Pirate Talk or Mermalade (8 page)

Curse Tataunga and all the Higher Powers!

It’s a blessing is what you must think—your one eye will see what comes next where two cannot, they are too busy conferring.

You dream that. What would I see?

A man with a fork rising from the sea to take out the other.

Mercy!

I don’t know how you see anything through your one eye.

It’s a ghost boat yonder, or nothing. It’s a boat that floats for sure, that’s all.

—A square-rigger?

A true boat, and it coming toward us!

Indeed.

Let’s flap our rags, let’s jump from a tree! Fire! The fire! Coax up the fire!

No time. They’ll be ashore before we can find enough kindling. Besides, they’ll never stop if we look like brigands drying our takings over a fire.

Southbound.

Southbound will be fine. Southbound will be just dandy.

Southbound it is. And a big fine ship it is. The newest of sails, all rigged right.

The bones of the burnt hull lure them.

How will they see us?

They see us, they’re tacking.

We are but two castaways from a boat caught in the rocks and burnt, that is our story—ah, what was the name of the vessel you heard was refitted?

The
Mayflower
or the
Maryflower,
some-such.

We are two castaways from the
Mayflower,
all that was left of the hundred of your countrymen accosted by brigands and left for dead after the burning boat catched on the rocks.

The flag is English?

It is. But the tale of being beset by something like the Frobisher ship is better, with its fraud so long ago of saying they were looking for the Passage, poking about and picking up women and not discovering—everyone knew Frobisher was a pirate. We begged to be put off the Frobisher-type ship and die here, rather than go on with the likes of that kind of captain.

Pirates like to leave a captain. I vote for the
Mayflower.
The less piratical our boatsmen the better.

Oh, bother—the
Mayflower
or the
Maryflower
then. Move your hand from the glass, you hide the sight of the crew. A monk’s on deck—see his cowl?

He will be kind to us.

Unless it’s a Moor in disguise. I can’t tell from those robes.

If only I had mine eye.

They need water enough, with a barrel like that.

I’ve forgotten what happened to my leg.

You fell into a well behind the topiary, the topiary behind the—what, what?—it comes to me—the chapel at Edgerton. Your eyepatch is from a fight between us when we were but infants. Which is true more or less since we’re naught but boys now. Big orphan boys.

It’s a fine thing you’re still so light of beard. They like it when there’s a woman. That frill off MacAdam’s cuff does the convincing. And the skirt from the washed up trunk.

Hanged.

It can’t be. I dreamed feathers flying into the dark of the night, it didn’t die, it came back. I should’ve eaten it long ago.

Leave it be. It found us water.

Hanged.

It led us to the brink first.

We must boast that the parrot will find a port, that it was the best of luck for us having tamed it.

Not in all the water of the seas I have drunk will that parrot be luck for us. Damned bird.

Hanged, hanged.

Which of the clothes to put on top for me?

Plaid, it’s plaid, a bold plaid it is. There may be some who fled Scotland.

I shall go all enraged—I was all set to land at a new port for the time-pieces when the pirates o’erpowered my ship. But I need a paper that says you took me. I don’t want to complicate the road we are set on by not having the right history.

But it would declare me a pirate!

Yes, well, maybe we would surprise them better as two warring sides.

Better we double our forces and turn on them just as they turn the key in your lock.

You were fighting athwart the boat in defense of me.

Hanged.

Get the bird off my shoulder.

I’ll stuff it inside your shirt for a heaving bosom.

Ah, yes, that could fool them.

And hide my cutlass under your petticoats on a belt around your leg. They won’t think of you with such a weapon. Or should I be carving the wood with it: “The Fine Maiden Hurries to the Dock for Communication from Her Lover?”

No, I will act as a kind of closet for the cutlass. Then after all the introductions, I will fall in a faint in the excitement so you can cover my face and carry me on board with all those weak lady excuses they make. Then we’ll poke them.

I’m bound into being a pirate.

It is our best chance. Over here! Over here! We’ve been besieged by cannibals daily.

Don’t say that—they won’t land.

They all like to say they’ve killed the cannibals in defense of the ladies. Hope they don’t confuse us with them though. But cannibals have far more teeth than we show. Please—mind the rocks. The rocks are what caught us—the great boat the
Maryflower
—

The
Mayflower
—

The
Mayflower,
god rest our ship and all the souls upon it, it was cast onto the rocks and there met its fiery end. Here! Over here!

The rocks caught us but they’ve spread for you due to
the flag you’re flying. Delighted to have you come ashore.

Hanged.

Miss Hanged, if you please.

You are no monk.

Zee cut of zee monk’s jib iss zo cool for zee nethers. But you—you are no uzual caztaway!

My sister, Monsieur.

Miss Hanged, if you please. Daughter of the First Magistrate of Barbados.

A lovely ranzom for zee daughter of Julian Julien, zee castrated cur of the Carribbean.

I was got out before he was maimed.

Aye, well, I don’t doubt that he had zome meanz about him. Give Miz Hanged and her bird the, the how-do-you-say? cloizter where she might go pale in the arm and the faze so as to fetch a better huzband in zee first zlave market we come to, or persuade Julian Julien zhe is worth a virgin’z ranzom. White as zee znow you will be by zen, and a big enough purze for uz, like az not. And find her a fine comb of fizhbone got from her father, the fine caztrated Julian. Adieu, mon cheri, I will veezit you zoon, zo zoon. Az for her having a brother—Julian Julien muzt have led a buzy youth.

Hanged.

I am a watchmaker of some repute. M’lady knows—

Zilence. Do not zpeak of Miz Hanged. We are not
talking about zee father of zuch a woman. Perhapz we should be talking of parrotz.

I am not even English, I am from Salem, from another father.

Comme si comme ca, zneaking puppy of the colonies. Back to your ztationz, the rest of you. I don’t want to zee the lay of the land, I want to zee zeez one’s zkin.

I swear to you!

Sacre bleu! Zuch a young one. Zo fine a zkin for zuch a pirate’z back. You will learn the wayz of the flesh—mine.

Five lashes only! I cannot take more than five.

The lash lovez you. The lash lovez and lovez the onelegged—

Only ten!

Yez, yez, yez. Oh, yez. We will zee how many.

No more!

Hanged.

Only after a pirate haz zeen the lash can he be trusted. Bligh, take heem below—and have the leg looked after by zee carpenter, zome paint applied. When zee lucky zailor recoverz from hiz lashes, he can inflame me with a leg as zhapely as hees zeester’z. And ztow the unbozomed bird in my quarterz.

I try to throw up my skirts.

It is hard to distract him. Just the sound of my pegleg upon deck and he comes at me again with his lash.

He calls me his bête noir.

Isn’t that one of those little cakes? He is stupid not to force you or we would be dead and at the bottom of the drink, both of us, from your lack.

They had dugong the week before.

“Zee fair mermaid of zee zea.” He has taken you away so often to “heez zuite” it’s hard to believe he has not tired of the farce.

I keep him off with stories—how boats will sail underwater by the power of cannonballs, one ball smacking the other, of the prince who cuts off his finger and a new prince grows from it, of the mermaid who sang to the wrong man—you know, whatever I can twist together.

We would still be swanning the decks if the parrot hadn’t flown from your bosom and ruined our Mayflower story. And the magistrate had to be impotent! Spending so long on that island even the gossip goes green. But the shackles are the same.

At least I don’t have to bear them on my ankles. It would be hard to sneak down with their clink, clink, clink.

If I ever get hold of a cat o’ nine tails—

You sound pirate enough now.

Aye, I’ll cut that parrot down first, and then the rest of them too. Avast ye, and the like.

Where can we escape to? The swells are high enough without us.

See the paleness in me.

Pale as a pirate’s turnip.

Bother. Let’s talk of the soup they kept in the Turk’s Head pot, across the gibbety square, the fine bones and mustards we never ate as pirates.

We’re in the soup now.

It is rough today.

Everyone else in chains goes aboveboard but you.

I don’t want to go up. There’s Silas and Fremont, dead of the fever and if the Frenchman finds them, I’ll have to haul out their bodies and my wrist is finished, a bloody stump from these shackles. I might as well get a hook now and be done with it.

You should not have got your hand caught in that loop of rope.

I was trying to grab for his faretheewell when he walked down with his whip, and my peg tripped me. But what of you? You’re a gimlet-eyed false woman with your fineries so fair, so many castoff jerkins you look about to birth a nation of castaways.

They do round me. He lets me keep them all, even the lacy bits.

No more talk of the Frenchman. Let’s talk of women,
the women of my wants, the women in my life.

The harridan, your wife?

She made me drink quince at every meal and diced my socks with rough yarn. There is nothing like that kind of a woman to suck you down.

The anchor that pulls you under.

The woman we courted, now there was a woman.

Aye. A pirate’s woman before we were pirates.

I daresay she had an eye for you in my dazzling wake.

An eye, yes, but not a foot. She didn’t stray from your path.

The last woman I heard had a tip-tap so light on deck it could have been a goat.

It was a goat. You could smell it roast for hours.

Not food, not so much food in our talk. Me-hearty me with a song if you must. My wrist!

You rhyme without shame.

I hate this belowdecks of yours and my getting pale for a slavers’ auction. Let us talk of fish instead, of the fish swimming alongside us, a’singing.

That was a swell, no fish song.

They sing what fools we be, you a scrimshaw saint, I a dead mother’s helpmate.

Your foot is in my hair.

I thought it was vermin!

The fish sing that the wind is upon us now. The fish, the wind—they sing together.

Your bowels are so loud I can scarce hear myself.

Now a scratching only, a fish come to gut us from below.

All hanz on deck! Methinz zee ship is zinking or I have fallen into me glasz! Where is zee crew?

Washed over or strung out on the line, shackled and drowned behind the boat.

I zay drink to zee drowned then! Where is the plug to plug ziss hole?

Lightning green on the rigging, the spar’s loosed up on deck, and the waves—

A fairy show. Evil faireez. I have seen fish standing on the wavez to greet uz, fish big as zaintz. To zee wine eenstead, zwill a drink to the cutlass by ze Savior de Papa, as ze Portuguese would zwear it!

Hanged. Hanged.

Which way, parrot?

Zee parrot knows zis lightning. Drink to zee parrot.

The wheel’s tied off.

Itz spokes cried out for the rope! By my gown of zee Christian monk and the gown of Meez Hanged and zee bold waters of Julian Julien—

Well done! He needed the crucifix as hard as you gave it.

The gash won’t kill him. Another wave!

I thought you’d washed over with the rest.

I hate the deck so, I stayed clear of it when they halloed.

Oh, god let us stay afloat.

Another.

That’s the mast going. Take his sword—it is yours, the rubied one. Fasten yourself to it.

The lash, I want the lash too.

Leave the lash, you idiot.

Waves across the fo’sicle, waves that—

Took the lash.

Yo-ho-ho, yo-ho-ho, yo-ho-ho.

Drink his drink down. All of it. It’ll hot your gullet, quiet your bloody bones, it’ll settle you where you need settling.

Argh!

His blood rushes out as quick as the water rushes in.

Hanged.

I’ll cut off the beak of it!

Enough slaughtering.

No wind of a sudden.

Clear as Christchurch! The sky scrubbed rough with soap.

This could be but the eye, just the eye of the storm.

I’ve heard tell of it.

We’ll swim home.

Don’t dance in the rigging yet. I’ll climb the crowsnest.

Maybe we are drowned and don’t know it. The blue-painted ocean—who said that? Why do you dally so?

Don’t tip the flagon so deep. Wait until I make my report.