“’Tis too tricky of a decision for this moment. I decide later.” Captain Zay laughed at their anxious expressions. “For now, you are guests. You ’ave some coffee?” She looked around at them, waiting. For a moment no one moved, unsure of what she wanted, and then Bee jumped up to pour.
The dark liquid in the cups gave off a rich, unfamiliar aroma. Bee tasted it. It was bitter and complex, completely new to her. Anika made a face, but Wil gulped his.
“What is this?” Bee asked, taking another sip.
“Coffee, you know. Coffee?” The others shook their heads. “No, but of course you do not know! It is from tree as well, from coffee tree. Very good, warming. It only need a cake to go with. Alas, no cake on the Egbertina-Henriette.”
Bee jumped up again. “Did someone find my haversack? I have cake! Or cookies, at any rate.”
Captain Zay clapped her hands smartly, and the cabin door opened at once. “Find ’aversack,” she commanded the pirate who peered in. A moment later, he reappeared with the two leather sacks in hand. Water dripped from them onto the carpet.
“Oh, they may be ruined,” Bee said mournfully. She rummaged through her sack and pulled out a packet of cookies, well wrapped. “No, the inner ones are dry!” She moved her coffee cup and laid the cookies, round balls of sugar, flour, and rum, on the saucer. Had these been baked with enthusiasm or with wariness? She hoped it was the former.
Captain Zay took two and popped them into her mouth, chewing ferociously. Her expression changed immediately from dubious to blissful. “Oh, Bee-girl, you ’ave bake these?”
“Yes.”
“They are quite full of delicious. They are so full of delicious that I will not throw you back in the sea if you make more of these for me.”
“If you have an oven, and flour, and sugar and rum, I will make as many as you want,” Bee said.
“This things we ’ave,” Captain Zay declared. “You will be baker for the Egbertina-Henriette, and we will take you where you need to go.”
Now Bee remembered: the cookies were baked full of helpfulness. She’d made them just after Master Bouts had knocked over a barrel of flour and she had volunteered to clean it up.
“We want to go to the Island of the Mages,” Bee said.
“And whyfore is that?” the captain asked.
Bee made a quick decision. The captain relied on Master Joris’s tulips for her thievery and might not take kindly to any move that could risk that. “We want to find out if he has the right to marry off the princess,” she said. It was not a lie; just not the entire truth. “The mages will know this.”
“I see,” Captain Zay said. To Bee, she didn’t sound entirely convinced, but she added, “Then go to the galley, Bee-girl, and see the cook. ’E will be giving you what you need. And take the Mooncalf with you.”
“The Mooncalf stays with Princess Anika,” Wil said firmly. “I am her guard.”
“You are not even ’aving a sword!” Captain Zay protested. “’Ow you will guard this princess?”
“With my life,” Wil replied. Bee looked at him, surprised, and he flushed. Anika smiled.
“I see,” Captain Zay said again, amused now. “This is the best kind of guard, to be sure. You stay then, Master Mooncalf!”
The pirate at the door took Bee down the short, steep flight of stairs belowdecks to the galley. It was a long, narrow room lined with cabinets, with a stove at one end. The cook, Limmo, was a skinny fellow with legs so bowed it looked as if he were astride a horse even when standing. At first, he didn’t seem at all pleased to be sharing his space with Bee, but when she explained that she only baked, and would help him chop and peel and slice when needed, he gave her a great gap-toothed grin and bowed low, snatching off the kerchief that covered his few strands of hair.
“In that case, I’m glad to have a helper, Mistress Bee!” he exclaimed. “And the crew will be wild to eat some sweets. What ingredients do you need? Let’s see.” He rummaged in the cabinets, pulling out packets and jars. “I have flour and sugar and salt, cinnamon, nutmeg. A little bit of chocolate. Hmmm … walnuts, hazelnuts. Do you use lemons? We use them to keep away the scurvy, but we’ve a barrel of the things, so you’re welcome to them.” He plopped a yellow globe on the counter.
Bee picked up the lemon, turning it over and over. This was the ingredient in the meringue pie in A Booke of Baking. She sniffed it. There was a faint, sweet-sour, pungent odor. She did the same with the other unfamiliar items, her eyes widening at the scents of cinnamon and nutmeg and chocolate. The walnuts were unshelled, and she held them up and shook them, trying to figure out what they were.
“Oh, aye, you’re from Aradyn!” Limmo chortled with glee. “I’d plumb forgot—you folks don’t know a thing about foodstuffs from trees.”
Trees held all this bounty? Oh, what she could do with these ingredients! Bee slipped on the apron Limmo handed her and got to work, mixing, tasting, adjusting here and there. Limmo showed her how to open the walnuts, and she ground them up for her batter. There were no cake pans, but a huge cast-iron skillet worked well enough.
She baked with enormous pleasure, though the galley stove wasn’t used to pastry and singed the edges of the cake she pulled out an hour later. But she cut off the burned pieces and then mixed the dark, bitter chocolate with sugar to make an icing, which she sampled so freely that she felt a little queasy afterward. She had never tasted anything as wonderful as chocolate. She cut the cake into layers and iced each layer with chocolate. The finished cake wasn’t her prettiest, but it rose high and proud, and the smell of it pulled pirates to the galley, eager for their supper.
“It ain’t suppertime yet, you feckless oafs,” Limmo told them. “Come back later!”
As Bee peeled potatoes and chopped onions, the long night caught up with her. When she almost cut off her finger dozing as she sliced the carrots, Limmo sent her off to sleep. In the room he directed her to, she could see Anika and Wil already sleeping in hammocks hung from the ceiling, and she tried to crawl into one of the dozen or more empty ones. It wasn’t easy. The hammock rolled and dumped her onto the floor with a crash, and Wil’s bleary eyes peered over the side of his.
“Lay yourself down carefully in the center,” he instructed her. “And then don’t move.” In an instant he was asleep again, and Bee tried again, slowly and cautiously this time, positioning herself with care. It wasn’t the most comfortable of beds, but the rocking of the hammock as the ship rose and fell was like the rocking of a half-remembered cradle, and it put her right to sleep.
They woke to an earsplitting ruckus: Limmo hammering on a pot cover to call the pirates to supper. Boots clattered down the narrow hallway outside the bunk room, and Bee, Anika, and Wil rolled themselves out of the hammocks and stood, momentarily confused about where they were.
“Pirates,” Bee recalled. “We’re on a pirate ship. And I baked a cake. Wait till you taste it!”
They followed the others into another room belowdecks, this one with a long wooden table scarred with the carved names and rough artwork of generations of sailors. Benches lined the table. When the pirates saw the three of them, they pushed away from the table and stood, snatching off their caps and tricorn hats. Bee realized at once that it was Anika they were standing for. Anika inclined her head regally, motioning for them to sit. The men made room, and Anika, Bee, and Wil took seats too.
“They have very good manners for pirates,” Wil whispered.
“Except for these,” Bee noted, pointing to the carvings, which they were now close enough to see in detail. Anika blushed and even Wil’s eyebrows went up at a couple of them.
“Captain Zay wanted me to dine with her in her cabin, but I wouldn’t,” Anika confided. “She said, ‘This princess shall not be dining with the rabble.’” Anika mimicked the captain’s accent perfectly, and Bee giggled. “But I disclosed that I thought the rabble would be much more
enjoyable. And so it is!”
They looked around at the motley crew. Bee counted ten—no, eleven. One wore an eye patch, some had gaps where teeth were missing, and most of the rest had faces as scarred as the table. Their skin was of all possible colors, from the coffee brown of one pirate who looked, even seated, a full foot taller than any of the others, to the pasty white of another who was crowned with a halo of wild orange curls that matched the freckles on nearly every inch of his skin. They had black eyes and brown, green and blue and amber, like a cat. One looked at least sixty years old, white haired and white bearded, while the youngest could have been Bee’s age. One by one, they introduced themselves, and most of their names and accents were as strange and different as their faces. They were Filmon and Haleem, Thoralf and Jacinto. There was Quigley, the pirate who had pulled them from the water. After that, Bee lost track.
Limmo’s stew was passed down the table, and Bee ate it with great gulps. She was starving, and it was very good. Then Limmo brought out the cake. Shiny brown and fragrant, it sat in the center of the table with a single slice removed, already sent up to the captain. The pirates stared at it in awe.
“You slice it, Bee,” Limmo commanded, passing her a jeweled knife. Bee cut thin, even slivers, not wanting to offend any of the pirates with a piece that was smaller than another’s. The men waited until Princess Anika took a taste, and then they dove in. After the first bite, there was a loud and general groan of pleasure.
“What is that glorious flavor in the icing?” Anika asked, licking her fingers.
“It’s called chocolate. It’s from a tree,” Bee told her.
“They never have tasted chocolate afore, nor any food that grows from a tree!” Limmo told the others, and they stared with disbelief.
A blond pirate, whose name was Rijkie, said, “I hail from Aradyn as well. The mage keeps the bounty of trees from the people. He controls all the trade, he does. He’s a greedy old duffer, that one. Only wants the coppers. I never tasted an apple in all my life till I signed on with the Egg-Hen.”
“The Egg-Hen?” Bee said, confused.
“The Egbertina-Henriette. Our old captain called the ship after his mother, and Captain Zay never changed it when she took it over. But that name’s a sight too long to say!” Then Rijkie stuffed another bite of cake into his mouth, and the others followed suit.
The cake was gone in minutes, and some of the pirates picked up their tin plates and licked them to get every last bit of icing. Bee couldn’t tell for sure if the pirates’ reaction was to the pleasure she’d baked into the cake or to the taste of the cake itself, but she was gratified by their delight.
As Bee and Limmo collected the dishes for washing, a pirate—one who’d worked while the others ate, it seemed—came dashing into the dining room. “Ahoy!” he cried. “Cargo ship in sight—man your posts!”
In an instant, the pirates had clapped hats on their heads, sprung to their feet, and were out the door. Curious, Bee, Wil, and Anika followed them up onto the deck of the ship. There, all was wild activity, but purposeful: every man had his task and set himself to it. The sails were trimmed, the ship turned, and swiftly they were headed toward the darkening horizon, where Bee could just make out the sails of another ship.
Captain Zay came out from her cabin, holding a spyglass. She trained it on the distant ship, her feet wide apart for balance on the pitching deck, while the pirates waited. Then she lowered the spyglass.
“’Tis one of Joris’s ship, most certain,” she declared. “I see the flag of Aradyn, the Tulip Gules on a Field D’or. Pirates, get ready. Be sure your blades is sharp, your last wills and testaments is signed, and your courage is big!” A cheer went up from the men on deck.
“What—what’s happening?” Bee asked the nearest pirate. “What does she mean?”
The dark-haired pirate with an eye patch and a scar that ran from beneath the patch down to his chin—Jacinto?—grinned at her and unsheathed his sword. He swiped it from right to left, and Bee jumped away from the flashing blade. “Best get out of the way, little baker. That’s a tulip ship we’re heading for. The Egg-Hen is going into battle!”
CHAPTER 12
“Belowdecks, Princess!” Captain Zay commanded as the Egg-Hen sped closer and closer to the other ship. Now Bee could make out the flag, the same red tulip on a gold field that flew on the palace in Zeewal.
Anika took Bee’s arm and whispered, “I’m not going below. We’ll just stay out of the way. I want to observe!”
Bee wasn’t completely sure she wanted to observe. She’d seen the sharpness of the blade that Jacinto had unsheathed, and she shuddered to think what such a blade could do to human flesh. But she backed away with Anika to a spot behind the mast, out of the captain’s view. She motioned to Wil to join them, but he shook his head.
“I’ll fight too!” he said. “Captain Zay, have you an extra sword?”
The captain looked him over, sizing him up. “’Ave you been using a sword before?” she asked skeptically.
“I’m a blacksmith. I make swords for the palace guards. Of course I’ve used one!”
“Quigley!” the captain shouted. “Give this boy a sword!” To Wil she said, with a wink, “More is merrier, Mooncalf. Only make sure you are not getting yourself killed!”
When the captain had turned away again, Anika reached out from behind the mast to grab Wil’s sleeve. “Wil, no!” she protested. “You cannot fight. There’s no army, no soldiers in Zeewal—how can you know how to use a sword?”
“My brother and I swordfight all the time with the blades we fashion,” Wil said. “I’ve always longed to try it for true.”
“That’s only playacting! Please don’t try to fight,” Anika begged. “You’ll be maimed, or killed.”
Quigley, the freckled pirate, ran up with a sword belt, and Wil buckled it on. With his pirate clothes and sword, Bee thought he looked quite dashing, and in Anika’s face she could see admiration and dismay battling each other.
“Wil, those are our own people, the merchants of Zeewal, on that ship!” Anika protested.
“Nay, Princess,” said Quigley. “They are mercenaries, hired to guard the tulips. The merchants, they stay safe in their homes.”
Wil looked at Anika gravely. “If you forbid me as my ruler, I’m bound to obey,” he said. “But I want this, Princess.” Anika blushed. Bee noticed that she blushed in a very charming way, her color rising pink on the apples of her cheeks. It was a little annoying; Bee herself turned splotchy and a little sweaty when she was embarrassed.
“I’m just Anika to you,” the princess said in a low voice. “Of course I would not forbid you.”
“You need a tricorn hat,” Bee told Wil.
“Alas,” he said, unsheathing his sword and then slipping it back in, “I shall have to be a hatless pirate. Imagine the tales of the swashbuckling Hatless Pirate—they will go down in history!”
“If the Hatless Pirate survives,” Bee pointed out. “And if you don’t survive, I won’t either. Your mother will kill me.”
“All the more reason for me to stay alive, then,” Wil said. He picked up Anika’s limp hand and kissed it, ruffled Bee’s hair, and joined the pirates at the ship’s railing as the Egg-Hen approached the tulip ship. Only Haleem, the enormously tall first mate, would stay on board to hold the ship steady.
Anika looked at her hand, blankly at first. Then a new flush rose in her cheeks. “Well,” she said.
“Don’t you don’t have any big words for that?” Bee said. “Gallant, maybe? Or heroic? Or … foolish?”
Anika’s eyes shone. “Courteous,” she said. “Genteel. Valiant.” Her expression changed to alarm as she turned to watch the pirates. “Oh, Bee,” she gasped.
They were very close to the merchant ship now, maybe twenty feet distant, and Bee could see the sailors on it scurrying about, trying to prepare for what th
ey surely knew would happen. Without warning, two of the pirates threw a thick rope with a hook on its end across to the other ship. It landed perfectly, locking tightly onto the tulip ship’s railing. The sailors rushed to it with knives, trying to hack it free, but in an instant the pirates were sliding across, hand over hand, from the Egg-Hen to the tulip ship. As each pirate swung himself over onto the deck, he unsheathed his sword and took a threatening stance. Wil was the fifth man over; Bee could tell that his grip on the sword was a little uncertain. Why was he doing this? Wasn’t life dangerous enough?
“It will be the end of him,” she said, fuming. Anika grasped her hand so tightly Bee thought her fingers would break.
“Oh, Bee!” she said again. Among the dozen sailors rushing around the deck of the tulip ship, two had pulled out swords of their own, and now there was fighting. They could hear the sound of blades clanking together and the shouts of the men. It was hard to tell the pirates apart—no, there was Wil, hatless among the tricorns. He was very quick on his feet, but one of the sailors must have noticed his awkwardness with a blade and headed straight for him.
Terrified, Bee and Anika watched as the sailor battled Wil to the ship’s railing. The blades flashed as Wil bent backward over the rail, his sword raised against the oncoming steel that threatened to slice down onto his neck.
“No!” Anika screamed.
Then, without warning, Captain Zay swooped between the two combatants. There was a shout, louder than the others, and the sailor fell to the deck, out of view among the scrambling men. After that, it was only moments until the merchant crew was overcome. The pirates herded the hapless sailors into a corner of the deck, leaving them with three guards. Then they descended into the bowels of the ship.
They emerged laden with sealed wicker baskets. A second line was thrown from the cargo ship to the Egg-Hen, doubled over so it could act as a pulley. Each basket was secured to the line between the ships, and the pirates on the Egg-Hen reeled it in. It didn’t take long before the deck was littered with baskets, and the men were sliding back between the ships onto the pirate ship.
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