Quintspinner

by Dianne Greenlay

  “Told ya’, didn’t I?” Smith nodded to William as the Surgeon later applied a greasy salve to their whip wounds. “Now you’ve a set of yer own stripes.”

  “You didn’t have to take my second set,” William mumbled. It shamed him to have had Smith rescue him from the fury of Mr. Rogers’ lash. “However, I hope to pay you back somehow.”

  “You’d have done the same, I’m sure,” Smith replied. William was not so sure he would have.

  “And I don’t understand what Da’ and Cook were doing–”

  “Why, what’s to wonder ‘bout that?” Smith cut in. “Yer Da’s yer Da’, and he’s the sort of Da’ what would do most anythin’ to save his son’s arse, an’ Cook’s the sort of man who’d do anything to have yer arse ….” Smith laughed at William’s shocked expression. “You’re really a bloody lander, ain’t ya’? Did ya’ not notice the lack of ladies aboard?” William remained speechless.

  “Just watch yerself,” Smith chuckled, “if Cook be the one to offer to apply the grease to ya’!”

  The injury to Tess’s finger had made removal of the ring impossible. Even when the initial swelling had receded, the affected knuckle remained enlarged, as though determined that the ring should stay put. Before the family left their house for the final time, Dr. Willoughby had insisted that Tess wear long gloves to keep the ring hidden from public observation. Tess was still so numb from Mrs. Hanley’s revelation to her that she barely noticed the passing sights of London, its lanes clogged with its inhabitants, as the carriages made their way along the cobblestone streets, down to the docks lined with waiting ships on the riverbanks of the River Thames.

  Cassie, on the other hand could barely contain her excitement. She and Tess were in a smaller carriage of their own, while Mrs. Hanley sat in the grand and ornately decorated front carriage with the Willoughby’s and their son. Elizabeth Willoughby’s depression had deepened since the onset of the infant’s seizures and Dr. Willoughby’s countenance had not improved. Cassie was glad to have been able to ride in a carriage separate from them, although she was beginning to think that the other carriage may have held more cheerful company.

  “We’re going to be on a ship!” she exclaimed to Tess, in an effort to cheer her. “I can smell the sea already!”

  “That’s only that vile dead fish smell. No different than it was in the market the day we were there,” Tess pouted. “That day we got into this stupid mess ….”

  “What mess?” Cassie responded. “Honestly Tess, look at it this way. You now have the most astonishing ring anyone has ever seen, and we’re going on an adventure together!”

  “ You’re not the one who just found out that your whole life has been a lie! You think that a ring makes up for that?” Tess retorted loudly. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted her angry tone. It was not Cassie’s fault. She herself had been the one to insist on going to the market with Cassie. She had been the one who had wished out loud to have been able to visit the Crone. A minute of uncomfortable silence passed before Cassie spoke up.

  “Well, you can drown yourself in a lake of sorrow, if that’s your choosing. I don’t see it that way.” Cassie’s eyes met Tess’s and she continued. “The fact is that you didn’t lose the family that you thought you had–nothing’s changed about your life that you’ve had with them so far–but don’t you see that you have gained another family that you didn’t even know you had. Now you have two! You’ve been doubly blessed.”

  A hot wash of angry shame flushed Tess’s neck and cheeks. Cassie had not meant for her words to make Tess feel bad, but the sudden realization that Cassie was the one without any blood family, made Tess burn with the humiliation of her own self pity. She wished she had not confided her real bloodline to Cassie. Tess was no more a Willoughby than Cassie was and the even playing field made Tess feel unreasonably competitive.

  At the docks, the wharves were thick with sea-going vessels, and the ships filling the harbor seemed massive. Tess and Cassie had never been so close to any before, and they watched in awe as the multiple pieces of cargo were hoisted and hauled up and over onto the ships’ decks before disappearing down into their holds. Heavily muscled men pulled and strained at the ends of squealing ropes and creaking tackles, as the massive crates, trunks and barrels became airborne. Tess wondered about their contents. She hoped they contained everything she and her family would need to make their lives in the new lands hospitable. She and Cassie had not been allowed to pack much of a personal nature.

  “There’s my trunk!” Cassie squealed in delight as she pointed to it swinging over the side of a ship’s railing. “And Mrs. Hanley’s too!

  Mrs. Hanley’s larger trunk was readily identifiable. She had loaded hers with all of her worldly possessions, those things being one change of work clothes and one other dress that she reserved for church and special occasions. Other than the one she had donned for this momentous day, she owned no further garments. She had stuffed a smaller trunk with items of even greater value to her–an assortment of herbs and cooking spices, a personal supply of limes and sugar for her teas, and poultices secured in neat little bundles with linen strips, with which to treat a variety of ailments.

  She had locked the greater trunk with a long thin iron key which she wore dangling from a finely braided strap of leather around her neck. Having secured her trunk in that fashion, she had proceeded to mark each of its four wooden sides with a bright red “H”, in a stain made from the pressed berries and boiled juices of wild strawberries.

  “Ya’ dinna’ think I knew me letters, did ya’ now?” she had said with a husky note of pride in her voice. The red letter, she explained, not only identified the trunk as hers, but it was a symbol of wealth and good luck. “There was a Chinee’ fellow what told me that.” He’d been taken off a ship from the Orient and brought to England as an indentured servant, she explained further, but he had insisted upon retaining and wearing his red shoes from his home country. Not even beatings by his new master had been able to dissuade him from wearing them.

  “Seems to me that they didn’t bring him much luck, then,” Tess had pointed out.

  “Oh, but they did!” Mrs. Hanley countered, “’Cause one day word came back that the ship he’d been taken from was lost in a storm off the coast of some far away shore, an’ there he was all safe an’ sound on land.” She nodded in satisfaction at her story’s ending. “He outlived his master, too an’ was able to set up his own spice wagon in the market place. He was the only one what could get the cinnamon an’ the ginger. Made enough with that alone, he did, to send fer a lady to marry from his own country, too. Swore it was the red shoes, what brought the luck an’ money to him.”

  “We must board now,” Tess’s father announced in passing, catching the three of them off guard and bringing Mrs. Hanley’s story to an end. He strode back to the carriage in which his wife and son had waited throughout the loading process.

  Tess’s mother emerged from the carriage, looking frail and uncertain as she accepted help to dismount down its stairs. She held a linen handkerchief to her nose and mouth in a futile attempt to block out the nauseating smells of the harbor area. Mrs. Hanley hurried over to the carriage and plucked up the baby who was wrapped in his woven travel cradle. Still so small, weeks after his birth, the only thing that seemed to be growing on the child was his head. His elfin arms and legs became stiffer every passing week and their diminutive size accentuated his large face and skull. So far the child had slept deeply and had had no further fits.

  Tess was relieved as it seemed to her that his fits were always preceded by nerve wracking inconsolable screams from her tiny brother. Not really my brother, she reminded herself. No blood relation at all. She reached out and threaded her arm tightly through Mrs. Hanley’s as they climbed up the steep gangplank to board their ship together. The smells of the wharf seemed to get stronger and Tess wished that she too, like her mother, had had a handkerchief to hold in front of her nose. A furious tick
le started in her nose and she sneezed.

  “Ah! A sneeze! Means yer goin’ to travel,” Mrs. Hanley snorted at the obvious truth. Tess sneezed again. Mrs. Hanley hugged Tess’s arm and continued. “Now that’s interestin’! Two sneezes means you’re going to meet a stranger when you travel.” Tess smiled a rheumy smile at her grandmother before emitting a third and more powerful sneeze.

  “So what do three sneezes mean?” Cassie asked eagerly, knowing Mrs. Hanley’s fondness for attributing mystical properties to numerical events.

  Reaching up the sleeve of her dress, Mrs. Hanley withdrew a crumbled piece of linen and handed it to Tess.

  “Three sneezes means yer comin’ down with the sniffles. Wipe yer nose an’ cover yer mouth with this. Looks like I’ll be needin’ to brew a tonic fer ya’ sooner than I expected.”

  Tess inwardly groaned. She had just finished a tour of their onboard quarters. Their accommodations aboard the ship were generous and richly supplied compared to the crews’ area, but greatly lacking in the space and luxuries to which they were accustomed in their own home. Her parents would be staying in a cabin that was paneled in dark oak; its far wall let in dulled sunlight through a row of glass windows, slightly grimy with lantern-smoke.

  Within this main cabin there was room only for the double bed equipped with a thickly stuffed mattress layered with soft blankets, and floor space for a travelling trunk. In one corner, a small writing desk was bolted in place to the floor. A tin wash basin sat upon the desk, securely cradled in a crater carved in the corner of the desk’s surface, and a chamber pot was tucked away under the sleeping platform. The rest of the space under the bed would be used as storage for her father’s more precious belongings–his dismantled microscope, his medical bag, a small bag of tins containing medicinal tinctures and powders, and two leather-bound medical reference books–all packed in a flat leather trunk.

  A narrow door in the far wall of the cabin opened into an adjoining room. It was even smaller in size than the first. In this one, there was space only for a narrow sleeping mat upon the floor, although a second door opened directly from it out onto the deck, making the room accessible from two directions. A low bench had been built into an alcove in the wall. This was to be Mrs. Hanley’s room for the trip, once it had been proven that her generously rounded bottom would fit through either of its narrow entrances.

  Tess and Cassie shared a room on the other side of the Willoughby’s cabin. To Tess it looked as though it had been a storage closet hastily converted to a sleeping area. One wall was lined top to bottom with shelving and the other was occupied with two sleeping hammocks, one strung above the other.

  “Come out onto the deck. We’re weighing anchor,” her father ordered, his voice tinged with excitement.

  “Away aloft!”

  At this command from their captain, the crew responded immediately, taking their places in a well rehearsed drill. The handful of passengers had gathered along the upper railings to watch. Sailors heaved in unison to hoist the massive anchor aboard. The bollards, ropes as thick as a man’s arm, were loosened from their knots around the docks’ capstans and hauled aboard. The ship, thus free from her ties to the shore and with her sails unfurling in an orderly manner, began to glide out and away from the heavy timber docks. The river’s harbor remained congested with ships of all sizes and types, and their own craft slipped slowly and carefully past the others, migrating towards the open sea.

  Tess glanced up as shouts overhead drew her attention. Men had begun to climb up the vibrating lines, shimmying out along the yardarms high overhead. Loosened sails snapped sharply and the riggings hummed in the wind; the ship shuddered and gently rolled side to side in response to the sails’ tugging dance with the lofty air currents. Lower winds snatched at the women’s hair and threatened to lift the hem of their skirts up above their knees while seagulls boldly screeched and soared on the drafts above.

  Even the birds are excited, Tess observed. Why do I feel only dread? Cassie and Mrs. Hanley stood on either side of her, with broad smiles blazoned across their faces, but try as she might, Tess could not drum up even one ounce of excitement towards the change in her family’s circumstances. As the river exited into the sea’s lap and shores slipped further from her view, the heaviness in her chest grew. She mentally ticked off her losses. Left behind forever were not only the home she had lived her entire life in–and a comfortable one it had been–but as well her few close friends and the majority of her books, along with most of her wardrobe. Her misery deepened. As if on cue, a faint high pitched squeal pierced her ears. Charley.

  He’s distressed too. At least we have that in common.

  “Tess, your mother is ailing. Tend to your brother. Clean him and make sure he gets fed and is kept quiet.” Administer some laudanum in sweetened water to Charley was her father’s unspoken instruction. She shot a look of annoyance at him, but he continued to stand at the railing and had already engaged another well dressed gentleman in conversation. He expended no further attention towards her.

  You’re the one who wanted him, she fumed. You’re the one who should be looking after him. She stripped off her long white gloves in the expectation of finding Charley’s nappy dirty and wringing wet. Seeing the ring upon her finger, she stopped and spun it around in its track, admiring the brilliant blue stones as they glittered and shone in the sun’s rays.

  Quintspinner indeed. She’d gotten caught up in the drama of a dangerous situation and, unaccustomed to such excitement, she’d let her imagination get the best of her. A diaper full of poop from a squalling baby was just the thing to pull her back to reality. She scratched with absentminded annoyance at the tickle deep within her ear canals, and headed back to the cabins, stumbling along as the ship’s flooring dropped and heaved beneath her feet as the ship continued to rock from side to side in the yet unfamiliar rhythm of the open water.

  Rather than being seen as the cause of their misfortune, as William had expected to be, his entire lashing episode was treated as top notch entertainment by the crew of the Argus, and the sailors continued to hilariously replay the fight between the one legged Cook and the Gimp, enjoying the retelling with many a guffaw. The loss of the bucket overboard was not spoken of, however, except in hushed tones, as though the men thought that the mere mention of it would awaken the wraith of impending bad luck.

  With each passing day, however, the seas grew rougher, and tension grew among the sailors as their chores became more difficult and dangerous, with progressively fiercer waves and winds tossing the ship about. Two crew members had been swept overboard in the course of trying to loosen some tangled rigging. The remaining crew became more irritable and tempers frequently flared as the crowded living conditions meant an absolute lack of personal privacy. Accusations of perceived wrongdoings flooded the Captain’s ears and the resulting number of floggings seemed to surpass even Mr. Rogers’s taste for blood.

  William frequently overheard quiet grumblings of dissatisfaction and unease among the crew members as they gathered in turn for meals with their messmates. The rougher seas frayed everyone’s nerves as all hands were ever on the ready for possible disaster to strike them. The tossing seas were the hardest on the top hands–so named for their duties as lookouts stationed on the very top yard arms of the fore and main masts–as they clung tightly from their bird’s eye perches far above the main deck.

  “They be our eye in the sky,” Smith informed William. “They keep the watch fer any other ships other than our charge, the Mary Jane–see, ya’ can just see her top sail over on the horizon there, when we sit on the crest of the wave–an’ they’ll be on storm watch, too.”

  Because of sailing shorthanded, chores for all were doubled up and shifts were longer than normal. William had already been assigned to assist in the galley as well as to carpenter duty, but the day came when the captain, upon learning of another of William’s skills, assigned him an additional, more pleasant chore.

  On a particularly cool
but calm night, William and several other sailors sat on the main deck, wrapped in their tunics, preferring to relax and even sleep in the cool, fresh ocean breeze, rather than breathe in the rank air of the lower decks. A full moon shone down upon them, bathing the entire deck in a silvery wash. The sailors brought out their pipes and pouches of tobacco, as well as their daily tots of rum, and one of the men began to play an English reel on his fiddle. It was a lively tune and was soon accompanied by the rhythmical stomp of feet.

  It was a tune that William recognized; he had sung it many times while working the fields in a time that seemed so long ago now. Memories of his former life flooded back, and he tucked his chin down and jammed his fists deep into the pockets of his tunic, determined to not let his misery show. His knuckles butted up against an object in the deep recesses.

  His flute. His fingertips outlined its familiar hand-carved edges. He put it to his lips and blew. The clear notes melded with the fiddle and gave sweet harmony to the tune. Several of the crew looked on in amazement, smiling their approval. Soon voices rose up and men jumped to their feet, dancing with sheer abandonment, the voyage’s tension melting away in them with each verse. Song after song was played, William keeping up as best he could with the impromptu recital.

  Overhead, the full moon slowly traversed the sky, and by the time the men were done with the dance and the rum, the white orb had lost her nighttime beauty, diluted by the approaching sun’s pink glow on the opposite horizon. William sunk gratefully into his hammock and for once fell immediately into a deep dreamless sleep. He was wakened a short time later by a vigorous shaking of his shoulder.