In The Belly Of The Bloodhound (25 page)

More water!

Better food!

Flaps open till dark!

“Pah!” He spits. “I have had enough of this! You shall break, depend upon it!” He goes back out, leaving a confused Hughie holding his ladle over his steaming pot, not knowing what to do. Seeing that Nettles is not with him, I jump down from the Balcony and go to the hatchway. I reach in through the bars and run my hand through Hughie’s tousled hair.

“No food yet, Hughie, but we’ll be all right, you’ll see,” I say, ‘cause he looks worried. It’s been thirty-six hours now since food has crossed our lips.

“Gotta eat, Mary,” he mumbles. He dips his ladle in the burgoo and fills a bowl and goes to pass it to me.

“Not yet, Hughie,” I say, backing away from the steaming bowl of the now delicious-looking gruel. The girls have come to the end of another cycle of chants, and I say, just loud enough for them to hear and no one else, “All of you are doing just fine. Division One, down for water. Divisions Two and Three, back at ‘em.”_ Clap, clap, clap._

As the other two divisions swing back into it, Clarissa and her Division One climb down off the Balcony and have their water cups filled. After they have refreshed themselves, the other divisions will be called down in turn, and the first division will go back up. That way we’ll always have at least twenty girls up at the bars at all times, chanting, with one division resting—we don’t want anyone’s voice to give out.

Clarissa comes over to confer, her nose in her cup. As the water hits her belly, it gives off a threatening growl, demanding more than mere water.

“After they’ve all drunk their water, we’ll go to the second phase of the Plan, all right?”

She grunts in reply. “Right. Do you think they’ll hold?”

“They’re all right so far. We can only wait and see,” I say, and then go back up to my division. A peek out shows that the Captain still stands glowering on his quarterdeck. I slam my cup extra hard against the iron bars and join in the chant.

More water!

Better food!

Flaps open till dark!

When we’re done with the last five chant repetitions, I hold up my hand and all fall silent. I count to six, then drop my arm. The girls take a common deep breath and Phase Two begins:

Ninety-nine bottles of wine on the wall, Ninety-nine bottles of wine!

Take one down

And pass it around,

Ninety-eight bottles of wine on the wall! Ninety-eight bottles of wine on the wall…

And so on and so on, in the classic drive-your-parents-mad ditty. We keep it going, pausing every ten bottles to do five of the regular chant, and then back to those never-ending bottles of wine. The Captain is now pacing back and forth on the deck, right out in front of us. As we get down to fifty bottles of wine, he rushes the cage and kicks at a hand clutching a bar. Minerva barely gets her fingers back in time. He goes back to the quarterdeck, mumbling curses under his breath. His pacing grows more and more agitated as we work our way down through the numbers.

Finally we get to the end.

One bottle of wine on the wall, One bottle of wine!

Take one down

And pass it around,

No bottles of wine on the wall!

There is a ringing silence.

I count to six, raise my hand, then bring it down. Another common deep breath is taken and…

Ninety-nine bottles of wine on the wall, Ninety-nine bottles of wine…

That cuts it. The Captain is off the quarterdeck, bellowing, “Chubbuck! Dunphy! To me!” and he charges to the hatchway and plunges down the stairs, followed quickly by his henchmen. Hughie, scared, shrinks back against the wall.

“Open this goddamn door!” he roars, and Sin-Kay, who has heard the commotion and come down as well into the now quite crowded hatchway, pulls out his key and opens the cage door. The enraged Captain Blodgett strides to the center of the Stage.

“All of you, get down here!” he shouts up at us. Nobody moves.

I think of doing the three claps to get them started again, but don’t. Let’s see what he has to say first, I’m thinking. I catch Clarissa’s attention, across from me, on the other Balcony, and nudge Sylvie, beside me. Sylvie looks at me, I nod, and she leads the way. And so we all follow her down to the Stage. Clarissa elbows Cloris and they all follow her.

When we are all assembled on the Stage, we are addressed by the seething Captain.

“Who put you up to this? Who’s your leader?” he spits out. “Who? Tell me now, or it will go hard for you.” Silence.

“Captain, it is probably the blon—,” says Sin-Kay from the Captain’s side.

“Mister
Sin-Kay, when I want your damned advice, I’ll ask for it. Now take yourself and your Dummy and get back to your cabin! Now!”

Sin-Kay jerks as if slapped. “I must protest,” he says, furious at this turn. “I was under the impression that I was in charge of the cargo and I—”

“And you have been doing a damn poor job of it! I will remind you that I am the Captain of this ship and in charge of everything and everyone in it! Now get the hell out of here and take your Dummy with you!”

Sin-Kay holds the Captain’s eyes for a moment and then turns abruptly away and goes up the gangway, cuffing Hughie behind the head to show him he is to follow. Hughie looks back at me in confusion and fear as he follows his master out.

After they are gone, the Captain forces himself to take several deep breaths before going on. His fury abates a bit,

and a look of sly cunning comes over his face. “It could go very, very well for the one of you who tells me. Very well, indeed.”

He goes over and stands before Constance. “How about you? You will tell me, won’t you?” Connie shakes her head and the Captain whips out his knife. He grabs her by the neck and puts the point of the knife against her throat. “Tell me or I’ll kill you.”

Connie, her eyes filled with terror, puts her hands together and says, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He leadeth me—”

The Captain releases her neck and backhands her to the deck of the Stage. He looks about for his next victim. It turns out he doesn’t have to choose.

“W-will you send me home if I tell you?” comes a quavering voice from on his right.

Oh,[_ Elspeth, no!_]

A smile comes over the Captain’s face and he turns to her. “Of course, my dear, I will send you home if you tell me. On my word of honor.”

Elspeth’s eyes are wild as she holds her supplicating hands up to the Captain. Then she blurts it out.

“Jacky’s the one you want! Right there!” she cries, pointing her finger at me. “She’s the leader! She’s the one who’s been a pirate and everything! She put everyone up to this. Oh, I can’t stand it here! Take her, take all of them! Just let me go! You’ll let me go now, won’t you? Now that I’ve told you? You will, won’t you? Oh, you promised you would, you—”

“Take her up on deck!” roars Blodgett, and he ain’t talking about Elspeth. He charges back up the hatchway as Chubbuck and Dunphy each grab one of my arms and I am dragged out the gate. I manage one look back at Elspeth’s face. She looks at the retreating Captain and then at me.

“I’m sorry, Jacky, I’m sorry. But I just can’t be here any longer, I just can’t…,” she blubbers, and then I’m up the stairs and on the top deck, blinking against the light.

The Captain stands by the mast and I am shoved in front of him. “That Dobbs fellow said you was a troublemaker and I guess he was right. Take off your dress!” he bellows in my face. I try to keep my legs from shaking as I reach back and unfasten the button at the back of my neck. The Captain turns from me and…[_ Good Lord, he’s taken the Cat-of-nine-tails from its hook on the mast!_]

I stand there trembling for real now and staring only at the Cat.[_ Could it be that I am to be flogged?_]

“Take off the dress. I won’t tell you again,” he says through clenched teeth.

Despairing, I reach up with my right hand and slip my left sleeve over my shoulder and then with my left hand I slip off the right sleeve and my dress falls off me to the deck. I step out of it.

“Tie her to the mast. Face-first,” says the Captain, matter-of-factly now.

Chubbuck barks out two names, and two brutes take me to the mast and roughly shove me up against it. One holds me to it, while the other ties a rope to my right wrist and loops it around the mast and then ties my other wrist. I am left hugging the mast tightly, so tightly that I won’t slip down when my legs fail to hold me up.

It’s really going to happen, oh, Lord help me…

“Get the rest of them up here. I want them to see this. And watch them! I want no one jumping over the side!”

The girls are brought up on deck, and they stand there, tremulously waiting.

“Now you listen to me, all of you! I ain’t gonna stand for any more of your horseshit, you hear me? Do you?” snarls the Captain, waving the Cat at them, its nine blood-crusted strands of knotted rope snaking and twining about under their noses. “Well, you’d better listen to me, ‘cause this is what you’re gonna get if you don’t!”

I hear him come up next to me. He wraps his fingers around a big shank of my hair and snaps back my head to make me look at the foul thing in his hand. Then he puts the Cat back on its hook.[_ Maybe he was just bluffing, maybe…oh, please…_]

“I’m not going to scar you, girl, you’re worth too much for that,” he says in a low growl, “but I promise you this: You will never,[_ ever,_] forget this day.” With that, he lets go of my hair and grabs my undershirt at the nape of my neck in both his hands and rips it down the back to my waist, then pulls the ragged remnants down over my shoulders.

He steps back, picks up the Cat again, and in a moment I hear it hissing through the air on its way to my naked back.

The hunger strike is over and we are back down in the belly of the[_ Bloodhound._]
p. After the Captain had finished whipping me and my bonds were cut from my wrists and I had collapsed barely conscious to the deck, it was Sylvie and Annie and Dolley, I think, who picked me up and carried me down the stairs of the hatchway. I was handed up to my kip on the Balcony, my chest heaving with great, wracking sobs.[_ The pain, good Lord, the awful, searing pain…_]

I had sense enough to realize that the Captain had followed us into the Hold and stood regarding his cargo. Most were grouped about me, but not all—a trembling Elspeth stood to the side and looked at the Captain expectantly, her eyes blinking rapidly in hope. A hope that I, even in my confusion and misery, knew to be a vain one.

“Captain…please…you said…oh, send me home, please,” she bleated. She wrung her hands and looked at him with imploring eyes. “I told you what you wanted to know, now—”

“Oh, I will send you home, girl, oh yes, I will be true to my word. But it will be to your[_ new_] home in North Africa that I will send you,” said Captain Blodgett. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of blue ribbon. He threw it at Elspeth’s feet and she looked at it in confusion. “However, I will give you this. That is for your hair. And for your information. Good day to you, good day to you all. I trust you will be[_ much_] better behaved in the future.”

With that, he turned and went back up the ladder and out the hatch.

Elspeth looks after him, unbelieving, then she looks around at the girls standing about and feels their accusing eyes fixed on hers, and then she falls to her knees next to the cheap piece of ribbon and cries out her despair in a long, wordless wail of utter hopelessness. Before the hatch above is closed and locked, a jar is thrown down. It hits, bounces, and then rolls about on the deck and comes to rest at Rose’s feet. She bends and picks it up.

“What is this, then?” she asks, opening the lid and sniffing at it.

I gulp and swallow and force myself to stop crying. “It—it is salve…for my back,” I manage to wheeze out. Rose looks at my back and then swallows and has to look away. Then she straightens up and comes to me to apply the medicine.

“No…wait…,” I say. My chest is still heaving, but I try to calm down, and when I get settled a bit, I say, “Bring her here…bring her to me,” and I’m looking down the rows of girls straight into the tormented eyes of Elspeth Goodwin.

“No, no,” she says, desperately looking about like a hunted animal, cornered and without hope. “No, please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…

“Sorry
ain’t gonna do it, you snivelin’ toad,” says Clarissa, lunging toward her. Elspeth shrinks back, but Clarissa’s hand lashes out and backhands her hard across the face. Elspeth cries out and buries her face in her hands, but she can’t hide there, for Clarissa grabs a fistful of the girl’s hair and drags her roughly forward, then forces her to kneel before me.

“Please don’t hurt me![_ Please! Please! Don’t hurt meeeeeee…,”_] Elspeth keens, tears streaming out of her eyes, her face turned upward, her features distorted into a crazed mask of pain and shame. Sadly, I remember just how merry and bright those features once were.

“Give me your hand, Elspeth,” I say, and reach my left hand out toward her. I wince a bit at having to move. She looks at my hand, uncomprehending. “Give me your hand,” I say again. “I will not hurt you.”

She shakily puts out her hand, as if presenting it to a coiled snake, fully expecting to be struck. I take her hand in mine.

“I forgive you, Elspeth, I do,” I say. The girl whimpers and hangs her head. “I forgive you because you have grown up in a world where all was goodness and sweetness and light and you had no understanding of the vileness and evilness that exists in the world. You were not ready for it when it came at you so hard, and so it is not your fault. I forgive you.”

She whimpers and clasps my hand.

“Now, Elspeth, you may put the salve on my back.”

Rose hands her the jar. She nods and takes it and dips into it and gets some on her fingers and looks down at my back. “It’s horrible…so horrible.” She shudders. “Everything is just so…[_ horrible I can’t stand it!”_]

“Yes, you can. Now just do it.”

She sniffles and nods and reaches out and starts putting the salve on the welts on my shoulders. I stiffen and cry out at the touch…It[_ burns, oh sweet Jesus, it burns…_] and she jerks back.