Quintspinner

by Dianne Greenlay

  “I’ve never sailed,” William replied. “Never been on a stinkin’ boat of any kind. I’m not a sailor. I’m–”

  “You’ll learn, and for yer sake, you’d best be a quick study. You’re a lander fer now, but you’ll be a sailor too. And probably will be for the rest of yer life.” With an upward shrug of his eyebrows Smith added, “However short that may be.”

  William followed Smith through the innards of the ship, its unfamiliarity closing in on him like a poisonous fog. The two of them reached a ladder, which rose through an apparent hatch in the roof, up to the next level of the ship. “This here’s the com-panionway to the main deck, so stay close,” Smith instructed William.

  The daylight was nearly blinding after coming from the darkened midlevel. The fresh sea air, however, was as sweet a thing as William could ever remember inhaling. Each breath was warm and clear, filling William’s lungs with an unexpected sense of pleasure, washing the stew of below-deck stench from his nostrils and lungs.

  He squinted into the sunlight, his eyes tearing up in response to the brightness of it all. Overhead, an airborne maze of riggings supported the white canvases of huge sails which boomed and snapped in response to the wind’s prodding. The riggings were alive with sailors, all scurrying up, down, and sideways, as gracefully as hungry spiders inspecting a web. Beyond the sails, the vast blueness of the sky stretched to the horizon in all directions. Days with such a clear sky were precious few back on the coastline of Britain. William stared in amazement.

  With his eyes having fully adjusted to the light of day, he looked around at his strange new world. The open deck was bustling with young men.

  “Them right here are doin’ drills,” Smith pointed out, “and it’s just such drills what’s supposed to make our Brits such a formidable fightin’ force.” He nodded towards the other end of the open deck. “And them there are doin’ the endless chores what keeps the Navy’s fleet afloat.”

  Twenty or so crew members, some not much older than William himself, marched in unison along the back lines of the deck, handling their weapons in a perfectly choreographed routine, all moving as one body in a synchronized fashion. “Them boys there be the marines,” Smith explained. “They’ll be runnin’ their drills every day and when they be done with that, it’ll be a wee bit of trainin’ fer the rest of us. Backups, sorta. Ever used a gun?”

  William shook his head.

  “No matter,” Smith continued good-naturedly, “’cause they’d not be lettin’ us landers have such a thing anyways. How’s about a hanger?” he asked nodding towards a wicked looking blade gripped by one of the sailors. Again William shook his head, never taking his eyes from the marines’ precise movements. “Ya’ had any weapon use at all?”

  “A skinning knife,” William replied. “I had my own knife back home.”

  “Didcha’ now?” Smith grinned as though he’d unearthed a secret. “A big one, was it?”

  William shrugged his shoulders. “Big enough.”

  “But not a hanger. Could ya’ do more with one than pick yer ear wax?”

  William thought back to his chores at home. For a few moments he imagined himself back in the shed with his father and brother. Slaughtering a pig or goat had been easy enough but a cow or a wild deer had always required much more strength in wielding the blade. And then there was the memory of the smell of the heme, and the warmth of the slippery organs and entrails. William and John had usually managed to turn a day in the slaughter shed into a contest of skills between them. Skinning the carcass as quickly as possible yet carefully enough that the hide was removed intact was William’s specialty. Such a hide could be sold to the tanners for far more than one that had any skinner lacerations through it.

  John had always bested William in the carving up of the carcass, being older and stronger. However, the end of each day in the shed had seen the boys finishing up their brotherly competitions with several rounds of knife throwing. At this, they had been evenly matched. The main difference had been that John was right handed, and William had preferred to use his left.

  His left hand however, bore a congenital peculiarity. His fourth and fifth fingers were webbed together from the middle knuckles to his hand, resulting in his remaining three fingers having developed the strength of a much more powerful grip.

  “Me granddad had a couplin’ with a mermaid what he found washed up on the rocks along the shore, an’ she infused him an’ his future kin with her essence forevermore,” his Da’ had bragged in the pubs. The eloquence of his descriptive words and the outlandish story never failed to earn him a free drink from someone in the crowd. William’s mother had different ideas.

  A left hander was the sign of the Devil, his mother had declared, and she had determinedly insisted from the time he was small, that William learn to use his right hand. He had obligingly done so with a great deal of success but had also continued to use his left in most things, his coordination in both hands therefore becoming equally honed. His keen eyesight had allowed him to hit the target pole at the end of the shed nearly every time.

  “Well do ya’? Eh?” Smith broke into William’s thoughts with his question. “Do ya’ know how to defend yerself?”

  “I don’t know,” William answered truthfully. “Never had to.”

  Smith’s eyes narrowed into dark dangerous slits and he hissed through his lopsided grin, “That opportunity will come about ‘afore ya’ even see it comin’, I ‘spect.”

  The marines were now repeating their drills and William’s attention shifted to the other sailors around him. Several were on their hands and knees, wetting down and scrubbing the wooden planking with stiff brushes made of boar’s bristle; some busied themselves with mops and rags, wetting and polishing. Still others hoisted and adjusted the huge sails, hollering back and forth to their airborne mates overhead, all the while pulling on the riggings strung intricately from each of the ship’s two masts.

  The sailors wore knee length breeches and most were deeply tanned and shirtless; those who sported upper garments wore nearly identical linen shirts, bleached in various shades of white, grime, and sweat. All of the men on deck were shoeless.

  It was only then that William realized his own feet were bare. His footwear had been removed while he had lain unconscious. He glanced down at himself. Although the trousers were his own, he was embarrassed to see that he still wore his nightshirt which hung lopsidedly over the front of his pants. Attempting to tuck it in, William discovered that the large pocket sewn into the front of his trousers still contained something. The only thing in the world that was truly his. It was so trivial, yet here, having been wrenched away from anything familiar in his life, it was a desperate talisman, connecting him with his memories of home. His hand carved flute.

  Where are my shoes? They left me my tunic? In the middle of his thoughts, William spied a young boy polishing the glass on the ship’s cabin windows. The child appeared to be about seven or eight years old and was painfully thin. Smith noticed William staring and explained.

  “That’s young Tommy. He was brought on board only two sails ago. He be the powder monkey.”

  “The what? Whose son is he?” William was appalled that any father would let so young a son on board.

  “He be the monkey. The one what delivers the powder to the gunners when we be in battle. An’ he’s no one’s boy. Picked him off the street, they did.”

  “Stolen?”

  “Nah. Rescued.” Smith saw William’s questioning look. “He’d a’ died anyways, left on his own, he would. Starved or beaten dead by someone, just fer fun maybe. On board, he gets fed and beaten no more than he deserves.”

  “But his parents–”

  “Probably don’t have none. None what he knows of anyway. He don’t even know his last name no more.” Smith grinned and continued, “So’s he just goes by Jones. Tommy Jones. That’s ‘cause one day he’ll go back to Davy Jones, which is the only thing what’ll take him back. Ya’ see,” he said thoughtfull
y, “Davy Jones’s is likely to take us all to the depths sooner or later.”

  Their appearance on deck gave cause to the men to pause in their chores as they stared at the two arrivals. Some openly leered and shouted obscenities about what they would do with the boys’ mothers. William had never been the centre of attention for anything. The only person who had ever stared at him for more than a few seconds at a time had been Maggie–dear, sweet Maggie–and William wished with all of his heart that he was back at his family’s hut, back with his dull and repetitive daily tasks. He felt the eyes of the sailors boring into him.

  I feel like a sow taken to town and put in the sale pen. You got your eyeful, you friggin’ fish eaters, now go to hell!

  As if reading his thoughts, Smith placed a hand on William’s shoulder and yelled, “Ahoy! Listen up you slimy bastards! This be Cook’s help and a lander, Mr. Taylor!” As if in response to this news, William heard low grumblings and words of acknowledgment coming from the crew members nearest to him. He glared back at them in defiance, his fingers curled into tight fists at his sides–a reflexive action in self defense, but it also hid the nervous shaking he felt.

  “Back to work, ya’ farkin’ toads!” a voice louder than all the others bellowed, and the command was punctuated by the sharp crack of a whip on the wet decking. The voice belonged to a huge man, a man who towered over the rest and whose massive biceps rippled as he slowly and deliberately coiled up the strands of his whip.

  “That’s First Mate Rogers!” Smith gasped, his voice quivering, as the giant of a man advanced upon them. “Fer God’s sake!” he pleaded in a whisper, “Taylor! Don’t be lookin’ him in the eye!”

  Smith’s warning came too late.

  “What have we here?” the giant bellowed. William stared up at the mountain of flesh approaching him. He had never seen so large a man. With skin the color of darkened wood, and thick greasy strands of hair as black as coal streaming from underneath a red bandana, the First Mate towered over William. The giant’s eyes were small and piggish, with irises so dark that they seemed one with the man’s pupils. The eyes of a demon! William stood frozen to the spot in the shadow of the bulk before him, with only his nostrils twitching involuntarily at the foul body odor wafting from the man.

  The giant scowled and his thick black eyebrows knitted together above his bridge of his nose. William stared, transfixed. The eyebrow hairs seemed to be moving of their own accord, shifting and undulating with the busyness of the lice which had taken up residence there. In fascinated disgust, William watched as small, wiggling specks fell from the giant’s head and face, their tiny bodies plunging to certain death onto the deck below.

  “Answer me ya’ snot-nose or ye’ll feel me lash lickin’ ya’, by God ya’ will!” the giant roared, breaking William out of his trance.

  “He’s Mr. Taylor, Sir,” Smith broke in. “He’s new. Brought on just ‘afore we sailed, Sir!”

  The ebony eyes swiveled and fixed on Smith. The First Mate’s mouth pulled back in a frightening scowl, showing a few remaining stained and blackened teeth, listing in their sockets, separated by gaps, protruding from reddened, oozing gums. The man’s tongue was swollen and blistered, and each exhalation carried out the fetid smell of rot. “D’yer thinks I’m talkin’ to you? Or is this one here mute? Eh? Is that it? ‘Cause we’ve one gimp aboard already an’ that’ll be more than enough to care fer the shitpots!” He raised the fist clutching the whip’s handle and let the coils slither to the deck. He drew his arm back and glanced at the length of rope as it followed his pull. “I bet my sweet one here could make him talk.” In an instant William clenched his eyes shut and stifled a scream in his throat, as he prepared for the slash of the whip’s knotted ends to slice open his shoulder’s skin.

  “Mr. Rogers!” A voice boomed out from the quarter deck. The big man’s arm froze in mid swing. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Sir,” the voice continued, “but I hold it to be more prudent to get some work out of him before you strip the flesh off his bones, don’t you agree, Mr. Rogers?”

  William’s eyes snapped open and he scanned the quarter deck for the source of the commanding voice. There, standing tall and imposing, at the railing, was a man, his hands clasped loosely behind his back, legs slightly astride. The blue jacket he wore was fastened up the front; its gold buttons glinted in the sun. His hair was neatly pulled back and hidden under the brim of a tricorn hat, it too, as blue as the man’s eyes.

  “Well, Mr. Rogers? What say you, Sir?”

  The first mate scowled and his jaws clenched in defiance. “Aye, Cap’n,” he grunted, but his gaze fixed on William like a snake about to strike its prey. “Aye, Sir, she’ll wait a’right,” and he slowly and methodically recoiled the whip, caressing the coils as he gathered them up in his calloused hands.

  “Mr. Smith!” the captain continued, “Has your charge signed to wear the King’s coat yet?”

  “Not yet, Captain Crowell! We was just on our way, Sir!”

  “See that it’s done then. And, Mr. Smith, see that he is put to good use as soon as possible.”

  “Yessir!” Smith stood stiffly upright, his long gangly arms held straight at his sides.

  “You, Sir,” Captain Crowell nodded at William, “What’s your name?”

  “Uh, William Taylor … Sir.” It seemed natural, necessary even, to William, to address this man as ‘Sir’.

  “Do not fail me, Mr. Taylor, in any of your endeavors upon my ship, for I would not like to be shown to have been wrong in my immediate judgment of you, and Mr. Rogers to have been right.” And with that, Captain Crowell lifted his head and resumed his watch over his wooden domain from the raised sights of the quarterdeck.

  “C’mon!” hissed Smith as he jerked roughly at William’s sleeve. William could hear the anger shaking Smith’s voice. “Do ya’ have a death wish then?” Smith propelled William ahead of him with a hard shove. He herded William through the throngs of sailors, towards the ship’s office and the log book awaiting William’s mark. “There’s no honor dyin’ at the end of a cat-whip, boy! Ya’ want pain? Ya’ want to have yer own blood spillin’ yer life down yer back? Do ya’?” Smith’s eyes narrowed into a hard glare. “Well, save it fer the fightin’ ahead! She’s a small Navy ship, just a ten-gunner, this one, that’s a fact, but Cap’n will not use her size or quickness to outrun troubles. He’s not one to back down from anythin’. Ye’ll see! Ye’ll soon be fightin’ fer King an’ country, boy, ya’ see, an’ that at least, offers an honorable death!”

  Smith’s rant was cut off by a chorus of frightened, angry shouts which shot up through the companionway from the deck deep below them.

  “He’s got the pox, I tell ya’!” one voice bellowed. A wild-eyed sailor’s face burst through the hatch. “It’s the pox!” he screamed.

  All on deck stopped what they were doing and turned towards the commotion. William stared at the man. The whites of the sailor’s eyes shone with intense fear, the same way one of his Da’s cow’s had done when it had been haltered in the slaughterhouse.

  “Here now! What’s that you’re announcing?” Captain Crowell quickly strode down and over to the man. “Has the surgeon seen him?”

  “No, Cap’n, Sir! I just seen him with me own eyes, I did! He’s got the fever, Sir, an’ he’s all broke out in blisters and pus spots! Oh, Lord in Heaven, save our souls!” he continued to wail.

  “Mr. Lawrence! You will cease and desist that caterwauling at once! Or I will unleash the fury of Mr. Roger’s appetite upon your back, so help me God, I will. Do you hear me, Sir?”

  “But it’s the pox, Sir! We hafta’ save us all! We have to–”

  “Mr. Rogers!” the captain commanded, “Apply Moses’ Law to this man at once. That will give Mr. Lawrence thirty-nine reasons to stop these lunatic ravings. Or at the very least he’ll have something worthy to cry out about. Immediately if you please, Mr. Rogers! Mr. Nawthorne, have the man below in question examined by the Surgeon, and instruct the good d
octor to then see me with due haste in my quarters.”

  William shrank back as several pairs of arms suddenly reached out and bound Mr. Lawrence’s arms together, then hauled the man over to the foremast where he was quickly strung up with ropes to the rigging, spread out like a crucified figure. The crew gathered around as Mr. Rogers took his place behind the man’s back.

  “’Here’s the cat, fresh fer ya’!” the First Mate roared at the man, as he withdrew a shorter whip from a red bag which had been handed to him. This new whip was much shorter than the first, a tangle of ropes only about two feet long, but each strand ended in a hard, tight knot. Crewmen pushed and jostled for position around William until he was squeezed to the back of the throng. He could not see over the heads of the men in front of him but the whistle of the whip and the sharp crack of it as it slashed open fresh skin was outplayed only by the screams of the bound man as the knotted ends of leather tore open flesh. The man’s terror was out of control, William realized, and that was going to make the flogging all the worse. Towering above the others, Mr. Rogers’ face was in plain view. His lips were curled back in an unholy grin, and his eyes gleamed wildly. They were the eyes of a demented soul.

  The sailor’s screams grew weaker and faded out altogether by the fifteenth lash.

  “Throw the water on him!” Mr. Rogers yelled. The salty sea water burning in his fresh slashes was enough to rouse the unfortunate man and the lashing began again in earnest. The crowd of men counted out each fresh blow in loud unison, for which William was grateful, as it partially obscured the man’s continued shrieks. From the corner of his eye, William caught sight of a portly fellow emerging from the companionway. He turned to watch him scurry away into the captain’s quarters.

  Before the flogging finished, the paunchy surgeon and captain appeared back out on the deck. The surgeon waddled over to the edge of the gathered crowd and quickly spoke with two men standing on the outer edge. They in turn, left and followed the surgeon down the hatch, returning a few minutes later with a long lumpy roll carried between them. It was a heavy item, and the men staggered to the edge of the ship with it.