by Eli Brown
“Do you think they’ll do it?”
“They don’t want to lose their silver again. Laroche haunts their dreams. Now Feng’s gone and the men are sweaty … I can’t say.”
“Call for all hands, Mr. Apples,” she said. “I’ll ask them.”
When the giant left, Mabbot rose from the chair with a groan.
“A terrible idea,” I said. “Not that you’ve asked me.”
I was ready for a fight, but her sad smile disarmed me. Her face was completely open, and I could see the ancient fatigue in her eyes as clearly as the strength behind it. She was donning the yoke of her life, as I had begged her to.
“Leighton’s heart was upside down,” Mabbot said as she tugged at her boots. “But maybe he was right about me setting my sights too low. What is genius but audacity?” She sighed when she looked at herself in the mirror. “Damn it, Wedge, you’re a hell of a barber.”
When every man had assembled on the tween deck, Mabbot stood above them on the poop. “I hope you’ll excuse my absence,” she shouted as she took off her hat and revealed her wound. “I’ve had a bit of a headache!” They laughed harder than the joke warranted, perhaps; the men were much relieved to see their queen alive.
When they had quieted, Mabbot’s face had become somber. “There is not a man here who is conscripted, bound, or blackmailed. You have each chosen your place aboard this ship, free and brave. You have bled on this deck and you have danced on it. The sea is full of ships wealthier, ships faster, ships stouter than our Rose, yet you have each, for your own reason, stayed on. Think on that reason now. For we have dangerous waters ahead. An opportunity has arisen to strike at the heart of the company and we shan’t have it again. But I must have you with me.
“History is a pageant of war machines plowing the earth to a powder, and the cruelest yet is the Pendleton Trading Company. There is a reason why China will not let them beyond the shores of the Pearl River. There is a reason why the colonists in the New World sank their tea in the harbor rather than drink a single cup of Pendleton’s brew. I need not tell you of the millions Pendleton has starved and murdered. I need not tell you how she mills slaves into poppy and poppy into sable-lined gloves for the mistresses of fat men.
“Now, there is nothing wrong with silver, and we have our shares below ready to be spent. I propose to you now that we spend them in Brazil. Brazil is full of dancing women, pinga rum, and chocolate. But not before we finish our work here. Lucky is the man who can right a wrong, and such a wrong this is. I question not your bravery, nor your skill. I ask only for your vote, for if you say ‘nay,’ we will turn today and head immediately for the New World. But if you give me ‘aye,’ we shall make a mark here that history shall not forget and sail on to Brazil with our sails full of victory. Now, who says to me ‘nay’?”
The ship was silent.
“Who ‘aye’?”
The ship exploded with cheers.
“I expected no less, you cougars, you falcons. Come round and jibe north as the wind wants us to, Mr. Apples, toward the Pearl River! Bosun! Paint the hull with something drab and cover the gilt with sacks. We’ll have to go in mufti. Strike the colors and raise a blue flag. We are now a whaling ship.”
Mabbot leaped into the crowd of men, slapping them on the back and pushing them toward their stations. “Aloft, men! Why are your hands empty, don’t you hear the gong? We’ve an appointment with the Pendleton Company!”
I was tidying the cabin when she pulled Asher in with a stern yank and said to him, “I have a particular task for you. I need your help. When we pass the Pearl delta, you’ll see endless fishing boats. You will take a few seamen of your choosing and silver enough to buy us two of those boats and enough black powder to fill them to the gills. Not the junks—get the dinghies that one man can maneuver.”
Her trust in him made the man’s chest fill. Though his eyes were still bleary, he stood straight for the first time since he’d lost Feng.
“I can send the bosun,” Mabbot said. “But I’d rather—”
“Let me do it, Captain!”
What all of my soothing words and spoonfuls of commiseration could not achieve, she managed simply by saying she needed him.
“I’ll arrange it, and you’ll have a longboat ready when the time is right,” Mabbot said. “Remember, as much gunpowder as they can carry. Don’t come back with so much as a shilling in your pocket.”
When Asher ran below to prepare, Mr. Apples said, “The smugglers carry muskets, but those dinghies are just fishing craft, Captain. They’re about as dangerous as tea cakes.”
“We’re taking a page from the Fox’s book, Mr. Apples. We’ll turn those tea cakes into hellburners.”
“God’s arse, I haven’t had one in years. Spoons, can ye make tea cakes?”
“One thing at a time,” Mabbot said. “If we get out of these waters alive, we’ll find you some cakes.”
All hands were busy setting sail or transforming the radiant Rose into a grey crone—all hands except Bai, who sat out of the way on the bowsprit near old Pete. Mabbot had just breathed life back into Asher, but she left Bai alone. Perhaps she could not bring herself to ask more of the man who had now lost the last of his family. I had heard that twins shared a soul, and seeing his vacant eyes stare at the horizon, I could believe that his had indeed floated away on the planks with his sister.
While the crew went to work, Mabbot walked proudly to her cabin where, once the door closed, she collapsed and slept through an entire watch.
Tuesday, November 23
It is not Sunday, but Mabbot’s recovery has earned us both a meal. Taking advantage, perhaps, of her weakened state, I talked her into letting me snip a handful of the curling green sprouts from the base of her largest ferns and whisk them away to the galley.
The rabbit’s bones and innards went to the broth, and now, with Mabbot awake and rallying, I took the time to check on the meat. It was still tough and in need of a little more aging. Instead I resorted to an ancient and knobby lobster that Kitzu had been keeping in a barrel since he caught it off the shores of Macau.
It is, admittedly, a base foodstuff, but lobster, well prepared, can nevertheless be made to satisfy the distinguished gourmand. I fried the moss-colored tomalley and glittering roe with chopped onion and a little flour, marveling as the heat turned the gravy a succulent orange. The meat I poached in sieved brine with a splash of vinegar, the tender shoots, and a drizzle of black soy liquor.
This meal of poached lobster and fiddlehead ferns with tomalley sauce we ate in Mabbot’s bed, eschewing both table and attire. We left the warmth of the blankets only to refill our cups with wine from the Trinity barrel. For dessert we ate one of the pomelos that hung like promises from the branches of Mabbot’s tree.
Citing modesty and a well-deserved hangover, I must edit the engagements that occupied us until daybreak, and offer instead a few notes:
1. Much has been written about the relationship between culinary and concupiscent appetites and their mutually amplifying properties; it is all true.
2. Before this adventure, Owen Wedgwood was a dour and prudish man, and poor Elizabeth was married to him. But Mabbot has kneaded, seasoned, and simmered me. Acts that before would have seemed wanton and carnal, now come naturally. The body is beyond reproach.
3. Since childhood, I have had trouble imagining heaven, for, I’ll say it, the descriptions have always disappointed. All my life, I have secretly searched for a credible glimpse of eternal bliss, in fern-floored groves, in echoing cathedrals, and in the iridescent surface of a perfect stock. Had anyone told me I would have found it upon a pirate ship, I would have struck them down with a ladle. To those imagined persons, I offer an apology.
Wednesday, November 24
I had risen from the luxury of Mabbot’s sheets to make tea, remembering that the little silver pot lifted from the Patience had been stowed with the tea itself and therefore might have escaped the jettison. I had just found it and was on my
way back toward the companionway when Mr. Apples appeared and pulled me rather roughly by the arm to the lower deck hatch. Though he was still limping from his gunshot wounds, we moved so quickly that the pot chimed on the bulkheads as we rounded them. He pushed me into the pit without the courtesy of a ladder, and I found myself in the bottom of the bilge where the cold blood of the sea chilled the wood. It was a part of the boat I rarely visited for the sense of drowning it invoked.
Here Mr. Apples gripped my shoulders and lifted me bodily into the air. Even in the dim taper light I could see that his eyes were red from sleeplessness, and the stress of the recent days twined the muscles of his neck into cords.
He shook me and whispered harshly, “I know what you’ve done in there with the captain! I haven’t had a single moment to do anything about it until now.”
I went limp, knowing it was folly to try to resist. I was going to die here in the bilge with a teapot in my hand. How had I not seen that Mr. Apples loved her? Of course he did. I closed my eyes, ready for the blow, but it didn’t come.
Without setting me down, he hugged the breath out of me. “Thank you,” he said into my ear. “I was sure she was doing the airy waltz.”
“Say what?”
“I thought she’d ducked into the circus tent, gone to see the show. The bone jig. I thought sure she was shark food.”
“She’s … strong,” I stammered.
“Well, your soups pulled her through. We’re all indebted. And not just your soups, I gather.” He winked and left me there, and I took a moment to consider my strange life. I was trying to pull myself up without dropping the pot when I smelled something familiar. The air down there was musty and dank, but the odor I had detected was an altogether different offense.
I followed it aft toward the rudder, passing through murky chambers filled with cannonballs and heaps of heavy line. The odor compelled me to squeeze past the massive barrels of wine that served as ballast, fearing they would roll and crush me. With every step, the smell grew stronger, and now water was running in rivulets over my boot. I heard a muffled hammering. I moved slowly, not trusting my step. Soon enough I was ankle-deep in the fluid. Wondering if the barrels had broken, I dipped my finger and tasted it: fresh brine, not wine and not the stale sludge of bilge water.
In the aft chamber of the boat, deep below Mabbot’s cabin, I became aware of a figure in the shadows. Water flowed past me at an alarming rate.
“Conrad!” I shouted. “What is going on? What is this?”
He rushed out of the shadows, and only because my limbs were still tingling from the fright Mr. Apples had given me was I able to move quickly enough to evade his attack. We both slipped on the planks of the submerged deck, I upon my arse and he face-first. He scrambled upright holding a large cooper’s chisel that he had been knocking holes in the hull with. I tried to regain my footing, but he was upon me again, plunging the chisel at my face and hissing, “Think I don’t see through yer tricks?”
Only by frantic squirming did I avoid his thrusts. I rolled and, without thinking, swung the teapot for his head.
There is a reason I am a chef and not a fighter. Hoping to knock him senseless, I instead only flayed open his brow, which sent a torrent of blood over his cheek. He fell to the floor and I stood above him, much conflicted. By the smell of the rum that mingled with his customary odors, I could tell he had been lurking in the holds drinking for quite some time.
“You’ll sink us! For what?” I demanded.
“Lubber loses a foot and thinks he’s a sailor?” he croaked. “I give years to the Rose, but when I got shot, I lay in the berths with the rest, begging for a sip of water. Everyone knows you’re cavortin’ in her cabin! Why you and not me? Because you can talk French. Shove a fig into a bit of hardtack and call it ‘Springtime Fancy Pudding.’ Charlatans, the both of you. She pretends to be a real captain, but she’s nothing more than a slattern hungry for a poke. I saw you dressed for an opera walking the deck like a panderer and his trollop. And the hunt for the precious Fox that whittled our days to the marrowbone—what does it get us? Nothin’ but the dead son of a whore.”
Crawling toward the chisel, he said, “And now she wants to take us into the hornet’s nest? For a grudge! We’ve already got our silver, but she’ll sail us straight to the bottom before we can spend a shilling. I’ll not die for that. Better to wait for Laroche to catch up. He’ll show mercy to them what show sense and cooperation.”
As he pulled himself to his feet, I kicked him hard in the chest with my peg. I heard his collarbone snap, and he fell back into the rising water. I took up the chisel and called for help. Just when I was trying to figure out how to carry Conrad to the upper decks myself, Mr. Apples stuck his head through the aft hatch and said, “What’s the holler? Are ye being murdered down there?”
“Saboteur!” I screamed. “I’ve found him!”
Mr. Apples brought a lantern and stood over Conrad with disgust plain on his face—no doubt considering whether to kill him on the spot. While Kitzu surveyed the damage in the hull, Mr. Apples tied Conrad hand and foot and carried him over his shoulder like a side of pork to the officers’ saloon. We listened to Conrad’s painful wheezing while we waited for Mabbot to enter and take her seat as judge. When she did, Mr. Apples shut the door against the crew who had gathered in curiosity. I was explaining what happened, breathless myself, when Conrad wheezed, “Lies.”
He spoke in short bursts, for his collarbone was now grinding with every breath. “The man lies,” he said. “I found him chopping the holes. I tried to stop him, but he overcame me and broke my chest.”
Mabbot gazed steadily at me and panic poured into my ears. I had not imagined having to defend my own innocence. My jaw went slack. Mabbot asked me, “Do you have proof, Owen Wedgwood, as I demanded? Proof, I said, or no accusations could be made.”
Mr. Apples started to speak, but Mabbot cut him off. “Let them speak for themselves.” I was aghast.
“Proof?” I held out the chisel lamely. “But I took this from him. No, I have no proof, save what is clear before you. There was no time—I did not think.”
“You know, Wedge, the punishment for accusation without proof is loss of an ear.”
“Captain,” whispered Conrad. “Forgive me, I was too surprised to overcome him.” He seemed to believe the fantasy, and I wondered then if syphilis or some other seaborne worm had nibbled his sense to tatters.
“The hull sprung, and two men emerge bloody from the bilge,” Mabbot said loudly enough for the crew outside to hear. “But Conrad has been with us for so long, and now he’s wounded, and Wedge holds the weapon. Who would want our demise more than our disgruntled captive?”
At this Conrad smiled like a baby. This Mabbot terrified me—this was the voice she used to order theater paint and floggings. With the crew listening at the shutters, Mabbot could give me no quarter. My relationship with her meant nothing—worse than nothing, as the crew would want to know for certain that she wasn’t playing favorites.
“I saw him on the night of the steerage explosion,” Conrad went on. “I saw him pour the pitch myself, but I had no proof, so I waited and watched him. It was only by this vigilance that I caught him tonight.”
“The steerage fire?” Mabbot asked. “You saw him then?”
“I did, Captain. I swear by it,” Conrad croaked.
She knelt beside the man and, while looking at him, spoke to me. “Here, Wedge, is your proof. His lies condemn him. The night of the steerage fire—”
“I was asleep,” I blurted. “I dreamed … a woman came to me—” Her swift glare shut my mouth and told me that she remembered all too clearly the events of that evening.
“No one wants to hear your ridiculous dreams. Enough that you were locked in your chamber, weren’t you?”
“Yes. Mr. Apples had locked me in.”
“And now, Mr. Apples, you were saying?”
“Only that Spoons was with me below—he weren’t the one making tro
uble there.”
The crew outside murmured as they passed the verdict to those who couldn’t hear.
Conrad opened his mouth to speak, but Mabbot drew a blade from her boot and placed the tip of it upon his tongue and held him there; his eyes became egg yolks rolling in a bowl. From his throat came the sounds of a cat.
“He said he merely wished to slow us, to surrender to Laroche.” I was hoping to soften things for him somehow—to let them know that he didn’t want to sink us outright, but at this the crew outside began to shout, pounding upon the door.
Mabbot nodded at Mr. Apples and he ducked out and roared, “Is this a ship or a menagerie? All men to the foredeck.”
As the crew dispersed, I begged Mabbot. “I want to claim my reward. Keep the gold. Only do not torture this man. I ask this favor. Do not mutilate … Oh, for God’s sake. I beg you.”
She crouched there for some time, and I thought she might gut him like a trout with that blade.
Mr. Apples returned with a satchel from Conrad’s locker—inside was a cask of water, waxed bags of figs, hardtack, and two ingots of silver. I shuddered—except for the silver, it could have been my own escape provisions poured out onto the table.
“What was it, Conrad?” asked Mabbot. “Row for land in a longboat while we ran about bailing the water from the bilge? Or did you fancy Laroche would give you a cut of my bounty?”
Conrad was silent, though. His gaze was fixed on the middle distance; he had retreated to a place somewhere deep inside himself. Even his breathing seemed easier.
“I’m begging you, Captain. Show him mercy.”
Mabbot told Mr. Apples to lock Conrad away.
When they had left, she gripped my throat, but instead of choking me, this time her hand was soft. “Wedge, what are you doing to me?” she growled.
Then she let me go and collapsed back into her chair with a sigh. “I’m afraid I might have contributed to this particular mess,” she said, running her hand over her shorn scalp. “Before you inspired me to take on a personal chef, I got it into my head that all Conrad needed was inspiration. I tried to get him to make some of the dishes I remembered, spotted dick, mince pie, that sort of thing. Poor soul, he took it very seriously. It was demeaning for both of us. I tried to coach him but—”