Betrayal

by Lady Grace Cavendish

  I clutched Masou’s hand. “Masou, there’s somebody here,” I gasped.

  Masou squeezed my hand briefly and winked. “You can do it, Grace,” he whispered, “I know you can.” And then he swung himself down, unlacing as he did so, and sat next to the sailor with his bare bum hanging over the waves as well.

  And I simply had to go. I was ready to burst. So I undid the lacing, then lowered myself down by one of the rope handles, until I was sitting on a plank with my bum bare like the other two and my shirt hanging down in front. My face was burning red, so hot I thought it would burst into flame, and even though I was so desperate, I couldn’t do anything for ages. I just had to sit there with my privy parts getting colder and colder, hating Lady Sarah more and more each moment (although I knew it wasn’t really her fault)!

  Just as I was starting to relax, the sailor belched, farted, and sighed, banged the dottle out of his pipe into the sea, then heaved himself up and off the plank. “Best be quick, boys,” he said. “No skiving on this ship, the Cap’n won’t have it. He’ll come down here looking for you himself, if needs must.”

  I could hear Masou snorting with suppressed laughter, though I don’t know what he thought was so funny.

  Once the sailor had gone, I concentrated hard on pretending to myself that I was just using a jakes on progress, and at last I managed to do what I had to do.

  When I had got the laces done up again and heaved myself off the plank, I saw Masou waiting for me. “Never, never, never tell anyone …,” I whispered through gritted teeth.

  “And have the Queen clap me in irons, throw me in the Tower, and then take my head off?” Masou replied, chuckling and shaking his head. “Never fear. But I wish you could see your face.”

  We went back to painting in the Great Cabin, with Masou still snorting with laughter every now and then. I don’t know how sailors can bear it, I really don’t.

  A minute later the Boatswain came in and tapped me on the shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Time for vittles.”

  “I’ve got to clean the brushes first,” I told him. Then I wiped them on the rag I’d been using to rub things out, and looked around for soapy water. The Boatswain pointed to another pot of bad-smelling stuff, so I dipped the brushes in that, and the paint did come off quite well. Once they were clean I left them to dry, and followed him and Masou back onto the deck.

  “Well, he ain’t lying about painting, at any rate,” said the Boatswain to Mr. Newman. “He’s done handsomely on the Captain’s picture. Reckon they’ve both worked hard enough to get fed, now.”

  That was a relief. My stomach was so hollow it was making very strange squeak-bubble noises.

  Mr. Newman nodded, so we went down steps and then more steps, down and down to the bilges where the Cook was. He was a scrawny man in a filthy shirt and jerkin and when I said “sir” to him, remembering what Masou had told me, he snorted. “You call me Cook, boy, that’ll do. Squat over there to eat.” He pointed to a space between two beer barrels. Then he slopped something that looked like vomit into two wooden bowls and gave them to Masou and me, along with a hunk of bread each and a big leather beaker of ale.

  I drank my ale down at once, then looked at the stuff in the bowl. Masou was already hunkered down on his haunches, next to a barrel, throwing bread into his mouth. There wasn’t room for us at any of the benches, and all the men were ignoring us.

  “What is this?” I whispered, squatting next to him.

  “Bacon and pease pottage,” he whispered back. “As I am a Mussulman, I should not eat it, for the pig is unclean, but there is nothing else.”

  “Oh.” I looked at it. I don’t think I’d ever had it before. I tried a bit, and found it was very salty and strange tasting, but I was so hungry I ate half of it. Then somebody barged into me from behind and knocked me flying, so the food went on the deck.

  “Watch where you’re going!” I shouted, furious that my bit of bread was now on the dirty floor.

  It was the sullen-looking boy again. “You watch where you’re sitting,” he sneered. “You’re in my way.”

  “No, I’m not,” I defended myself. “You just did that on purpose—”

  “You calling me a liar?” shouted the boy.

  One of the men laughed, and tapped his neighbour. “Temper, Tom!” he called. But instead of doing something about the boy, they settled back to watch. Another man put down some pennies, and then another, and I suddenly realized they were laying bets on us.

  Tom lifted up his fist and waved it under my nose. “I’m older’n you and I’m a sailor and you’re not. So you do what I say.”

  Masou could see I was tempted to answer back and elbowed me hard. “Leave it,” he whispered in my ear. “We don’t want to get into a fight.”

  But then Tom kicked Masou’s bowl over and shoved him flying into a barrel!

  “What did you do that for?” I shouted at him.

  “’Cause I choose,” he spat. “’Cause I’m better’n you and that slave boy, and you better remember it.”

  I slapped him hard across the face. How dare he call Masou a slave?

  He roared, and then hit me so hard on the side of the face, I fell to the ground. Tom had punched me! Me! A Maid of Honour to the Queen!

  Masou cannoned into him, fists flying, and knocked him sideways. I stared for a second as I climbed to my feet, astonished at Masou, who was supposed to be the sensible one. Unfortunately, he isn’t very big—or good at fighting—and that beefy Tom knocked him down with one of his big fists, and then kicked him.

  That really made me lose my temper. Everything went all slow and cold. I’m not sure how I managed it, but I caught up some of the pottage from the floor and threw it in Tom’s face, and then somehow I got my arm round his neck while he was trying to wipe it off, and started squeezing. He was terribly strong, and his arms flailed, but I just kept on squeezing while his face went red—and I hit his ear a couple of times too. …

  Masou had climbed to his feet, with a wicked look on his face and his knife in his hand; at that, two of the men pounced on us, lifted Masou out of the way, and grabbed me by the shoulder.

  “Let go,” growled the one holding me. “Let go, right now.”

  After a moment, when the roaring in my ears had faded a bit, I did let go of Tom’s neck. Tom fell to his knees, choking and gasping. Then he stood up, with a knife in his hand, too.

  “Put it away, Tom,” said the man behind me. “You got beat, now live with it.”

  Some of the other men clapped and started paying their bets. I thought we’d get some terrible punishment—but nobody said anything.

  Masou picked his bread up off the floor before a hopeful rat got to it, and I did the same. Then I decided not to eat it because it had got trampled in the fight. The rat could have it, and welcome.

  The three of us were ordered to clean up the mess made by the fight. I watched Tom like a hawk in case he tried to attack again, but he just scowled and did the minimum he could get away with. But I noticed that while he was cleaning, he carefully picked up all the spilled bits of bacon and put them on a bit of wood he had hidden in a corner. When he had gathered all he could find, he went to Cook and muttered something. I nearly sprained my ears trying to listen to them.

  “Not again, Tom,” Cook sighed.

  “Captain said I could. It’s for herself,” Tom told him.

  I was so excited I practically scrubbed a hole in the planks.

  Cook shook his head and handed over a small bowl of drinking water. “You’re soft on her,” he accused.

  “I’m not soft!” grunted Tom, and he skulked off into the darkness.

  I tried to catch Masou’s eye, but he wasn’t paying attention. I was desperate to talk to him. Both of them had said “her”! And this ship was full of men and boys only. Well, I was there, but nobody knew I was a girl. They must have been talking about Sarah!

  I wished and wished I could follow Tom to wherever he was taking the supplies, but I couldn’
t. Cook was watching us. I made careful note of which direction he had gone in, and that was all I could do—which was terribly frustrating. Of course, it was awful for Sarah, being fed leftover bacon that had been on the floor, and nothing but water to drink. I could only think that Drake was sorely vexed with her—Sarah is very trying, and perhaps she had refused to give in to his wicked plans! But Masou and I weren’t doing too well, either. My face was puffing up in a bruise, and Masou had a split lip.

  As we finished working, Cook kept shaking his head and chuckling to himself. “Don’t think any of ’em expected to see you give Tom a run for his money like that,” he said to me, shaking his head. “You’ve got some spirit in you, lad. No wonder you’ve run away to sea. I done the same myself, in my time.”

  I saw a great opportunity: Cook would likely know everything that went on aboard the Judith. So I pretended to be interested in hearing how he had run away to sea—and had to listen to a very long and unlikely tale about how he’d “nearly got sunk and drownded with the King’s Great Ship and then fought the French hand to hand.” I made impressed noises as he told me, then, when he’d finished, I risked a question. “Do you know what the Captain’s up to on this voyage, Cook?” I asked casually.

  “Oh, aye, hoping for some plunder, eh?” Cook assumed. He tapped his nose. “Well, Captain did put to sea in an almighty hurry—we’d not even fully finished loading our supplies. He might’ve caught wind of whatever it was Captain Derby was hurrying to find. But nobody knows for sure. Captain’s not said yet what we’re up to.”

  I decided to risk another. “Um … have you ever known anyone … bring a woman to sea on the Judith, Cook?” I asked, busily scrubbing the pot in my hands.

  Cook chuckled. “Oh, aye,” he said—it seemed to be his favourite phrase. My heart leaped, thinking he was going to tell me of Lady Sarah! “There was that Sam Pike,” he went on. My heart sank again. “See, he was lately wed, and desperate for to keep his wife close by him. So he smuggled her aboard dressed as a sailor and she hid in the cable tiers, and the sail locker, and even the brig. And when the Captain came round for his inspections, you never saw such a flurry, what with Sam and his mates shifting her out of the hold and into the galley one step ahead of him. I did laugh. Course, she got tired of it and fell asleep one night in Sam’s bed, and the Captain found her … Oh, aye, he was fit to be tied, was the Captain … Would have flogged Sam, he said, only he was such a good topman. Mrs. Pike spent the rest of the voyage shut up in a cabin, sewing, and couldn’t wait to get off the ship when we came home to Plymouth.”

  Cook shook his head again, grinning. “Oh, aye, the men are always trying it on, but the Captain, he just won’t have it. He said, clear as clear, he said, ‘I’d as soon have a raging bull on my poop deck as a woman stowed away in the cable tiers for the men to fight and grieve over.’ That’s what he said.”

  I grinned back, all the while thinking what a hypocrite Drake was—abducting Lady Sarah without a by-your-leave, and then keeping her hidden away somewhere aboard ship! I tried one last line of investigation: “Oh,” I said, “it’s just that I thought I saw a woman in one of the cabins, Cook. Very pretty, red hair, with a figure …” I made a curvy shape in the air, as I’d seen gentlemen do about Sarah when they didn’t know I was watching.

  Cook laughed and swatted me lightly with a ladle. “You’re too young to be thinking sinful thoughts, Greg. You get your back into cleaning these here pots—that’ll settle you down for the night.”

  Masou shook his head as we worked away at cleaning the black iron pots with sand. It was really hard work, and quite stinky, and my hands got sore from the sand. I kept thinking of Lady Sarah, in irons in the brig—which was where I thought she must be hidden since few seemed aware of her presence and she was being fed on scraps. But by the time we finished, all I could think of was how lucky she was to be sitting down and not having to work. At last Cook said we could stop.

  I was exhausted. “Do you know where we are to sleep, Cook?” I asked him.

  “Here, it’s the last space we’ve got,” he said, pointing at the gap between the barrels where Masou and I had eaten. “I’ve counted every onion and cabbage, and if there’s even one missing in the morning, I’ll beat you.”

  “But what if the rats eat them, Cook?” I asked.

  “That’s why you’re here,” he replied. “Keep ’em away, and you won’t get beaten, see?” He seemed quite friendly now—he even gave us a filthy blanket to share. Then he hung a candle-lantern from a beam so we could see the rats, and left us.

  I lay down awkwardly, top to tail with Masou. I’d slept on a straw pallet on the floor when on progress, but never on the actual floor! The planks were really hard, and I was so tired my head was spinning, plus my ear was hurting and my cheek felt like a sore pillow—and bits of me were all bruised where Tom’s fists had flailed. This adventure was turning out to be a very uncomfortable one—even for a Lady Pursuivant.

  Masou’s lip was swollen, too, but he seemed to find something funny, chuckling away to himself.

  “What?” I asked crossly.

  He shook his head. “Where did Lady Grace Cavendish learn to fight like that?” he mused.

  I scowled, because I was a bit embarrassed about it.

  Masou reached over and patted my leg. “You make quite a boy, Gregory,” he said. Then he put his head on his arm and seemed to fall asleep at once.

  I kept hearing skittering in the shadows, and then a pair of small eyes shone red in the lamplight. I threw a bit of squashed bread at them.

  Masou snored gently and annoyingly beside me, but I think that even if the planks had been soft as pillows, I would not have been able to sleep—because I kept thinking of Tom taking food to someone who was a “her”! Who could it be except Sarah? Cook must have been lying to me. I had to find her. And I could not leave further search a moment longer!

  I considered waking Masou to let him know what I was up to, but he was in such a deep sleep, I decided against it. And anyway, it would be easier to creep around, and hide, on my own.

  I got up very quietly, left my boots and socks off, and crept along to the ladder.

  The hatch was down, but not bolted. I pushed it up slowly, hoisted myself out, and crept along again. I knew, from listening to the sailors talking, that there’d be a watch kept on deck, but below decks was different. Down here, the sailors who weren’t on watch were bundled up, snoring, all over the place—and every deck smelled worse than the last—of sweat mainly, but also of onions and beer and salt fish, and that thing which happens to your bowels when you eat too much pease pudding.

  I went all the way aft to the stern. We hadn’t been able to search the rear of the ship properly before we were shut in the sail locker. I was praying that more of the doors might be open—and some of them were—but they were storerooms with nobody in them.

  There was a hatch next to the capstan and I opened it and peered in. I could see thick anchor ropes in the shadows. They smelled horrible: salty mud and rotten seaweed. “Lady Sarah?” I called softly. “Are you there?”

  But there was no reply, just the creaking of the ship and the clopping of the water, and loud snoring coming from somewhere else.

  Further along, I found a door with a big lock on it and guessed it was the brig, because it had a tiny hatch to pass food through. Heart thudding, I opened the hatch—and the smell from within almost knocked me down by itself! Hell’s teeth! Now I hoped Lady Sarah was not in there! Bracing myself, I put my face to the hatch again, and called softly.

  There was no answer, and I was relieved that Lady Sarah was not languishing in such a hell-hole—but where else was there to look? I wondered desperately.

  Then I remembered Cook’s story of Sam Pike—and how he had moved his wife around the ship, while hiding her. Captain Drake didn’t have to keep Sarah in one place either, did he? I rolled my eyes. There was no help for it—I couldn’t possibly go to sleep thinking about that. I would have to sear
ch everywhere afresh.

  So I crept forward again, looking carefully in all the cabins, hiding in the shadows when some sailors came by.

  I found myself outside the sail locker again. I opened the door and, just for a second, I thought I’d found her. There was a candle guttering on the floor and someone lying curled up there. “Lady Sarah?” I whispered cautiously.

  The shape on the floor moved. By then I had realized it was too big and the wrong shape to be Lady Sarah. It was that ugly bully, Tom. Why he was sleeping there, I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to get into another fight with him, so I turned to creep away.

  Suddenly a hand caught my shoulder and slammed me against the wall. “What you doing here?” Tom growled.

  I thought quickly, and said the first thing that came into my head: “I … I’ve come to see the kittens.” Then I shut my mouth in horror. What would he think? He’d guess I was a girl now, surely!

  Tom loomed over me. I couldn’t see his face in the candle shadows. “If you’re coming to drown them kittens—” he began.

  “Of course not!” I cried, shocked at such a thought. “I just came to see them.”

  The big hand let go of my shoulder. “That right, then?”

  “Yes. What are you doing here?” I demanded, remembering how Masou always fared better by standing up for himself.

  Tom drew himself up straighter. “I’m guarding, that’s what.”

  “What?” I asked, sounding very stupid.

  “I’m not letting any of them sailors drown ’er kittens.” He was scowling now.

  “Well, of course you shouldn’t,” I said. “Who would want to do a thing like that?”

  “Some of ’em,” Tom muttered. “They reckon it’s a bit of fun. But I’m not having it. And I don’t care if they say Tom Webster’s soft. Them kittens is stayin’ safe until they can go to other ships. We’ve got plenty of rats for ’em.”