The Voyage of the Sea Wolf (4 page)

“I understand.” I swallowed hard. My stomach was roiling a little, perhaps from the strangeness of the
situation or perhaps from the hen soup.

“I have washing water there and a commode,” the captain continued. “Ye can use the washing water after me if you have a mind to. Not before. And never use the commode. I do not wish what comes out of you to mix with what comes out o' me.”

“Aye, Captain.” I wanted to ask where I should go when I needed to relieve myself but it did not seem appropriate. No doubt I would find out for myself.

Sebastian had stood listening and watching. She did not order him away.

Mr. Forthinggale, on Captain's orders, directed me to her cabin. He strode beside me and his expression was grim. I noticed that the turkey redness had gone from his face but he was still angry. He walked too fast so that I had to run to keep up. My stomach, so long without food, was cramping now so I moved half bent over.

We went down a set of stairs, turned toward the stern and stopped at an open door. “A captain's door must always be left open,” my father had told me. “The crew can come and go as they please.” It had been that way on the
Reprisal
and it seemed it was that way here. Would it be left open
through the dark hours of night? If it was...?

“Get yerself settled,” the quartermaster said in a surly voice. “Then get topside. Sebastian will be waiting for ye.”

I dropped my bundle of clothing.

“Mr. Forthinggale?” My voice shook. “Quartermaster... I cannot. I feel deathly sick. 'Twas the soup I—” With that it all came rushing up, out of my stomach, down my nose, into my mouth. I had no control over it as it gushed out, over the captain's floor, over Mr. Forthinggale's booted feet.

He gave a little high-pitched squeal of disgust. Then the words spurted from him the way the vomit had spurted from me.

“Ye wretched, putrefying besom! Look at me boots! I'll never get the stink out. And captain's cabin! Do ye know what ye've done ye wretched, filthy dog?”

“It could not be helped,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. My stomach felt better. How had my bundle of clothing fared? Thankfully it was out of reach of my indelicate incident. But on the floor was a slimy puddle of yellow vomit. Mixed with the liquid I thought I saw some remnants of the hen's foot.

If my teacher with her emphasis on teaching me good manners could see me now!

“You'd best stay where ye are. I will inform the captain and Sebastian that you are unwell. 'Twill not get ye out of
work, mind. We will see what Cap'n says. And get this cleaned up. Now. Before she has to look at it or smell it.”

I was glad to see him go.

But how was I to clean it up?

I looked around the cabin.

It was as austere as my father's had been. There was a bunk with a gray blanket and a sturdy wooden chair bolted to the floor. Its high back and wide armrests gave it the look of a throne. There was a row of books on a shelf that had been slotted so they would stay in place even in a storm.

No time to inspect them now. I had to clean up the disgusting mess before Captain Moriarity saw it.

Against the wall was a wooden table, on it a water jug and basin, set into holders that were strapped down. I was never to use this before her. But now I had to. I loosened the straps, poured water into the basin, took a shirt that was no more than a rag from my bundle and washed the floor. It was slippery and nasty enough to make me sick all over again. But I could not afford to be delicate. Hard to believe this revolting accumulation had been in my stomach. And that it had tasted so good going down.

I carried the basin carefully from the cabin, up the stairs and onto the deck.

The cool evening air smelled of the sea, of tar and rope
and all things clean. I took long breaths, then went slowly to the rail and tipped what I had disgorged into the sea. The scum of it drifted on the surface, then sank. I tossed the ragged shirt after it. Then I went back to the cabin, rinsed out the basin, made another trip to the railing to empty the water and carried it back.

The quartermaster had ordered me to stay here.

I looked around the cabin.

The bed, the chair, the books.

The books! I went closer to read their titles. Many were on seafaring. Some were novels. I saw
Gulliver's Travels
and
The Tale of the Tub
. And then I saw a slim, small copy of
The Tain
. I knew it to be Ireland's greatest epic, the tale of Queen Medb and the brown bull of Cualinge. Captain Medb Moriarity's namesake. Had her father named her after the great Irish queen? Or had she named herself? I was tempted to look through it again but someone could come at any minute through that open door.

On the shelf next to the books was a small, carved box with an ivory lid. I wanted to open it but it had an air of secrecy about it, of value. My hand hovered above the lid. And then I knew. I knew what was in there and why I felt as I did. I lifted the lid, just enough, and saw the lock of William's hair, shining and golden. I lifted it out, touched it to my lips, then placed it carefully back in the box.

What had been bleak was even bleaker now.

I stumbled across the cabin calming myself. I was aware she had taken it, now I had discovered that she had kept it. What else did I expect? I must not let the knowledge unsettle me.

I looked around. In the corner beside the jug and washbasin was the porcelain commode with a wooden lid. A not-very-clean towel was suspended on a roller device. There was no hairbrush. My father's, the one my mother had given him, had been left on the
Reprisal
when Herc had thrown us off the ship.

I saw a sea chest, the lid closed tight with a lock and chain. Did Medb have other secrets in there? Most people had secrets that they kept hidden. I had a quick thought of the Burmese Sunrise—my secret, mine and William's—safely hidden in my mother's bedroom back in Port Teresa. Some day, I thought. Some day we will take it and use it and be together forever. And there will be no more Captain Moriarity.

There was a long cupboard, the kind that had been in my father's cabin. His had been big enough for me to hide in. I went across to this one and swung open the door. In it on a row of pegs hung several pieces of rough clothing and a dark-blue velvet jacket with gold braid, which I thought must be Captain Moriarity's “going to shore”
apparel. There were blue velvet trousers, buckled at the knees, and on the shelf above were white silk stockings and shining black shoes with pointed toes. I imagined Captain Medb Moriarity stepping proudly through some exotic town, her red hair asparkle, her shining black shoes clattering on the cobblestones. So fashionable, so important. Queen of that town, too.

I got my bundle of clothes, stepped into the cupboard which was not as capacious as my father's but served well enough, discarded my own wretched trousers and pulled on the green pantaloons. They smelled of mildew and stale brandy but they could have been worse.

I tucked my flute into the waistband, patted it gently and whispered, “I still have you, my dear friend.” It shamed me to feel tears behind my eyes.

As I stepped out again into the cabin I remembered how I had found my mother's silk petticoat in my father's cupboard. The memory bruised me. My beloved parents, both gone. My father's body somewhere in this big wide ocean, my mother's underneath the earth of Cobb Hill. Was the piece of pink coral my father had placed on her coffin still there?

My stomach had settled into an empty ache. The wet on the floor was drying. There was no trace left of my unfortunate accident.

The quartermaster had told me to stay here but I could not. Instead I would go back on deck and face the captain. And Sebastian.

It was not easy to find my way back. The brigantine was unlike my father's ship. I knew we had come down steps and veered either left or right but I had lost sense of direction. I took several wrong turnings. Here was a set of steps leading down to the hold below decks. Animal sounds came up to me. I heard goats bleating and I thought of Daisy and Pansy, my goat friends on the
Reprisal
.

I went down holding on to the bulwarks on either side as the ship rolled beneath me.

There were three pens: one with a lone pig, one with two goats and one with four fat turtles. I thought the noise increased when they saw me. “Are ye begging to be set
free?” I whispered. “If I could I would. But I'm a captive myself.” I reached over and patted the head of one of the goats. I would not give her, or the other one, names. It would make it too easy to hold them dear and too difficult if you had to see them cut up and served in Salmagundi.

Chickens clucked inside both pens and pecked at the droppings and each other. I'd had chicken soup. I'd had the foot of one. The thought did not sit well.

I passed the hold where barrels of grain and flour and salt were strapped down and overflowing. Something moved behind one of the spilled barrels and I saw a sleek black cat. It looked at me with hostile eyes and I hurried by. I passed rolled up sails and coils of rope and the spare wood that all sailing ships carried in case of a mast needing to be replaced or a hull needing patched. This would be where the weapons were kept, probably in the locked chests that were lashed down in preparation for rough seas. Casks of water or wine or rum, dozens of them, lay side by side in a neat row. There was the musty smell of grain and animals and rancid bilge water. It was close and airless, hard to breathe. The brig was down here somewhere, dark and fetid and waiting. The brig! The sea, pushed against the hull, thumping like drumbeats. Like my heart.

I rushed back to the steps and ran up them.

Wind billowed my green satin pantaloons and drove
me forward. I took great gulps of the clean, salt air.

Crewmen rushed about the deck. One, whose name I did not yet know and who was carrying a small crate of limes, said, “Hey! Them's Frenchy's pantaloons. They looks better on you.”

“Ye'd look more fetchin' without them, I'll lay to that,” another one, fat and cumbersome, remarked.

“If I took them off I'd not be giving them to you then, Pork,” I said. “You're too stout to fit into them.” I did not know if he was the one they had called Pork or not. He fitted the description.

“Ye hear, Gabby?” Pork sounded pleased. “She knows me name!”

I scanned the deck for a glimpse of William but didn't find him. And then I saw Skelly. He sidled up to me. Sunlight dazzled on his glasses and I could not see his eyes. His bald head was hard and brown as a chestnut and freckled. “Pay a mind to Sebastian. He has much to tell and he likes to talk,” he whispered. “But be wary. He has Captain's ear.”

I nodded. I had already surmised that.

His thumb directed me. “He be's farther along there.”

Sebastian sat on the deck surrounded by the billowing mass of a sail, the edge of which lay across his lap. I thought it must be the big, square-rigged sail off the foremast, but when I looked up I saw the wide squareness of it, still flying, blown full and swollen against the deepening blue of the sky. A spare sail then, perhaps the mizzen top gallant.

From this angle, his little legs hidden by the canvas, Sebastian looked like a full-sized man. His head was bigger than most, his hair hidden now under a dark-blue woolen cap.

He glanced up at me, grunted and indicated for me to sit next to him. I noticed that on one hand was a leather glove that wrapped around his wrist and palm with a hole for his fingers and thumb.

Below us the ship rocked back and forth. Spray misted my face, scattered by the push of the
Sea Wolf
through the waves.

“Take yerself one o' them needles,” Sebastian said, pointing at a bundle that lay beside him.

I opened it. Inside was a row of needles, big as carpenters' nails. Next to them was a roll of brown string.

I stared at the needles and string, then at him. He was using one of the oversized needles as he worked.

“Did ye ever sew?” he asked, not looking at me but at
the sail he was mending. I saw that he poked the point of the needle at the canvas, then used the leather-protected pad on his palm to push it through the stiff sailcloth.

“I sewed a bit,” I said. “Miss Grayson, my teacher, thought all young ladies should be adept at needlework. We made pinafores and skirts that we donated to women's charities. I hated it. I did not wish to be the kind of young lady that grows up to make samplers and embroiders handkerchiefs.”

Why was I prattling on like this? Perhaps people did give Sebastian information about themselves and that was how he knew everything.

“What did ye want to be?”

His eyes were the deep green of the ocean close to shore. There was a quality to them that I had never before been aware of. They were listening eyes.

“A pirate,” I said.

He studied me, sucking on his fingers. Now I could see why he did. The palm of his hand was protected but drops of blood speckled his fingertips. He licked them off.

I felt myself cringe.

“And what do ye want now?”

“To be free and with William,” I said.

“Ye'll have to chart a course through dangerous waters afore that happens,” he said.

I could not look away from the green of his eyes.

“Choose yerself a needle and start,” he said at last. “We needs to get that rip there stitched.”

I sat cross-legged beside him and chose a needle. Its eye was as big as a pea. He pointed to a knife and then at the string. I sawed myself off a length. It was coarse and hairy and tough, and I supposed it to be made from hemp ropes, the strands separated.

I started where the rip began, pushing the needle into the sailcloth, pushing and thrusting with all my strength before the point went through.

“Here.” From under his edge of sail Sebastian produced another leather glove. “Put on this ‘palm.' Ye'll not find the task as easy as makin' pinafores.”