Alive.
I moved to the corner where she lay and crouched beside her. We sat there together, breathing. I began to hum.
The bear groaned. She shifted her body someway and turned her head toward me. She gave a hoarse little roar, right into my face—a faint echo of her earlier roars, as if to tell me she was still not happy with what had befallen. She clambered to her feet and began to sniff about the edges of her cage, walking with that pigeon-toed shuffle and nary a limp about her.
A cheer went up from the men. The bear ignored it. The captain called out to me, “Inspect the cage, boy. Make sure she can’t escape.” I did, noting that one corner of the cage had splintered some deck planking and that a few of the bars had bent a little, though not so far as to leave a bear-sized gap. I tugged at every bar, and none came loose. The door, though, no longer fit rightly—it was latched, but hung askew. The entire cage had gone a bit awry, and one of the hinges had twisted.
When I told the captain what I had seen, he sent two sailors to repair the hinge while I stayed near the bear to calm her. After they had done, the captain called to me, “Move your feet, boy, what are you waiting for? The men have real work to do, and you’re standing in our way.”
They came pouring across the gangplank, then, a wave of racket and turmoil. I found a quiet spot near the prow and stood watching, wondering if there had been a single day in my life before now when I had run toward trouble rather than away.
PART II
THE NORTH SEA
CHAPTER 11
Dung
AND SO WE set sail on a clear and breezy morning in early June. The great, square, red-and-gold–striped shroud bellied out before us, and men scampered up and down the ratlines, calling out to one another and singing as they worked. The wind tugged at my hair and clothing, and the salt air cleared my head, and a hopeful, buoyant feeling arose within me—the kind of feeling you have when you are off on a great adventure, and the world feels large and full of possibility, and it seems as if even the ill-favored stepson of a farmer might sail into another realm entirely, riding into battle as the trusted companion of princes.
I paced the deck, jumping out of the seamen’s way from time to time and watching them at their work with not a small bit of envy, for I knew I wasn’t one of them; I was still only a boy-man, still only the keeper of the bear.
Which soon became all too clear.
“Boy!”
A seaman, solid as a barrel and shaped just the same, strode toward me across the deck. His face was deeply tanned and creased with many wrinkles, and a braided pigtail, streaked with gray, hung down his back. He thrust a long-handled hoe at me, and then a pail, and then he pointed in the direction of the bear cage. “It’s time to earn your keep.”
It was the loose kind, the kind that jiggles in a heap, like meat jelly cooling on a platter. Like a dozen good-sized meat jellies, all massed in a steaming mound. It was different from horse dung or sheep dung, which I had cleaned up many times before. This was bigger. Blacker. Wetter. Worse still, when the ship rolled, the mound shuddered and swayed, then crept along the floor of the bear’s cage like a giant mollusk, leaving a wide, brown, slimy trail behind.
It reeked. I breathed through my mouth to mute the smell of it, but it burned my throat and stung my eyes. I glanced at the bear, who was sprawled in the far corner of her cage in an attitude of sleeping, and yet one eye remained open and seemed to be watching me. I gripped the hoe’s handle and thrust it between the iron bars, reaching for the mound of dung.
The ship pitched. I grabbed for one of the bars to keep from falling. The mound lurched away from me and zigzagged across the cage floor, now well out of reach of my hoe.
“Would you hurry up with that?” one of the seamen yelled. “It stinks to high heaven!”
I found my balance, gripped the hoe in one hand and the pail in another, and edged round the cage, closer to where the dung had settled. I set down the pail, poked the hoe between the bars, and reached for the mound. I nearly had it, until the ship rocked again. I hacked off a chunk of dung and held it in place, but another chunk—the larger one, nine or ten meat jellies’ worth—skidded off in yet a different direction.
I drew in the captured bit and pulled it between the bars. I turned round to fetch the pail, but it had rolled away from me. I reached for it, dropping the hoe. The ship lurched again; I flung out my arms for balance, stepping into the pile of captive dung. My feet slipped out from under me; I hit down on one hip, splattering dung across the deck.
A laugh erupted from the seamen near the bow. “Clumsy oaf,” someone said. The voice was familiar. I looked up and laid eyes on him:
Hauk.
“Filthy!” someone else chimed in.
“You’re stinking up the place.”
“Get moving, Dung Boy.” Hauk, again.
“Dung Boy!” This from the skinny sailor I’d seen earlier with Hauk, the one named Ottar.
I felt heat rise in my face; suddenly, I was warm all over. I took hold of one of the cage bars and hauled myself to my feet. The last mound of dung was slithering away from me. Quickly, before it could escape, I went after it with the hoe. The dung dodged once, dodged twice, but I was on to its tricks now, and with a mighty thrust of the hoe, I trapped it.
Got you!
I was dragging it back toward the pail when the bear, in her corner, yawned, clambered to her feet, and began to piss. Across the floor of the cage came a gushing, foul-smelling torrent. It spurted up the side of the dung heap, submerged it, ran rolling across the deck, and lapped over the toes of my boots.
Laughter roared.
“Dung Boy!”
“I hate you, Bear,” I muttered. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”
CHAPTER 12
Not Like Horses
LATER, AFTER I had scraped the cage floor clean and rinsed it with buckets of salt water; after I had swabbed the soiled part of the deck, hauled up a basketful of fish from the hold, and tossed them one by one into the cage for the bear; after I had rubbed off the muck from my cloak and tunic, rinsed out my stockings, and scraped and stowed my boots, deciding to go barefoot like most of the crew . . . After all of that, the old seaman who had told me to earn my keep appeared beside me, told me to fetch my spoon from the storeroom, and led me to the prow, where a man was setting out hardtack biscuits and wooden bowls of cod stew. The second man greeted the older one by name—Thorvald—and handed him a bowl, which Thorvald passed along to me. “Eat hearty,” he said, then took a bowl for himself and squatted down among a half dozen younger sailors sitting cross-legged on the deck nearby.
Hauk peered up at me with the unfriendly smile I knew well, a smile my stepbrothers often gave me when they were ranged against me and I had no hope. “Dung Boy,” he muttered, and a couple of others snorted.
Thorvald skewered them all with a hard, sweeping glance; they turned away and took to their various pursuits—some tucking into their meals, a few playing cards or dice, and one of them—Hauk’s minion, the thin Ottar—whittling a stick of wood.
I took my spoon and ate. Soon, talk rose around me—gossip—mostly about men I didn’t know. But when the topic veered to the doctor, I pricked up my ears. He had formerly been King Haakon’s physician, they said, but he had botched a minor surgery on the king’s favorite niece, leaving her face badly scarred. The king had been enraged. He had dismissed the doctor from his service and, as further punishment, assigned him to tend to the bear on its way to London. If the bear arrived sick or injured, well, there were many theories as to what would befall the doctor, but all agreed that the penalty would be dire.
Somebody called for Thorvald, who clambered stiffly to his feet and set off toward the captain’s quarters in the sterncastle.
“Dung Boy.” Hauk, again.
Snickers.
A copper-haired seaman said, “Hauk, that was your duty when we had horses aboard, but nobody called you names for it.”
“I just cleaned it up,
Ketil; I didn’t chase it.”
Ottar looked up from his whittling and guffawed.
“Well,” Ketil said, “it’s not like horses, is it? Mind what that beast did to the doctor. I saw his arm right after. Sliced clear to the bone, it was.”
The others grew suddenly sober. One man crossed himself; another muttered and shook his head.
“Just the same,” Hauk said, “he stole my supper last night, and so now . . .”
He lunged at my bowl and speared my last hunk of cod with his knife.
Staring directly into my face, he took a bite and chewed with obvious relish.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flickering of glances. Ottar let out an uneasy snicker; the rest looked down and away.
I knew I ought to fight to get my dinner back. But Hauk was bigger and stronger, and right now, I was too heart-weary to try.
CHAPTER 13
These Selfsame Stars
THAT NIGHT, I wrapped myself up in the sheepskin bedroll Thorvald had given me and curled up on the deck among some of the other seamen, listening to the unfamiliar sounds. The constant swish of the sea. The creak of the mast, the snap and whisper of the sail. The muffled thuds and scrapes of cargo shifting below.
Someone snored nearby. Someone else mumbled in his sleep. And, farther off but still unmistakable, I heard the thump thump thump of the pacing of the bear.
She was restless tonight.
I drew my head down within the folds of my cloak, trying to muffle the sound, but I couldn’t block out the memory of her crashing to the deck in her cage, and her hoarse little roar of complaint.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I flung back my cloak, turned over onto my back, and gazed up at the stars, glimmering through a milky-bright wash of moonlight. All at once, I wondered if Mama was looking at these selfsame stars right now. Maybe she couldn’t sleep either, tonight, wondering where I was.
Had they searched for me? Scoured the sheds, the boathouse, the caves high in the fells? Had they spread out to neighboring farms and asked to comb through their byres?
Were they sorry, now that I was gone? Did they wish they’d treated me better?
Mama . . .
Was she missing me now?
Right now?
What kind of son would leave his own dear mother without a word?
A great wave of aching engulfed me. What was I doing here? Why had I left Mama and home? Were they truly so bad, my stepbrothers? Though they were scornful and rough, they hadn’t truly harmed me. It was just . . . hard play. It was how they were. And now I was Dung Boy—no betterment whatsoever.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I sat up. I couldn’t lie here anymore. I slung my knapsack over one shoulder, picked up my bedroll, and tiptoed around the sleeping bodies until I came to the bear in her cage.
“You can’t sleep either?” I asked her. Softly, so no one could hear me talking to a bear. She swung her great head in my direction and kept on with her pacing.
I sat beside the cage and took the letter from my knapsack. In the moonlight, the ink strokes stood out clear against the parchment. I drew a finger down the page and picked out the word that Mama had recognized as my father’s name: Morcan. Then I sought out the word she had guessed was my own: Arthur.
So often had Mama told me about the place where I was born that I could summon it clearly in imagination. A place between the shoulders of the mountains and the curved plane of the salt marsh that swept down to the blue gray of the sea. A place of many mists and winter rains, of pastures ringed about with rowan and oak, a place that was green all the yearlong.
I could see myself, now, standing before the high timber gate to the castle. It would creak open, and . . . Surely the four princes, David’s nephews, must recollect my father. Surely they would embrace me as my father’s heir and a true son of Wales.
A soft grunt startled me. The bear, no longer pacing. She gazed at me, her black nose sniffing at the air. I held myself perfectly still. For a long moment we held each other’s eyes. Then she let out a great, heaving sigh, enveloping me in a cloud of fish-smelling bear-breath, and lowered herself to the ground. She pressed her head against the bars, rubbing one ear against them, and then the other.
I folded the letter and returned it to my knapsack. I knelt beside the cage and began to hum. I knew she was dangerous—a wild animal—but in that moment, she brought to mind my old dog, Loki, who often kept me company when I was lonesome. Who loved when I scratched behind his ears.
The bear’s head was massive, nearly the size of my chest, but her ears were rounded, furry half circles no bigger than the palm of my hand.
I reached out my fingers.
Drew them back.
Reached them out.
Drew them back.
Reached them out.
And, still humming, let my fingers graze one of her ears.
The ear twitched. Hesitant, I stroked the fur just behind it. She pushed her head against my hand, as Loki used to do when he craved a deeper scratch. I dug my fingers all the way down to the black skin beneath the white-gold fur. The bear groaned. She turned her head and presented her other ear for me to scratch.
I scratched and hummed. Hummed and scratched. Clouds of fluff came off her and wafted into the air; she must be molting. Her body heat warmed my hand.
At last she sighed and turned away. She sprawled out flat onto her belly, splaying her legs in all directions. One foot pushed back partly through the cage bars near me, pressing against my knee.
The moon was setting now. The stars burned bright against the distant sky.
I wondered if bears ever noticed stars, or thought about them. I wondered if somewhere a young bear was gazing up at these selfsame stars and yearning for his mother.
CHAPTER 14
River of Blood
AT FIRST IT looked to be an uneventful voyage. The weather held clear; the wind, brisk. We sailed south, into the waters beyond the tip of Norway, and along the coastline of the Danish peninsula. We stopped at a couple of ports along the way to restock our food and water.
The bear soon grew accustomed to the rocking of the ship. She flexed and stretched as the deck rolled beneath our feet and often hoisted her great black nose into the air to sniff, seeming to read signs in the wind as learned men read markings on parchment. And, though she did not pace as constantly as before, I could feel a great, restless longing in her, a longing to be free and away.
As for me, I was hungry. For three days, Hauk stole the better part of my supper, leaving only bits of biscuit when it pleased him. I tried taking my bowl and eating apart from the others, but Hauk followed me. I tried stuffing the food into my mouth the moment the cook gave it to me, but Hauk slapped me on the back until I choked. I tried gulping bits of the bear’s raw fish when no one was looking, but after that, my belly roiled all night.
Even worse than the hunger was the shame—how some averted their eyes from me when Hauk pinched my food or called me “Dung Boy”; how Ottar parroted Hauk’s taunts; how others regarded me with silent pity. The slights and jeers of my stepbrothers reached out to me from across the waters, reminding me that, while my father had been a nobleman who rode with the prince of Wales, I myself was of no account.
On the fourth day Hauk was there at the stewpot, waiting for me. As the cook reached to give me my bowl, Hauk took it in my stead. “He’s giving me his from now on, aren’t you, Dung Boy?” The cook hesitated. He must have known that Hauk filched most of my supper, but I’d always had a chance at it before. I could feel the eyes of all the others on me.
Ottar said, “Dung Boy,” and a hot gush of rage spurted up within me. I put down my head like a bull and plowed into Hauk’s belly. I heard an oof, as he staggered backward. I laid about him with fist and foot, and felt a satisfying thump as one fist landed squarely on his ribs and then another. He crashed onto the deck, the bowl flying. I fell upon him again, kicking and swinging, but now his hand was on my face, and another ha
nd pushed hard against my neck, and I couldn’t breathe . . . And before I quite knew how it had happened, I was flat on my back with blows raining down upon every sore and smarting part of me. By the time Thorvald appeared and pulled Hauk off me, I was choking on the thick, salty flood at the back of my throat, and a river of blood was gushing down my chin.
CHAPTER 15
Another Kind of Beast
THE DOCTOR SAT back on his stool. “Well,” he said, “it’s not as bad as I thought.”
He wrung out the bloody rag into the bucket at his feet, then hung it over the rim. He applied a stinking, stinging potion to the cut above my eye. I sat very still, cross-legged on the deck, clenching my teeth against the pain. The doctor stoppered the bottle and stowed it in his sea chest, then picked up my cap and set it back on my head. “There was a lot of blood,” he said. “I feared you might need stitches, but it’s a shallow cut for all that. You’re young—there’ll be more swelling, but you’ll be good as new in a fortnight or so. Your nose has stopped bleeding, and the cuts on your lip and cheek are trifles. You’ll have bruises aplenty on those ribs, but they’ll heal soon enough.”
So if they were all such paltry injuries—trifles!—why was it I could barely see out of one eye, and my head throbbed like thunder, and my chest felt as if it had been kicked by a horse?
The doctor took the lamp and set it back on the bracket that hung from the ceiling. He had taken me to the storeroom, one of two small, enclosed chambers beneath the sterncastle; the other was the captain’s quarters. The tiller ran through a gap between the rooms, and the helmsman stood just outside. “Eat hearty,” the doctor said, “and rest when you can, and—”
“How?” I demanded. “How am I supposed to eat hearty when he takes my food from me every—”
I stopped. I shouldn’t have said anything. My stepbrothers had taught me well the lesson that tattling only makes it worse.
Journey of the Pale Bear Page 4