Cook pointed out two empty tubs. “For washing. For rinsing. I’ll help ya by getting the saltwater for washing. You get the fresh for rinsing. Are you simple, boy? In the hold, down below. Hurry now. Wait—don’t forget the buckets.”
She scurried away with a pail in each hand. Noticing Jem nearby, busy oiling a squat, fat cannon on a slide, she asked, “How do I get down to the hold?”
He directed her, and she raced down three narrow sets of stairs, finding the hold. The casks of water stood to one side, and she filled both buckets. Gripping the pails—perhaps thirty pounds between the two of them—she mounted the first step of the ladder.
Well, nervousness will do you no good, Marley.
And at that moment a rat raced along the rail to her left. She stifled her own scream, but her reflexive jerk toward the right unbalanced her, and down she tumbled, back into the hold, dropping the buckets.
Great start here. Bruised rear, soaked legs, and wasted freshwater. As she refilled the pails, stinging from pain, she focused on how it could have been worse. She could’ve broken her tailbone. She could have spilled the water all over, rendering her disguise useless. She plucked the clinging pants away from her thighs and went on counting her blessings as she stiffened her spine and headed up.
At the top, she almost shouted for joy—until she spied the remaining two flights.
Up she went.
In the galley she found Cook scrubbing the plates, occasionally sprinkling in a handful of sand. When she carried her buckets to the rinsing tub, she saw it already filled.
“Almost forgot.” He gestured to the other wall. “There’s two casks of fresh water, here.”
She stared from the casks to Cook, scratching one soggy calf with her other foot, the toe already poking at the threadbare stocking. The wiry old man grinned at her, baring exactly four teeth.
“Ah, that’ll teach you, lad. Listen to your master, but use your head. You can’t always trust your master. He may be a wicked old man ain’t been to Confession since he was a wee one.”
With as little expression, as little pitch that might reveal her as a woman, as possible, she asked, “Sir, what’s your real name?”
“Padraig. Got tired of mealy-mouthed boys calling me Paddy, so I go by Cook. Why do you ask?”
She took the dish he was feverishly scrubbing. “I don’t know anyone on board, Padraig. It’s good to have a friend.”
He gave an impatient noise and a dismissive wave. “When those dishes are clean and dry and stacked away, get going on those potatoes.”
She set her mind to getting through the chores as quickly as she could. Fortunately she’d learned the joy of work as a child, and she found enjoyment passing the next hour.
Jem reappeared just as she was placing the peeled potatoes in a gigantic kettle.
“Sir, can you spare the boy while I show him some of his other duties?”
With a scowl and a wave of his hand and a sparkle in his eye he couldn’t conceal, he dismissed his helper. “It’ll be waiting for ye when ye get back.”
Jem led her down one deck and down the passage. “Now usually most of your duties have to do with the captain. But this voyage is different, seeing as we have ladies on board. The captain doesn’t like traveling with ladies, but we didn’t have no choice in the matter. The colony needs marriageable ladies. So the thing is, he don’t want ’em up on deck. So everything they do—eat, shit, piss—it all goes on in this room.”
Delightful.
They arrived at a door, and the noise inside set her teeth on edge. Even in school, she had disliked giggling girls.
“Your duties with the women are to take them their meals, empty the chamber pots, swab the deck. There’ll also be laundry day before we make Boston. I’ll help you with the chamber pots this morning, but this evening, it’s all yours.”
When Jem opened the door, the feminine voices rose in feigned sexual interest. Instinctively, she knew this was likely to be the toughest part of her job.
A dozen or so women were scattered around the room, half on crates, playing cards. The rest sat alone, grooming themselves, or in pairs, chatting. When they glimpsed Jem and her, their voices rose, no doubt relieved from the tedium of solitude.
The women swarmed them. “And who’s your handsome young friend, Jem?”
This from a woman who appeared to be their leader. She propped one foot on a crate and eyed Marley with frank sexual interest.
“This is Marley, Miss Kit. He’ll help you from now on.”
“Oh, he looks helpful indeed.” She straightened, bringing her boot to the ground with a bang and then sauntering toward Marley. Her eyes glimmered with desire.
Holy cow, this was awkward. Marley knew her acting skills were dismal, and she lowered her eyes, noting with great sadness how filthy this floor was. What did these women do all day, have spitting contests?
She raised her eyes again to the woman named Kit, startled at her beauty. Jet-black hair and luminous gray eyes. However, this was eclipsed by the sudden confusion in the woman’s gaze, as if she didn’t know quite what to make of Marley.
As if she knew the truth.
At last, the woman laughed, pinched her on the rear, and turned back to the tittering women. “You can have him, girls. He can’t be more than 12 or 13.”
The women screamed with laughter.
Marley exhaled as quietly as possible. These were not well-bred ladies. Perhaps they’d leave her alone.
“Go on, now, ladies,” Jem said, awkwardly placing an arm between them and Marley. “He’s here to work, and he’s already scared as a little bunny. He don’t need your help there.”
Two huge chamber pots stood in the corner, and Marley was relieved they were at least covered. They were also quite full, however, and the smell choked her.
Jem showed Marley how to empty the chamber pots directly into the ocean without splashing their awful contents everywhere. He then directed her to take a pail full of seawater and mop back with them. “When you do this tomorrow, take the mop and pail with you when you go. Save you a trip.”
“Do the women never leave their cabin?”
“No. It would be easier, wouldn’t it?”
She nodded at him with wide eyes.
“Captain says there would be anarchy. Plus they couldn’t use the head anyway. Men would be gawking.”
“What about their beds? Do they make them themselves?”
“Captain says no one’s to touch their beds. I’ll leave you to it, and be back soon for your last morning chore.”
As she mopped around the base of the beds, she realized the structure wasn’t a bed. They slept on crates, covered with thick quilts.
Sudden understanding swept her. These women weren’t faint-hearted Christian maidens; they were prostitutes, ensconced over the crates as decoys.
Here, she was certain, was the gunpowder she had read about in Hawk’s hidden ship’s log.
She finished scrubbing a corner then walked to retrieve her bucket and leave.
One of the women kicked over the bucket—slyly, as if by accident.
Another woman squealed. “Mary! ’Tis the first time this floor—or deck, or whatever you call it—hasn’t been sticky all week. You—”
And a fight was on, with the women scratching and clawing and sliding down into the filthy water, yanking at each other’s hair. Marley was alarmed to see one hand come away with a clump of hair, until she realized it was a hairpiece.
“Stop it, now.” The quiet voice in the corner boomed into the fray.
She noticed the older woman dozing there. Apparently a housemother of sorts, watching over the young ladies.
She sighed and started mopping up. Again.
Padraig had the midday meal ready for the women, and Marley delivered it to the table set up in their cabin, hastily setting out the dishes. Jem followed behind with two heavily laden trays stacked with tankards of beer.
“One thing I forgot,” Jem said as they left the
women. “Never take a candle in there. Do your last visit before dark.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know the answer to that. I think the old hag who watches over them is afraid of fire. She growled at me one time when I forgot.”
Confirming Marley’s suspicion about the gunpowder.
Her final chore of the morning took her back to where she’d started. The great cabin of the captain.
When Jem knocked and heard a deep voice greet him, he ducked his head inside. “Didn’t know you’d be in here, sir. We can come back later.”
“No. We’re finished.”
“Sir, we’re so sorry. The women’s cabin took longer than we expected, and …”
Hawk waved them in. “Don’t give it a second thought, Jem. We scraped out a meal, as you can see.”
He sat in the captain’s chair, one ankle crossed over the other knee, drinking from a tankard. Raven sat at the table, across from a man Marley didn’t know. All three were drinking, enjoying an inside joke of some sort. The unknown man met Marley’s gaze and gave a brusque nod.
Hawk spoke with distant politeness. “Philip Deming, this is Marley, my new cabin boy. Jem is training him.”
Marley noticed the same lingering glance from Deming that she’d seen in Kit—as if each of them knew a secret about her that even she didn’t know.
She ducked her head and bowed stiffly, as she’d seen Jem bow to the captain the night before.
She avoided the captain’s gaze, troubled to realize that the reminder of her was painful to him. Not only did he no longer trust her—through no fault of her own—he clearly regretted his intimacy with her. At the moment, he seemed unaware of her.
Between her aching back, her blistered feet and hands, and the low blood sugar from her empty stomach, she was able to put him out of mind, although he was less than ten feet away.
She’d only thought she’d tidied the room this morning. Jem showed her otherwise. First she dusted the room and his books and instruments, then Jem gave her a small pot of wax and set her to polishing the teak covering nearly every surface in the room. Then, she changed the bed linens, replacing them with fresh linens from a cupboard. By the time she began sweeping the rug and mopping the rest of the floor, the men and Jem were gone. She stacked the men’s dishes and glasses on the tray, straightened their chairs, washed and polished the table, and left the room with the heavy-laden tray.
A time for lunch failed to present itself, and she found purpose and distraction in the never-ending work on board the ship. By the time the dinner dishes had been done, she realized she was weak from hunger, but was also way too tired to care.
The captain’s cabin was dark and deserted when she arrived, as spotless as she’d left it. She stood in the center of the room in the waning light of sunset slanting through the window, uncertain about what she’d intended to do.
“Oh. Right,” she said to the room.
She shuffled into the hallway for a lantern, brought it into the cabin, and lit a candle. Quickly she lit a few others along with three lanterns over the captain’s table. She replaced the whale oil lantern on its hook in the hall, then sat in the daybed to await the captain’s further directions for the day.
All simple details of living in the eighteenth century that she’d known academically in her old life, but that she had learned firsthand today as she grew acquainted with this huge, insatiable mistress of a ship and her constant demands.
For a moment, all the aches in her body cried out against the simple action of sitting down. Then, a moment later, the rush of joy over resting filled her, her head clunked against the wall of the alcove, and she fell asleep sitting up.
Chapter Twelve
A weary, moody Hawk worked through the second dog watch, until the sun vanished into the water and the moon rose high overhead. He’d worked harder that day than he’d worked in years, purely to exhaust himself. He wished for the dozenth time in the past week that he’d never stopped to fish that awkward, impossible, beguiling woman from the surf.
The thought of her disappearing unknown into the surf left a little hole in him. An awkward, impossible little hole.
Today had marked Marley’s second day serving as a cabin boy. Last night he had stayed in Raven’s cabin—as lavish as his own, one deck below—to avoid her. He had slept little.
He’d seen her, bedraggled and limping, descending toward his cabin at the end of the day, but he wanted to be too tired to do anything near her except sleep. Yesterday morning, he’d thought his anger greater than anything he’d ever felt toward any woman. He’d awakened and with the daylight was able to see his hidden compartment ajar, the papers inside in disarray—and he knew her betrayal.
She knew everything. Nothing could explain her actions except treachery.
Then he’d watched her, yesterday and today, without her knowing, watched her tote pails and tubs almost larger than she, watched her hurry to obey Jem’s orders without complaining. He’d watched her labor today, unaided and unbidden.
She’d never spotted him, simply going about her chores quickly and quietly—as hard a worker as any man here. He’d watched her on her hands and knees in his cabin buffing the teak carvings around his windows and bookshelves. And his admiration—his affection—for her had deepened.
His cabin indeed. When he’d brought Raven and Deming to his chambers the day before for the noon meal, he’d seen her everywhere. A room where he’d lived for over a decade now. He had watched the stars countless times with Raven, with Michael, the same way he had with her.
Now that isn’t quite true, is it?
Good God, no. He’d been delighted that night when he’d learned Jem had knifed the second hammock, had lain awake watching the stars with her sleeping contentedly against his side for hours before he rose to take her to his bed to sleep. And again holding her that night, he’d slept a better, sounder sleep than he had in years.
There was no logical explanation for her appearance than that she had come from the British warship—and yet nothing in her spoke of anything except a desire to please him.
So, he told himself, she was competent at treachery.
There. With that thought, he was ready.
He headed below.
His cabin was nearly dark, aside from lanterns she’d lit over his table and a single candle. His bed was still made.
Where was she?
He peered around the room, then lit a candelabra. There she was, nearly hidden in the daybed, curled into a ball in the corner, her head at an awkward angle, as if she’d fallen and gone straight to sleep. Her face was nearly covered by her pathetic knit cap. He lit the candle in the sconce there and stooped beside her, planning to move her to the bed.
She was filthy.
He touched her fingers, feeling blisters and dried blood where a nail had broken into the quick and bled unnoticed. He removed her cap gently. Dust and grime covered her face. Her hair was sticky. What the hell had Jem had her doing?
At the door, he called to a sailor on watch. “Have a hot bath brought up.”
“Sir?”
“Fresh water. Rouse Jem if you have to.”
“Aye, sir.”
Presently the bath was brought into the room, and she slept through the ruckus that entailed. An extra bucket of warm water sat beside the filled tub, and Hawk closed and barred the door. He dropped a towel over a chair near the tub, then approached the daybed.
He knelt at her feet and slipped his fingers into the tops of her stockings—an old, worn pair of his—and pulled one down. Where the sole had been before, it was now tattered strips and threads, and utter filth. When he sought to draw the piece all the way off, it was stuck. He tried to find where it was caught on her breeches, but he went still. A strip of the tattered sole was embedded in her foot. He gently tried to pull it loose, and she cried out.
He stopped.
She’d worked for fourteen hours today and the same yesterday with no shoes. For most of the crusty sal
ts on the Adventurer, it posed no threat. But she was a woman, no doubt accustomed to finery. Like perhaps decent shoes.
He stripped off the other sock without incident, but he touched her feet lightly, finding them covered with broken blisters. He quickly removed the rest of her clothes, took her to the tub, and almost set her down in the water. He noticed the pillbox she always wore, and he removed it and slipped her into the water. She gasped and splashed, her legs sprawled out of the water. He ducked away from her flailing limbs.
“Shh.” He stroked her hair, then tucked her foot with its dangling sock attached into the water. “Relax. Go back to sleep, if you like.”
“Just so tired.” She yawned and was asleep again.
He leaned her head back against the lip of the copper tub—it couldn’t be comfortable for her, but she was mostly submerged in the water, at least. He slipped a knife from his boot and trimmed her broken nail, as best he could.
With gentle patience he soaped her face and hair, then moved down her body. By the time he reached her feet, the soaking had loosened the stocking, and he dropped it beside the tub.
He’d known women in Paris who had delicate, decadent soaps they guarded as if they were cherished pets. He wished he had those soaps now to tend Marley’s wounds. The soap he had was neither decadent nor delicate.
He worked up a lather and washed her hands and arms, then her legs and those abused feet. When she was clean and the water grimy, he trickled the fresh water in the pail over her, through her hair, leaving her clean and well-scrubbed.
He gently twisted the towel around her thick, unruly hair, then whispered her name, bringing her to her feet. She stood there sleepily, her head hanging.
The candlelight glistened in the droplets of water clinging to her, the curve of her throat, the fullness of her breasts and hips, the slimness of her waist.
Would that this were a different moment.
He toweled her off and had her step out of the tub where he dried her feet. He lay her in the center of his bed, then found a fresh pair of comfortable stockings—some of his favorite—and a tin of ointment. He daubed it on her blistered feet and covered them with his stockings, then just a bit on her palms.
Immortal (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Book 2) Page 11