Cinnamon and Gunpowder (12 page)

Joshua interrupted us with a bottle of wine and glasses. He couldn’t help making fun of our scene; his lips were pursed in the dour pout of a sentry who had just eaten an entire lemon. He poured with the florid overarticulated gestures he imagined befitting a proper steward. Mabbot chuckled as he took a clownishly deep bow out the door. Another secret cache, this was an altogether different wine than had gone into the sauce. It came to my lips whispering a song of bees sipping on overripe fruit, of aging in an oak tub overhung with rosemary, of sleeping for a century in some sunken ship until the color of the waves themselves had soaked into the bottles.

“Sanghen?” Mabbot asked.

“Not far from Calais,” I said. “Right across the channel. Jesuits from all around Europe, all living on a valley farm. The land there was protected by our benefactors, and, as long as we stayed within the gates, we were safe from persecution.”

“But that must have taken quite a lot of influence—one doesn’t just wander between France and England in these days of strife, and as a Catholic, no less.”

“I was fairly smuggled. But the monks have learned to look after one another; Jesuits fled the cities in droves to take refuge in our hidden monastery. We cooked for them all. My teacher had himself been chased from Bordeaux by a mob. As he said, ‘Wars come and go, but people always eat.’ When I was considering seminary, he said, ‘Which do you like better, Pentecost Mass or the feast afterward? You’d make a terrible priest, but you make acceptable lamb galantine. God knows you love Him. Focus on the food.’ This was a man who had made pies for the pope.”

“You must make me a pie!”

“Cold butter and fresh flour is needed for crust. And real meat.”

“We have lard … and Mary Sweet—”

“I’ll try,” I said.

“But go on. Orphans do tend to find their way aboard pirate ships.”

“Captain … perhaps we can discuss less personal matters.”

“Such as?”

“You don’t speak like a pirate,” I ventured.

“Do you know many?”

“I mean to say … you speak properly—”

“I am educated, properly, with great doses of impropriety. As an adolescent I was taken in by a wealthy man, a judge, who shared his knowledge and his fine things with me.” Mabbot rolled a fork between her fingers languidly as she spoke. “It was there that I first acquired a taste for what he called ‘the essentials’: comestibles, wine, and conversation. They were subjects I excelled at. I was something of a project for him, a trained pet. He held parties at which I was the entertainment, the whore who could recite Ovid while hoisting her sails—”

I must have blushed, for she gave me a rather humane smile and said, “My, but you are a delicate flower, aren’t you?” She patted my hand. I was so startled by this gentle touch that I yanked my hand away. Her smile didn’t waver. “Don’t fret, this judge didn’t keep me long. When he tired of me, he sent me out. And I have been a wife of whim ever since.”

“Ahem … Is the meal to your satisfaction?” I asked.

“Oh, delicious! Truly, you’ve earned next week’s rent.”

We finished our plates and Joshua reappeared to clear them. He brought more wine and poured; his little finger, hovering far from the rest of his hand, painted florets in the air. As a rule I never drink to inebriation, but now I allowed myself another glass. I was flooded with emotions, powerful and conflicting. The comfort of food and wine was a great relief, but it only highlighted the stark reality of my condition. “A week’s rent,” she had said. It will go on this way, week after week, unless my plan of escape proves good.

Mabbot’s rabbit leaped onto her lap. Normally I am fond of pets but I couldn’t bear its uncanny stare. I am beyond shame; whatever you may think of a grown man afraid of a bunny, you must take my word that this particular beast was misbegotten.

Mabbot seemed to be waiting for more conversation.

The rabbit peered at me as well. The thing … perhaps the stupefying swaying of the ship lent a certain unreasonableness to my perceptions. Nevertheless, I would prefer to be left alone in a room with a lion than with that lightless creature, who, I had convinced myself, could swallow my soul as one swallows a bean.

“This is Kerfuffle.” Mabbot pulled on the beast’s ears as if milking a goat, and the thing practically swooned with pleasure. “She’s the softest,” Mabbot said. “Give her a pet.” I balked, but she pressed on. “Pet the rabbit, Wedgwood.”

I had to lean to reach Mabbot’s lap, and I could feel her breath on my cheek. The rabbit was indeed soft—the whole moment was much too soft, and I brought my hand back quickly, thinking:
This woman is a killer.

Here we were interrupted by Feng, who rapped lightly on the anteroom door, then stuck his head in. Mabbot said to him, “The food is good, Feng, we’ll keep him. Set it up.” With that, Feng left again. “Tell me”—Mabbot leaned in—“if you were going to teach me to cook like this, what is the first lesson I would have to master?”

The wine in my veins mingled with the thrill of my life extended by seven days. “One mustn’t confuse the nose with the mouth,” I began.

“Certainly not.”

“As with the harpsichord, to make a pleasing sound, one must hit several keys in harmony. Thus, flavor.” I blushed here, feeling I had exposed my passion too much. But she didn’t laugh. “The nose has infinite sensations, but the mouth has only six.”

“This is fine.” Mabbot beamed. “I miss refined conversation. Even in your sourness, you’re a relief. My crew are good men, but they aren’t dinner companions. Do go on.”

“The flavors of the mouth have their analogues in life: Salt is the spirit of blood and tears, victory and defeat. Its color is red. Sour is a call to attention, a slap on the rump, the prick of a thorn admonishing you to attend. Its color is the yellow flash under a finch’s wing.”

“So you are a philosopher as well!”

We both drank. The rabbit was gone, then back again. It seemed to have the ability to dash in and out of darkness as one uses a door. “Go on, that’s but two,” she said.

“Sweet is the welcoming hand, the mother’s milk, the kiss, the warm bed. Its color is the orange of dusk. Bitterness is the love behind a stern word, it is hard-earned fortitude. Its color is green. Astringency is a strong wind; it tightens and cleans, it invokes self-reliance. It is the blue of cold water.”

These ideas had been brewing within me for years, but I had never spoken them aloud to anyone. The wine was stronger than I was used to.

She had closed her eyes and now leaned back until her head rested on the chair.

“The Pearl Gate is the last flavor,” I said. “Rarely spoken of. It lives in the dark slope of the soft palate. Only found in very particular broths, it is the taste that lingered after God breathed life into Adam. It is the flavor that animates the clay. It is violet.”

When I suspected Mabbot had fallen asleep, I made to leave. At this, though, she protested. “Oh, a few minutes more! Poetry and passion, these are fine qualities. Just sit a bit longer.”

“It is your turn, then, Captain. I’ve spoken.”

“Fair enough. Ask me something.”

“You said Ramsey had sent a corsair after you, that he fired red-hot cannonballs? He must be a considerable adversary.”

“Relentless. He’d chase me to the moon to get his revenge.” Mabbot was unhappy to be thinking of the man. “Laroche has a menagerie of infernal weapons. His gun rooms are lit, I’m told, with fireflies and fox fire, which give light but cannot ignite the powder. But I don’t need to tell you, you have some familiarity with the man, don’t you?”

So my slip of the tongue had reached her after all. “I saw him only at a distance,” I said. “He spoke not a word to me.”

She saw through my lie. A scowl from Mabbot is like the sleet-needled wind off of a frozen lake. It was the way one looks at an earwig that has just crept from the pages of a book the moment before pinching it in two with a thumbnail.

So I told her of the demonstration I had witnessed, about the pigs and the interview. The whole morbid scene improved her mood. I could have been describing an evening at the circus. “A rare spectacle to see a man sell his soul to Lucifer,” she said.

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I realized suddenly that I could hardly count on a rescue by Laroche. “Now that Ramsey is … gone, Laroche won’t be after you, will he?”

“We do not get the daily papers out here, Mr. Wedgwood. It will be some time before he learns about his financier’s fate. But it’ll only make him the more dangerous. Now those debts will be open to the Pendleton accountants, and they’ll come after him to recover the expense. Once the company sees how much his strange ship costs, he’ll be lucky to avoid a charge of treason. He’ll have to bring my head smiling on a platter to keep his own, and soon! Poor Laroche!” The captain chuckled. “He’s a victim of history, like the rest of us. He has the purity of a child—believes that what goes wrong can be made right. You have to admire his passion. He’d rather use his last penny on a bullet than on bread. I have nothing against him personally except that he’s trying so hard to kill me. I suppose one does not get to choose one’s nemesis.”

“But you must have many.”

She did not deny this. After a spell her gaze softened, and she resumed her habitual posture of threading her hands behind her head, leaning far back in her chair.

“The newspapers say you attack only Pendleton Trading Company vessels,” I said.

“In my days as a privateer, I had no qualms and would sink any ship that dared to wet its hips. But now I dine exclusively on Pendleton meat.” The captain rubbed her face. She was weary and, I saw now, older than I had first thought, with faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and a few grey hairs twined at her temples.

“But why?”

“We are surrounded by monsters,” she said. “We can cower before them or we can pick one and sink our teeth in with the aim to give it hell. I have investments in the Pendleton Trading Company. I have invested all of my daggers into it. The unkind things in this world are countless. But my choice was made easier by certain personal offenses. In a way, Pendleton chose me.”

“You speak as if the company is the villain. As if Ramsey was the rogue.”

“I should,” she said.

“But I watched you shoot him, helpless and unarmed on the ground.” The memory inflamed me. “Is it a crime to be a gentleman—chairman of the most successful company in history? Shall a lord as lofty as this, who has dined with the king himself, be libeled? You murdered him without mercy, unprovoked, and unrepentant.”

“You’re right on all but ‘unprovoked.’” She laughed. “Here sits a provoked woman—take it in. This is how a provoked woman turns her head, drinks her wine. Theirs is a noble piracy hallowed by the seals of gentry—while I take ships, they take entire continents and, oh, the plunder! Don’t fret, Mr. Wedgwood. Pendleton has many heads. I have not killed the beast, I’ve only vexed it.”

“Who is the Brass Fox? What is your aim with him?” I demanded.

“Now we are done.”

Feng appeared and pulled me toward the door. I set my feet and tried to keep the anger from my voice. “Captain, when will I be allowed to return home?”

“But you’ve only just arrived.” She looked genuinely hurt. “Give us a sporting chance.”

“I am not in the habit of being mocked.”

“Well, it comes to you naturally, then.”

Shaking, I said, “I will not take insults.”

“Take? Not take, that would make a pirate of you. No, they are given freely. In your company, I find I am positively wealthy with insults, and I don’t mind lavishing them upon you.”

“Home, Captain. When shall I be returned?”

“But where is home? Either you have none or it is here. By now Ramsey’s estate is covered with dustcloths. Did the man have heirs? I ask you, did he?” Mabbot’s eyes glimmered in the candlelight. “In that case there will be an auction. The great claw-footed tables, the Venetian lamps, the emerald-eyed lions, they will be dispersed, and then the manor itself sold. Another owner, another set of precious artifacts carted in. The other servants have already found jobs elsewhere, haven’t they? What will you return to but strange faces, lack, and loss? Are you so eager to serve another master?”

“I prefer to choose my master.”

“But here you lounge and loaf in the sun. I don’t ask you to weigh anchor, brace a yard, or even mend rope. You cook but one day of the week. Is it not refreshing?”

“It’s a wet hell.”

“You won’t make friends that way, Wedgwood. Where are your manners?”

Feng pushed me toward the door, but, in a fit of petulance, I snatched the bowl of potpourri on my way out. Feng looked to Mabbot, but she just smiled and shook her head. Thus I returned to my cell clutching the stale scraps, feeling I had somehow succeeded without victory.

Much to my surprise, I found that my cell had been altered while I was gone. My sawdust sack had been replaced with a hammock, a woolen blanket, and a horsehair pillow. There was now a small table with a pot and pitcher, a bottle of brandy, more paper, tapers, quills, and a bottle of ink to replace the lead ingot I’d been writing with. Under the hammock was a pewter chamber pot.

In my heart, gratitude curdled with resentment and fatigue. These meager comforts only made me long for home. I crawled into the hammock and fell instantly asleep.

7

FRAGILE VESSEL

In which I am rescued by an unlikely ship

Wednesday, September 1

I am finally well enough to make a record of my perilous escape from the
Flying Rose
. It is enough to say that I am happy to be alive—but I’m getting ahead of myself.

It began Monday night, as many terrible stories do, with a false smile.

I waited a few minutes after the gong brought the graveyard watch up: the men of the dogwatch wandered down to snore in the still-warm hammocks. This was the four-hour stretch when all of the berths in the ship were full, leaving only a dozen or so men on deck.

I used the flattened spoon to free myself, then wedged the door shut again with a scrap of canvas wadded into the hinge.