by Eli Brown
How does this man, who would lose his post to a donkey on land, achieve such a position at sea? “Ship’s cook,” it turns out, is not properly a position but a punishment. Not only does he spend his days cramped in a steam-filled chamber, churning with a shovel enough food for an army, but worse, Conrad must bear the derision of the crew who look to a meal as one of the sole respites in a long hard day. Finding sand between their teeth and even the hardtack sour, they turn their frustrations upon poor Conrad. What pleasure they can’t get by appeasing their tremendous appetites, they find instead in taunting the man who takes their hoots and howls with stoicism.
I have already learned that being at sea breeds romance and fantasy. Whether it is the monotony of the horizon, the confined perambulation, or the intoxicating ethers that boil from the deep I cannot say, but here men’s imaginations bloom. Their women back home are, all of them, Helens, breasts like sleeping doves, petal cheeks, voices like glass bells; their inns serve not beer but nectar; their gardens grow peas the size of fists. These fantasies are ferociously strong, and, compared to them, Conrad’s grey porridge is an insult. The man no doubt would have been cast overboard long ago save one of the captain’s commandments: He that molests the cook becomes the cook. Stronger even than their anger at Conrad is their fear of becoming Conrad. Thus he is left in peace to make his bubbling abominations.
When not eating his “burgoo,” the sailors tolerate him well enough. There are worse things in a pirate’s life than a man who cannot cook and who talks too much.
As I am compelled to linger in the galley, Conrad takes the opportunity to fill my ears with his prattling. He considers me a compatriot, and I haven’t the heart to correct him.
A central theme of his monologues is his admiration for the captain, which, from his tone, is not without a touch of the prurient. This afternoon, for example, he said, “Well we’re on our way, aren’t we? She don’t lose a minute, the cap’m. Making up for time lost killing Ramsey. A mere holiday for her! But we’re on track again. The grand pursuit!” He chortled above his cauldron of porridge. “Oh, but she’s dogged as she is fair. She’ll find him soon enough. She’ll figure it out. Smart the cap’m, she took Ramsey by surprise, didn’t she?”
“If it’s all the same to you, we will not talk about Lord Ramsey,” I said.
“The man was a dog.”
“I’m quite serious, sir—”
“Strike me, then—do! Won’t hit back.” He lifted his chin, and I was surprised by the strength of my urge to wallop him. Instead I said, “You call her wise, but she put you here in this steam box.”
“But I put myself here, didn’t I? Punched the other cook in the eye, which fairly blinded him one side. Well, it was lashes for me, and now I’m the cook. How can I complain? If God were this fair, the world wouldn’t be such a shit pile!”
“We will not speak of God nor of Lord Ramsey.”
“Well, you’ve got your druthers, hain’t you?” He made a rude farting sound with his mouth. “What’ll we talk about, then?”
“Have you ladles? Tongs? A rolling pin? Where are the pie tins kept?”
He laughed again, which led to coughing. “I don’t have your ’fisticated wit. Pots and spoons, that’s what we got. Pots and spoons.”
I took note of what I could find myself. There are some iron skillets, wholly unused by Conrad, rusted and in need of curing. Pots—we are flush with cheap pots. One fine rasp and several knotty and oversized wooden spoons …
Conrad went on: “It’s the same pots we’ve had for the five years I been cook. Near round the world twice hunting the Brass Fox,” he said. “The hunt is always in her mind. She won’t speak it, but she thinks of naught else.”
“What kind of weapon is the Brass Fox?” I asked.
“Weapon? Ha! The Fox is a thief—the King of Thieves.”
“What does she need a thief for?”
At this he laughed hard enough to reveal several teeth made of cowry.
I wanted him to stop before he began coughing again, so I asked, “Is it treasure?”
“Sure it’s treasure. But what type? Seen her, myself, chunk diamonds into the wake like sowing wheat. So it is hard to say, ain’t it? Mr. Apples prawly knows, but he’s tight as a barrel with no bung. Feng and Bai, well, they may know, ’pending on if they grasp the English tongue. But they’re about as talky as my elbows. So that leaves those of us who don’t know to speak on it. Grim has it that Cap’m is in hunt of the largest heap of gold ever heaped, left there by Ben Gaunt and his pirate ’federacy. Jawbone thinks she’s looking for the wood of the true cross, but Jawbone was kicked in the head by a horse when he was short.” Here Conrad tasted his gruel with a grey tongue—it was a sight I wish I had been spared. “Shash’ll tell you she’s looking for the secret city of immortals where everyone lives forever and grows tulips in their navels. Half the men have it she’s looking for the egg of the roc, which is a fine theory, because I’ve seen one of them with my own eyes carry an elephant into the sky.
“Half the men believe she’s looking for the antidote to the curse a widow put on her that won’t let her sleep, which she don’t, or don’t much. Or could be a witched amulet to make her safe to musket fire, which, if there is such a thing, would be mighty handy and with many useful ’vantages, and worthy of a long search. Been shot once myself. Feel on this rib, you can make out the ball under the skin. Well, it still hurts. Man wasn’t meant to carry shot around in his ribs—I’d rather not get another. Gimbal will tell you she’s looking for a cure for the opium pipe, with that she could become empress of China and raise their army to break the comp’ny spine.”
“The Pendleton Trading Company.”
“What else? In my personal experience, though a person look complicated, deep down he is simple and likes gold. It’s almost sure gold, ain’t it? A mountain of it. Enough to make dukes of us all. Enough for her to buy the whole comp’ny a hundred times over. Whatever you do, don’t ask her about it. She broke Gimbal’s finger for his curiosity. Just reached out and took it gentle like she wanted to kiss him, then snapped it easy as a twig and held on to it until he thanked her for it.”
“Thanked her?”
“Wouldn’t let go until he did.”
“Well, she’s a fiend,” I said.
Conrad looked at me so queerly then, it sent shivers down my spine. I must try to remember where I am and keep my opinions to myself.
Unable to really explore the galley with him in the way, I returned to my quarters, planning to try again later.
The man has me thinking about our destination. The sound of the wind boiling in the sails—I can hear it even now. We are, as he says, “on our way.” But to where? I have been so preoccupied with my situation that I haven’t given thought to our ultimate target. I am aware that pirates will sell a man into the slave mines for a penny. Yet more incentive to make Mabbot’s repast memorable, indeed.
An odd bell brought me out of my brooding and onto the glistening deck. When my eyes had adjusted, I saw Mabbot pushing her way through the crowd gathered around a prone seaman.
Without preamble she knelt by the man and tugged his lower lip open. His teeth were dark with an oily residue. He was delirious, laughing and staring hazily at the faces around him.
Bai handed Mabbot a small wad of paper. She opened it. Inside were several shriveled flower petals enclosing half a ball of opium.
The crowd murmured.
Mabbot asked the sailor, “Did you eat this? You ate too much—you’ll be ill.”
“I’ll not,” the man said. “’Pologies, Cap’m. Just a lark.” He grinned and slowly got to his feet.
Mabbot handed the opium back to Bai, who chucked it overboard.
“Theater paint,” Mabbot said wearily.
The crowd hushed as the bosun set quickly to work tying the man’s hands behind him.
I realized that I had just witnessed a trial and sentencing. Before I could guess what punishment might be named after
an actor’s rouge, the bosun, with swift strokes of a knife, flayed the opium-eater’s cheeks in arcs until the meat hung wet at his neck and his teeth grinned ghastly from the holes. The opium was doing its job, for the man looked surprised but showed no signs of suffering.
Ramsey had kept a small vial of laudanum, which he enjoyed frequently after an evening meal, but I had never seen a true opium swoon. Above all, the poor seaman looked sleepy; his indifference was frightening. Even as they bound his feet and lifted him toward the head of the ship, he looked merely annoyed, as if this were a prank they were playing on a friend who had drunk too much cider. He was trussed like a roasting pig to the bowsprit and left there.
Before long, the petrels that follow us converged upon him and began to make tentative jabs at his face. By evening the opium had worn off. He was entirely occluded by a frenzy of feathers, and I had to wad paper into my ears to block out his screams.
I moved as far as I could from the horror and encountered Mabbot at the stern bulwark overlooking a sea the color of jade.
“So gruesome,” I moaned.
“I should have him write his lessons on a slate? Bend him over my knee for a paddling? He knows the law. He made a choice. Not all of us get to choose our death.”
“A death sentence! For such a petty crime?”
“Petty?” Mabbot’s own cheeks flushed. “For this pettiness ten million Bengalis starved in their own fields because the Pendleton Company forced them to grow opium instead of food. China herself is capsized! She can trust none of her officials to keep the tide of smugglers out. She has sprung a leak the size of the Pearl River and has lost all of her wealth to England’s avarice. In a few years she will be a derelict. Look around you; not a few of these men have lost their homes and families to this pettiness. It won’t happen to my ship.”
“But surely he has learned his lesson by now.”
“The lesson is not for him.”
A month would not be enough time to prepare a kitchen here, and yet, with days left, I find myself loafing in despair, unable to begin the Herculean task.
Joshua showed up for reading practice again as if he were a paying pupil. Our lesson was slow and rudimentary, but it was a relief to forget my misadventure as we focused on a simpler world. Go to market: this one sentence required our entire attention for half an hour, and simply imagining life on land—the shady path I took past the church on my way to buy kale and a silverside of beef—was a welcome break indeed.
Joshua is quick to smile and has the devil’s humor. He switched my panch with brine just to watch me pucker and sputter, then laughed like a crow in the corn. Here is a laugh to wake the dead; I suppose it is precisely because he cannot hear it himself that the bray is so utterly unfettered, loud, and raw.
The door to my cell is secured by a simple bolt. A monkey could manipulate it from the outside, but as long as I was on the inside, it was beyond my power. Until tonight, that is.
Due to my peculiar status as Mabbot’s chef, and as only a madman would leap overboard, I am free to roam the ship except at night or when Mr. Apples considers it necessary to confine me. Nevertheless, if I am to have any chance of escaping, I must have my own key.
To that end I have stolen a cheap tin spoon from the berths, which I was able, after an effort, to flatten under my boot. This fits, as my comrade promised, between the cell door and the frame. By working it to and fro in agonizing increments, I can, with patience, free the bolt—or almost free it. I have chosen not to open the door completely for fear of revealing myself—once the door swings, I would have no way to lock myself in again, and my trick would be exposed. I must save this for a crucial moment.
4
FIAT LEAVEN
In which I make contact with a fellow prisoner
Tuesday, August 24
I have made myself a rudimentary calendar, little more than a series of grids on paper, and it is a frightening thing to mark every morning another day’s distance from home and happiness.
After relieving myself over the bowsprit in the barbaric manner common here, I caught a glimpse of my fellow abductee shackled to the mast. He is a round man (though, judging by the hang of his clothes, he has lost weight) with an ample face and muttonchop whiskers. His naval officer’s uniform is soiled and torn, but his jacket, despite the heat, is properly buttoned to the top.
When he spotted me and recognized, by my lack of response to the watch gong, that I was a prisoner too, this gentleman saluted. I was so moved by the gesture that I immediately returned the salute, only to realize that I had done so with the wrong hand.
When Bai saw this exchange, he wagged his finger at me. I was not looking for another beating, so I contented myself to sit and watch the prisoner from a distance. He returned my kind gaze. We shouted not, nor waved, yet the space between us was filled with volumes of sentiment. I don’t know his name, and yet I feel more akin to him than to any other soul on earth. I would have sat there feeling the sweet relief of friendship for days if Bai had not come to shackle me, too, on another part of the deck.
The cause of this unwelcome treatment, I came to see, was the proximity of land: first the unmistakable musk of humus, then the irreplaceable verdant sway of trees, the amnesty of solid earth passing me by.
We anchored at Porto Santo. Mabbot and some others went ashore for a few hours while I could do nothing but sit and watch the palms swaying near the distant pier where little men cast nets into the water.
They released me hours later, when we were again at open sea. Near her cabin, I saw Mabbot arguing with the imperturbable Mr. Apples. They consulted a map, and, though they were too far away to hear, Mabbot’s rage was visible.
Today I undertook to establish that most basic of culinary foundations—a simple yeast sponge batter—not because I know yet how I will make bread in the ruins Conrad calls an oven but because I feel out of sorts without one. One may accuse me of superstition, but I feel a kitchen is not a kitchen, indeed a cook is not a cook, without a nice leaven batter rising gently beneath a clean tea towel. Even if I never find a way to bake, I will feel more secure knowing it is there. With a mound of dough warm and waiting on the counter, one becomes a mogul in the kingdom of bread, entitled to its myriad pleasures: the comforting weight of a rosewater manchet swaddled for the night, the coy tenacity of milk rolls, not to mention the smell of baking bread, which can turn the most refined dignitary into a boy begging for a nibble.
Such were my thoughts when I embarked on the task that, in a civilized kitchen, would have taken me two minutes. Instead, it took all morning and may not have worked in any case.
A basic bread sponge is easy enough to make: fine flour, a spoonful of the last sponge, clean water, and warmth. The sponge is stirred every day and fed more flour and within a week will bubble to show its contentedness. Any wife, brewer, or baker can do this while asleep. As an apprentice in Sanghen, France, sheltered in the Jesuit sanctuary from the feral convulsions and purges that had so rent our world, I learned simple civilities, such as how to make a sponge without the benefit of a starter. For this, one need only find a suitably sugary piece of dried fruit and use it in place of the dollop from the previous batch. Whereas a baker may use an ancient line of leavening dough, each batch carrying an enlivening pinch of its parent, the resourceful cook may sire his own line from the hearty particles of yeast that cling as a white rime to a raisin—and raisins I had in plenty. I was feeling capable if not optimistic when I encountered my first obstacle: lack of clean water.
Sponges aren’t demanding, yet without clean water they will never rise. The water we drink here on the ship is cut with spirits for preservation, and the water we ride upon is salty as tears. This struck me as a defeating blow and sent me to my cell muttering in my frustration.
After an hour on my sack, though, I had devised, in my head, a simple distillery, which might, with heaven’s help, clean the water of salt. Seriously doubting that I would find the glass retorts or copper tubes needed
to build such a contraption, I headed to the galley but stopped one last time in the pantry to peer around, and thank Mary I did, for there I rediscovered the sack of coconuts. Happy day! The water in a coconut is clean enough to wash a wound, and its sweetness will only make the sponge happier.
I had mixed the ingredients together, ignoring as best I could the coarse and musty quality of the flour, when I realized the second obstacle: lack of warmth. We are headed far south, I am told, following the captain’s mysterious agenda, to round the gruff chin of Africa. But for the time being we haven’t yet passed the Canary Islands, and while the days can be hot, the nights are cold enough to rattle my teeth.
My childhood guardian, Father Sonora, had a saying: “If it’s too cold for you, it’s too cold for the dough.” Normally a bread sponge is left in the kitchen, near the embers of the fire, but I could not leave such a delicate thing in Conrad’s reach, for I was sure he would step in it, spit in it, or eat it as soon as I turned my back. To overcome this impasse, I have decided to nurture my sponge as a wet nurse.
I have borrowed, from a heap of supplies, a kidney-shaped tin box, with a long leather strap. From the scraps inside, I surmised it had been used to carry tobacco, hardtack, and, it appeared, something furry. I cleaned it as well as possible with boiled seawater, dried it with the least-filthy corner of my shirt, placed my sponge within it, closed the lid, and hung it around my neck. It rests against my belly, where my body temperature will keep it in good health. In this way I will be able to monitor its progress and feed, mix, and moisten it as needed. Not since Abel ground the first flour between two river stones has a sponge been so arduously crafted. I will not know if I have succeeded for some days.