by L. A. Meyer
"Too bad we ain't got feathers," she says.
"We got feathers," I say, and dive back into my seabag. I pull out my writing quills. The girls look at me in wonder. Well, of course I would have those in there, wouldn't you?
Katy takes a quill and splits it down the center.
"Too bad we ain't got glue," I say.
"Don't need no glue," says Katy.
She takes three pieces of half quill, strips a bit of the feathery part off each end, exposing the bare center spine, and uses more of the cord strands to lash them down sort of opposite each other on the notched end of the stick.
"Injun kids showed me how to do that. They didn't have no glue, neither. Can you light that candle for a bit?"
I do it and she drips the hot wax over the lashed parts of the arrow and smoothes it over with her finger and then hands it to me.
I hold it up and admire it while she strings the bow.
"Now, let's see about them millers," says Katy Deere.
Rats ain't the only creatures this thing could kill, I'm thinking with some satisfaction.
Later in the day, I'm sitting on the Stage, listening to Dorothea give a lecture on the life of Galileo, but I'm watching Katy. She's down in the Pit, crouched under the starboard Balcony, way back under so she can't be seen by anyone looking through the bars. She lies down there in the Pit for hours, it seems, the bow pulled back and an arrow nocked in place and trained on a hole where we know the rats come out.
Suddenly there is a twang and a high squeak, and I know that we have our first miller, and when Dorothea is finished, I go station myself next to the lookout up on the forward port Balcony and wait. It's Sylvie who's got the watch there, and I sit with her in silence. Looking at her sitting there, scanning the deck with her dark eyes, intent on her duty, I think of poor Henry Hoffman and what he must be going through, with his dear girl gone. Does he think her dead? Kidnapped? I don't know what any of them are thinking back there, and I shake my head to stop thinking about that.
Ah. There's Keefe, walking by on some errand. "Keefe," I hiss, "c'mere!"
He looks around guardedly and comes near, but not too near, and asks, "Wot you want?"
"Tell Cookie I wants to see him. About makin' a deal for some millers."
He looks dubious but I put my face to the bars and flutter my eyes and look piteous. "C'mon, Keefie, you'll do it for me, won't you?" I've been giving the boys a tiny bit more with each of my special performances down by the tubs, just to keep their interest up.
"Awright," he says.
"Tell 'im to meet me here, where he won't be seen from the quarterdeck. Sometime when it's convenient to him. We're always home."
By the time Cookie comes to call, Katy has bagged three more millers. I'm down at the work site when I get the call from the lookout that he's coming, and I'm up there in a flash, holding the four rats by their tails.
Cookie looks warily about, but squats down next to the bars. "So what's the deal?" he asks.
"Look, Cookie," I say, "we got millers, lots o' them, and you ain't. You know they all live over here and only go forward to raid your stores."
"Little blighters," he grumbles in agreement.
"So, we give you four millers and you cook 'em up nice and give us back three, and you get to keep the fourth to sell or enjoy yourself," I say, all reasonable.
"One for you, three for me," he says, as I knew he would.
"Fifty-fifty," says I, "or no deal ... and no more show and no more stories." I know from my lookout reports that he's been enjoying both forms of entertainment.
"Awright. Deal. Hand 'em over."
I swing the carcasses through the bars and he gathers them up.
"You'll get yours tomorrow. 'Bout noon."
"Good enough, Cookie, and thanks."
Chapter 33
We line up for inspection, and by now no one, not even Constance, is bothering to put on her dress—most of the time it's just too damned hot and what's the point, anyway? Sin-Kay has not commented on this—he probably thinks it's a good sign of us being broken and not caring anymore and all. Fine. Let him think that.
He has taken to carrying a riding crop under his arm during these inspections—I guess to make us scared. I reflect that it was probably that very thing that put the scar on poor Hughie's cheek. Bastard.
Clarissa does not mock him outright today. No, she just hums a little tune when he stands in front of her, and then she bursts out laughing, as if at some little private joke—at Sin-Kay's expense, of course. He doesn't let it go.
"All of you are too skinny. You will notice today that your rations are being improved." He takes his riding crop in hand and with it he lifts up the front of Clarissa's undershirt, enough to show her lower ribs. "We cannot have this when we arrive at the slave pens. Weight must be gained."
"Yassuh, Mistah Stinkey, we be fattenin' right on up, you'll see," pipes up Clarissa. "Jes' like a bunch o' happy little ol' cows in yo' feedlot. Yum, yum, jes' let me at that fine, fine burgooooooo!"
Several of us, up and down the line, echo Clarissa's lowing ... Mmmmmoooooo ... Another great sound, I'm thinking, that you can make without moving your lips.
There are several stifled snorts of laughter.
Sin-Kay glares at Clarissa and then turns abruptly away. He knows this bit of fun will be reported to the rest of the crew—some of them are always lurking and listening—and he doesn't like it. We continue to grow in stature in the crew's eyes, and he continues to be diminished.
"Fine. Have your fun. Sammy, report to me any of them who do not eat their full bowl, and they shall be force-fed like geese. Dismissed!"
We do not move on his command, just as we had planned, but only come to attention and stay that way until he leaves the Hold.
We go forward and get our rations from Hughie under Sammy's watchful eye. When I look in my bowl, I nod toward Wilhelmina and she does her usual trick—she groups girls around the hatchway so that Nettles can't see in.
"Dolley, Clarissa," I say, and they come over, looking into their bowls. "Just an extra thick layer of pork grease on top, that's all," I say, as I put my nose down and sniff. "Rancid, too. Let's pass the word, quietly, for them not to eat it."
"Some 'improved rations,'" says Dolley, looking disgustedly at the greenish fat swirling around in her bowl.
"Right," says Clarissa, equally revolted. "But what can we do with it? That creepy boy Nettles'll tell on us, sure as hell"
"Let's get the word to the girls and then we'll figure that out," says I, and we three scatter to warn our divisions.
It's Katy Deere who has the solution. "Let's get us a coupla pieces of cloth and have each girl spoon her pig fat in it. It'll harden up when it cools and then we'll use it to draw them millers outta their holes. They're sure to get more wary as I keep nailin' 'em. I'm bettin' they'll like this stuff enough to come out and take a chance to get some of it."
We line up and do it so our bellies are not assaulted by that awful stuff. And when the grease cools, Katy will have a fine, if disgusting, ball of pork fat. Even without that bait, she had killed six more millers since yesterday's hunt—they wait in a pile at the port-side forward Balcony watch station, the rendezvous point for the exchange.
I go down to the work site to check on things and am much encouraged. The round-the-clock schedule has really sped up things, and I know just by looking at the Rat Hole that I'll be able to get through it. Before I go, though, I return to my seabag and change clothes. I reach in and pull out a small bundle and open it up.
"What is that?" whispers Rebecca, always fascinated with what I am up to.
"My burglar outfit," I whisper back. "If I'm surprised over there, I'll be better able to hide in this rig than I would in white drawers and undershirt." It is the same outfit I used to haunt the not-so-very-Reverend Mather back at the school when I found out what he had done to that poor Janey Porter.
"Trust you to have a thief's costume," says Constance Howell, wh
ose turn it is at the Hole and who has overheard the whispered talk between Rebecca and me.
"Just tend to your duty, Connie, and leave me to mine," I say in a low voice, a voice with a good deal of warning in it.
I whip off my drawers and hear a firm tsk! from Connie, but who cares? I climb into my tight black britches—actually the same britches I stripped off Charlie Rooster's body all those years ago and had later dyed black. Then it's on with my serving-girl black stockings and off with my white chemise so I can pull on my tight jersey sweater and black leather gloves. My knit wool watch cap completes the outfit—and, when I pull the watch cap down over my face, there ain't a white bit of me showin' 'cept for the whites of my eyes peering through the slits cut in the cap.
"Ooohh," breathes Rebecca, "you look like a proper imp from down below, you do."
Constance sniffs loudly but reserves judgement on the impishness of my character, which is lucky, 'cause I'm just about ready to smack her a good one.
The candle is lit and I go through the Hole. I still scrape a bit at my hips, so I know it'll be a while before Dolley could get through, but hey, chip by chip, we'll get there.
Standing up on the other side and holding the candle, I look about me. I see a worktable, and there are kegs and boxes stacked about on shelves and on the deck. There's some boards of various lengths, and ... a coil of rope, and, aha! there's a spool of twine beside it. But first things first.
I go to the door to check it out. I can tell from the hinges that the door swings in and to starboard. I hold the candle to the latch, but I can't tell anything about it from this side, and I don't want to stick a blade through and jiggle it about in the daytime because someone might hear and wonder at the noise. I put my ear to the door crack and listen but hear nothing except faraway sounds. Course, it's not likely I would, since I'm down in the bottom of the ship, just above the bilges, and the sleeping quarters and the galley would be up on higher decks. Hmmm. Thinking about the kitchen makes me wonder if that's the smell of our millers roasting. Hope so. Maybe later tonight, when all are sleeping, I'll give the latch a try with my shiv. But for now, it's back to business.
I crouch down and choose eight more battens and slide them back through the Rat Hole. Waiting hands take them immediately. Katy's going to make up some more bows and then we'll see which of the girls turn out to be handy with them.
Then I go back and get the spool of cording and put it through, whispering, "Cut off about twenty yards of that and then pass it back." I wait there, crouched, until its return. I know that some girl is measuring it out, nose to extended arm, nose to extended arm, repeated twenty times. A hand appears below me, holding the spool, and I take it and put it back where it was and then continue my exploration.
If the ship's carpenter is in charge of this space, he sure ain't a neat custodian—there's piles of odd pieces of metal angles, and while some tools are hung on pegs on the bulkhead, others are just strewn about on the worktable top. There's about five brace-and-augers, tools for drilling holes—that's good, we might need those—and there's mallets and files ... Good, good ... And everything being a mess, nothing will be missed if we borrow some tools for a while. I take up a file and pass that through—Katy needs it to round off the arrows—and then I spy stacked buckets and ... What's in this box? Glory! It's cakes of laundry soap! I take one big cake and one bucket and put them through the Hole, hoping that the girls on the other side don't shout out loud over that prize. They don't, though I know that much linen will be scrubbed and hung out to dry under the Stage this day and...
Then I freeze. Oh, my God! Someone's coming! There's a clatter of boot heels on the outside ladder and then footsteps outside the door. The latch rattles.
I snuff out the candle and suck the acrid smoke into my mouth so it won't be smelled. No time to get back to the Hole. I leap back against the passageway bulkhead and flatten myself as the door swings open and covers me.
One man enters the room, muttering to himself, "Goddamn Chubbuck, whyn't he get his own goddamn spikes, the sod..." The much put-upon man rummages about on the worktable, as far as I can figure out, me being out of sight behind the door. Then ... Horrors!... The ship has taken a more pronounced roll and the door starts to swing closed! If he turns, he'll see me! Quick. I reach up and grab the top of the door and swing it back toward me. Then I hear, "There. This should serve, and the filthy bugger can go to hell if it don't." Then I hear his footsteps, and the door is pulled from my lightly restraining fingers and slammed shut. The sound of his boots gets fainter and fainter. Then silence.
I let out my breath and waste no time in feeling my way back to the Rat Hole and out.
Damn! That was close. Note to self: We can't be surprised like that again.
I praise the girls gathered about the Hole for not crying out and giving us away during that time of peril. They are certainly turning into a coolheaded bunch, by and large, and I rejoice in it.
"All right, light the candle again," I say.
"But surely you're not going back in there again!" whimpers one of the girls. "You were almost caught!"
"Only for a moment, Rose," I say. "And you shall see that we will be the safer for it."
The candle is lit and I slide through to the storeroom once more. I jump up, grab from the wall a brace-and-bit with a small drill I had spotted before, and am back down and through the Hole in an instant.
After all have calmed back down and are again at work on widening the Hole, I make yet another visit to my seabag. I reach in and pull out one of my door wedges, one of the ones I had used when I was touring Cape Cod, to keep unwanted visitors out of my rooms at various inns. As wondering eyes watch me, I squat down and clamp the wedge with my toes and put the bit to the thicker end and start drilling. In a matter of minutes, I finish, then I squirm through the Rat Hole once again and return the brace-and-bit to its place on the workbench. This time I do it by feel, without the candle, as I am becoming quite familiar with our dear storeroom.
Taking about fifteen feet of the twine, I slip the end through the newly drilled hole in the wedge and tie it down tight, whipping the end for neatness.
"See, the next time someone goes through, the first thing she does is put this wedge under the door. If someone surprises us and tries to open the door, he won't be able to—he'll rattle the door thinkin' it's stuck 'cause of the dampness or something. Then the girl out there scampers back through here and yanks the cord, pulling the wedge back here, too. If the intruder hears it skitter across the floor, he'll think it's merely a rat. Got it?"
As I wriggle out of my burglar gear and back into my usual undershirt and drawers, I talk to Dolley and Clarissa, who both have come down to the work site. "We had a big scare there. It shows us we've got to cover our tracks better. There's some planking and saws over there, and I say the next thing we must do is make a hatch cover for the Rat Hole in case we are ever really inspected. We must do that, for if the Hole is discovered, we are lost."
"Good. We will do it. But won't they hear us sawing?" asks Dolley.
"We'll wait till we have a good rockin' blow, when the chains are really clashing against the sides, and then we'll time our saw cuts to that. Clang! Cut! Clang! Cut! We won't be heard. Every sailor is busy during a blow, be it a King's ship or a slaver. They won't be thinking much of us, I can tell you.
"And nobody is to go through the Hole to the storeroom for the time being, unless we three say so. Is that clear?" I ask, reaching over and placing my stern finger on the nose of the ever more adventurous Rebecca. All around us nod, including her, but I know I shall have to watch our Rebecca. She crosses her eyes comically, looking down at my finger on her nose, then giggles, curls up in a ball, and rolls away. Hmmm...
"Jacky," comes the soft call from high above, "bag down"
Bag?...Ha! It's gotta be our millers!
I jump to my feet and fly out of the Pit and up to the port-side forward watch station. Ruth Alden sits there, on watch, with an oilskin
bag at her feet. A line from the neck of the bag extends out through the bars and beyond.
I pull open the top of the bag and a wondrous smell hits my nose. The spit pools in my mouth and threatens to spill out over my chin. I swallow hard and attend to business. I reach in and pull out a greasy parchment package. I open it and admire the gloriously roasted millers within. I wrap it back up, lay it aside, and say to Ruth, "Okay, now stuff those other millers in the bag!"
But she shrinks back, horrified at the thought of touching the six dead rats piled in the corner.
"All right, I'll do it," I say, bending to the task. "But I'll wager, Ruth Alden, that within the week you'll be smacking your lips over the arrival of these things!"
She shakes her head and looks greenish about the gills, but we'll see...
I give two tugs on the line when all the millers are stuffed inside the bag, and it jerks up and out of sight. Then I make for under the Stage, the package warm in my hands.
"Pass the word. We've got roast miller. Everybody can have at least a bite."
But it turns out that not everyone wants a bite. In fact, there are only four of us willing to try. The first one to plunk herself down next to me is Lissette. She sees the surprise on my face and says, "You English, you are always making fun of the French for the eating of the escargot and the legs of the frog. Eh, bien. Make fun of me for this, too, but I will have some meat."