by Emma Carroll
‘I should’ve guessed you’d survive such a catastrophic flood,’ the person replied.
Odd, but I recognised the voice – a woman’s. The rolled ‘r’s were like our local accent, only warmer.
‘Do you know her?’ Susannah whispered. ‘Because she seems to know you.’
The torches parted. A figure came towards us, laying her hand gently on the horse’s shoulder. The face looking up at me was dark and strong, and one I’d not expected to see again.
Maira.
‘You!’ I spluttered.
At the exact same moment Susannah nudged me. ‘It’s the woman from the hiring fair!’
Maira took in our wet skirts, plastered against the horse’s flanks. Her mouth twitched into a smile. ‘Oh, dear child. You were so much more use to me in breeches.’
But I was already sliding off the horse, determined to prove that wearing a girl’s clothes didn’t make me useless. My legs had other plans. As I hit the ground, I swayed dizzily. Maira caught me by the elbow and set me back on my feet.
The torches closed in around us. Now my eyes had adjusted I could see faces, all dark like Maira’s, staring at us with interest. I bet we did look a sight, mind you, two soaked-to-the-bone girls and a baby, wide awake, trying to squirm out of the front of Susannah’s dress.
‘Your ranks have grown since we last met,’ Maira observed.
‘These are my friends, yes.’ I was wary. Despite Susannah’s view of why Maira had vanished with Mother’s parcel, I still wasn’t entirely convinced she hadn’t thieved from me.
‘Hmmm … and I’d say you’re in some sort of trouble, am I right?’ Maira asked.
I bit my lip. Could I tell her? Could I trust the feeling I had standing before her, the awe, the flutter in the pit of my stomach? Even now I wondered what my life would have been like if she’d hired me that day at the fair.
‘Fwwwwafwwaaa! Waaaannnnt!’ Bea yelled.
One of the torch carriers – a boy near my age, I’d guess – was pulling silly faces at her. It set Bea off, giggling and reaching out to him. Maybe it was a sign that these were decent people after all – wasn’t Bea supposed to have a knack for knowing?
Susannah certainly seemed to think so. Before I’d a chance to speak again, she was telling Maira about our situation.
‘We’re currently being followed, I’m afraid,’ she admitted, ‘by a man who thinks I’m a witch.’
‘You? Ha!’ Maira laughed. I don’t think she’d seen a more unlikely witch in her life. ‘Then you’d best hide with us tonight, hadn’t you? I hope you’ll like our boat.’
*
I thought she was joking or that I’d misheard her. Yet after a short walk through a soggy-underfoot meadow, we came to the boat in question. It wasn’t huge, but clearly it had a crew and a hull and a sail that hung limply from its mast. It was also about two miles from the sea, on its side in a field, which was good news for the horse, at least, who soon had her head down in the grass.
Maira’s boat was called the Songbird, and had a gash in its hull, just above where its name was painted in swirly letters. The hole had to be fixed before the boat could be seaworthy again.
‘In the harbour we were, moored to an iron ring this big …’ Maira held her hands apart. ‘That strange old wave tore us from the harbour wall.’
‘You’re a sailor!’ I realised.
So this was the work she’d wanted me for. If it hadn’t been for Mr Spicer butting in, I’d have joined her too, and spent these past few weeks sailing the ocean as one of her crew. I felt stung that I’d missed out on such a chance. Though if I’d gone with Maira I’d never have met Ellis and Susannah, and Bea, and I wouldn’t have wanted that, either.
Maira and her crew clambered on to the boat, then reached down to help us. Someone grabbed the back of my gown, hauling me off the ground. I scrambled the rest of the way, and when my feet landed on the slippery, sloping deck, I couldn’t help but grin. For the first time in my life I was on a proper boat. If only Jem could see me now!
Maira, opening the hatch, quickly ordered us all below deck. The flaming torches were replaced with a couple of little yellow-glass lanterns. One by one, we climbed down a ladder into the gloom.
‘No witch hunters are welcome here,’ Maira declared, bolting the hatch behind us.
Below deck, the air felt as warm and close as being underneath a blanket. The ceiling was so low you had to crouch when you walked – not that there was far to go. The whole living space looked no bigger than two or three horse stalls. Everywhere was wood – wood ceilings, wood walls, great beams running across and down into the floor. At one end of the boat were hammocks, clothes on hooks, jars and baskets of supplies tied to shelves. At the other, a couple of trunks, some rope, a small firebox for cooking. Though everything was on a perilous slant, it felt as safe as an animal’s burrow. Already I could feel my shoulders dropping, my thoughts untangling.
For the second time in as many days, we were given dry clothes – not women’s clothes, thankfully, but shirts, jackets and breeches the same as the rest of the crew wore.
The face-pulling boy was called Pepper.
‘Mine from long ago,’ he said, handing Susannah a tiny wool vest. ‘For the little one.’
The vest was huge on Bea, and she’d soon squirmed free of it to crawl between legs and climb on to laps. But Susannah was smiling, thanking Pepper, thanking Maira.
‘What a stroke of luck to find these people,’ she said quietly in my ear.
In fact, they’d found us. In the soft light of the lanterns, I was able to get a better look at Maira’s crew. They were a team of four: two girls, Pepper and another boy, all older than us, and with exciting names. Pepper had beautiful ink drawings on his arms. Rex carried the ship’s tabby cat on his shoulder like a bird. The girls, Flint and Arrow, wore single gold earrings, and were strong and quick. I couldn’t help but wonder what Maira had seen in me that day, what my part would’ve been in a team like this.
The crew deferred to Maira like she was royalty. Susannah kept whispering that it was ill-mannered of me to stare, though she was doing the same.
‘She looks very dashing in breeches,’ Susannah murmured.
‘She’s also captain of this ship,’ I pointed out, because even I, who’d been raised by capable women, hadn’t known such a thing was possible. It was another reason to be impressed by Maira.
While Bea sucked the honey from a piece of bread, Arrow fed us hard biscuits and strips of meat so salty it made me cough. Afterwards, we drank beer and wrapped ourselves in blankets that smelled of salt and sunshine. I began imagining what it would be like to do this every night, with the sway of the sea beneath us.
And it wasn’t that difficult. I’d a feeling I could be myself amongst these people. In fact, I’d bet a silver coin Maira and her crew knew what it was like to be stared at, talked about for being different. On board the boat, they were free of all that. They could be who they wanted to be. To live a life with no boring household tasks, no long skirts, no expectation to be virtuous and quiet. What’s more, they’d see the sea every single day. If Maira had hired me this would’ve been my life, and I would’ve fitted in here. But we were past all that now, I realised sadly.
Susannah, meanwhile, was fretting over our discarded gowns.
‘We really should return Ellen’s clothes to her,’ she said. ‘She only had three dresses, and we took two of them.’
‘I’m not going back to Glastonbury, not for anyone,’ I replied with a shudder.
‘They’ll need mending, anyway. Mine’s ripped.’
While Pepper sorted her out with sewing things and a lantern, I settled back on the floor, cradling Bea in my lap. We all fell into an easy, drowsy silence. One by one people crawled off to their hammocks to sleep, until Susannah returned to claim Bea, who was now snoring gently. That left just me and Maira.
I knew I had to ask her what had happened to Mother’s parcel; all evening I’d been mulling over when
to, and how. As it was, she beat me to it, pulling the package from her jacket.
‘I never intended to take it from you,’ she said, placing it in my hands and closing them around it like a shell. ‘But I knew you’d come back for it, Fortune Sharpe.’
So she hadn’t thieved it. I wasn’t sure what pleased me more: having the package returned, or being able to now fully trust this person I admired. And the truth was if she’d not taken it, it would’ve likely been lost in the flood anyway.
‘Thank you.’ I’d tears in my eyes. ‘My mother gave it to me just before we parted company.’
Maira had looked after it well. The fabric was neatly folded, the dried skin inside still in one wizened piece.
‘Do you know what it is now?’ she asked.
‘Umm … not really,’ I admitted.
‘It’s a caul. You were born with it covering your head.’
‘I was?’ I stared at it, thinking what a strange, ugly thing it was to give as a gift. ‘My mother kept it all this time?’
‘Of course she did. She knew how auspicious it was. Being born with a caul brings great protection, child, because it means you’ll never drown.’
‘I can swim a bit, actually,’ I pointed out.
‘Ah, yet even the strongest swimmers can drown. Amongst sailors and seafaring folk, a caul is a very lucky object. You’re not simply Fortune in name, you know.’
I turned over the piece of skin in my hands. Back home it was Jem who’d been the special one; this caul was something that marked me out too. I supposed it might explain why I loved the sea so much, why going out in our makeshift boat that day hadn’t scared me.
‘Did the caul help me survive the flood, do you think?’ I asked.
‘Maybe.’ Maira shrugged. ‘It was certainly why I wanted to hire you that day in Bridgwater.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’
She thought for a moment. ‘You weren’t ready.’
‘I would’ve been,’ I insisted.
‘No, you weren’t. But I believe you are now.’
I looked at her. Her eyes were very deep and dark.
‘Would you come to sea with us now, Fortune Sharpe, if I asked you?’ she asked.
I felt that flutter again, in the pit of my stomach. Me, a crew member, like Pepper and the others, with my own hammock to sleep in? A life of freedom, of wearing breeches, of being myself? Did Maira mean it? The look on her face told me she did.
I took a long breath.
‘I made a promise to Susannah that she could stay with me and my family,’ I replied. ‘I can’t let her down. I’m sorry.’
Maira nodded. ‘We leave from Withy Cove, about two miles down the coast, at sundown tomorrow – at least that is our aim.’
‘But I can’t come,’ I tried to explain. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve—’
She held up her hand. ‘So you’ve already told me.’
But the questions, the ‘what ifs’, were unfurling inside my head. And Maira knew it as well as I did.
25
The next morning, we set off with the risen sun behind us. It was a wrench saying goodbye to the Songbird and her crew, yet as much as I was tempted by Maira’s offer, I was still resolved to help Susannah and Bea. There was also the small fact of my own dear family who I was eager as anything to see again.
The horse, whom Susannah named Blaze on account of the white stripe on her face, came with us. We’d tried to turn her loose, but she followed us down the lane, so in the end Maira fashioned a halter from rope and begged us to take her.
‘What use have we for a horse on a ship?’ she said, which was a fair point.
Susannah wanted to ride Blaze, but I preferred to walk. It was a good arrangement for it meant we could both keep an eye out for anyone who might be following us or acting suspiciously. Despite the odd knee-deep stretch of lying water or thick mud, there was no need for anyone – girl or horse – to swim.
Bea, secure in a new sling across Susannah’s chest, loved it up on Blaze, and was talking and pointing at everything we passed. I felt in reasonable spirits too. Mother’s parcel had been safely returned to me and was tucked inside my shirt. And this morning’s brisk walk was so much easier in sailor’s breeches.
After another few miles with no sign of Dr Blood, my mind drifted to Jem, Mother and Abigail, and how much I’d missed them all. I couldn’t wait for them to meet Susannah and Bea, and I hoped they’d find a use for Blaze. Meanwhile, Susannah had gone very quiet.
In the end, I asked her what was wrong.
‘It’s your poor family I’m worried about,’ Susannah replied. ‘How can you be sure they’ve not been flooded when so many have?’
I explained that Fair Maidens Lane was sheltered from the sea by a steep hill.
‘The flood mightn’t have even reached them,’ I tried to assure her. ‘And if it did, it probably hasn’t done too much damage.’
We walked on. The heavy silence still hung over her, making me think the matter wasn’t closed. She’d also insisted on bringing Ellen’s gowns to return, and carried them in a bundle on her hip, which she’d started fidgeting with. Eventually, the bundle slid to the ground.
‘Shall I carry it?’ I offered.
‘I have to tell you something!’ she burst out.
I stopped and looked up at her.
‘When I sewed Ellen’s dress last night … the needle and thread … it happened again.’
‘Oh mercy!’ I muttered. ‘What was it this time?’
‘Terrible things happening to you, Fortune,’ she cried. ‘Something to do with water and drowning.’
But that couldn’t be right, could it? After what Maira had told me last night, then surely this was one prediction that wouldn’t come true.
‘Why are you smiling?’ Susannah said crossly.
I squeezed her dangling foot. ‘Because it’s all right, nothing bad will happen to me, I promise. Maira told me—’
‘Told you what?’
‘That parcel of mine she took? It was a caul. I was born with it covering my head.’
She blinked in surprise. ‘Oh, which means you’ll never drown, and you’ll bring good luck to sailors, isn’t that right?’
‘Something like that.’ I nodded. ‘So forget what your needle and thread told you. It won’t happen.’
‘I’m not a witch then, despite what Dr Blood might think?’
‘I don’t care what he thinks: do you?’
Susannah wiped her face. Shook her head. After a moment, she said, ‘What is a witch, anyway?’
I thought about it.
‘A clever woman,’ I decided, ‘who knows her own mind.’
‘You don’t believe it’s about magic?’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe. But doesn’t everyone have a bit of strangeness in them? Imagine how dull life would be if we could explain every single little thing.’
‘Yaaaaaa!’ said Bea, who agreed.
*
As the road took us further inland, we passed farmsteads where people were sweeping the last of the water out of their yards. Animals were feeding, a man was fixing a gate, two women were beating a carpet hung on a line. On the banks of the lanes, the first snowdrops were trying to appear. It could have been any winter’s day here in Somerset, and was all heartening evidence that normal life was returning.
Better still was when we reached a fork in the road. There on the milestone was the name of Nether Stowey, our nearest town. On recognising the symbols, I could’ve cried for joy.
We were only four sweet, easy miles from Fair Maidens Lane. We’d be home in less than a couple of hours.
I began to tell Susannah about my family – how Jem snored though insisted he didn’t, and that Mother made the most delicious oatcakes on the griddle over the fire.
‘You’ll find Abigail …’ I searched for the word, ‘disapproving, sometimes.’
Susannah listened closely, taking it all in.
Before long we were on the same road I’d travelled wi
th Mother that night in December. It ran straight as a table’s edge, with banks of willow trees on either side: beyond it, the fields still lay underwater. Whether that was the result of the big flood or the usual winter rains I couldn’t tell, only that the ice had now gone, and the wind rippled across the surface, making the water dance like a little sea.
Everything was recognisable yet different: maybe I was too. I wondered what my family would think when they saw me. Would Jem say I’d grown? Would Mother and Abigail tut at my sailor’s clothes? Would they fall in love with Bea, as I had done? And what of Susannah? In a hamlet of strong-minded women, I hoped she’d find a way to fit in.
*
The town was busy when we reached it. It was market day, though there didn’t seem to be much selling going on. Most of the fare laid out on stalls looked pretty meagre – old turnips, sacks of damp flour, a few scrawny chickens, powder-dry herbs. The snowdrops might be coming up, but it would take weeks – maybe months – before the land recovered fully. That was the reality. In our family, Jem and Abigail were both big eaters and I dearly hoped they were managing all right.
Past the church, we joined the main street, which was choked with farm carts and knots of people gathered on the roadside to talk. It wasn’t anything unusual for a market day, where gossip was just something else to trade. It was when we stopped at the water trough for Blaze to drink that I overheard a man mention the king.
‘He’ll arrive from London in a couple of days, roads permitting,’ the man said.
‘Wants to see the flood damage, does he?’ replied the woman he was talking to. ‘He could come and stay at my house – if I still had one.’
Her friend laughed bitterly. ‘’Tis why there’s nothing decent on sale today. It’s all been kept back to feed King James.’
A dairymaid, carrying a yoke across her shoulders, agreed it was. ‘We had to save our best cheeses, and stamp our fresh butter with the royal crest.’
‘If we don’t make him welcome, it’s treason. That’s the law,’ the woman with no house pointed out.