The Convicts (10 page)

From the darkness of the ship came a sudden cry of pain. High and shrill, it jolted through me, setting my nerves tingling, my heart racing.

“Lie still, Tom,” whispered Midgely. His fingers were hooked on the edge of his hammock, but all the rest of him was hidden inside it. “Don't even move,” he said.

The cry came again, then a thump and a scuttling sound. My mind turned the noises into visions: a boy curled on the floor with his hands on his face; feet kicking; fists pummeling.

“Ain't nothing you can do,” said Midge in his whisper. “It ain't you they're after, Tom. Lie still and wait.”

Wait for
what?
I wondered. No, it wasn't me they were after. Not
that
night, at least, or not that hour. But my turn would come; I knew it. “Midge,” I said. I reached across and shook his hammock. “Show me where the hull is rotten.”

“Now?” he said.

I didn't wait another moment. I slid from my hammock and crouched on the floor. The faintest of light came in through the grates, making gray of the black space between the floor and the bulging hammocks. With a soft tinkle of his irons, Midgely came down beside me. We crawled below the sleeping boys, along the deck to a distant grating. The light of the stars shining up from the water glowed dimly on Midge's face. He touched the wood at the base of the wall, then rapped with his fist. He did the same at the next grating, and the one after, before he looked at me and said, “Here. Look at the spirketing, Tom.”

“The what?”

He took my hand and put it on a thick plank just above the deck. Even in this faint light I could see a patch of wood darker than the rest. “Tap it,” Midgely said. The patch was soft and spongy.

“That's rot,” he said. “There ain't enough of it here, but that's what it's like. Smell it, Tom.”

I put my nose close to the wood. The smell was rich and earthy, like mushrooms in a cellar. It tickled my nostrils.

“That's what you want,” said Midge.

We went right thrQugh the ship, up and down the ladders. Once we heard the boyish voices of the nobs, and once the march of heavy footsteps. As they came toward us, Midgely pressed me into the shadows behind a ladder. On the deck above, a guard went by in a circle of light from the lantern he carried. It made huge sweeping shadows of his legs.

“You said they didn't come down at night,” I whispered when the guard had wandered by.

“I said they don't
stay”
said Midge. “They come on their rounds sometimes.”

We held our irons tightly so they wouldn't rasp against the wood, and went up and down, back and forth, until I was hopelessly lost. Then somehow, in the darkness, we parted. I suddenly found myself alone, with no idea where I was. “Midge!” I called, as loudly as I dared. “Midgely!” But there was no answer.

I crept through the ship. Every post and pillar, every window looked the same. I thought I was going in circles, until I found a doorway that took me to a new and different room. Benches stood in perfect rows, in a place that towered twice or thrice the height of any other deck. In a hatch far above me, the stars of the Pleiades shone in their square.

It was such a quiet and peaceful place that I could hear the river rippling against the planks. Then timbers creaked, and the ship turned a bit in the current. The moon—a curved sliver—seemed to balance on the edge of the hatch. It sent a beam of light down through the darkness, through swirls of dust, onto the face of a bearded man.

He stood in the shadows below the ceiling, many feet above the floor. Utterly still, and utterly silent, he seemed to be staring right at me.

I eased myself toward the wall, into the corner by the last of the benches. Hidden there, I waited, willing him to go. I heard the bell very far in the distance, and waited till it rang again. But the man never moved.

From somewhere in the ship came another sudden cry, and the sounds of a struggle. There was such misery in the voice that I clamped my hands to my ears. It was Midgely, I thought. The nobs had caught Midge because I had dragged him from his hammock. They'd caught Midge, and next they'd catch me.

The hull creaked and shifted, and the moon seemed to turn in the hatch. Its light, for a moment, shone more fully on the man's face, and I saw there a look of worry, of
care,
perhaps. Then the moonlight shifted away from him, across the room, and directly onto me. Too late, I dropped behind the bench. But I heard no shout, no movement. The man must have seen me, yet he stood still and quiet. I wondered if he was hiding too, tucked as he was into the top of this high, empty space. I whispered into the moonlight, “Who are you?”

His silence was unnerving. To think I shared this secret place with such a mysterious person put prickles in my skin. Yet I felt only comfort to have him there; I knew that he meant no harm to me. I could have stayed quite happily all through the night, free from worries of Weedle and the nobs. That was the sense he gave me.

But I was worried for Midgely. It annoyed me that I was, for I had never fretted about the welfare of others. What Mr. Goodfellow had told me once was true: I
was
selfish, and I knew it. I owed nothing to Midgely, so why did I want to find him?

I took off my shirt, thinking I could wrap it around my chains and muffle their sounds. I leaned against the wall, drew up my legs to grasp the irons—and there I stopped. The smell of rot was all around me, strong as smelling salts.

Everywhere on the ship, the wall was made of planks. But here it was paneled in sheets of oak that might have belonged in a rich man's home. Each square was set in its own frame, and each seemed solid when I tapped it with my knuckles. I pried at the framing here and there. It was nailed in place, strong and tight wherever I looked, until I came to the lowest corner. The wood there was blackened and eaten away, the last inch of framework missing altogether. Another piece came loose at a tug, as though nothing gripped the nails. The mushroom smell wafted over me with such a richness that I guessed the rot went on and on behind the panel, maybe folly through the hull.

I didn't wait to prod any farther. The bearded man was hidden now, but I didn't fear him. I wrapped my shirt around the chains and crawled between the benches and out through the door, into a deeper darkness. I kept moving, calling in a whisper for Midgely.

Scuffling sounds made me pause, until I realized that I was hearing rats on the deck below. I started forward again, then wondered what had put the rats on the move.

“Midgely?” I whispered.

There was a different sound then, a small scrape and a clink of metal. And the boy who answered wasn't Midgely.

“Nosey,” he said, very softly. “Nosey, where are you?”

I went forward more quickly. When I came to a ladder, I was no longer sure if I wanted to go down or up. But it seemed easier to go down, and I let the chains dangle from my feet. They settled on each rung in turn, easing their weight for a moment, then falling away with a jerk on my ankles.

I was nearly at the bottom when a voice said, “Don't move.”

And a hand reached out and grabbed my ankle.

The fright that I got nearly brought a scream from my lips. My hands flew from the’-ladder, andTbarelycaught it again as I went toppling backwards I clutched the rung with all my strength, but it seemed my heart had plummeted to die floor,

When I lifted my foot, someone pulled it down.

“Tom! It's me. It's Midgely,” He held my chains so they could make no sound, and he told me, “Stay still!”

Hie ntsbs were above us. I heard them scuttling across the deekwilh thaljingk of icons and the soft padding of bare feet. I heard their whispers and pressed myself against the ladder. The nobs came closer, nearly right to the hatch. Weedle called out, soft and clear,“Nosey. No-o-sey!”

They stopped right above me. The darkness was so complete that I couldn't see Midge, and I supposed they couldn't see me. But I felt the ladder tremble, as though someone was starting down. Then I heard the nobs moving, and I waited a long while before dropping down to Midgely's side.

I expected to find him lying battered and bleeding, but he was fine. He was even a little annoyed. “I've been waiting forever,” he said. “Where did you go?”

“I'm not sure,” I told him.

We huddled where we were, and even slept for a while on the hard deck below the ladder. Midgely, knowing the patterns of the ship, got us safely in our hammocks before the guards came below to start our day. We were marched to the deck and down again, and I thought that breakfast would follow. But we went in a different direction, toward the front of the ship, straight to the home of my bearded man.

It was the chapel. There sat my benches in their perfect rows. There, high above me, stood the silent figure. His feet crossed, his arms spread, he was carved out of wood—a crucified Jesus. As I looked at his downturned face, a small flame kindled in my heart. I felt that he would protect me, that I
would
escape from the hulk. Even that I had to.

I maneuvered to the proper bench, Midgely at my side. As we sat, the chaplain entered through a narrow door beside the altar. In a white surplice he climbed to his pulpit, opened a black Bible, and read the psalm that began “The Lord is my shepherd.” The hundreds of boys sat in silence, none of them listening, all looking up at the sunlight that glistened in the barred hatch where I'd seen the sickle moon. I leaned against the wall, exploring with my foot the bit of framing near the floor. I could see the heads of the nails I'd loosened.

The chaplain closed his Bible with a thump. “Come, ye children, I will teach you the fear of the Lord,” he said, raising his hands. “On your feet now. Catechisms, boys.”

We stood as one and followed him through the wretched catechisms. Many a bum-brush I'd gotten in school learning those endless things, but I knew them by heart. The chaplain asked the first qttestteti, and we bleated out the answer like a herd of talking sheep. He asked the second, and the third, staring down from his pulpit to see who was talking and who was silent. In that way of all boys, most only mumbled bits of nonsense to add their voices to a babble.

I looked at the panels of wainscotting, wondering how to remove them. I wished for tools I could never have, so lost in my thoughts that I didn't hear the chaplain conclude his service. Suddenly the boys were standing, and he was staring down, pointing right at me. “That boy,” he said.
“That
boy win stay behind.”

When the room was empty he came down from the altar. His face was long, his forehead high, framed in white hair and white bushes of whiskers. All he needed was a red dot on the tip of his nose to be an old Silly Billy from a London fair. It wouldn't have surprised me to hear him burst out in one of those clown's little songs: “Eh, higgety, eh ho!”

But when he smiled, the image of a clown deserted me. He seemed only kindly, a small man with big wrinkles and sad eyes. “You know your catechisms well,” he said. “Where did you learn them, son?”

“In church, Father,” I said. “In school.”

“Indeed?” His eyes brightened. They were pale and squinted, as though he needed spectacles but refused to wear them. “I meet few boys who've had schooling. Tell me; what led you astray?”

I didn't hesitate. “Mr. Goodfellow.”

“Ah,” said he. “Did you rob him? Did you beat him?”

“No, sir. It's what he did to me.”

“Now, now. The first step to salvation is confession, my boy.” His fingers raked through his whiskers. “Would it help you to come here in the evenings?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” I could hardly believe my luck.

“I have a small library. You can read, can't you?”

I nodded. “Yes, Father.”

“Splendid. I will hope you use it often.” He stood up and called for a guard to take me to breakfast. “The boys are set in wicked ways, and I feel sometimes that my work is wasted here,” he told me. “But you give me hope. I'd like to help you on your way.”

“I believe you will, sir.” I smiled back at him, but felt rather rotten inside.

When I arrived at the breakfast table the boys were on their feet for the blessing. With one look at Oten Acres, I knew who the nobs had been after in the night. His hands trembled as they held his bowl. His face was puffed and bruised, one eye blackened, lips split open. And more than that, he was broken through and through. Without a word of complaint he passed up a share of his food, then lowered his head as though he might never lift it again.

Midgely whispered at me. “He's a meek now, ain't he, Tom? He'll inherit the earth, sure as spit.”

I gave up my own share as easily as Oten had done, and Weedle gloated in his power, his eyes shining. Now and then they fixed on me, and I shuddered to think what he might be planning. But I ate all that was left of my food. If Midgely expected some, he neither asked nor complained. I spooned up the slop without looking.

“Smasher,” said Weedle.

I nearly answered to the name before I realized that was what he wanted. In his stupid cunning he'd hoped to trap me, to prove a truth that didn't exist.

“You're him, ain't you?” he said.

I pretended not to know that he was even talking to me.

“I'll give you what you gave me, and more,” he said. “Cut my face? I'll cut your ears off, nosey. I'll slice your lips away, you'll see.”

He put fear in my heart; there was no denying it. And the fear made me desperate to be gone from the ship. So it was Weedle's own fault, in a way, that I stole a needle from the workroom table. I thought it would help me dig through rotted wood, but I didn't think whose it was. I tucked it into my rope belt as I rose for our noontime meal, and learned what I'd done as soon as we sat for the afternoon.

Oten Acres picked up his needle; Midgely picked up his. Carrots and the others started sewing again, aiid only Weedle was left empty-handed. He sorted through his piles of cloth— lazily at first, and then frantically. He hurled the pieces aside. “Who's got my needle?” he said. “Who nicked it?”

No one even looked at him.

“Bumpkin!”

“No,” said Oten, in a pathetic tone, that I would hardly have known was his. “It weren't me, Weedle, I swear it.”

“Give me yours,” said Weedle. “Carrots, hurry. Take it from him”

It was too late for that. A guard came running, and the fuss that was made over a missing needle would have shocked me just days before. Weedle was caned on the back, then marked for punishment in the morning. “Someone's going to pay for this,” he said. “Someone's going to wish he wasn't never born.”

His needle stayed in my belt until the evening, when I went to chapel with the noseys, a lot of pale and scared-looking boys. Every table in the ship, I realized, must have had a Weedle to keep the weaker boys downtrodden. They were half starved and scurvy-ridden, coughing with the fever, all as thin as death. They fell aside like so many sticks as I pushed my way to the rotted wood. I brought out the needle when the chaplain made us kneel to prayers. I poked it into the rotted wood, half its length in an instant. With a bit of effort I pushed it nearly to its eye.

Chanting my prayers with the others, I worked the needle in and out in the same spot. Then I bent forward, as though in great reverence, and with my cheek nearly on the deck I looked for a gleam of light in the hole I'd made. I was sure the hull was no thicker than the length of my needle.

I left it there when prayers ended, its whole length buried in the wood. Only the tip was showing, a bump of brown metal nearly impossible to see.
“All but invishible,”
I remembered Midgely saying, and surprised myself with my fondness for him. But as I was leaving the room, the chaplain stopped me. To my relief, he wanted only to thank me. “It's not often that a boy shows interest in prayer,” he said. “You must have a probing mind.” I almost felt sorry for the old codger.

Midgely was waiting when I went into the ward. Weedle was there too, in his usual place with his usual group, and every one of them watched me pass with the noseys. I looked at them once, and then away, going straight to Midgely's side. He was studying the pictures of his South Sea islands, so deeply immersed in the etching that he started when I touched his shoulder. Then he smiled and asked me to sit beside him.

“I decided it don't matter,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“If you want to go to chapel with the noseys. It ain't no odds to me.” He shrugged, then held the book toward me. “Read to me, Tom?” he said.

In the crowd of boys we made our own small space. I had no worries with the guards around, and sat shoulder to shoulder with Midge, the book balanced on our knees. I found a passage about a ship and its sailors, and Midge closed his eyes to listen. Tome it was jibberish. “We dropped the bestAower and veered off on a jcable and a half,” I read. “Struck yards and topmasts Rove out cable for the cooper.”

“Ooh,” $aid Midge, with a shiver that shook the pages. “It musht have been a shtormy night.”

“It doesn't say that,” I said. “You're not listening.”

“You're not
hearing”
he said, and explained it all. I didn't know that bowers were anchors, that a cable was both a rope and a distance. I didn't know that yards were the sticks that held the sails, or that sections of masts could be lowered and raised. But Midge made me see. He turned the dull words into pictures of excitement, with sailors bustling about like so many bees.

“How do you know all that?” I asked.

“From the dockyard,” he said. “Every night the sailors came to see me mam. She loved to have the sailors come and visit. They took turns going into the bedroom to talk to her, Tom. So I sat in the parlor with the ones what waited, and I listened to their stories. Ooh, what stories they told.”

It was the time in the evening when the guards let us talk. But we did it in whispers, our heads close together.

“Where was your father?” I asked.

“Oh, he was long gone,” said Midge. “But he was a captain, I think. I remember he had a sword.”

“So did mine,” I said. “My father's a captain, too.”

“Go on!” he said. “You're just saying it ‘cause I said it first”

“No, it's true,” I said. “But the navy has no place for him now. He hasn't had a ship in years, and—”

“Tin? You don't mean
Redman
Tin?” said Midge. “Not Redman Tin what had the
Starling?”

It was my father's name, but the rest was a mystery. “Was the starling a bird or a ship?” Tasked.

“Wal-ker!” he said, just like old Worms. “She was only a sloop. Only ten guns. And Redman Tin weren't really a captain; he was a commander. But when Nelson seen what your dad could do with them ten guns, he called that sloop his darling. And listen, Tom, he was here,” Midge tapped the wooden deck. “Your dad was on this ship.”

“No! He was never on a
hulk,”
I said.

“Oh, Tom!” he cried with a laugh. “The
Lachesis
weren't always a hulk. She was at the Glorious First of June, Tom. Your father was a young midshipman on her, and she chased the French right back to Brest. He was a hero in the wars, Tom. All the sailors, they still remember Redman Tin.”

I knew little of my father's years at sea. After Kitty's death, my mother had hushed him quickly whenever he had begun to talk of it.
“Look where the sea brought you”
she'd say.
“To rack and ruin. Don't turn the boys head.”
After a while, he never talked of it at all. And my friends never thought of wars that had been fought long ago.

“Your dad knew Collingwood,” said Midge. “He might have met Nelson.” Then he stared at me from the corner of his eye. “Why, he might have come and talked to me mam.”

When the guards locked us down we cleared out on our own, away from the seething Weedle. I didn't want to go to the chapel that night, afraid that his nobs would follow me, or find me there. Instead, I followed Midgely through the ship to a place that he wanted to show me. It was dark and cramped, with the ceiling very low. In the wars, said Midge, this was where the midshipmen had lived among their sea chests, where they'd slept and dined and studied.

We settled in the darkest corner, and heard the nobs go roaming. Huddled on the bare floor, Midge and I slept the night through, on the same ship where my father had slept thirty-four years before.