by Kim Wilkins
Old Harry, the cook who brought her two meals a day, was kind enough to speak a few words to her, though she was cautious not to ask for too much. He gave her all the important information: where they were, how the journey was progressing. They passed within twenty miles of Palma and then the peak of Tenerrife, but haze and thick clouds prevented her from seeing either. Once they moved into the path of the trade winds, their good speed was consolidated and their captain—her father—was reported to be mightily pleased with their progress. Without Harry’s updates, she would have believed herself adrift in the ocean forever, not drawing any closer to land, just rolling and rolling on the endless waves.
One overcast afternoon shortly after they crossed to the other side of the world, it grew so hot in her cabin that she felt she couldn’t breathe. It had rained that morning, and then the grey clouds had hung over them like a woollen blanket, trapping the moist heat. Her body grew sticky, uncomfortable. She couldn’t bear to sit on her bed, because sweat gathered on the backs of her legs and trickled down behind her knees. She hung at her window, but caught none of the freshness in the breeze. She began to feel anxious, overwhelmed. Air, she needed air. But Father had told her, very forcefully, that she wasn’t to leave her room during the day.
Well, then. She would just have to make sure her father didn’t find out.
It was a big ship; there were only eighteen crew. Surely she could work her way up on deck, hide somewhere . . . The poop deck was out of the question: Father spent most of his time up there. The quarterdeck had plenty of places to hide, but saw most of the action. But the forecastle deck, right at the very front of the ship, would certainly catch the best breezes, and it would be safe.
Constance moved to the door, cracked it open and listened. There was nobody in the narrow corridor that led to the pantry. She scurried out, making her way quickly towards the root of the main mast. Here she paused, back pressed up against the round, smooth wood. The sour smell of the ship was strong in the airless space. Above, she could hear a commotion. Laughing, shouting. She kept moving. Then somebody called out, “All hands on deck.” Footsteps everywhere. She crouched beside one of the eighteen-pound cannons, wriggling up against the wall. Her heart thudded dully as the sound of everybody moving surrounded her. Men dashed past, up the ladders onto the quarterdeck. They were in a hurry; they didn’t have time to see a girl hiding in the shadows.
When Constance was sure everybody had passed, she rose and made for the ladder, curious, now, about the commotion. Carefully, she peeked out at the quarterdeck. She didn’t have a clear line of sight; masts and ropes and the shadows of the sails were in the way. But now she could hear a loud clucking noise, flapping wings. She glimpsed men chasing about, laughing. Old Harry shouted instructions. It seemed he had gone to get chickens for dinner, and one had escaped. Guilt crept over her. Perhaps, like her, the chicken just wanted to feel the breeze. She mentally vowed not to eat chicken that afternoon.
Still, while they were all occupied with their game, they wouldn’t see her creep up onto the forecastle deck. She hurried up, stepping around neatly coiled ropes, and found herself a place in front of the forecastle mast. The long bowsprit pointed out to sea before her, its rigging criss-crossed against the lowering sky. She sat, already blessing the wind, which tangled her hair behind her and cooled her sticky skin.
The ocean disappeared beneath her, grey and vast. She could taste salt on her lips. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, freed from the oppression of her cabin. Voices nearby had her jerking upright, looking around. But they were coming from beneath her, through the wooden lattice that let light in to the spaces below. She remembered, then, that under the forecastle deck was where the skilled crew—boatswains, gunners and carpenters—had their accommodation.
“She certainly gave Old Harry a run,” the first voice said gruffly.
“I think he’ll relish carving her up,” his companion replied in a thick Irish accent.
Laughter. She relaxed. They didn’t know she was here.
Their conversation moved on, Gruff-voice and the Irishman. An albatross circled above, and she watched it, trying not to listen to them speak. They used the most unsavoury turn of phrase, and when she realized they were talking about a woman . . . and then a particular kind of woman . . . she was scandalized and curious all at once.
Eventually, though, they turned to other matters.
“So why do you think the captain is bringing us all this way without a cargo aboard?” said Gruff-voice.
“I reckon he’s got something mighty precious waiting at the other end. An opportunity he had to chase quickly.”
Constance smiled to herself. He was right, in a way. Her father did seek something precious, but it wouldn’t earn him any money.
The Irishman continued. “Some of the others disagree with me. They say he’s on the run, had to leave England in a hurry.”
“In trouble? No, not Captain Blackchurch.”
“You don’t know then?” His voice dropped. “About his past?”
Constance’s spine stiffened. She strained to hear every word.
“That rubbish,” snorted Gruff-voice. “Piracy off the coast of Madagascar? I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t, eh? Ask Old Harry sometime—he was there. The only crew member Cap’n Blackchurch has kept. The others he got rid of; they knew his dark secret. Cleaned himself up, hoisted the red duster instead of the Jolly Roger, and now he’s respectable Henry Blackchurch Esquire. But I reckon at night he can still smell the blood on his hands.”
Then they were gone. Constance was numb. Could it be true? Could Father be a pirate? A thief? A murderer? She realized she hardly knew anything about him, had spent so little time in his company. Now the question seemed obvious. What kind of man was her father?
In her cabin, alone, Constance had too much time to contemplate this question. Her suspicions, with nobody rational to help dispel them, multiplied until her mind teemed with them, and her feelings for her father iced over with fear, as though she were a character in one of Daphne’s silly books. If only Father hadn’t confessed to some horrible deed in the letter to Violet, she might have been able to dismiss these feelings. She had always taken pride in her rationality. Reason was a thing to be cherished, or so Dr. Poole said. But now, every time she saw Old Harry, all her veins and nerves lit up with the desire to ask him if the tale about her father were true. It took all her energy to hold the questions in. If it got back to Father that she knew his secret, he would be angry. And she was more afraid of that anger than ever.
A sudden change in wind direction blew the heat away, replacing it with the chill of the Southern Ocean. In the following days they suffered through heavy squalls, and Constance no longer took her evening turn about the poop deck. Rather, she hunkered down in her cabin with her dread and wished with all her might that she was at home in England.
Then, one night, she had a nightmare. Father, with his clothes alight, roaring: a monster, a demon, brandishing two pistols like an old engraving she had seen of Blackbeard. One was pointed at her.
She woke. The room was filled with morning light. Somebody was knocking at her door. Alarmed, she pulled the blankets up to her chin.
Another soft knock. “Miss Constance?” It was Old Harry, with her breakfast.
“Come in.” She had slept late. Usually she was up and dressed by now, sitting at her writing desk working on a letter to Daphne that enumerated every fear she felt about Father.
He brought her a tray with warm oats and honey on it, placing it on the little table in the centre of the room.
“Good weather has returned today, miss,” he said as he straightened his back. “Our head is now right for the Cape; we’ve only twenty-eight degrees of longitude to run down. The captain says we’ll stop there a few days. You’ll be able to post your letter.”
At mention of the captain, Constance felt the terror of her dream return to her. She couldn’t help herself letting free a litt
le groan of fear.
“What’s wrong, miss? You’ve gone quite pale. Do you want me to call the surgeon?”
“No, no. I’m . . . I’ll be fine.” She forced a smile. “Harry, is my father . . . he’s a good man, yes?”
“Why yes, of course.”
“You’ve known him a long time.”
“I’ve been with him for twenty years. Since my leg worked proper.”
“Has he always been so? A good man, I mean?”
To Constance’s horror, Harry’s eyes flickered. He took a moment—it seemed an eternity—to answer her. And in that moment she knew, she knew. The Irishman had been telling the truth.
“He has always been as he is, miss,” Harry said firmly. “The best captain I could have wished for.”
“Of course.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. Harry wouldn’t meet her eye; he left the room quietly. And from then on he told her nothing more about their journey, but delivered her meals wordlessly.
His silence told her everything she needed to know.
A week later, they caught their first glimpse of the Cape of Good Hope. It was midday, the sun hung vertical in the sky, and the clouds were nowhere in sight. Slowly, they made their way towards Table Bay. It was two in the morning when Constance woke to hear voices cheering; they had cast anchor. She kneeled up to her window and saw Table Mountain, its long flat peak ghostly in the clear moonlight.
“Africa,” she murmured. And the incredible thought that she would soon set her feet on that mysterious continent caused a thrill to her heart. She drifted in and out of sleep, restless, eager for morning to come.
She was dressed in her cabin, her letter to Daphne folded and sealed on the writing desk, when Father opened the door.
She tried not to flinch. He lowered dark eyebrows at her, his customary expression in the last few weeks as she had become more and more withdrawn from him.
“Constance,” he said, “we have arrived in Table Bay. The crew are going ashore for two days. Do you have anything for the post?”
She offered up her letter, her heart sinking. “Father?” she ventured. “Could I . . . would it be possible for me to accompany you ashore?”
“I’m not going ashore. You’re staying here, and somebody will have to watch you.”
Ordinarily she might have protested how unfair this was, but she was utterly intimidated by him. “Very well,” she said, and returned to her bed to gaze out the window at the mountain and the bay. Trying not to think how much she felt like one of Old Harry’s doomed chickens in its coop.
Good Bess quit the Cape of Good Hope with a brisk gale after eight long days waiting for favorable winds. Henry was growing anxious, though he didn’t know why. Sixteen years had passed since Faith’s disappearance; the matter of a few days would hardly make a difference to the outcome of the journey. And yet anxious he was, keen to move, keen for the wind to blow.
Within a week, he was keen for it to stop blowing. North-westerly gales plagued them. One particularly violent storm plunged him deep into fear. The swell was high, but kept down by the violence of the wind itself, which ripped the white tops off the waves and sent them hailing across the decks. He couldn’t stay upright without holding the rail, and his roared commands were carried away from the ears they were meant for. “Hand the mainsail!” he shouted, hoarse. “Take another reef in the mizzen topsail! For God’s sake, keep Bess before the wind!”
He had been at sea nearly all his adult life, had steeled himself through storms twice the measure of this one. Why was he so fearful? Then it came to him: prior to this day, the only cargo he had carried was for trade. But today, Constance was aboard. His precious child. For all that she couldn’t meet his eye, that she quavered when he approached as though he might eat her, he loved her and couldn’t bear the thought of her coming to any harm.
They soon met with the south-east trade winds, blowing fresh and scented with the tropics. Good Bess was head-up for the Gulf of Mannar. Their journey was nearly complete.
“Captain?”
Henry turned from his navigation charts to see Maitland standing at the door to his cabin. He looked tense, and Henry felt himself tense up in sympathy. “Maitland?”
“We’ve seen a pearling schooner.”
“We’re sailing between pearl banks. Of course you’ve seen a pearling vessel.”
Maitland cleared his throat. “We think it’s de Locke’s.”
Henry’s blood began to warm up. “You mean, you think it’s mine.”
Maitland nodded. Henry clasped his right fist in his left palm. “Prepare the men. We’re going to take it. In one piece if we can. We’ll fire three shots across her bow. If he still resists, we’ll blow it to bits.”
Maitland hurried off, and Henry took a moment to gather his thoughts. De Locke, that scoundrel. Four years ago, Henry had bought pearls from de Locke for a trader back in England. It was only through fortunate coincidence that one of his paying guests on Good Bess was a jeweller, who had looked at them and declared six of them to be made of painted clay. Henry pursued de Locke through the pearl fishery superintendent. De Locke immediately and conveniently forgot every word of English he knew, so Henry’s journey home was delayed while a translator was sought.
Then, late in the evening, de Locke had come to see Henry aboard Good Bess and, in halting but perfectly comprehensible English, challenged him to a match of écarté, staking the money he owed on the outcome of the card game.
By lamplight in the low-ceilinged cabin, with Maitland and Burchfield as witnesses, they had played. Henry wasn’t ordinarily a gambler, so de Locke had to provide the cards and refresh his memory to the game’s rules. In two voles, de Locke had increased his debt to Henry threefold. He drank fiercely, bet recklessly, continued to increase his debt. Then, finally, he had pulled out the title deed to his pearler, La Reine des Perles, and thrown it on the table.
“All against this,” he declared.
Henry agreed.
De Locke turned up three kings. Which was interesting since Henry also had two. Maitland searched de Locke’s jacket and found high-scoring cards tucked into his sleeves. Under the threat of a pistol, de Locke was forced to count the cards, submit one correct deck, then roll his sleeves to his elbows for the final game. The one that everything was staked on.
De Locke was terrified now, perspiration beading above his gingery eyebrows. He turned over two tens, but Henry had two queens. And so he earned himself a third: the Queen of Pearls, as the pearler would be known in English.
Henry scooped up the title deed and crushed it in his fist. “A pleasure doing business with you, Gilbert,” he said.
De Locke looked as though he were fighting tears. “Will you give me until the morning to collect my things? Tell my crew?”
“Of course.”
In hindsight, that had been foolish. De Locke disappeared within an hour. A visit to his home the next morning had discovered only empty rooms. Henry sailed, still in possession of the pearler’s title deed, and without being repaid the money he was owed. He had always intended, some day, to track de Locke down and make him repay his debt. To happen across him in the Gulf of Mannar was luck too good to be ignored.
He left his cabin, intending to go up on deck. Then he saw Constance’s cabin door and remembered himself.
“Constance?” he said, knocking briskly, then opening the door.
She sat at her writing desk, auburn hair unbound.
“Father?”
“No matter what happens in the next hour, no matter what you hear, you are to stay here in the cabin. Do you understand?”
She nodded, her eyes round with surprise . . . or was that fear? He hadn’t time to debate it.
“Don’t lean out the window, either. And put your trunk in front of the door. Just in case.”
Who knew what de Locke was capable of?
Another nod. Why did she look so pale? What cause had he given her to be so afraid of him? “Don’t worry, c
hild,” he said, unable to keep the impatience out of his voice. “I know what I’m doing.”
He left, closing the door behind him. He could hear the sound of her shifting her trunk. Good, at least she’d listened to him. Heart thudding, he made his way up, hoping the gunners had the cannons ready.
“Tell them it’s not good enough, Alexandre!” barked de Locke.
Alexandre turned to his diving companions, translated de Locke’s words but softened them. “He wants to know if you can work faster. It’s been a bad month.” The pearl tucked in his cheek seemed to burn a guilty hole. No pearls in four weeks—only the one that Alexandre had found—and de Locke was growing frantic.
“We are working as fast as we can for the money he is paying us,” one of the divers said in response.
Alexandre turned to de Locke, hedged, then said, “They say they will do their best.”
“Don’t mumble so,” de Locke said, gruffly, turning away.
Alexandre adjusted the mainsail sheet, then glanced up. A ship had been growing closer all morning, but now she was clearly visible, the English merchant flag flying from her masthead. Alexandre watched a few moments. It seemed the ship was bearing straight for them, approaching fast.
“Gilbert?”
De Locke joined him, peering at the ship. “English pigs. What do they want?”
A sudden gust made the pearler heel over. Alexandre, perched on the cabin top watching the larger ship, lost his footing and crashed into the pin rail, cracking his jaw. He fell to the deck. The pain echoed through his skull. He shook his head hard, fighting unconsciousness.
De Locke was leaning over him, slapping his face. “Boy? Boy? Are you well?”
Alexandre opened his mouth wide to test his jaw. De Locke’s eyes seized on something within. Alexandre snapped his mouth shut hard, but it was too late.
The pistol was at his temple a half-second later. “What are you hiding in there?”