The Wolves of Andover (14 page)

The last man to climb over the railing was a fop, wearing a shirt with more flounces than a woman’s and a velvet coat. He was called Thornton, and he answered every hail and every instruction with a silent sneer. Whether at rest or in motion, Thornton had a grace and a barely suppressed energy that might have, with enough experience, made him a superior seaman on the bucking deck of a sailing vessel.

Once the ship was under way, the four older men would often come up to the deck to desperately gulp at the air. But the boy, never; he was always left belowdecks.

The Rat frequently grinned to himself, thinking how quickly the London men’s swagger left them once the ship headed past the Isles of Scilly and the headwaters of the Channel. He often stood in the webbing of the bowsprit and watched impassively the four landies hanging over the sides, their eyes bulging, expecting to see their shoes coming up through their mouths. He himself clung effortlessly to the ropes like a monkey, impervious to their curses and threatening gestures, laughing silently at their distress, and waving extravagantly to the forlorn outcroppings of the Isles to show the Londoners that there would be no more sightings of land for many weeks.

The Rat had heard the captive boy crying from the Londoners’ section of the hold. There were no barriers or separate cabins in the hold, but the four men had hung a blanket for privacy, and
when the boy went on sobbing for too long, the Rat could hear first the thud of a swinging boot to the ribs, and then the groan before the captive was kicked into silence again.

The Rat knew, of course, about impressment. The seas would dry up before the practice of kidnapping a man off the docks onto a ship would come to an end. But those who were captured were usually grown men, most of them seasoned on at least one trip on a ship; otherwise they would prove useless, especially on such a small craft, where every sailor had more than one duty to perform. This captive, he was sure, had never before been on a ship and couldn’t have been taken for ransom, as he was ragged beyond simple poor. He had the ground-in dirt of a river urchin, a lifetime spent in the sucking muck of the Thames up to his knees, grubbing for barnacles or bait or a ha’penny accidently dropped into the reeking tidal wash.

One day he heard an odd, repetitive moaning, like chanting, coming from the captive, and he realized the boy had been mindlessly singing to himself. The boy’s voice had a high-pitched quavering sound, like a wounded bird, or like a man stuttering out his prayers as he’s swaying, storm-ridden, on the yardarms, his fear giving desperate music to the pleading.

The Rat crept beyond the blanket when all the Londoners had gone topside, and crawled to where the boy lay bound with his hands behind his back, his knees drawn defensively up to his belly. He sat awhile looking at the older boy sleeping fitfully, noting the bruised, tender-looking swelling over one eye. As though feeling the Rat’s presence, the boy opened his eyes, which were not brown as the Rat had surmised but the blue of an island shoal. The boy’s brows knitted together, pleadingly, and he opened
his mouth to speak. But the Rat heard the ponderous, slapping footfalls of the men returning, and he darted away into the shadows. From behind stacked barrels of powder he watched the men’s shadows thrown up by lantern light against the curved ribs of the hold.

The Londoners talked amongst themselves of plans and schemes, their voices getting louder the more rum they drank. They bragged of their fights and the prodigious pay for their robberies and murders, conversing at length of the man in the new England they were sent to capture or kill, or die trying.

Baker, the soft-spoken man with the eyes of the dead, talked of the plague ten years back and of the numberless bodies stacked in the pit at Houndsditch. Frequenting the Pye Tavern hard by the burying grounds, Baker would place winning bets on the exact number of dead piled onto the passing carts, like guessing the number of beans in a bottle.

But as the days went on, the ship heaving and creaking through stiff westerly winds, the men grew silent. The group lay on the floor to sleep, to be battered and rolled about, instead of hoisting a proper hammock. Eventually the men left off even dicing and playing cards, spending more and more time topside, leaving their captive alone, seeking through drink to numb their misery only to wake to a rebellious stomach and a throbbing head. In a way, the Rat thought the most pitiable was the oversize Cornwall, who drank the most but could not eat, spending his entire day amidships, his meaty hands grasping at the ropes for balance until he was chased away by the seamen seeking to trim the sails.

As the Rat worked on deck cleaning the chains, or with tar and oakum patching cracks in the deck, he would watch the
captain watching the men, the captain’s expression carefully neutral. At one point, Thornton, his fine shirt soiled, the neck lace limp with seawater, approached the captain for a discourse. Without offering the Londoner so much as a “by your leave,” Koogin abruptly turned away, retreating to his quarters.

A
T THE STEERSMAN’S
strike of eight bells, the end of the middle watch, the Rat woke and lay in his hammock, which swung in a deep pendulum, following the yaw of the ship. He could hear the seaman next to him wake and deftly roll from his own hammock. There was a rustling of a shirt quickly tugged on and then retreating footfalls as the seaman crossed to the ladder to the open deck. Soon, the man he replaced at watch swung himself into the empty hammock and within the space of ten breaths was snoring gently.

It would be another half hour before the Rat had to begin his duties with Cook, and he took his time thinking of the boy, and how it would be to have a true companion. One who could serve as the Rat’s voice, whispering or howling his way through the oft-mapped lines of latitudes and stellar declinations like a singing fish through an invisible net. In all the years spent in the company of seamen, he had never had a shipmate even close to his own age.

The Rat would gladly, if only given the opportunity, share with the boy all his own hard-won knowledge of the ship, not just the trimming of sails or the climbing of the yards, but the listening for the gunshot sounds of a breaching right whale, or the
sighting at night, midsummer, of the green glowing ribbons dancing in currents of water so deep they could never be plumbed.

He remembered with a growing anxiety the previous night, when he had overheard the four landsmen arguing over where and when to throw their captive overboard. He had been standing just behind Thornton, coiling a rope, when Brudloe caught sight of him and landed a quick kick to his side, sending him sprawling against the deck. The Londoner glared down at him, the white channel of scars in stark contrast to his weather-burned face, and all motion ceased for the briefest of moments, the seamen poised and wooden in their rigging.

The ship’s boatswain, directing the halyards, roughly brushed passed Brudloe, hauling the scrambling Rat back up to his feet. He bent down and whispered hoarsely, “Maggoty pie.” The Rat grinned widely behind his hand and nodded. He was to change out that very morning a fresh fish for an old one on top of the flour barrel. A dead fish, with its rotting flesh, was used to bring the maggots up out of the flour. He would later take the worm-ridden, stinking carcass and roll it into Brudloe’s blanket.

The Rat wasn’t certain if the captain knew of the plans for the bound boy, but he had felt a growing tension in the captain’s demeanor, like a rogue wind pulling a sail tight against its rigging.

After his morning duties with Cook, he stood on the open deck and happened to see the captain leaning down towards him from the halfdeck, a deep furrow between his brows. His eyes flicked ahead to the cresting waves, peaking at fifteen feet or more, and then back again. “Boy,” the captain called to him. He
motioned for the astonished Rat to come up the ladder and stand beside him. The wind whipped stingingly at them on the raised deck, and the two swayed in unison for a moment in silence, each hunching into his own shoulders for greater warmth.

The captain brought out his compass, the thirty-two-point placard that rotated magically beneath the true needle, like the single rose the boy had once seen in the captain’s quarters floating in a bowl of rainwater. The captain’s eyes then raked over Cornwall, clinging miserably to the grating over the weathered deck, where he had fallen moments before. The forecastle of the ship plunged into a trough as the ship came about for the tack, spraying the struggling Londoner with frigid seawater.

“Do y’know what signals a good seaman, boy?” the captain suddenly roared, looking pointedly at Cornwall. The Rat cocked his head to show he was listening. “Knowing best when to cut a bad line.”

He then dismissed the Rat, but called after him in Dutch,
“Het donderend geluid, jungen!” Thunder comin’, boy!

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, the Rat learned from Cook that the captain would be inviting the four landsmen to eat in his quarters. In addition to rum, the Rat was told, the captain would be offering a bottle of Madeira steeped in wormwood.

“Which will, Rat,” the cook barked, “give them fuckin’ landies a long sleep and a relief from the pukes, and afterwards, a fuckin’ head from Hell.” The cook laughed, but then quickly frowned, pointing belowdecks. “It’s a shame, that. What’s goin’ on below.”
The Rat nodded his head in agreement, sadly staring at the boards below his feet.

At four bells on the first dogwatch, the four landsmen drew straws for who among them would be declining the captain’s invitation, staying behind in the hold. It would have taken a cretin not to know that it signaled a long walk on a short deck for the bound boy that night. The Londoners had been too puffed up and careless in talking of their plans of ridding themselves of the boy and taking his share of some unspecified bounty for the entire crew not to have heard. A blind spot between the masts, a moment’s distraction, and the bound boy could be shoved over the railings in the blink of an eye. And who was to prove it was not an accident?

The Rat had not heard the boy crying the whole of the day and he suspected even the captive knew his time was drawing to a close. He also suspected the landsmen were unaware of the battering storm beginning to bear down on the ship.

Soon the three passengers Brudloe, Thornton, and Cornwall, led by the Rat, were groping their way aft across the open deck, leaving their companion, Baker, behind with the captive. The wind had taken on a new, shrieking quality, tearing steadily from port-side, as the three landsmen struggled into the rear galley for the captain’s meal.

Brudloe, the first blown into the aft quarters, cast his eyes immediately on the open decanter of Madeira skating across the tilting table, and said, “Damn me, Captain, if it’s not a vicious blow.”

The captain looked at the huddled three, damp and reeking as doused dogs, and answered carefully, “Yes. It may even come
upon us rough tonight.” Then he turned his back on the men and, handing the Rat another bottle, told the boy, “Give this to the man below.” And then in Dutch, he added quietly,
“Wel opletten dat hij het drinkt, hoor.” And make sure he drinks it.

As the Rat departed, he uncorked the bottle and sniffed the contents. A dark, unctuous smell riding below the sweetness of the wine brought to mind the tar he used for plugging the hull; but deeper still was the odor of a Danish mast, freshly planed, still weeping sap.

He took the bottle and, on his way to the landsman’s tuck, counted eight heads: all the able-bodied seamen along with the carpenter. The crew had been sent below, clearing the decks for the worst part of the storm. The only men on deck now would be the steersman and the first mate watching the pattern of the cresting waves.

The Rat found Baker sitting on a weighted barrel with his back and arms pressed into the steeply curved hull, his legs dancing from one side to the other as he attempted to stay aright against the violent pitch of the ship. The Rat saw a bucket close by his feet that held the bile from the man’s last meal. Baker’s face had taken on an ashen shade of gray, his eyes pressed tightly shut. He was shivering, the air from the more northerly latitudes suddenly cold and saturated with a creeping damp.

The captive looked up at him from his place on the floor. Carefully, but deliberately, the boy’s lips parted and he mouthed the words “Help me.”

The Rat’s eyes quickly darted to Baker’s face but the man’s lids were still closed, one hand now clamped firmly over his mouth, damming up whatever bit of remaining stew threatened to spill
from his gullet. A thought as brief as lightning crossed the Rat’s brain: to make a grab for the boy and hope for aid from the crew. But the first rule of the ship was to be deaf and blind to the doings of the passengers.

In that moment, Baker opened his eyes and startled to see the Rat standing there. He spied the bottle of Madeira and, with an unsteady hand, reached out to take the proffered gift. His fingers, uncallused and cold, made the Rat think of the fish on the flour barrel.

“This from your captain?” Baker croaked.

The Rat nodded, gesturing that the man should drink. Baker uncorked the bottle and poured some of the wine into his mouth. He swallowed, shuddering violently, and said, “Boy, give me that blanket.”

Crumpled next to Baker’s feet was a thin quilt that had slipped off the man’s restless shoulders. But the Rat, instead, picked up another blanket, one he had expertly rolled into a tight bolster. As the blanket unfurled, it spilled from its innards the rotting fish that was meant for Brudloe to find. The carcass lay on the floor in gelatinous pieces, a heaving mass of maggots that had gained momentum from the blanket’s warmth. The stench rose up and filled the small space like an uncovered burial trench.