Little Jane Silver

by Adira Rotstein

  Instead she just clenched her fists at her sides and fumed silently. How dare that ludicrous third-rate poet/incompetent scientist/person-who-hadn’t-even-finished-his-medical-degree-because-he-was-too-lily-livered-to-deal-with-a-paltry-little-thing-like-unanesthetized-surgery, expect her, Bertina, the Flower of Dominica, to clean up after this … this … thing standing in her beautiful kitchen! If her dear, sweet, insanely rich Dovecoat was here … but he wasn’t there and he’d left all his blasted money to that pasty-faced wife of his in Codswallop-on-the-Thames when he’d kicked off, leaving Bertina to deal with tasks that were clearly beneath her, for example taking care of smelly little scoundrels like this! Once again she vowed to marry her daughters off to the first halfway wealthy, well-bred human being that showed up on this wretched island to remove them from such obscene influences. In the meantime, though, something had to be done with their guest, so Bertina did what any practiced manager would do in such a situation: she passed the buck.

  “Charity! Felicity!” she sang out to her two precocious daughters. “Why don’t you take this animal upstairs and give it a bath?”

  The twins glowered back at their mother, but did as they were bid, sensing that more mischief could be had with the newcomer away from their mother’s prying eyes. They pinched Little Jane by the fabric of her shirtsleeves, and so, touching her as little as physically possible, led her away down the hall.

  Little Jane stared up at her captors, wondering if the magistrate’s mansion had a dungeon. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine Almost-Doctor Villienne, for all his eccentricity, consenting to keep such a room in his house. However, Charity, Felicity and that beastly Bertina, she wasn’t so sure about. As she trudged up the stairs, the faces of dour old-fashioned people stared disapprovingly at her from their portraits on the walls, all painted in dark oils, by artists with very little idea of perspective, on canvases buckling from the humidity.

  “Don’t touch those!” snapped Felicity, as she saw Little Jane’s eyes wander over the pictures.

  “They’re precious family heirlooms and they’re worth more than you’ll ever see in your life!” added Charity haughtily.

  Little Jane smiled to herself, thinking of all those gold coins her parents had, stored up safe on the Nameless Isle. Some people really had no idea of anything—

  “And stop walking on the carpet! You’re tracking dirt everywhere!”

  Little Jane looked for a place to walk that wasn’t carpeted, but the only such surfaces were the ceiling and the walls.

  “And stop looking at things!” chimed in Felicity. Little Jane closed her eyes, but only succeeded in tripping on the top step. From there, they made a sharp left turn and followed a long corridor, past many doors, until Charity finally flung open the one to the lavatory.

  There, in a small room with just one tiny window, was an object the likes of which Little Jane had only seen two or three times in her entire life. Sitting there gleaming in perfect white shiny innocence was … a TUB!

  One important thing to know about pirates is that they rarely took baths, and by rarely, I mean almost never. Why was this so? After all, were they not surrounded by water at all times? Yes, that is true, but cleaning oneself in saltwater is unpleasant and doesn’t get you very clean anyway. Fresh water is a tricky thing to obtain on an ocean voyage. Every single drop caught in the rain barrels has to be preserved for drinking. The expression “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” wasn’t just something made up for a poem about Ancient Marinara Sauce, you know. Not to mention that all those new-fangled pro-bathing ideas currently sweeping Europe had as yet to migrate to the balmy shores of Smuggler’s Bay. On the island, to bathe more than a handful of times per year was still thought to cause plague.

  And so, is it any wonder Little Jane was repelled by the sight of the bathtub?

  “If you think I plan to get in there,” she told Charity and Felicity, “then frankly you’re out of your pea-sized minds.”

  “Oh, we don’t think you’ll be going in there,” said Charity, with a peal of sinister laughter. “We know you will!”

  Felicity then shoved Little Jane hard from behind. Little Jane grabbed the sides of the door with her hands and stuck her feet into the corners of the frame in the manner she judged least likely to be budged, but Charity simply crossed her arms and nodded to her sister.

  Then, in an amazingly ladylike manner, Felicity grabbed the sides of Little Jane’s breeches and yanked them firmly down.

  Trying to pull up her breeches, Little Jane let go of the door frame as Felicity took the opportunity to ram her daintily into the room from behind.

  Little Jane felt herself shoot out of the door frame like a cannonball, rolling head over heels into the bathroom, striking her still-healing hands against the tile as she went.

  Before Little Jane could scramble to her feet, Felicity was back yanking at her trousers and Charity was pulling at her shirtsleeves.

  Little Jane struggled to get up and land a punch, but was wrestled back down to the floor. One on one, Little Jane knew she could’ve taken either of them, though they were both a year older and a head taller than her. Yet against two of them and exhausted as she was, Little Jane could do nothing. It wasn’t long before Charity and Felicity managed to reduce her to a naked, shivering heap.

  “Look at these ridiculous trousers!” shrieked Felicity, holding them up.

  “You let go of those!” growled Little Jane.

  “If your parents are such grand pirates, how come they can only afford to put you in boy’s clothes?” taunted Charity, trying to snatch them from Felicity’s hands.

  “And ones too small at that!” giggled Felicity, twirling the trousers over her head.

  Charity picked up Wayne’s threadbare jacket. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so common in my life!”

  “Please, those clothes ain’t mine! They was lent to me,” Little Jane begged. “Stop wrecking them!”

  “Oh, Felicity … look at the soles of her feet!” said Charity.

  Felicity put her delicate little hand over her mouth in a melodramatic gesture. “My Lord! Have you ever seen the like!”

  “Why, they’re absolutely filthy!”

  “Poor, poor dear. Haven’t you ever owned a pair of shoes?”

  “Did you walk in a tar field barefoot, or is that really your colour underneath all that dirt?”

  “Let me alone, ye pair of harpies!” spat Little Jane back at them. This time she nearly squirmed free, but Felicity managed to seize her by the wrist.

  Felicity held up Little Jane’s hand for her sister to see. “Oh! Oh! This is too much! Look! She’s actually wearing gloves! ”

  “Ridiculous!” pronounced Charity. “Does she think herself a proper lady?”

  Felicity pulled one of the thin cotton gloves off, removing with it the still healing scab on Little Jane’s palm. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Why, dear sister, it seems I’ve hit a nerve. Look, she’s crying.”

  “My, my, how sad.”

  “Have we injured your feelings? Oh, what a pity.”

  “We had no idea you were so sensitive.”

  Charity gave a sad little moue of regret and the two of them cracked up giggling once more.

  Little Jane held her bare, bleeding hand in her gloved one, a violent image of exactly what she’d do to those two if only she had a sharp sword handy flying through her mind. Then the vision fled and Little Jane looked about to see Wayne’s generously donated clothes strewn around the room, nearly torn to strips. There was no way she could give them back to him now.

  Sniffling and blinking away the last of her tears, Little Jane composed herself. Then she turned on the two girls, now busy commenting on the condition of her hair.

  “All right,” said Little Jane coolly. “You’ve had your fun. Now what do I have to do to make you shut up?”

  “Get in the tub,” ordered Charity.

  Warily, Little Jane stepped into the tub. Clou
ds of dirt instantly swirled up from her feet as they touched the freezing water.

  “Good,” said Felicity. “Now sit.”

  Little Jane sat. Instantly, she began to feel a pleasant lightness come over her body as the thin crust of dirt that’d been her constant companion for years gradually began to evaporate into the bath water.

  Charity and Felicity lapsed into sudden silence.

  With the two of them quiet, it occurred to Little Jane that if the water was a little warmer and those awful twins weren’t sitting there staring at her this bathing thing really wouldn’t be so bad.

  However, the reason for Charity and Felicity’s silence had nothing to do with a sudden onset of good manners and everything to do with shock.

  “Mother Mary in a top hat!” swore Felicity in her least ladylike manner (which was still very ladylike, all the same). “What in God’s green earth are those?”

  Panicking, Little Jane peered into the murky water in the direction Felicity had pointed, expecting to see electric eels, but noticed nothing other than her legs and feet, looking very much the same as they had a moment earlier, only slightly less filthy.

  “Tattoos,” hissed Charity in a scandalized whisper. “Savage symbols of heathen worship!”

  “Oh, come off it,” laughed Little Jane, looking down at the innocuous little designs on her calves. “These little things? They’re just a pig and a chicken. All us sailors have ’em. They keeps you from drowning at sea. It’s ’cause when a ship goes down, what always floats to the top is the pigs and the chicken, on account of the wood cages we puts ’em in, see?”

  But the scandalized twins plainly did not see.

  “Good God, she’s a savage!” gasped Charity.

  “I’m a sight more civilized than you!” Little Jane scoffed. “Anyway, if you think these are something, you oughta see my Papa! He’s got this monstrous skull done all over his chest and a purple octopus on his back and words on his knuckles that say—”

  Felicity’s eyes goggled back at her in fright, wide as saucers. “Is he … your father … a cannonball? ” she whispered.

  “Now that’s just ridiculous,” snorted Little Jane. “Although now that you mentions it, he did tell me a cursed cannonball chewed off his foot, but come on now, how could I be the daughter of a cannonball? Ain’t anyone ever told you babies don’t come from cannons? Artillery’s got nothing to do with it!”

  “Chewed off?” gasped Charity, her face pale. Felicity stared back with an equally ashen countenance.

  It was only then that Little Jane’s understanding of the situation clicked into place.

  “Oh, you mean a cannibal. Please! That’s just st—” She was about to say “stupid” when inspiration hit her and a slow, sly smile crept over her face. “Um, wait. Now that you mention it … aye, he is a cannibal. Woe is me. Egad! The jig is up! However did you know?”

  The two sisters shrank back from her in terror.

  “Though he’s really trying to cut down.”

  Charity dropped the soap.

  “Now it’s just two buttered scones for breakfast,” — Little Jane peered into the tub, trying to locate the soap in the cloudy water — “a strapping young man for tea, and a side dish of Druid princess for supper.”

  Little Jane looked up after successfully retrieving the soap to find herself blissfully alone, now that the evil twins had fled in horror. She grinned. Her business with the sisters now concluded, she sank back into the tub, to finish her bath at her leisure.

  When Little Jane was done, she toweled off and changed into the cotton nightshirt the sisters had left on the chair by the sink. Sadly, she tied Wayne’s now ragged clothing into a bundle and headed downstairs.

  “Har … I mean Redd, do you have a lantern?” she asked the red-haired former sailor.

  “What for?”

  “I’m going back to the Spyglass. It’s time I talked to Magistrate Villienne about a few things.”

  “But it’s dark,” he objected. “Why don’t you sleep here and see him in the morning?”

  “If you think I’m gonna spend the night here, with those twin devils about, then you’re mad as a hatter!”

  “Hmm. I sees your point,” said Redd, proffering a lantern from a nearby cupboard, “but I ain’t lettin’ you go alone. If you and him is up to makin’ plans to give that Ned Ronk some serious what-for, I got a few ideas to contribute.”

  “Shall we then?” said Little Jane, and took up the lantern. Harley gave her his jacket to put over her nightgown and off they went.

  It was a warm summer night and the air was sweet and balmy. Little Jane felt wonderfully refreshed. Her curls, combed out of their braids, bounced behind her on the breeze, and the hem of her borrowed nightgown danced cheerfully about her ankles.

  I’ve triumphed over the two nastiest people in Smuggler’s Bay, gained meself a crewman, and taken a bath, she thought with a small sip of pride. Now all I need is a ship, some supplies, a couple more crewmen, a sizeable cannon, and the Panacea’s as good as shot out of the water. Ned won’t know what hit ’im!

  With her head suddenly full of plans, she ran the rest of the way downhill to the Spyglass, with Harley struggling to keep up.

  Chapter 19

  Back in the Brig

  Long John pulled his torn shirt tight around his shoulders. It was cold, powerfully cold in the dark recesses of the ship’s brig, but Bonnie Mary slept on, unperturbed, the outline of the hidden object just visible through the material of her shirt.

  In the dark of the cell, Long John shifted his uninjured parts into a more comfortable position and continued with his story, writing, even though he could no longer see the paper before his eyes.

  I grew up working at the inn, slinging grub and pressing tap with your grandma. “Fetch me rum, Jim! Fetch me rum, Jim!” was the general hue and cry and for some reason it were quite the amusement to your grandfather, no matter how much he heard it. But I ain’t going to knock the Spyglass. It’s been more home to me than any other place in this world. T’was there I learned plenty a the tricks I’d need later on — how to be quick with a jest, friendly to a fault, and deft with me fists.

  In the winter months, when your grandpa’s sloop would harbour in the bay, he’d put me to work with his crew, patching the sails, scraping away at the barnacles on the hull, cooking the meals, or touching up the paint. Seeing I were an eager ear to their tales, them other tars would fill me up with stories of adventure from sun-up to sun-down. They’d send me home, dreaming of the sea. I’d fall asleep at night running them strange place names over me tongue: Malta, Madagascar, Malabar, and the High Barbary, thinking on the day when all those wonders would be mine to see.

  Sometimes he’d take me with him on short trips, your grandpa would — small runs of legal trade to Jamaica or the Cayman Isles. I learned his secret to managing men(flog only when necessary), piloting by the stars (Polaris is essential), and staying upright on a water-slick deck (a secret concoction of sticky tar mixed with eucalyptus gum rubbed on any surfaces what’s making contact with the deck). To this day I think he would’ve taken me with him, too, if it ain’t been for his promise to me Mum.

  Watching that sloop I’d worked on all winter sail out of the bay each spring just galled me something rotten.

  Where’s the excitement, the infamy? I says to meself. The inn were always the same. Night after night, the same regulars ordering the same things, sitting by the same fire, running through the same complaints I’d heard a thousand times before. By the time I was thirteen, every sailor’s child and fisherman’s boy I growed up with was all gone off with their fathers and brothers, but I were still stuck fast on land, though me heart and head were on the sea.

  One dull day, alone and bored out of me skull, I decides to practise climbing the lines like a member of me father’s crew’d taught me, using a bit of rope I’d stole from the ship. Somehow, I’d gotten it into me head, that if I just showed me father I could climb the rigging like a regula
r jack tar, that’d force him to take me with him when he left that spring.

  Standing on the bar table, I throwed the length of rope round one of the rafters and knotted it tight with a twist. Then I doffs me peg and begins to climb, hauling away, hand over hand, thighs tight to the hemp all the way up to the ceiling just like I’d seen them sailors do onboard. And I would’ve got to the top, too, if your grandma hadn’t picked just that minute to burst in from a trip to market.

  Well, you can just imagine what happened. She screamed and I screamed and I were that surprised that my hands left the rope for a tick and I fell. Me backside met the ground hard and weren’t much pleased with the introduction.

  When I explained to me mum what I were trying to accomplish, there was plenty of commotion. That night I lay awake thinking on how I ain’t never been so miserable in all me life, me hands and backside hurting like I wouldn’t be able to sit down for a month and me parents warring with each other in the tavern below. I remember their words as if they spoke them yesterday.

  “He thinks he’ll go to sea,” scoffed your grandma.

  “Aye,” your grandpa says. “Climbs like a right monkey he does, too. The vessel what berth him oughta consider herself lucky. What man that stands before the mast can lay claim to such knowledge as that lad carries between those two ears of his? Be a might touchy to get him a crack at a naval ship,” says he, “but a merchantman always needs a pilot what knows the local waters.”

  “John,” me mum says to him, “I says this once, then not at all. I won’t stand to have me only son washed overboard or strung up by the yardarm! In my time I seen the sea rob me friends of every man they ever fancied! I knew what ye was when I met ye, John Silver, seaman and pirate through and through, and to me credit I ain’t never strove to change a hair on yer head, ’cause I knew it’d be sure enough pointless to try. But even from you, strong and stubborn as y’are, that witch, the Sea, done stooped to steal from. Even you, her most favourite son, she done and robbed from since that first time we danced together in Congo Square. What guarantees you give me she won’t take our boy? Sacrifices must be made, says I, and I ain’t never complained! Not when you come home all broke to pieces, not when we was forced to leave England where you swore to me I’d be safe forever, not even when the treasure you promised me done fled and gone! Hold fast you says, and bless my soul, I have! But you hear this, John Silver, and you hear it well! On Jim I ain’t giving no quarter! I swear I’ll keelhaul you meself if you let our son go off with you. Promise me,” she says at last. “Promise me he’ll never go to sea, not with you nor anyone on this island!”