My Name is Resolute (7 page)

“Aye, aye,” August said, and he darted away, with that foolish, boyish, duck-footed run he has. A pirate boy is my bonny brother. Well and aye, then. Uncle Rafe might have been looking upon me with disdain, I was not sure. That was one of those things that was hard to measure, for grown people always lie to children about whether they like them. No matter, for my ability to despise Rafe MacAlister had long ago grown to full breadth. Now that I found him here in the company of privateers, I knew I had been right to loathe him, and I kept my eyes away from his as I joined other captives at the soup kettle. Perhaps he had been the one to trick August into signing the ship’s articles, too. Not until I had a bowl in my hands and could appear preoccupied did I chance to turn and look at him. But the man was gone. As for August, I promised myself that if I should see him again I would tear out his eyes.

When I finished my soup, I followed the row of women back to our jail. This vessel, the others said, had been built to carry cows and sheep. If the builder had spread the bars one inch wider in any place, I could have slipped between them and made my escape. But to where? Swim to Jamaica? I would swim, I vowed, as no one had swum before. Only when I sat on a knee formed by one of the ship’s ribs, leaning my head against the side, did I notice that Patience was not to be found. It never occurred to me where she might be, and I felt I had but to wait for her. After all, she was not a good swimmer.

I picked at a piece of tar squeezed from between the planks near my head and rolled it between my fingers as I thought about home. From a tiny opening where tarred rope connected parts I could not name, I could get one eye to the outside and see that it was still daylight. The Saracens’ hideous ship, now run by English pirates, was going to our home, albeit the ship itself was full of holes and might sink on the way. This one, no matter that it was cleaner and there was food and air, was not going home at all! We were already at Hispaniola and this accursed boat was going north.

I whispered against the hull, “I will always live in Jamaica. No one can take me far enough that I shall not find a way to return.” I used the piece of tar to scratch a line against the wall. I drew Patey, August, and myself, with sad faces and chains around our feet. I wrote,
“Jamaica, Two Crowns, we are prisoners here.”
I drew Pa, lying down with a cross upon his chest.

As I drew, I thought of Ma, pining away there, with no way with which to write us, her children, and now with Pa buried in the ocean—oh, Saint Christopher, do not let him wash up on shore where she finds him—she’ll be widowed and no doubt unable to manage the plantation, then put out. She’ll need us. And now, August a turncoat and a vagabond privateer! Ma’s heart will break upon hearing that news. When I drew Ma, I drew tears falling from her eyes. I vowed then that when I found opportunity to write her, I would not write of his wretched apprenticeship. Patience and I would write of our captivity and deprivations. We would somehow make our way home and together we and Ma would survive, perhaps on Ma’s sewing. “Oh, la,” I said aloud, for want of any real words to tell the depths of my aching emptiness. The thought that I had begged to go aboard this ship plagued me above all else. If I had stayed where I was, I would have been put off in Jamaica!

“Let us have a seat, there, girl,” a woman said to me. She pointed to a small mat. “You can have my bed there, if you wish. My back pains me so.”

At that moment the iron door creaked open and I said, “Here, madam, you may have it,” as I saw Patience slip through the opening, clutching a parcel, her head bowed. She flinched when the door closed with a loud clang. I thought she had carried her pocket and I called, “Patey!” At once I felt a thrill that she had procured our passage home, and the same moment a terror that her rings had been traded for naught.

Patience came toward me, eyes on the floor, and reached my side just as men above slid the hatch cover closed and the twilight of this deck enveloped us.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Above,” she whispered.

“That lady said I could use this mat. Would you sit with me?”

Patience lay upon the mat but turned her body away from me and curled her knees up. Her shoulders shook as she cried.

“Patey?” I whispered. “What is that you’re carrying? Well, no matter. Please take heart. We shall find a way to get home.” Even as I spoke, I doubted we could. I thought of what August had said about escape. I thought of Ma, looking out to sea from the widow’s walk, day after day, waiting for us. I put my arm around Patey’s waist to comfort her.

She flung my arm from her as if it had been a snake, hurting my shoulder. “Keep still!”

I pulled back a little. “Where did you go? Why did they not bring you with the rest of us? Tell me what happened. Why are you carrying that?”

“Leave me alone, Resolute. Leave me.”

I was not sure if she had not finished her words or if she meant more than a wish for me to keep shushed and meant me to leave away from her side. I said, “You did not have to hurt my arm. I merely reached to pat your side.”

“Simply do not touch me.”

“Fine, then.”

She lay a-weeping then, moaning sometimes, and as it was dark and I was fed, I slept to the sound of her sobbing, an old familiar tune. When the woman asked for her pallet again, Patience sat next to me on the wale. She reached under her skirt and loosened a tie, then pulled off the petticoat Ma had made for her. She raised it over our heads and made for us a little tent. She held my hands, and when I started to make a sound, shook them. She opened the parcel she had brought. Into my hands she placed a boiled turtle egg and half an orange. The need for food was ever awake in me and I crammed the egg into my mouth, whole. The fruit had dried, but once I bit through the hard part, the juice was sweet and tart on my tongue.

“Do not smack,” she whispered. “I have one for each of us.”

“Oh, this is excellent. How did you get these?”

“Just eat it. Eat all of it, too. Even the rind will keep us from scurvy.”

“Someone will smell these.” But no one did, or if they did they had no idea whence it came, and so we crouched in our dark corner huddled together and ate. Although I might at one time have been loath to eat an orange rind, my hunger spoke over the bitter tang on my tongue. I stuck the orange rind in my cheek and sucked at it until it dissolved. It left a raw place on my tongue and I rubbed the spot against my teeth.

The next day passed with no sign of August or a Spanish galleon filled with gold. I felt renewed enough to feel both thankful to Patience and irritated at our situation, and I complained to anyone who would listen. That evening before I closed my eyes, I hoped for another stolen morsel from Patience, but she stayed at my side all the time and so was not able to collect anything extra. I believed she would do what she could for both of us, just as Ma would have done. It gave me some peace to know that.

At dawn calls from above awoke us. “Strike colors! Take the whip! At the guns! Man the sweeps!” This was followed by the sounds of hurried action, and from my tiny peephole I saw a set of oars thrust from our ship’s sides begin to move in tandem to a chant of “Yo-hope!” We turned sharply; the ship listed hard to one side until it rose upon the surface of the water. Our vessel cut through waves helped by sail and oar alike. Some woman of our group cried, “We’re going keel over!” and someone else hushed her.

Cannons bellowed off our port side and shook the ribs of the ship and all mine, too. I screamed and clasped my ears at the unexpected roar of them. They levied a full broadside and all of a sudden everyone on this deck lurched and fell as the ship turned into the wind, jerking and hauling with shouts from the oarsmen as it started moving full astern. We swayed again, falling upon each other, and felt the concussion of another full broadside from our ranks of starboard cannon.

In the midst of it I heard, “Run up the colors! Man the canoe!” I had no idea what the canoe was, but I knew the colors would either strike terror or a challenge in the souls of our prey. They would either surrender or begin a terrible battle in which we prisoners could die more easily than the sailors. If they sank this crock we were doomed.

What followed was eerie calm, a chorus of cheering, then more silence. The English had taken another ship by means of that wrenching maneuver that tossed us off our feet. I lost my fear as soon as I had heard the cheers, since the battle was won. I stood upon the wale and got my eye as close to the little hole as I could, wishing I were on deck to watch. We floated beside a great ship, as large as the one that had first taken us. The name on her aft was
Castellón.
I saw “our” longboat coming alongside the
Castellón
and men climbing aboard with no shouting nor fighting at all. Sailors from this vessel threw ropes between the two, stitching them together. I heard a drum playing and a whistle blew.

I peered right to left trying to see anything more, and was about to step away from the hole when I heard a pistol shot. Someone on our ship shouted, “Trap! It’s a trap!” and the air filled with the sounds of swords and axes clashing, men commanding orders, men groaning, dying, things and people falling overboard. Cannons roared from both ships. After many long minutes, the firing of cannons ceased, but pistol fire continued as long as the first battle. What had seemed a peaceful surrender turned to a bloody slaughter.

The air belowdecks filled with smoke and the women began a chorus of wailing that we were all to perish. From overhead a short silence broke with a weary-sounding round of cheer. For several hours the English sailors boarded and returned, taking goods from the
Castellón
to the
Falls Greenway
. Now and then a call echoed above but I grew tired of watching. Patience was not curious and cared not at all to do it. She took off her petticoat again and rolled it for something to put her head upon. She lay there at my feet, staring at the beams overhead whilst I stared out the hole. I wondered if all this fighting and plundering would take the place of our morning goat soup, and I pressed against my middle, wishing I had another of those precious stolen oranges.

The day waned and the sailors talked more loudly. Some moaned in pain. Others shouted and called to each other. Hour after hour, the sounds did not change. Then, a surprise came such as I had never imagined. Music! I heard a fiddle and drums, and some kind of high-pitched flute. The fiddler played and played, and stamping feet joined in the beat of the drum. The sounds became more drunken and loud, the music less easy to follow. The hatch above us opened. Rafe MacAlister came down the ladder steps followed by a sailor and stomped straight to the cage that held Patience and me. He motioned the man to open the lock, and took Patience by the arm. She went with him. He stepped through the gate as the sailor looked through the women and chose an African slave. “Know ye English words?” he asked her. “I favor singing and dancin’.”

“I come by some,” she answered.

“Up top wid ye.”

Later, I heard music again. Patience did not come down. I thought about the Irish girl with the long red hair. How she had been taken to the banquet. Maybe Patience was dancing and eating. I thought about the splashes late in the night and I tried not to think about Patience eating until she burst, or of her falling overboard. I tried not to think about the sounds of the laughter and dancing. Foreign, delicious smells wafted through the wooden floor. I imagined them having all my favorite sweets. I vowed to try not to think of them eating but the more I tried the worse my hunger grew, so I closed my eyes. I hummed to the tunes amidst the perfume of turtle soup and roast pork haunch.

I thought about the rules of pudding instead. I do not know who made rules about pudding, but there are rules. Pudding should always be larger than the smallest child’s head, was one rule. And if it had fruits it should not have hard sauce, but without fruit it should always have sauce. Sauce, I decided, was better when it was warm. And if it had rum in it and Pa lit it at the table that was always nice. I liked the way it glowed around the edges of the flames, kind of blue-green, as the color of the bay most days. I liked the way it was sweet and hot and left a hot place in the back of my throat after I swallowed it. If Patience was having a banquet with pudding I should like to know what kind of pudding was made by pirates, who might not follow the rules. If they had no pudding, I supposed after a difficult day as this when they had been tricked and fought for their lives, one should understand. A roast leg of pork or mutton would do. Perhaps chicken. A string of drool slipped from my lip and drizzled onto my chin. I wiped it away, angry because I had no pudding.

Without food, the other thing I longed for was sleep. That night it did not come, so empty was the place where Patience should have slept. All the other women around me were asleep when the sound of the jail door opening and shutting cut through the rhythmic breathing of midnight.

Patience tiptoed over sleeping women to what had become our place, again carrying a parcel, and again she laid herself down, curled tight as a snail, away from me. She spoke not a word but soon in her sleep she moaned and whimpered. I lay beside her but did not sleep. After a while, she began to whisper, “No. Please not again. No, no.”

I did not touch her, but I wondered if her feet had blistered from too much dancing. Familiar sounds awoke me, the watch changing, the clanking of chains, thumping of hard boots on the deck above, men calling orders. Light came in the hole above the wale. Most of the sailors above slept, their raucous snores a constant hum. Women in my cell sat up and stirred.

When Patience sat up, I looked on her with horror. Her face was blue and one eye swollen, her top lip had blood matted in the corner and it was as round as if she had hidden an egg in it. She put the parcel in my lap and lay back, covering her eyes with her arms. Her gown was nearly gone, worn out and torn; it was all but indecent.

“What you got there, missy girl?” a woman asked.