The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (4 page)

“I said overboard! Are you daft, Mr. Preston!” Captain Lowe pointed at the infant with the feathered end of his quill. “The miserable whelp should not have been allowed on this ship in the first place. It must nurse from its mother to stay alive, and now she’s dead.”

“So we throw it overboard?”

“Can you nurse a baby, man? There is nothing more that can be done!” the captain said. “And it probably carries the sickness as well. Get it over before the others fall sick.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Again Ontoquas tried to look elsewhere, and this time she succeeded. In the two years since her enslavement in the Caribbean—so far from her home—she had seen horrors that haunted her dreams: men whipped until they fell and then whipped more, children succumbing to the smoke in burning fields of harvested sugarcane, human beings bought and sold at market in chains, families and loved ones torn apart.

Ontoquas did not want to watch them throw a baby overboard—this baby with the tiny feet it kicked in the air.

Several feet away knelt a boy no older than Ontoquas: a white boy in a plain sailor’s shirt and pants cut at the knee. Captain Lowe had ordered the deck holystoned, and the ship’s boy had been assigned the task. The stone lay in front of him as he sat back on his haunches, breathless, having stopped to watch the unfolding drama. Ontoquas wondered what he thought of it.
How could he look on so easily?
The stone was large, two hands wide. Beside it a large bucket made from
the bottom third of a cut barrel held fresh water.

Ontoquas’s eyes locked on the stone, but she turned when she heard the first mate speak.

“Bowler, Simpson, damn your eyes!” Mr. Preston said. “Do as you’re ordered, men!”

The two sailors who had cast the dead woman over the rail without a care now stood eyeing the infant. They each stole a glance at the other.

“You quite certain, sir?” one of them said, risking a flogging himself.

“Oh, for the love of God!” said Captain Lowe. He tucked beneath one arm his treasured ledger and strode to the middle of the deck where the baby lay. He snatched the boy up by one leg so that the infant dangled upside down.

“Truly, Mr. Preston! You should be embarrassed, sir. Never have I known Englishmen to be so squeamish.” The baby rocked back and forth as the captain strode toward the rail. Its cries grew louder.

Ontoquas spun away, pressing her palms against her ears. The baby’s cries were too terrible! Her eyes fell again on the holystone. She remembered the words of her father, Chief Anawan, the last time she spoke with him.

“We will lose our lives in our fight. It has been foreseen. But if we do not fight, Little Wolf, then we are no longer a people. If we do not fight, then we are already ghosts.”

Ontoquas lowered her hands.

If we do not fight, then we are already ghosts.

Ontoquas stepped from the line of slaves, and with that first step she was a slave no more and never would be
again. She took three strides toward the boy who stared at the captain, and kicked him savagely across the cheek with the sole of her foot. He sprawled back in a heap, then turned an incredulous look upon the girl as she hefted the stone.

All eyes were still glued on the captain and the infant dangling from his hand. His back was to Ontoquas.

“Captain! Captain Lowe, sir!” the boy called out.

The captain did not turn as he approached the rail. “Silence, boy, or I shall have you flogged. This is the work of men.” Ontoquas raised the stone high and charged.

“Captain!”

The wind was out of the west that morning. It swept steadily across the quarterdeck. Captain Lowe had handed his hat to the first mate before grabbing the infant, and the pressing breeze revealed a pale spot of scalp on his head. He had reached the rail now and drew back his arm to heave the baby to the sea.

“Captain, sir, look out!”

Ontoquas took a last step and drove the holystone for the spot on the captain’s skull with everything she had.

I will fight!

The stone struck without sound. The captain’s head snapped forward. The ledger he held fell, bounced once against the rail, and whirled off in a flutter. The captain slumped into the rail and slid along it until he dropped to the deck in a tangle of loose limbs. Ontoquas plucked the crying baby from the deck and tucked him beneath her arm.

There was an instant of shocked silence, and then
the line of slaves broke apart, everyone running.

“All hands!”

The ship exploded into chaos. Voices yelled out in all languages. The captives ran in every direction, some in terror, others in rage. One man hurled himself upon a crouched sailor who had just jumped from the ratlines, and the two struggled for a knife the sailor held. Others charged out blindly and struck at any sailor they could find.

“Get them tied! Get them below!”

Ontoquas ran across the quarterdeck away from the sailors, but Mr. Preston cut her off. She stared at the dark circle of the pistol’s barrel the first mate leveled at her.

Then she dove and tumbled, holding the baby close and trying not to hurt him as she rolled. There was a terrific explosion, and a woman nearby crumpled against the rail with a cry. Ontoquas found her feet again and dashed across the deck.

“You little devil!” shouted the sailor. He raised a whip. Ontoquas dodged and the crack sang out just behind her ear. She clutched the little baby tighter.

I must save this baby!

The man’s face contorted in fury. He reared back again. Behind him she could see a surge of dark bodies emerging from the main hatch, men howling tribal war cries.

Again the man lashed out with the whip. Ontoquas lurched to avoid it and lost her footing on the wet deck planks, falling onto her back and nearly dropping the wailing infant. The deafening crack resounded against the rail behind her. A hand clamped down on her arm.
Ontoquas bore down on it. The man howled as the girl’s teeth crunched against bone, and then she reeled as the butt of the whip came down on the top of her head.

Somehow she still held the baby. He was part of her now, her own brother. She would do anything for him. Again Ontoquas rose, the first mate separated from her by a wrestling crowd of sailors and slaves.

The whip crackled the air. Many months before, Ontoquas had come to understand that she would die, and die young, but with the infant in her arms, living was an imperative. If she did not live, the baby, too, would die. Ontoquas charged at the first mate, who had made his way clear to her, and scooted under his arm. Across the deck she scampered, the snap of the whip chasing her. She ran directly at the ship’s boy—crouched in terror—the infant still cradled tight in the crook of her arm. Next to the boy rocked the overturned bucket.

“Leave me be!” the boy wailed.

“Get that one!” Ontoquas heard a sailor shout. “Grab her!”

Ontoquas lifted the boy’s bucket by its handle. She turned toward the rail, and she ran like she had never run. She leaped as she had never leaped. One bare foot lighted upon the rail. She thrust against it and was over.

Through the air they flew, Ontoquas and her new brother, the bucket held above her head by its handle. The endless arms of the Great Mother Sea rushed up to greet them.

I
n an open and seemingly infinite sea the girl floated. From the vantage of a flock of white birds that passed high overhead, it would appear the girl was alone, but she was not. She clung to the sides of the bucket, keeping the rolling waves from tipping it and using its buoyancy to save her strength. Inside the bucket the tiny baby curled on his side and slept. In the late afternoon the wind ebbed to a gentle breeze, and Ontoquas was able to haul herself up and spread her body over the opening of the barrel without tipping it. In this way she protected the boy from the bright sun. From this position she looked at the uninterrupted horizon on all sides.

Now I cannot die. I must survive. I must find land for my brother.

In the language of her recently lost people the name
Ontoquas
meant “she-wolf.” On the night before she was born her mother had a dream in which a wolf spoke of a
daughter who would survive the death of her people to go off and begin the world again.

Ontoquas’s mother, Shanuke, was an important healer; her father was the great Wampanoag Chief Anawan. But that was before the war and the killing. Anawan and his tribe had joined with a fellow Wampanoag tribe headed by the great Metacomet to fight a war against the white man: King Philip’s War. Metacomet and Ontoquas’s father led many raids on English villages, but then a man named Benjamin Church came hunting. With the help of an Indian tracker, Church led a silent attack before dawn on the grassy meadow where Metacomet and Anawan and their weary warriors had made camp.

The colonists’ rage was not quelled with just the death of the men. Soon afterward the women and children of Anawan’s village were rounded up and brought to the port of Boston. There they were sold into slavery and loaded onto ships heading south to distant islands where sugarcane grew.

For two years Ontoquas had known the whip of many masters. She had felt the searing heat of the boiling houses and smelled blackened death among the torched sugarcane stalks, burned before harvesting. She had watched men, women, and even children sink down into such fields from exhaustion. And she had come to care little as to whether she lived or died.

Ontoquas was twelve years old.

I thought the wolf had lied,
Ontoquas thought, stealing
a peek into the shadows of the bucket where the little boy twitched as he slept.
Oh, please, please, let the wolf be right. I want to live again.

The unlikely pair bobbed along between the rising and falling of the waves, the Caribbean sun blazing down. Ontoquas let her head hang. Sometimes she drifted into sleep, only to startle awake in time to steady her balance on top of the bucket. She awoke to measure how far the sun had moved along its descending arc.

Night would come.
What then?

Before she had time to consider how she would survive the night, something rose slowly from the water—a fin. It formed a tidy triangle and it cut a straight line through the surface of the water. Ontoquas had watched dolphins swimming alongside her ship in the open sea, chittering and carving exuberant arcs through the air. She liked to think they were laughing at the ridiculous humans. But this fin was different. It had no curve.

Ontoquas pulled herself up onto the bucket as best she could, bending her knees to keep her toes out of the water. Supporting her entire weight and that of the baby, the bucket’s lip sank to just a few inches above the surface of the water.

The fin carved a complete circle around Ontoquas. Then another.

“Leave us!” she shouted at it. Could sharks be scared away? Her heart thundered in her chest. No, no! This could not be. To have survived the ship, only to die now?

In front of her again, at a distance of perhaps fifteen feet, the gray triangle cut in sharply and came straight at her.

“No!”

Just a few feet before the fin reached her it lowered into the water. The great gray body swept slowly beneath her, so close that Ontoquas could see its mighty tail swishing back and forth as it propelled itself through the water. It was huge, perhaps twice as long as she was tall.

Ontoquas felt her chin begin to quiver. The baby beneath her stirred. He opened up his eyes and began to cry, his mouth stretching wide open.

I will save you. I will save you.

The triangular fin reappeared again at the earlier distance. Again it circled her, once, twice. And again it broke from its arc and came straight at her, this time toward her left side.

Ontoquas tried to pull herself up higher on the barrel, but there was nowhere to go. Closer came the fin, closer, and then the triangle leaned over and out of the water rose a gaping mouth of gray and white full of glittering teeth. The huge jaw snapped at the barrel, and its teeth found a purchase in the wood. The shark thrashed, nearly tossing Ontoquas from the bucket.

She could see the shark’s black eye looking up at her. Again it thrashed, and this time Ontoquas slipped, and her legs and body slid out and onto the shark’s snout.

No!

Rage filled her. Pure rage. Ontoquas reared back with a hand and punched the shark on its snout. The shark turned to try to get its mouth on her, but the bottom lip of the barrel got in its way. Again and again she punched, her eyes filling with tears. Again and again and again she struck. She could hear her voice shouting at the beast, but it somehow seemed far away, as if another voice were calling.

Suddenly the shark broke off and sank beneath the surface. Again Ontoquas watched it swim beneath her, and again it reemerged at its former distance.

The circles began anew.

How long can I fight it off?
she wondered. She pulled herself up onto the bucket’s lip again and saw that the knuckles of her left hand were wet with blood. Ontoquas knew little enough about sharks, but she had heard that the scent of blood drew them like ants to honey. She pulled her wounded hand in and rested it on her forearm instead, the wound dripping a drop of blood down onto the baby’s leg.