effort, I gasped land air into my lungs. I could see smoke, no doubt the smoke of a cooking fire, further inland. So perhaps they were here then, Winters and his crew. They or someone else. I was creeping towards the sight and smell of the smoke when I was smacked hard from behind, and went out like a snuffed candle. Even Oldham's frying pan over the head routine had nothing on this. As I fainted, I heard someone screaming. Perchance it was me.

Now I still felt weird, half asleep. I tried to think about the cipher in the final emblem. For a moment I couldn't remember what it said or even what the emblem verse was. The plain text. Or the picture. I was too confused. Why would I even think about ciphers at such a time anyway? It was a kind of madness. But I did think about it, I couldn't help myself, and its words and meaning were slowly coming back to me. I could almost see letters set out on the parch
ment. Not all of them though. I couldn't recall all of them.

I managed to open both eyes before squinting around. Everything was hazy. Two figures loomed above me, huge and dark against the sun. Perhaps they were the wild men talked of in England. The wild men of the New World. Or Spaniards. Either way, they'd likely kill me. I banged my eyes shut and pretended to be dead. Mayhap, I thought, I already am, and this is hell. But at that moment I realized with relief that they were speaking English. Then with dread, because one of them was Proule. I could tell by his voice.

“What you do to him?” asked the other voice.

“I hit ‘im. Hard. He went down like a slit pig,” retorted Proule.

“He's Scratcher's boy.”

“I know that. He ain't supposed to be here. He could rat us all out. I ain't wanting to see Scratcher's face again ever in this life, not after our last set-to. I ain't wanting to see him again even after, if we're both sent below.”

“Below?”

“To ruddy Hades.”

“Is the boy dead?”

“I'll find out.” Proule kicked me hard in the side. I moaned, staggered up, then fell onto both knees, my head spinning. The dog stood nearby, looking a bit stunned. Proule kicked him too. He yelped and cringed, before running over to me. I was too hurt to reach out, but felt a sudden and unfamiliar kinship with him. Tempest. Good dog.
Pax vobi
scum
. Peace be with you.

“Nope,” Proule went on. “Starveling's not dead. He reeks like dead fish but he ain't dead.” I was amazed he could smell me over his own noisome stench. But perchance he was so used to his own stink that he thought he smelled like attar of roses. “In point o'fact,” Proule went on, “he's alive.”

“That's lucky,” said the other man.

“Aye, that's lucky. That's good news.” Proule sounded as if it wasn't. “On yer feet, cockroach,” he shouted, loud enough to deafen me. He dragged me up by the ear. “I'm taking yer to the gov'nor and making a present out of yer for him.”

He punched me in the back to help me get going. Feeling as if my spine had cracked in two, I screamed again.

“Shut yer yap,” Proule shouted.

A small crowd, no doubt alerted by my shrieks and Proule's yelling, was already gathering. I recognised people: Mary Finney, Stephen Beerson, the minister's clerk, Sam Buyers and Abraham Carpenter, sailors both, and Admiral Winters himself, who I supposed to be the gov'nor. There were some others. I didn't see Peter Fence anywhere, but true it is that my right eye was very sore, that's the side of the head where Proule had bashed me, and I couldn't look leftwards.

Proule let go of my ear and I sank to the ground.

“What's this? What's this?” asked the admiral.

“It's Scratcher's boy, Admiral Winters.”

“I can see that. How did he get that gash on his head?”

“I give it him, knowing he'd come to spy.” Proule picked up a heavy stick, probably
the
stick, and pantomimed hitting me for Winters.

“Put the stick down, Proule.” Winters face was stern. He would brook no nonsense.

After a further swish or two of it to show he wasn't bested, Proule complied.

“Spy?” asked Winters now, with a curl of the lips.

“Aye, sir. He's a right crooked little cockroach, full of tricks like that. He should be hanged high, sir. Hanged high. Wouldn't take me more'n a minute. I've suggested it before, but to no avail.” He didn't know how true that was. He spat into his hands and rubbed them together briskly. “He should be hanged high, admiral,” he repeated a third time, as though he relished the words.

He was serious. I gasped. If there was anything worse than drowning, it was being hanged. I'd seen enough of it, and pulled enough dangling legs to know.

“What's your name, boy?” asked Winters.

“Robin Starveling, sir.” I struggled to get up. “I haven't come to spy. I was missing my good friend Peter Fence and came to find him.”

“Perhaps we should send you back to Master Thatcher, should we?”

“No sir. Please sir, anything but that. Master Thatcher is not a good master. I'd rather serve you. And I want to stay with Peter Fence, if he” — I crossed my fingers — “if he is here.”

“He
is
here. He is out collecting logs for the fire.”

“Best to hang this boy, I say. Hang him an' quarter him and cut him up for swine swill. Them pigs'll eat anything. He's Scratcher's creature, so he must be up to no good.” Proule picked up the stick again and twirled it twice before throwing it high, high, in the air. It dropped into the sea, but there were plenty of others around.

“Am I to die?” I whispered, my lips almost frozen with fear.

“No boy, you are not,” said Winters. “Neither of your injuries, which we will take care of, nor by hanging.”

“Send the blighter back,” yelled Mary Finney. “Since you ain't going to hang him. We don't need the likes of him here. And send that vicious animal Proule back while you're at it.” So her quarrel with Proule wasn't fixed after all. Not entirely, at least.

“I've seen the boy with Peter Fence before; they are friends, as Starveling said, and that is no bad thing in these terrible times. I shall take into account what Fence has to say before deciding whether to keep the boy or send him back to Boors and Thatcher.”

“Yer take a cabin boy's chuntering over my own word that this here cockroach is a fool and a spy who will spoil our good government?”

“I do,” replied Winters. “Even if the young man were a spy, which I doubt, I fear nothing from him. He cannot harm us. Sir Thomas and I agreed to part and each govern our own domain.”

“So yer says.”

“I am in charge here, and I will brook no disobedience from you. In fact, Proule, looking at your handiwork this day, I wish to God I had never brought you to this place
.

Mary has a point.”

As I lay there watching them, I wished Winters hadn't brought Mary either. She was sporting a nasty expression. Proule, meanwhile, stood his ground sullenly, but he said not a word as Winters beckoned to two men in the crowd. “You there, sirrahs. Bear the boy to camp. Gently.”

Stephen Beerson and Sam Buyers lifted me. Beerson slid his fingers under my arms, his nails digging into my armpits. He was praying in a dark mumble, hopefully for my recovery. Buyers grabbed my knees. He was swear
ing, but not loud enough for Winters to hear, about how I weighed more than a sackful of turnips, and if he had to carry anything he'd rather it be the turnips. At least he could eat them after. The wound in my head brushed against Beerson's chest as the two men hoisted me. I dragged my hand up and stuffed it into my mouth to keep from screaming again.

The crowd was beginning to disperse. But Mary stood stock still, glaring at me as the mariners carried me by. Proule, cheated of a hanging, the hanging of someone he clearly wanted rid of, made a gargoyle of his face, not that he wasn't ugly enough to begin with. He spat again, but into the sand this time. I knew he would have spat on me directly, and perchance have done much worse, had Winters not been there to curb him. He was not only angry. He was humiliated, which made him even more dangerous. Sick and in pain as I was, I felt evil rising inside me like a foul black tide. I felt reckless. I wanted him dead.

C
HAPTER 22
E
ATING AND
T
ELLING
T
ALES

“What I wouldn't give for a trencher of hot porridge,” I told Fence a few days later.

“You're feeling better then, Robin? Thanks be that you are. You haven't taken a bite of food in three days. In fact, you've barely been awake, though you've been spouting rubbish.”

“What kind of rubbish?”

“I don't rightly know. I could hardly make it out to be English. It made no sense to my ears and was all mashed together like the filling of a mince tart.”