He dragged the girl from the cell and another closed the lock. It was the Irish girl. I remember the red hair, hanging down his back, with her upended on his shoulders. He pushed her at the ladder, but when she refused, he hoisted her like a sack and darted up the steps as if she weighed nothing at all. Her howling left an echo that hung in the air for a long time. They took one other woman from another cell who did not fight at all but climbed the ladder to her fate.
“Stop!” I cried out.
Patience clapped her filthy hand across my mouth. “Be still. I have saved you.”
We slumped to the floor, and others stood above us. A reeking stench came from every square inch of this place, as if the scuffle had awakened sulfurous demons. Someone made dry coughing sounds across the way.
Later, I said, “I hear her crying,” to Patience.
“No you do not. They’ve given her a nice dinner and comfits and sweets of every sort. Pies and puddings. Turtle soup. Ham and sprats and kingfish. She is not crying.”
“I hear her crying,” I said. “She was no bigger than me. Poor wee Irish mite.” Pa used that word for me sometimes. Mousy, mousy, wee mite, he called me. “Why would they give her food and not us?”
“Go to sleep.”
“I cannot. My head hurts. Were you trying to knock my brains out?”
“If that was what it took to save you.”
“La, Patey. You are hard.” I shoved her away from me. How could she hate me so? What had I done to be so abased and abused?
Three times that night we heard great splashes off the side of the ship. I thought and I thought. I knew people who died on a ship got buried in the sea. If they fed that girl and that woman a dinner, had their stomachs exploded and they died? And why were there three splashes? Who else had eaten with them? Maybe the food was poisoned, but I felt so hungry I would gladly eat poisoned food. I would.
Patience slumped against the hull, and though she was breathing she did not wake, as if her last strength had gone to hold me back from the pirates. Some of the women began to cry, but we all knew by then that sadness was useless. The dead do not mourn the dead.
Sometime after that we came to quieter water in a bay of some sort. My mind felt bleary. My head pounded. I dreamed sometimes of a great banquet being laid for us, but that at that banquet table all the food held poison; the meat tasted of iron rust and the drink tasted like spoiled fish. We slept in the exhaustion of sickness. When I awoke, it was always to hunger. There was no food but hardtack and watered rum. Sometimes they brought uncooked rice or wheat grains we sucked on until we could chew them. Another woman died in our cell and two died from across the way. I felt ashamed that my first thought was that at least there was a bit more room. Maybe they would give us more rice to chew with one less to feed. Hunger had pushed away all the human kindness I owned. Patience would not suck on the rice. I feared she would die next. If Ma would but call out to us, we should take heart, I thought, but I dared not tell Patey that, for she tried to slap me again if ever I mentioned Ma or Pa. I suspected she was angry at me for not running to warn them fast enough.
I plotted to ask the next pirate who came by here to take me to the banquet hall. While I thought of that I searched inside my clothing for any scrap of fabric that was not filthy. When at last I came upon my pocket holding Ma’s little casket I found it was made of two layers, and keeping the lump hidden between my knees I pulled at it on the inside until I got off a shred of linen cloth about an inch or two long. I put that in my cheek and sucked on it. I chewed it and swallowed it. I pulled a larger piece off, and put that in the opposite cheek. I tore loose a third bit and shook Patience’s shoulder but she merely opened her eyes and stared at me. I whispered to her, “Try to eat some of this cloth before you perish. I will ask the next pirate I see, for our sake, to take us to the banquet above.”
“No,” she said, “for we had rather perish than go above.”
“You are mindless for hunger,” I said. “My pocket was still clean inside. Let me help you find yours.”
At that moment sailors shouted from above and we heard a great trampling of many feet. Then followed shouts, chanting words over and over, yet they were nothing I understood. The imprisoned men overhead raised a clamor. This ship’s cannons began firing and the tomb in which we lay filled with a thundering roar. The whole place shuddered with each concussion. At one point the firing grew so constant that I could not draw a breath between one explosion and the next.
A ball came through the side of the ship, not four feet from where I stood. A few women found the strength to scream. Though the cannonball brought with it a great deal of splintered wood, it fell in its path like a dead thing hitting the floor. It rolled the length of this dark cavern, petering down to a crawl. It came to a halt at the end of the corridor. Light poured in through the hole left by the ball. Light and air. The fragrance of clean air lifted my soul from its dungeon and I stood, pressing my face against the bars, gulping at the breeze coming through the new porthole. If I were to die or drown, I swore I would have at least a breath more of that clean air to go with me. I sucked in air and held my breath as long as I could. I let it out with a burst and took in more.
The ship groaned and listed as a full broadside shook us from keel to flag. Men screamed in agony. The water around us churned with splashing and our guns fired again. The sound of small guns followed like plunking stones compared to the cannon. We heard more shouts. First many, then a few, and two men called back and forth, one apparently on this ship and one from the second one.
“We’re saved!” someone said. A few women cheered.
Someone else called out, “One master’s just another master. Them be privateers’ colors I spy. They’re not for sinking this bilge bucket. They’re for taking her!”
“Yes, but they’re English!” another woman said.
“Patey? Wake up,” I said, jostling her. “We are saved by the English.”
Patience groaned and looked at me through filmy eyes. She had dark circles under them and when she tried to speak her teeth had taken a pink color. “English?”
“We are going home, now,” I said, and patted her hand. “Do not try to stand up. Everything will be all right, now.”
A wrenching scream—a man’s voice—tore the air, and a great splashing with more shouting followed that sound. A deep-voiced man said, “Anyone else crave a taste of steel?” The rest of what happened I could narrate only with my ears. The sounds of hard-soled boots clamored overhead. Orders given. Ropes tossed. Saracen pirates were hung, some strangling for several minutes before they died swinging from the yards over the deck. Served them justice, I thought.
Men swung axes at the heavy bars over our heads which held our prison hatch closed. A man stuck his head in and threw up on the ladder. Apparently we were sickening to an English privateer’s delicate sensibilities.
In short order, more Englishmen came down the steps and again pumped seawater about our ankles. Eight fellows stood in the row between the cells and opened the gates. Six of them held swords drawn and two had pistols. We were marched up the stairway and made to stand on the deck. We were near land! My mind was already home again. There would be so much work to do, putting our house right once Patey and I got home. We might spend weeks living in a shade tent. What a bother that would be! Then I looked about. This ship was surrounded by three other vessels loaded with men all brandishing cutlasses and pistols. One of them flew a flag I had heard much about but had not seen before, black silk with a white human skull and crossed bones beneath it.
They moved the men captives to another ship. I could see the heads of our desperate fellows, recognizable by their filth and wasted stance. Many women were so weak that they could not climb down the rigging again as we had come up. After two fell to the sea and drowned for they could not be pulled up with the weight of wet clothing, the sailors stopped sending captives over the side.
These sailors were little different from the Saracens in thei
r smell, but they were indeed different in their means of holding prisoners. The English pulled sails down to form tents on deck. They put up cots. They called a physician to see each person. They even procured odd bits of clothing, ragged coats, old trousers, a few gowns and shifts for the women. Imagine, women in trousers! They guarded us day and night with armed and fierce sailors rather than keeping us in animal pens in the hold. They sent ashore for crates of vegetables and they butchered a kid right there on the main deck and made stew. I helped Patience eat from a wooden bowl though they still afforded us not a spoon amongst the bunch.
The men brought up some kind of plant that they pounded into a soapy pulp with a mallet. We washed with it in sea brine, clothes and all. At least we were not as wretched as before. I told Patience I would help her, but she would not let me. Said her clothing was her own affair. As I stood in line for my turn at the wash kettles, one of the women told me to pile all my clothes aside and she said, “You be wearing twice the frocks some has got. You don’ gan to wear dem all w’en dere’s dem goes naked. Put dem down.”
“No. I shan’t,” I said. I stood as tall as I could make myself, rising up on tiptoe. “My ma made my clothes. You shan’t take these. They would not fit you, madam.”
“Put dem down, Missy,” she said, and stood over my head, as if to frighten me.
I put my fists against my waist and said, “Show me one person here my size who shall gain from my clothing!”
“How now. Stop the squalling!” called one of the English. “Hark ye here. No one’s to pinch from another on this ship!” At that many of the men laughed. Then that man—a short but brawny fellow and clad in once fine clothes himself, though I doubted he had done more than purloin them from some real gentleman—walked toward the woman, passed her, and stood squarely in front of me.
“Look here, now, sir,” I began. “I am the daughter of Allan Talbot, master of the Talbot plantation and chief director of the Two Crowns sugar mill. It is your duty as an honorable English citizen to return me and my sister to our family and home at once. Now that you have rescued us from the accursed—”
“Rescued you, be it? Duty? As an honorable English citizen?”
“My sister there, Patience, will verify my claim and our brother is on that other boat yonder with Pa. Ma escaped and is still at home. She will be awaiting us and fairly worried.” As he made no move at all but to put his fists on his waist similarly to mine, I added, “Take us home, sir, and you shall be paid well for your trouble.”
He put one hand toward me as if to take my hand in his, to bow and kiss my fingers, or to shake it as a man would, I knew not which. I began to reach forward, but as I did the cur reached behind me and clutched a great pawful of my gown, hoisting me in the air. I hung from my waistbands, startled and grunting. He strolled to the side of the ship and hung me at his arm’s length over the water, well away from reaching any ropes.
He laughed. “That’s a muckle grand idee!”
“You cursed vagabond!” I said. “Put me down this instant!”
I felt something spring loose in my clothing and I feared falling into the sea. Wet clothes pulling me down, I would drown and be eaten by a shark before I could hope to reach the shore, although I knew somewhat how to swim.
Another English sailor came toward him, this one wearing a proper officer’s hat and coat. He said, “On deck, Mr. Beckham.”
“This one ’as asked to be put ashore, Cap’n. Says she’ll pay to get ’ome.”
The captain looked upon me with such distaste I felt ashamed and my face reddened. He turned his gaze toward another ship closer at hand, and said, “She’ll pay in copper and iron like the rest of ’em. Don’t spoil the goods, Beckham. Put it down before you catch something.” The captain walked away and Beckham swung me to the deck, banging my bones against the planks.
My pocket with Ma’s casket came loose and fell between my knees. I tried to stand, holding my legs tight around it. Mr. Beckham watched me and pursed his lips.
I scowled at him. “Privy!” I said, and he turned away, thinking I had need of a water closet. I returned to the line before the iron wash cauldrons, now standing at the tail rather than my place before.
“What,” I asked Patience, “if I take one of my bits of eight and show it to him? Perhaps they did not believe we could pay. I could pay one for each of us.”
“They would take it and you would pay all and we should still be afloat here.”
I scuffled under the top skirt for the pocket straps. “See, my pocket has come loose and I cannot tie it without notice by them. So I might as well offer—”
“Do not! Do not even think on that.”
“Why would not they take us home?”
“They are not going to take us where we tell them. They are going to do with us as they wish. Keep all that hidden until there be no hope without it. You will know when it must be spent. Ma said it is to save your life someday. Your life be not in danger at this moment and producing the coins could change that. They might strip us bare to take what else we’re hiding.”
She must have meant the needles and the jewelry. “I would give it, to get home.”
“Home can be got to by other means. We are not going home, maybe not for a long time. Going there is not saving your life; it be merely going to a place where you are not.”
“Any place is better than this place. And you are mean.”
“Will you not listen? You always think you know things that you cannot know. The world be a hideous place, Resolute. Full of danger and trouble and pain. You have survived the pox-ridden hold yet the pirates who kidnapped us have in turn been thwarted and captured by other pirates. Did you not see the Jolly Roger?”
“I did.”
“Do you hold that this has now become a seagoing play party? That all you must do is say, ‘Take me home, sir,’ and they will send footmen to bow and scrape to us?”
I said nothing for a bit. What I intended to answer would draw her scorn so I said, “They did feed us.”
“As you would an animal fit for auction.” Patience continued, “How did your pocket come loose?”
“I ate some of the cloth on the inside. A little. Actually, almost all of it. I told you. Do not you remember?”
“Was it not awful?”
“No worse than the other they gave us.”
She made a face with half a smile that reminded me of Ma, and said, “Well enough. If I had thought of it I might have fared better. Just be caresome lest any see you about it. And take no more else the whole of it shall come undone and we be found out. Come here and I will help you wash so that no one sees our treasures.”
As we finished and dressed in our soggy rags, I leaned toward her ear and whispered, “I hope I am all done eating pockets. I will not mind having more goat stew, I think.”
“Less talking here. Keep quiet!” an English sailor shouted at us.
We sunned ourselves, turning up petticoats to dry even as we wore them. I was careful to check all the places where Ma’s precious things lay hidden. All remained safe. Fresh air and buoyancy filled my soul as the rest and food worked its task. After a couple of hours on the deck spent thus, they lined us up and marched us below again.
Awaiting my turn I spied August among the men who had all been loaded onto another ship and ran to tell Patey.
Patience called to him, “August Talbot! Where’s our father?”
August called back, “Killed. Buried these four days.” Patience sank to the deck and frowned, moping. I heard his words repeated as if they existed in an echo or came from a noise in the back of a house. They made a little scratching sound in my head like a mouse raking through a corncob with a tiny clawed hand. I stood, watching him, waiting and hoping for him to say other words that undid what he had said.
I looked over the side of the ship, expecting to see Pa’s face in the green churn below. Buried there? Dropped below the waves, eaten by all manner of fish and bones picked clean by lobster and st
ingray? Washed up on some lost beach by a storm like the bloated remains I once found? I sank beside Patey. She took my hand, and as people moved around us, we listened to each other breathing for a while. Sadness o’erwhelmed me, yet I could not cry. I imagined our horrified mother, weeping inconsolably. I also imagined that without Pa, Uncle Rafe might never again be convinced to leave us alone.
After two more days of calm sea and warm food, many of the women had revived. Our clothes were ruined. Our hair hung matted against our gaunt faces, but we no longer stank of death from the hold.
With that much reviving, it seemed that all the prisoners save Patience and I began to take great heart. The third night they held forth with singing and some even danced jig steps to the songs. They sang and rocked, and stomped their feet. Some drummed on the casks and hogsheads in the aisles. Soon the women around us began to dance in a line. Two of them came to Patience and me, took our hands, and bade us walk with them. Patience walked but with no joy. I lifted my feet, trying to keep time. Around and around we went as the songs got louder. We circled and coiled through the small hold. The sailors heard from up above and did the same. They stamped their feet with thunderous noise, and the shouting became rhythmic. Reels from our island and from theirs blended together. African songs took hold, drowning out the English reel, and the drumming became loud and heavy and insistent as a beating heart. They held my hands and swept me into their rhythm, pounding, pounding my blood through my feet and arms. A smile crept across my face. The movement was earthy and fierce and lively.
Patience had pulled herself from the line and stood by the wall, her hands over her face. I jerked myself free and went to her. “Come and dance!” I called.
“No. I am not a slave that I should be dancing as they.”
“It is pleasant. It’s, it is diverting!”
“We are prisoners. I will not be diverted.”
“I am sorry, Patey.” I felt her sadness rolling over me, yet for no reason I could speak, I backed away from her and into the line of singing, dancing women. We coiled like a great snake through the tiny prison, until, sweating and ripe as old fruit left in the sun, the drumming stopped and we all sat where the drums stopped us. I panted against my arm. I knew that, as much as she could not, I must dance the sadness out of me, dance and dance. I raised my face from my arm and looked about me at the slaves in this prison. I thought of the nights I had lain awake in my bedroom, steamy nights filled with far-off drumbeats and the songs from the quarters, and I knew now why they danced. It made something in the chains and bars that held us demand our spirits to take flight. I would take that with me, I decided. That knowledge would abide. It made me feel larger than I had before. As if the bars did not, could not, contain me.
My Name Is Resolute Page 4