Minerva's Voyage
M
INERVA'S
   Â
V
OYAGE
M
INERVA'S
   Â
V
OYAGE
Lynne Kositsky
DUNDURN PRESS
TORONTO
Copyright © Lynne Kositsky, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Project Editor: Michael Carroll
Copy Editor: Cheryl Hawley
Design: Erin Mallory
Printer: Webcom
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Kositsky, Lynne, 1947-
               Minerva's voyage : a novel / Lynne Kositsky.
ISBN 978-1-55488-439-1
               I. Title.
PS8571.O85M46 2009Â Â Â Â Â jC813'.54Â Â Â Â Â C2009-903259-7
1 2 3 4 5Â Â Â Â Â 13 12 11 10 09
We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program
and
The Association for the Export of Canadian Books,
and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit
program, and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
www.dundurn.com
Images from Henry Peacham's
Minerva Britanna
, used by permission of Special Collections at Middlebury College, courtesy of Professor Timothy Billings. Some have been digitally altered from their originals.
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For Michael, my life partner;
Roger, my writing partner;
and Tom, my sparring partner.
C
ONTENTS
Chapter 1: From the Frying Pan to the Fire
Chapter 2: Robin Starveling: A Playful Name
Chapter 3: In the Belly of the Boat
Chapter 7: Scratcher's Ambitions
Chapter 8: Horrible Proule the Ghoul
Chapter 10: Pelted by Mary and Rain
Chapter 13: The Visitation of St.Elmo
Chapter 22: Eating and Telling Tales
Chapter 23: The Path and a Bath
Chapter 27: Small Beer and Mince Pies
Chapter 28: Underneath the Trees
Chapter 34: Hidden and Discovered
Chapter 35: Entering by Invitation
Chapter 37: On His Head the Crown?
Chapter 38: Out of the Cave and into Danger
Chapter 39: Keeping the Treasure
C
HAPTER 1
F
ROM THE
F
RYING
P
AN TO THE
F
IRE
I was stolen off the streets of Plymouth in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and nine, by Master William Thatcher, better known as Scratcher, whose name and nickname I came to know in due course. It was the second of June, upon a Friday noontide, and the weather was waxing hot. The wind blew salt across the town. A multitude of holes in my hose allowed the damp breeze to reach through and cool my body. Scratcher had his sleeves rolled up above his elbows. We collided at the intersection of New Street and a small alley, where I was knocked on the head by Scratcher's wooden chest, which he carried on his shoulder and which travelled, at least in part, ahead of him. I fell down, stunned by the blow.
“Where do you live, boy?” Scratcher demanded. He dropped his chest and pulled me up by the ear.
“Nowhere, sir,” I said. And this, for the moment at least, was true.
“Who are your parents?”
“None, sir.” I felt a single tear drip down my cheek.
“Any who care?”
“No.” This was true enough also. I sniffed.
He let go of my ear. “What is your name, boy?”
“Forgotten,” I said. In fact, my name was Noah Vaile. I was more than glad to lose it because it sounded like “No Avail.” Widow Oldham always made nasty cracks about it. If any of the other students asked me to do anything, she'd cackle and say: “Don't you see? It's hopeless. It is to Noah Vaile that you speak.” It made me feel like a failure before I was even out of the starting gate. Returning to the present, I rubbed my forehead, which I was certain must be dented by the chest.
“Hmm. I will name you anew when the mood strikes me.”
I threw him my best questioning look.
“I am in need of a servant: to fetch, to carry, to sharpen my quills.” He was in need of a servant with no family connections; that was clear enough. “Pick up my chest.”
“Well,” said I, thinking as fast as I could while rubbing my head again.
“Stop that rubbing at once. Pick up my chest and be sharp about it.”
I didn't like him. He was thin as a snake and looked horribly nasty, with two deep dark lines that ran from his eyes to his chin. And he kept scratching himself; he went at the scratching something furious. Besides, I was still weigh
ing him and his intentions up. Who is easier to dispose of, after all, than a boy with no family? I could, in fact, see the tip of a knife hilt in his belt. It boded ill. But without him my prospects were dim, my next stop almost certainly the alms house. He had arrived, true it is, straight from Fortune, without turning left on the way.
My parents had vanished in a dense fog â the haze of the past, and also the very real smokiness of Plymouth town. Mistress Oldham, the schoolkeeper, had taken me in out of a confused blend of pity and laziness â she needed a slave â but had recently ejected me for setting rats free in the schoolhouse on Saturdays, and myself free dur
ing the week. I should have been studying and doing the housework, but was a certified truant who preferred pilfer
ing to lessons and skivvying duties. The week she threw me out I pinched a chicken leg, a mound of apples, and a pigeon pie, all from St. Nick's market. There is a streak of wickedness in me, I'll willingly admit, but I've learned to live with myself as I am. There is no fixing wickedness: it arrives with a whoosh and a flash of its own accord. It makes no prior announcements. Sometimes my actions surprise even me.
“General truancy, is it? I can't abide general truancy even more than I can't abide rats,” Oldham had screeched two weeks ago, pinching my ear just as Scratcher had just now. Adults seem to be overly fond of ear gripping, pulling, and pinching. In my case, it is their easiest hook to hang on to, the rest of me being too thin and slippery to grab a good handful of. Oldham knew nothing of my stealing, happily, or she'd have turned me over to the judge, and I'd now be hanged by the neck â boots dangling â until dead. I'd seen hangings enough in Plymouth, the convicted giving me a penny once or twice to pull hard on their legs after the drop and help their departure along.
I didn't want any young cozener pulling on
my
legs, thank you very much. I learned to run fast, really fast, so that I could outstrip the barrow boys whose stalls I nicked from. So if Oldham ever did find out my crimes, which, God knows, were hang-worthy, and decided to haul me to the judge, likely she wouldn't be able to catch me. In any case, her corns and carbuncles slowed her down. So did her enormous belly, which, when she so much as shifted from one foot to the other, quivered like a bowl of blancmange under her gown.