The Convicts (16 page)

Through the day and the night we lived in that space where slaves had lain not long before. By the pattern of the ringbolts, and the scars that chains had left on the wood, I could see how the people had been packed as close as the fingers of my fist. Curled like that, front to back, they must have crossed the ocean in a solid, rippling mass.

At every moment we expected to be sorted out in the same fashion, knocked down in our places and chained to the ringbolts. Word went around that the captain of our ship was a tyrant—a madman—who would come himself to lock us into our rows. Carrots said he had seen him peering down the hatch, his eyes white with craziness, his hand gripping a bloodstained lash.

Through the evening and the night other boys arrived. By dawn of the next day there were sixty or more, and still they kept coming. There were boys from every prison in the land, boys from the north with accents so broad I couldn't understand them.

I was talking to Midge when a newcomer shouted my name. In my mind I was riding in a long canoe, paddled by savages with bones through their lips, when I heard that old cry: “Smashy! HalloP’

“It's him, ain't it?” asked Midge.

“Yes,” I said. It was Benjamin Penny.

“Keep him away, Tom. Please say you'll keep him away.” He sounded quite frantic. “Go and tell him we don't want him near us. He can't come into our corner.”

I didn't want him there myself. He was already scuffling toward us, and I hurried to stop him halfway. But as bad as it was to see that boy turn up again like a—well, like a bad penny, it was worse to see who came behind him. Down the ladder, rung by rung, descended the boy I'd feared the most of all I'd met. At the foot of it he turned toward me, huge and solid. Gaskin Boggis, the giant from the Darkey's gang. Stooped below the timbers, he grinned with his rotted teeth.

Penny ran in that grotesque way that was his. I tried to push him aside, but he only grabbed my hands as if he thought I was trying to embrace him. “Didn't think I'd see you again,” he said. “Not when they napped me on the moor.” He looked up with his eye wandering. “Smashy, they got her. They hanged the Darkey.”

“Good,” I said, not thinking.

“What?” cried Penny. “Somebody peached on her, Smashy.”

Boggis was lumbering up beside us. “It was you,” he said, pointing at me. “We know it was you.”

“Don't say it,” cried Penny. “Smashy ain't no snitch.”

“The Smasher's dead, you diblish. I seen him,” growled Boggis. “He lay on the slab at the doctor's, the old Smasher himself. And I seen the doctor bring out his head in a hatbox and chuck it in, the Thames”

“That ain't true,” said Penny. “Doift let him say it, Smashy. Lay it on him now.”

He shifted round behind me, as though he meant to push me right against the giant. With my elbow I shoved him back. He stumbled on a ringbolt and sprawled across the deck, and the ship was a tingling stillness as Boggis came toward me.

“Kill Mm, Smashy. Kill him!” Penny cried.

How I wished for all the guards of the
Lachesis
with their rope ends and their canes. But there were only the boys now, and none of them moved. Midgely huddled in the corner, sobbing iny name,

A grunt came from thexgiatit, and a deep breath that moaned through his nose. His arms swung out from his chest; his hands rolled into fists; He lumbered toward me.

I wasn't half his weight, nor two-thirds his size. I was surely smarter, and I thought I might be quicker. But his fist swung so far and so fast that I couldn't move away. With one blow he knocked me to the deck.

As I looked high at his troglodyte's head, I remembered the terror I'd felt in the Darkey's lair to see him looming above me. I remembered how I'd cowered from him, and I hated that person I'd been. Over me now came a rage more powerful thanthe one I had turned onto Weedle at the sight of Midgely Ypiinctured eyes. I felt my lips draw back to bare my teeth. I felt prickles on iny spine, as though hairs that weren't even tjiefe were rising intohackles, I got up and stepped forward, and Boggis moved back.

He stood in the sunligi& below the hatch, as big as three boys together. His fists pulsed like huge hearts; his arms bulged enormously. They could crush me into bones and blood, but I was as blind as Midgely in my rage. Head down, I rushed the giant.

It was Walter Weedle who stopped me. He flew between us, his arms spread wide to keep us apart. In a shrill voice he cried, “Don't! He'll kill you, Gaskin. He will!”

He planted one hand on my chest and one on the giant's. “Keep away from him, Gaskin. It's him, I tell you.”

Weedle whirled to face me. Before I knew it, his hand was in my collar, and my shirt was wrenched from my shoulder, baring my upper arm. He stared at it, and so did the giant, breathing his great breaths. “There ain't no mark,” he said.

I pulled my shirt across, baring my other arm. There, in the little hollow below my shoulder, was a patch of hard skin, a mark in the shape of a diamond. I had been born with it, though how Weedle could know that was a mystery. It was exactly where he had thought to find it, but on my other arm instead.

“Poz!” shouted Benjamin Penny. “I knew it was you, Smashy.”

“It is,” said Boggis, suddenly pale. “Living or dead, it's him.”

The giant moved away. I could see that I had nothing more to fear from him, nothing to fear from anyone. As though my change were now complete, I had become that mysterious boy I'd lifted from his grave. Inside and out, I was the same—or a mirror image—and everyone believed that I was him in the flesh. Even Midgely believed it, as his only other choice was the impossible notion that I was really a captain's son. Why, I nearly believed it myself.

That afternoon the ship prepared to sail. The hatch was locked down and covered with a heavy grate, and the sailors ran to sailors’ chores. Midgely lay against me. There was a smile on his young face, until Penny came to join us.

It didn't seem that Benjamin Penny would be content to be anywhere except right between Midgely and me. He kicked at Midgely's legs to shift them from his way. “Move!” he said.

“No,” said Midgely, kicking back. “Does your mother know ydu're out?”

Many times I'd heard boys taunt each other with that silly question. There was only one answer, and I was surprised to hear Penny trot it out. “Yes, she do,” he said in the proper, saucy tone. “But I didn't know the organ man had lost his monkey.”

I couldn't help laughing. Benjamin Penny had such an ugly face, on such an awful body, that it was easy to think he had neither heart nor soul inside. But to hear that funny chant come from his lips made me see him now as just a sad boy abandoned by all.

“Sit here,” I said, patting the deck on my other side.

I could never please one without upsetting the other. As soon as Penny sat, Midge tugged at my clothes. “Tom,” he whispered. “Tom, we don't want him here.”

“Oh, let him sit where he likes,” I snapped. “You can't see him anyway.”

What a terrible thing to say. Instantly I regretted it. Penny laughed, and Midge turned his back, and I—feeling rotten— listened to the strange sounds from above us. Wood and rope worked together, and one man shouted's others sang.

“Smash? What are they doing?” asked Penny.

“Who knows?” I said.

Midgely sighed. “They're setting topsails, you stupids. The helmsman got her hard over, and she's falling off on the current; it ain't no quiz. They're fitting the capstan bars and—there!—you see? They're weighing anchor.”

I heard the sailors singing, and the anchor winding in. I felt the ship slide forward. From the front came a thud.

“Anchor's up,” said Midge. “They're hoisting the foresails now. They're setting the main course, see.”

Through the grating in the hatch I saw a white sail billow open. It flapped and curled around the edge, then tightened in a swooping curve. Water gurgled against the wood behind me. In a rattle of canvas the huge square sail swung across the grate.

“They've come about,” said Midge. “Wind's behind them now. They're running for the river.”

He said all this with his dead eyes open, seeing nothing. But through his blindness I could look beyond the shadows where we lay. Not everything I understood, yet everything I saw. Our ship added sail upon sail. It quickened on its way, flying down the river, a brown hull under towers of canvas. It flitted past shouting bargemen, heeling to the left as the river burbled down the planks. My heart beat faster; my breaths came deeply. Through the squares of the metal grate I watched shreds of clouds and a silvery bird go streaming by.

The ship hurtled out of the Medway and into the wider Thames. The sails cracked and tightened; the wind made a whistle through the ropes. Then the ship rocked forward, and in a moment rocked back, and it lazily rolled to each side. And that was it for me. Old Neptune had me in his arms already, and he squeezed them round my guts. He rattled me and throttled me, and not an hour into our voyage he had me pinned against the deck.

I wasn't the only one with the seasickness, but none suffered so greatly, and none shared the fear that was building inside me.

As the wretched ship galloped out to sea, Midgely soothM me, but Penny only laughed at my slithering, boneless body. “You're turning green,” he said.

“Go away,” I told him.

“Green as sewer slime.”

“Ohh,” I groaned. “Leave me alone.”

He did, finally, as soon as old Neptune squeezed my breakfast right out of me. Midgely, by then, had gathered a bucket, and he held it for me as he cradled my head in his lap. “It ain't nothing, Tom,” he said. “Think of Nelson. Think of trees, Tom, and beaches. Tom, think of our islands.”

I did that—both of us did—as our ship battered its way to the Foreland. We sat on our favorite sunny beaches, with coconut trees above usu We heard the parrots chatter, and the natives drumming at their village. Then came a clamor of canvas and wood, of voices shouting and feet at a run.

“We're coming about,” said Midge. “We're heading for the Channel, Tom.”

The ship settled onto a new course. It leaned harder to the side, and hurled itself from wave to wave. Creaking like a bag of cats, the hull trembled from end to end. “That's the masts working,” said Midge. “They shake the whole ship.”

Waves bashed against the bow, each boom of the sea sending a shudder through the timbers. Gallons of water came thundering onto the deck, splattering against the iron grate in bursts of greenish white, raining coldly on our bodies. Soon a sailor appeared there, and another, and they tore the grating open.

I thought we were about to sink. I tried to get up, but the deck was too slippery, my legs too weak. “Save yourself, Midgely!” I shouted.

He only smiled. “Ain't nothing, Tom,” he said. “Why, this aiir't nothing at all.”

As always, he was right. The sailors had only opened the hatch to give us food and water. Down came bloated skins and sacks, falling as though at a slant to land at the side of the ship. Then came the blankets, some thudding down in tight rolls, some fluttering like wounded birds. Midgely collected his share and more, but I wanted neither food nor drink.

The grating was closed again. Over the top, sailors stretched tarpaulins that the sunlight turned to sheets of gold. In a moment they were soaked with spray, and their glistening wetness gave our space a pleasant, shadowed glow. I was glad that the sails and the rushing clouds were hidden at last.

“That's better,” I said. “I like the darkness, Midge.”

“Oh,” he said. “It ain't night already, is it? What a ripping day we've had.”

That was the first I knew that his eyes were getting worse. He hadn't seen the tarpaulins, nor even sensed the difference in the light. I looked into his eyes and saw them grayer than before. He yawned, then stretched out at my side, nearly covered in blankets.

“Tom?” he asked. “Where's that horrible boy? He ain't near, is he?”

“No,” I said.

“You'll keep him away, won't you? If he comes back, you'll chase him off?”

“Oh, Midge,” I said. “Does it really matter?”

“Yes,” he said, whispering now. “It does.”

“Why?”

“I shouldn't even tell you, Tom,” he said. “I should turn the other cheek.” He sighed. “But he's the one, Tom. That Benjamin Penny, he's the one that blinded me.”

I wanted to get up right then and give Penny the thrashing I'd given to Weedle. But I wanted as well to lie right where I was and never move again. I managed only to lift my head and stare across the ship. Weedle had his face in a bucket, and Boggis was rocking and moaning. Between them, Benjamin Penny sat laughifrg.

“Please don't smash him, Tom,” said Midgely. “Promise you won't.”

“But, Midge,” I said.

“No!” He pinched my sleeve in his fingers. “Say you won't do nothing. Promish you'll be a meek.”

I gave him my word. Then Midgely eased me down again, and I fell at last into a woozy sleep.

Because of Midgely, the struggles and battles had ended. It was an uneasy peace belowdecks as We sailed to the south, but a peace nonetheless. Weedle and his lot kept to one side of the ship, Midgely and I to die other. Benjamin Penny seemed caught in the middle, until my coldness finally drove him off. Then he made a place at the giant's side, and his horrid laughter often rang through the ship. But from the glances he gave me, and the dark looks he fixed on Midge, I knew he housed a bitterness and jealousy. He could never forgive nor forget.