by Eli Brown
As I threw myself over the bulwarks to collapse upon the planks, the Fox’s schooner was already shrinking toward the horizon. The climb left me completely flaccid, and once upon the deck, I curled up, unable even to shiver.
“We’ll not catch her, Captain,” Mr. Apples shouted.
“Here’s an ugly fish,” I heard Mabbot say above me. “Let’s hope he tastes better than he looks.” She nudged me with her boot and said, “Did you think I’d go without Sunday’s feast?” When I didn’t respond, she kicked me in the ribs. “Wedge, you had better have some information for us.”
Even as I groaned, the twins dragged me to Mabbot’s cabin, where, fighting to keep the apple from coming back up, I told her the entire tale. Mabbot paced in a tight circle as I related what the Fox had said. “If not for my bungled escape,” I added, “we would have missed the man entirely.”
“Work together?” Mr. Apples laughed. “Did the Fox say that? Captain, that smells strongly of horseshit. I can fairly taste it.”
“But there is a plan here. Something ambitious—I can almost see it—tunnels in Canton, a patchwork army of angry men.” Mabbot was kneading her temples with her knuckles. “He’s captured with a gang of smugglers by Captain Jeroboam—which shows he’s overreaching, getting reckless. After escaping the penal island, he flies east to regroup with his colleagues, deny rumors of his capture, set his things in order … then heads for the South Atlantic again to recruit slaves from the Congo. Who is he fighting if he needs men in every sea? But now he’s changed course again—”
“It was Ramsey dead,” I said. “That sealed it. He said plans had to be accelerated now.”
“But what is he up to? Fetch Braga—he’s been more reticent than I’d like.”
Braga was brought to the cabin and stood with his hands folded behind his back like a soldier at ease. The man had been pilfering garlic from the galley; even from where I sat in my puddle of seawater, I could smell that his grey-streaked beard was rank with it.
“You haven’t told us everything you know about these tunnels,” said Mabbot.
Braga was quiet for a moment, and I felt sympathy for his position. Only minutes before, I had been obliged to spew everything I knew to stay alive. Braga, though, managed to keep his dignity as he spoke with quiet calm.
“The tunnels we dug are not just for smuggling. The Fox is filling the chambers with a massive cache of black powder.” He paused. “Directly under the Barbarian House.”
This meant something to Mabbot, for her jaw dropped.
“Sounds like something you’d try, Cap’m,” said Mr. Apples.
“He calls it his insurance,” said Braga. “Beyond that, I know what you know—that he has spent his gold building a guerrilla army.”
“But where is this army?”
“In the washing rooms of barons, in the cotton fields, in the holds of junks. On every continent, his fighters are waiting for the call to bring the opium empire crashing down. Pendleton has raised the army for him—slaves, lascars, starving farmers, opium addicts, smugglers risking torture and death for pennies. All waiting to feast on the corpse of Pendleton.”
“But Pendleton has never been in better health.”
“The weight of the entire Oriental trade rests on one rotten peg: the smugglers who bring the opium into Canton. Without them, Pendleton would have to go back to paying precious British silver for their tea. The empire would crumble. How many of the smugglers now follow the Fox? And he knows the price of every corrupt official who has dipped his toe in the Pearl River—he can give that rotten peg a push. And then, of course, he has his insurance.”
“But even if he could break Pendleton’s back, how would he stand to profit? He has never been much for selfless acts,” said Mabbot. “And now this invitation to join him in Macau.”
Braga shrugged.
“Your life depends on your honesty, Mr. Braga,” said Mabbot. “If you have anything else to tell us, this is your last chance.”
He only shook his head. Mabbot opened the door for him herself, and he left.
“With every answer, we get a sack of questions,” said Mr. Apples.
“But we know the Fox is about to stage something dramatic,” said Mabbot. “We know I am featured in it. What do you think my role is, water nymph? Mrs. Macbeth? He’s got something grand in his skull.”
“It’s a show I’d rather miss.”
“Heavens, no—orchestra seats, Mr. Apples. Anyway, we have our headings now, don’t we?” said Mabbot. “And damn his fast ship, we can take our ease getting there. The men are itchy for a plunder anyway. First to Cochin China, then straight on to Macau.”
“But it’s a poison pie he’s offering, for sure, Captain. A poisoned horseshit pie.”
“I’ve noted your concern. Have you noted the heading?”
“Aye.”
“Then to it.”
When Mr. Apples left, Mabbot turned a sad gaze on me and asked, “Tell me, did you see my boy smile?”
I am now of a small cadre in the know: Mabbot, Mr. Apples, the twins, and myself. Of course Mabbot assured me it would mean my death if I spoke of her son to another soul, and given how she has kept her crew in the dark about it for so long, I take her at her word.
9
THE PATIENCE
In which many are punished
When I was feeling strong enough to walk again, I found the pinnace lashed as securely as ever with my sack of provisions still stowed discreetly under the seat, this journal undiscovered. After fishing a new pair of boots from a barrel of discarded and mouldering clothes, I went to make my peace with my saviors.
I owe my rescue ultimately to two men. The first is old Pete, the weathered ancient who watches the waves. After Mr. Apples found my cell empty in the morning, it was this old Pete’s inscrutable reckoning that led the Rose back to find me. Mabbot had circled for a few hours in the waters where I should have been, and it was there that they spotted the Diastema on the horizon, recognizing it from the description the prison guards gave.
I offered the old man figs, but he eats only salted sardines with rice and that in the tiniest amounts. I sat with him but could not tell if he valued my company. His simple smile does not leave his face in any circumstance, even as he took in my scarlet nose and sun-blistered lips. He is as benign as a teapot. The events of the last few days have been brutally humbling, and sitting near this man in his wicker chair as he stares at the water does nothing but humble me further. I upbraid myself for not having recognized, at first sight, a saint in the flesh.
The other man is a more complicated story. Mabbot told me that Asher, the graveyard watch chief, had been ordered to “make right” my escape. The poor man hadn’t slept, and it was he who finally spotted the Diastema from the nest. I made him a few savory griddle cakes of pounded cornmeal with onions, topped with slices of pickled herring. I found him moping silently in his hammock. He would not look at me, and when I handed him the plate, he threw it against the wall.
Joshua showed up for his reading lesson as if there had been no intermission, and I was glad for it. He showed me the mother-of-pearl inlaid box of ink and quills Mabbot had given him, but when I opened it, I screamed and dropped it; he had stashed a dead rat inside.
At first, Joshua’s laugh frankly unsettled me, but when I hear it now, I cannot help but join in, even after juvenile pranks like this. In a world that feels, day by day, more soiled and fraught, Joshua’s laugh can wash a room clean.
He brought too a tattered leather-bound Bible. It was a dramatically simplified missionary translation, with no sentence longer than ten words, but I held it to my forehead for a long moment before we sat.
Our reading lesson began, as any should, with Genesis. Translating these primal stories by gesture and drawing was arduous work. Joshua made it no easier. While his reading is confoundingly slow, his wit has the devil’s speed. No sooner had a sentence been laid out than he had some objection to it. He knows many of these stories al
ready, but he resists them with heathen vigor. The stick figure I made to represent Abel’s wife he practically obliterated with question marks. In addition, he wanted to know who made God, and didn’t He have a stick to kill the serpent with?
I set him to the task of copying sentences. For our next lesson I’ll put together a less inflammatory curriculum. I think I’ll ask the boy to write about his own family.
As I watched Joshua making the tentative loops and spears of the alphabet, I fought a strong urge to wrap my arms around him and pull him to my chest. I was worried for him; he was so thin and this sea life so treacherous. A reverie sprang up in my mind: I saw my late beloved Elizabeth at the door with her apron full of greens, I saw over her shoulder the apricot tree in bloom, I saw even the squirrel she fed despite the havoc it brought to the garden, and there at the kitchen table was Joshua, hunched over his letters, playing the part of our own son.
For a moment it was frighteningly real. A seaborne mirage. But the longing it set alight was so penetrating, and the remorse so ferocious, that, had Lucifer arrived with a contract and smoldering quill, I would gladly have signed my soul away for a single day in that dream.
I know I’m clinging to Joshua, carving him in the shape of my own grief. Of course, his shoulders are much too narrow to carry the weight of it, and besides, he is here willingly—the boy is a pirate, after all, there is no denying it.
These hysterical flights of fancy are yet more reason to find some way home, wherever that may be, before these weakening pieces of me finally break and madness rushes in.
Thursday, September 2
This morning at sunrise, Asher was whipped for letting me escape. He walked, of his own accord, to the mast, where Mr. Apples tied his hands. It would have happened earlier, but Mabbot had wanted me present. All of us gathered, and she announced from the upper deck: “Punishment for dereliction of duty!”
The first lash brought a mournful cry from the young man. I went to Mabbot and said, “Please, let me stand in his place. This is my mischief.”
“It is your mischief,” she said. “But look at you. Your skin is still hanging from your fingers in folds. The sea has made you soft as a babe. That whip would cut you in two.”
“Mabbot, please don’t joke. This is not justice.”
She looked me steadily in the eyes and said, “If I let you take the whip, what will you learn? What will he?”
The whip cracked and the poor man sank to his knees. When I averted my eyes, Mabbot said loudly, for all to hear, “Can you not even give him the dignity of witnessing his punishment?” And so I watched, sweating with shame, as the last strokes broke his skin open.
Afterward I went to him where he lay on his side under the hammock and tried to clean his wounds, but he would not tolerate me.
Thus I am caught in ratlines of reliance, and the more I struggle to free myself, the more entangled I become. I have never gambled, nor borrowed. When necessary, as a poor journeyman, I ate moldy bread rather than ask for flour on credit of my honor. Now, though, it seems I am daily indebted to a new scoundrel, men whom I would not have nodded to in the city streets.
Even so, yesterday I was heartened to have found fellowship of sorts. Eating supper with the men on deck, a bowl of gelatinous porridge before me, grateful to be still among the living, I stood and gave grace. I then announced my intention to observe evening prayers and invited any to join me. Expecting ridicule, I got instead half a dozen volunteers who followed me in prayer before bed, a sweaty bunch of fellows happy to bow their heads and whisper “amen.”
I had been quite weak since my ordeal, my sea legs wobbly and my stomach eager to turn, but after this hodgepodge mass, I felt my strength returning. It satisfied something deep in me, and I slept better than I have in a long while.
Therefore, it was a shock when, today, I caught five of those same men prostrating and praying with the Mohammedans. Unable to contain myself, I scolded them for their sacrilege and got this response: “Gold ye may gamble. But sumtin’ precious as a ’ternal soul, one is best taking no chances. Cover yer bets, man, for ye only look to break even.”
This nonsense was delivered to me with motherly concern. From their expressions one might have mistaken them for missionaries guiding a lost savage. A better Christian would have stayed to show them the error of their logic, but with holy prayer compared to a game of dice, I was struck dumb and merely wandered away muttering to myself.
I may not be skilled at eloquent oratory, but for muttering angrily under one’s breath, I have never met a more capable man.
When Joshua came for his lesson, I had already prepared a stick drawing of a family. I wrote MOTHER and FATHER beside the appropriate figures and JOSHUA beside a smaller one. Pointing to the patriarch, I asked, “What’s his name?” with my face to the light so Joshua could read my lips.
Joshua put his fist on his heart, then tapped the thumb of his right hand against his forehead with the fingers splayed like antlers.
“No, write it here.” I put the pencil in his hand, but he dropped it and made the gesture again. “The man must have a proper name,” I said and moved his hand toward the paper, but he pushed it away and continued with his inscrutable gesticulations. I seized the wild bird of his right hand and put the pencil firmly in his palm, saying, “Whatever you wish to tell me, you can write. God made hands to hold tools, not to mince the air. You’ve only to learn to write, and you can express anything at all!”
But the impudent child broke the pencil in two and crossed his arms. Gathering all of my composure, I sharpened the pencil, taking the time to make a fine point, and placed it again in his hand. When he threw it down and began to gesture wildly, I pinched his ear, for effect, and said, “That is not the way to do it! Learn to write!”
The boy slapped me hard in the face. It took me so by surprise that he had turned and slammed the door on his way out before I could summon a response. I spent a good amount of time grumbling to myself. Perhaps I should not have laid my hands on him, but if he really wishes to learn the rudiments of language, he must apply himself. I cannot do all the work for him.
I wish Joshua’s slap was the only insult today, but I must make a note to avoid Feng whenever possible. For no reason at all, while we passed in the twilight of the lower deck, the little man scowled and elbowed me, causing me to lose my wind completely. My ribs ache now with each breath. While a few here may be justified in their resentment, this man’s cruelty seems quite gratuitous.
Friday, September 3
On this gruesome day I was the unwilling witness to the sacking of the Pendleton Trading Company ship the Patience. Although I’ve no desire to relive it, I shall note my impressions to be read, let us pray, at the eventual trial of Mabbot for piracy and murder.
During the night previous, we weathered a squall. It was a small one, the men said, though I could not tell if this was one of their jokes. I had tried to sleep and failed. It felt like I had been placed in a barrel and was rolling down a particularly steep and uneven hill. There were moments when I could not distinguish between the thunder and the clopping of boots on the deck as men ran about reefing sails or securing cannon. My hammock beat against the wall and tenderized me thoroughly. In my half sleep I wondered if Mabbot had foreseen this storm on the horizon and exchanged my sack for this hammock just in time for me to be flung about in it like a piglet brought to market. At one point, hoping to stave off nausea, I made the mistake of going above deck to see what the men were up to. As soon as I emerged, a great wave smacked me down, and only by scrambling upon the wood and catching hold of an errant line was I saved from being washed over the bulwark into the frothing void. Those seconds, illumed by the ghostly lanterns and the great shudders of lightning, were like another world, neither above water nor below it, a world of howling fear, and a darkness whose appetite was insatiable. Returning to my cell, soaked to the bone and shuddering, I resolved to tell the first priest I met that all the fire in hell had been long since do
wsed.
Only in the mean dregs of morning did the storm pass and the ship calm itself enough for me to close my eyes. This is my excuse for sleeping well into the day. But that too was a mistake, for I had the misfortune to wake to cannon fire. God keep you from this fate. It is completely upending: the heart leaps up and tries to escape the prison of the ribs before the eyes are open. One may find oneself running, as I did, in an arbitrary direction, hands instinctively covering one’s crotch, and slamming face-first into the doorframe.
But to the point.
I discovered, above deck, that our cannon fire had been a warning shot and that we were quickly approaching the Patience, which had been damaged in the storm and was making no effort to flee. The garish two-headed lion of the Pendleton Trading Company flag was impossible to mistake. Except for the broken mizzen yards of the Pendleton ship, the only sign of the storm was the mackerel-striped clouds above. Our crew was in a state of great excitement, and I had to push through a crowd of men at the bulwark to see the ship. Some of the men blew upon enormous tin trumpets, each easily twenty feet long. This colossal flatus that echoed off the sails of the Patience was meant, no doubt, to instill fear in our victims.
I have learned that although the oceans are vast, the shipping lanes themselves are rather narrow. Between the currents, winds, and storms, any ship hoping to make it to China and back dares not venture too far from the courses laid out in the almanacs. Though hundred-foot waves and mast-crushing winds sound terrible enough to me, nothing chills a sailor’s mood quite as much as talk of the “doldrums.” In these swaths of the ocean, nothing at all happens. Any ship slipping into such a zone becomes a windless island, and its crew castaways forced to eat rope and, eventually, one another. To hear them tell it, Mabbot’s crew would rather row a live shark into a hurricane than find themselves in the doldrums. Mabbot’s mischief, then, is made easier, for she needs only follow these safe routes and eventually she will spot a company ship on the horizon, like the Patience, homeward bound off the western coast of Africa, on the last leg of her long journey, with a belly full of cargo and hope.