Stamps, Vamps & Tramps (A Three Little Words Anthology)

by Rachel Caine

  “Will we get better?” asks the blonde.

  A VIRGIN HAND DISARM’D

  By Mary A. Turzillo

  Modesty was not the custom on this clove-scented island, Will knew. The beautiful dark girl, Mawar, wore no more raiment than a cat, except for the ornate markings on her face, body, hands, and feet. That and the luxuriant veil of her black, silky hair. She had taken off her sarong and invited him to swim. How could a woman with so few adornments command such respect with a glance of her black eyes?

  Mawar had caught his heart like one of the golden fish, the gohu her tribesmen caught for the elders to dine upon.

  “Mawar, though I am but a poor seaman, the least and youngest on my captain’s ship, I beg you to stoop to my low station. Mawar, please, marry me.”

  “But how could I lie with you?” she mused. “You have no embellishments upon your hands. How will you pass through life’s seasons with such bare fingers?”

  Will looked down. His father was a glove-maker, but his hands were bare on this epic journey. One of his gloves had been lost, or stolen perhaps, in Nova Albion, along with his boots.

  Her own hands were covered with finely-drawn patterns—eyes, and flames, tiny deer, the moon, sun-wheels.

  “But still, you are the finest man I have seen in all my life. Your babes will be fine, too; tall and with that bit of sunlight in your hair. And with skin so pink and light. And your eyes are the color of clouds. So, come, let us lie here on this warm sand.”

  Dishonor her? His wits had fled. He was so roused that he thought to take her after simply drawing aside his codpiece, but she puzzled at his pins and buttons and soon had him raw as a boiled egg.

  And then she laughed, in surprise, not ridicule.

  “It’s true what my kinswomen say, then,” she said. “These Englishmen do not subject themselves to the tooth. So how may they properly confront the world?”

  Will was still engorged with passion, but her laughter somewhat wilted him. He said, “I have sailed for three years. I have seen parts of the world your chieftain and your silly gossip mothers will never see.”

  She mock-gaped at him. “And perhaps the sun burned off your markings?”

  Then she threw herself back on the sand and rolled away from him, stopping to prop herself on one elbow.

  “Without the marks upon your hands, you may pass many seas, but you will not pass the River of Death. Maligang will not allow it.”

  “Who is this Maligang? I have heard of it, but—”

  She sighed. “Maligang guards the afterlife. Surely your people have heard of him.”

  “Sooth, but we call the river Styx, and the goddess who owns it has the same name.” Most of his sense had flown to his engorged cod, but he thought to add, “There is a ferryman, named Charon. But a coin pays his toll, no images upon the skin.”

  “What ignorant fools your men are. Are your women equally benighted?”

  She sprang up and deftly wrapped her sarong around her.

  “Must I be marked with pictures, like you, before I am accounted a true man?” He was having trouble stuffing himself back into his clothing. When he’d left England, this whole affair of love-making had seemed somewhat less urgent. Oh, he was mad for love, but too shy to approach even the loosest of maids. But he was sixteen now, an age when tumbling a maid was enough to drive a man to do anything.

  “Oh, I’ve seen you’re a true man, and a fine one. Eager as a puppy. But it would disgrace me to have such a lover, all undecorated as you are.”

  He made a quick decision. He’d forgone the needle and dyes before, though many of Drake’s crewmen had pictures from several islands, all over their bodies and even their faces. “I’ll be decorated then. Take me to your surgeon, or whoever does this frightful work.”

  She softened, and her black eyes showed pity. “Really, sweetling, if you hope to cheat death at the end of your life, you must be clad in dye.”

  She strode off, leaving only her flower scent to compete with the spice that hung over everything on the island.

  He had seen many of his crew-mates drowned or pierced by arrows or lead, but he wasn’t planning to die soon. Dye, die. He’d promise anything.

  Mawar’s body rivaled that of a goddess. Of course, what did he have for comparison? What maid had he seen naked, back on the banks of the Avon?

  He’d fallen into conversation with her so easily, after just a few days while Drake’s other men were foraging for necessities on this Island of Diamond, as they called it. Though he let his fellow sailors believe that he had trouble with the Latin and Greek they had taught him at school, he learned languages easily. And so did Mawar. Were she come to the English court, she would be accounted a wit.

  What the court would think of her painted sleeves, he could only imagine.

  So they traded wit and flirtation back and forth, she teaching him her tongue and he teaching her English, while Drake traded and cajoled and extorted what he needed to sail back to Plymouth.

  Now Mawar was asking him to take on the body-paintings. He would do so. By the Cross, he would marry her if she would have him, no matter how many drawings he must have on his pale, if sunburned, flesh.

  And so he went with Mawar to her granddame, who advised his decorations should start with his hand. Would Mawar marry him? Of course! She had promised. And yet, he noticed several handsome men on this island with whom she exchanged admiring looks.

  The artist who was to decorate him turned out to be a venerable and richly decorated old dame. She was called the tufunga, if his ears did not betray him. Mawar had counseled him to give her a gift. Fortunately he still had one of his father’s second-best gloves. Only the left one, but she seemed quite happy with it, though it was too big for her clever hand.

  Also to his surprise, Mawar’s relative had provided a feast, with song, dance, and a dish called papeda kuah ikan, with a rich yellow fish soup, and snake fruit.

  This was perhaps to soothe him for the pain to come. The tufunga offered him no anodyne. Tuak, fermented palm wine, was forbidden to initiates, and he had no access to Drake’s store of rum. He was made to lie on the floor while the tufunga held his skin taut with her feet, and positioned a bone disk with a small hole filled with dye made from a burned nut above his hand. She then took a huge tooth—from a shark, he later learned—and poised it above.

  He braced himself, but shrieked like a woman in childbed when the hammer-stone hit the shark’s tooth, which then pierced his skin. Ashamed at his lack of manly courage—good God, he had been half-drowned once, and it had been less horrific—he clenched his teeth until he thought they would break.

  He was dimly aware that Mawar and her two sisters were singing sweetly as they knelt nearby. He could barely translate the words—something about I wish I could take this pain instead of you—if I give you a bracelet, it will someday break, but this tattoo is a jewel that you will take to the grave and beyond—

  He would have been touched, but he was too busy stopping himself from howling.

  When the pain slacked off, the tufunga wrapped sacred leaves around his hand and arm and tied them with a deft knot.

  Will cut the knot and let the leaves fall away from his arm, which still stung like fury. The head of a beast was printed on the base of his thumb, and its body and limbs coiled around his wrist and forearm.

  Mawar gazed with admiration. “The tufunga chose well! This is the naga of great power. It poisons deer and even men, and then eats them. Your hand will perform great feats, and you will pass the River of Death with ceremony.”

  He grinned. “So, I am immortal?”

  She frowned, but then said, in English, “Yes. That is your word. Immortal.”

  “So now we may—”

  “Not yet! You must have the other arm done, and then wings upon your shoulders, that is, if the tufunga gives you wings. And then—”

  “But we—do your people not practice marriage?”

  She seemed confused. “Of course. But only a
fter you have taken more of the marks of manhood.”

  She nestled against him and he felt again the heart pang and the rising of his manly spirit, but he only said, “I do not see this naga picture on any of your tribesman.”

  “Oh, that is a special one. The tufunga saw great power in you. So she gave you the naga. The komodo naga.”

  Will went to Sir Francis and told him that he planned not to sail when The Golden Hind left Moluca.

  “Do you say so, sirrah?” said Sir Francis. “You astonish me. I give you special treatment. While the other men subsisted on sea biscuits, you were allowed jerky from my own store, and an extra ration of water.”

  “My pardon, your honor. When we reach England, I will get money from my father to repay your kindness.”

  “I have a hold full of silver, gold, and spices. I doubt your glove-stitching father will give me anything I would value more than one of the sea biscuits you so proudly disdained.”

  Will had broken his teeth on the sea biscuits as humbly as any of the crew, but he said nothing.

  Sir Francis continued, “I need you on this journey. You helped me make speeches to inspire my men. You have an alacrity for the tongues of the Portugee, the Spaniards, and the many dark men of the forests and islands. I cannot let you dwell here while I assault the island nations.”

  Will felt a cold chill.

  “I noticed,” said Sir Francis, “That you’ve taken one of the body-marks the natives here adopt. A dragon, is it? I suspected you were planning to stay. And so—”

  Three of the crewmen sprang up from their seats and grabbed Will. He struggled cleverly, but they put leg irons upon him. He was chained to the deck of The Golden Hind.

  Mawar came to him in the night. Her hair was wet, and her sarong was wrapped around her waist, concealing almost nothing of her lithe, decorated body. In the moonlight, the lineaments of her markings looked like delicate dark lace. The seaman set to guard him paid her no heed, for he knew of Will’s misfortune.

  She put her wet face to his pictured hand and kissed the naga.

  “I am sorry, Mawar,” he said, again and again.

  She pressed closer to him, then, with the same deft fingers she had used on the beach that day, undid his garments. She threw aside her sarong and lay beside him. She opened herself to him, honey and salt. He knew nothing of the art of love, but his body instructed him as he penetrated her secret places. His pleasure both intensified and overcame his sorrow. They slept, then coupled again, and again.

  The sentry woke them as the sun broke over the horizon. Mawar stood without a trace of embarrassment; her beauty, her dignity, and her tattoos were equal to the robes of a queen.

  Will stood too, pulling his breeches on, his emotions and heart undone.

  “Listen,” said Mawar, her lips against his ear. “I know you cannot return. Your country is a world away, and few have come from there to here even once. But I am in my part of the moon where children are made. And I believe I am a fertile one, though I have not yet born a babe. I believe perhaps this night we have made, between us, a child. I will tell the child of his beautiful father with the naga tattoo. And though we are apart, my heart will belong to you until I cross the River of Death.”

  “No! Come with me. Sir Francis will allow not allow a woman aboard The Golden Hind, but you can dress as a boy. I will find clothes to cover you—to cover your —your loveliness—and—”

  She pressed two cool fingers against his lips. “I am afraid of the deep sea. I love you, but this is my home. I will not forget you, I promise.”

  “But I want to marry you!” And then a horrid thought occurred to him. “You’ve just been toying with me. Your mother has picked a husband for you, and now I’m an exotic pleasure, soon to be forgot.”

  “No. Part of you stays with me.” She pressed her hands against the birds painted upon her belly. “I believe it will be a girl.”

  When The Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth, Will felt his sea-legs under him turn to land-lubber’s legs. He gazed with a boy’s longing at the gold-green fields of England, nearly at harvest.

  Will had his seaman’s pay, and this he spent on a new pair of boots, and passage from Plymouth to Milford Haven, then a carriage ride, and a night at an inn, with a meat pie and ale to fuel his drive toward his father, his mother, his home, and the few books he owned.

  Will felt embarrassment that he had lost and given away the fine gloves his father made for him —they weren’t John’s best, of course, since those were made of more costly leather. But when he strode up the path, the first thing he saw was his mother, with a load of wet clothes ready to pin up to dry.

  Her eyes grew as wide as coins, and she dropped the laundry, heedless of the dirt. She ran to him and grabbed him tight. “Will, Will, oh my sweet boy, where have you been? We feared you dead, or taken up by authorities for poaching.”

  He embraced her—she was shorter than he was now, by a whole head. “I’ve seen such things—”

  A woman was standing in the gate to the Shakespeare house, daughter of a neighbor his father had done favors for. Her eyes met his, and she smiled a slow smile. “Young Will has grown to be a man.” She sauntered past him and his mother, then turned and winked over her shoulder.

  “Anne is a bit backward in company,” said his mother, wiping the tears of joy from her eyes with her apron. “I’m sure she is near glad to see you as I am.”

  In his experience, Anne wasn’t all that bashful. “She’ll be back,” he said.

  And she was. Before he was even settled in helping his father to cut and stitch fine leather, this same Anne set to wooing him.

  She became tedious in her attentions; a pretty enough girl, and as virtuous as the next, but God’s body! Why would she follow him every day and every where?

  Will thought of the black eyes and dark, sweet skin of the love he’d left the wide world away, but this woman was here. Her mouth was sweet, and in a field blossoming with aconite and yarrow, she had her way with him.

  And soon after, she announced that he was to be a father.

  After the hasty wedding and the birth of his little pink-cheeked daughter, he became restless. A few years later, the birth of the twins, Hamnet and Judith was a joy, especially the birth of a son to carry on his name. But he chafed under daily routine at his father’s shop. By candle or moonlight, he wrote poetry, most notably the history of Lucrece, a virtuous woman raped by her husband’s enemies.

  And he thought of Mawar. Perhaps there was another daughter, a half-world away, a toddler now with velvet-dark cheeks and enchanting black eyes. The thought agonized him. He went down to the port once or twice, but had no stomach for a long sea-voyage, nor for abandoning his wife and three children.

  And no doubt Mawar was, despite her vows of love in her own language and in English, long since wed to another man, mother to a dark man’s children, or even, may God forbid, dead.

  The dragon image on his hand seemed to stand out when he was in his father’s workshop, a mockery of his leather-cutting skills, or lack thereof. His hand ached, and he found himself cradling it and wanting to stick it in cold water. He was not content to make gloves.

  An actor was murdered in a theatrical company traveling near Stratford-on-Avon. On impulse, he went to the troupe’s leader and volunteered to stand in for the actor—he had learned the lines after seeing the play but once. But one performance, and Will knew he was meant for the stage. He sought roles in several troupes, finally achieving a part with the Lord Chamberlain’s men. London, at last! Stratford-on-Avon was his home, Anne was his wife, and he had three fine children, but he was stage-struck.

  He excelled as an actor, but his dragon-tattooed hand itched every day until he made time to write, and write, and write. The tattoo tickled, almost like a kind of lechery, and he could ease the itch only by writing histories and comedies. The ease was short-lived after each work: three plays about Henry VI and the rollicking, romantic Comedy of Errors. His tattoo began to torme
nt him as if the dragon was afire. It burned, and he could ease the pain neither by drink nor by plunging his arm into cold water nor by the distractions of the city, but by writing of severed arms, maidens raped, tongues cut out: the bloody tragedy Titus Andronicus. He thought of Mawar when he wrote of the vixen Tamora. And was Anne Lavinia? These were but caricatures of the women: perhaps his Mawar was still true to him, at least in her heart, though he had left her on the Island of Diamonds. And Anne—she was certainly no helpless ravished virgin. He sought his place in life. His alacrity with language, discovered by Captain Drake, won him applause from audiences and actors—and enough money for fine things for Anne and his three children.

  It was the beginning of a satisfying career, almost enough to make up for the emptiness he felt when he thought of those islands, the sea, the heady perfumes, the red lips, the sharp wit of a woman who learned languages easily, and those black, black eyes.

  He wrote of travelers in love with exotic strangers: the twins Antipholus and Antipholus, shipwrecked and sea-traveling, and of Emilia, the long lost wife and mother. He wrote of lovers torn apart by ill-haps. He wrote of shrewish wives—

  And when Anne decided to come to London to see one of her illustrious husband’s plays, he learned to regret using her as inspiration. Not that she was really the termagant he so deliciously portrayed in Taming of the Shrew, but there were some touches she couldn’t avoid recognizing.

  “How could you!” she railed, following him back to his lodgings and amazing his mate Thom Kyd with her ravings. “I do not wonder that you never bring your work home to your own dear family. You think I cannot read?”

  In fact, Will knew very well that she could read; it was one of the reasons he’d agreed to marry her, aside, of course, from her swelling belly. Some of his fellow dramatists carried desks and materials everywhere they went, but Will kept his in London to speed his journey to Stratford-upon-Avon.