Steel (4 page)

“I don’t know if she is, Abe,” said Cooper, answering his grin. Jill blinked at them both, confused. “Jenks, fetch the book.”

“Aye, sir,” said the bald man in a sandpaper voice, and he ran from the deck to the cabin below.

“Can you read, girl?” the captain said.

“Of course I can.”

The laugh in Captain Cooper’s eyes grew brighter at that, and Jill bristled at the thought they were making fun of her. This was all a bad joke.

“The articles keep the law aboard a ship like ours. Read ’em through.” Jenks arrived with the book, which Cooper opened and handed to Jill.

The book was a slim, tall thing; she needed two hands to hold it and had to tuck the rapier under her arm. It was bound in leather and water stained. The articles only took up one page; the rest of the pages were filled with signatures. Her eyes needed a moment to focus on the dense writing, black ink on a yellowed page. The handwriting was crooked, cramped, and hard to read.
S
’s looked like
f
’s and whole words were abbreviated, and the author seemed to assume she’d know what it all meant. But she’d said she could read and refused to ask for help. The others didn’t comment on how long it took her.

The articles stated that the crew elected the captain and quartermaster and could remove them at any time by an organized vote, which seemed awfully orderly and civilized. There were punishments—flogging—for crimes: Theft, murder, and rape were specifically noted. The articles also laid out the compensation a crew member would get for injuries sustained in battle—different amounts of gold for hands lost, legs lost, and blindness—and described how prizes were to be split—everyone got an equal share, even the captain.

“You’re pirates,” Jill said, reading the page again, approaching full-on panic. She had to get out of here.

The captain laughed. “Pirates! We’re enterprising business folk!” The men around her chuckled at the joke, and Jill blushed. “Lass,” the captain continued. “If you’re not on the crew, then you’re a prisoner and you’ll stay locked up below.”

This was crazy. Could she tell them just to drop her back off at Nassau? But their Nassau wasn’t her Nassau. Nothing but water surrounded them. Where could she go?

What were the chances that any of this would apply to her? She could be careful and follow the rules, avoid offending anyone—though according to the articles fighting among crew was prohibited and she’d already broken that one in her duel with Henry. But she hadn’t been crew then. And she wouldn’t fight in any battles and be in danger of losing limbs. Surely she’d get home before that happened. Somehow she’d wake up from whatever dream this was.

If she were on deck—not locked up—she had a chance of escaping. They had to stop at land sometime. Then she’d run. Then she—she didn’t know, but she’d figure it out.

The captain turned to the next page in the book, revealing rows with a few names, but more
X
’s. Most of the people who’d signed couldn’t read. Jenks had also brought a pen—no, a feather, a long quill with most of the feathers shaved off—and a little bottle of ink. He held the ink while Marjory dipped the pen in it, then handed it to Jill.

“So what’ll it be? Crew or no?”

Jill didn’t know what other choice she had. She took the pen and signed her name on the next open space. Her writing looked large, round, and clumsy next to the other signatures. The others leered like they’d won a victory.

Surely it didn’t mean anything, she thought.

Cooper blew on the ink to dry it and handed book and quill back to Jenks.

“Welcome aboard, Jill. You’ve met me. Your quartermaster is Abe”—she nodded at the smiling black man—“and first mate is Jenks.” The bald man snarled. “Now you’ll scrub the deck.”

Jill stared. She didn’t even know what scrubbing decks meant. Scrubbing with a mop? A brush?

“And give me that sword, won’t you? And you’ll say, ‘Aye, sir’ when I give you an order.”

If this was a joke, she was the only one not laughing. They were teasing her, and she couldn’t do anything about it. Anger made her straighten and look Captain Cooper in the eye. The woman might not have been so tall; she didn’t even look strong. But Jill wouldn’t want to fight her. Cooper wouldn’t fight fair. In the captain’s mind—and in the minds of the crew—by signing that page she’d agreed to obey the captain, no arguments. She wondered if pirates really did make people walk the plank. This time, there might not be anyone to fish her out.

“Aye, sir,” she said softly, offering the rapier, handle first, to Cooper. The woman’s smile was thin, satisfied.

Cooper turned over the wheel and shouted, “Henry! Show the new recruit how we scrub decks!”

“Aye!” He’d been coiling rope with another sailor by the side of the ship, but he looked gleeful when Cooper called to him.

Henry, the boy she’d fought. Who might have beaten her if the captain hadn’t stopped the duel. She didn’t want to face him. Cooper pulled him aside, and Jill caught a few whispered words: “Make sure Jenks and his crowd keep away from her.”

“Aye,” he murmured back. Jill pretended not to hear, but she worried.

Cooper straightened and called, “Off you go. Welcome to the
Diana
.”

Jill didn’t feel very welcome. She’d play along just until she could find a way to get out of here. Somehow. But it was hard to escape from a boat in the middle of the ocean. Land was still in sight—a rough band of foliage on the horizon. But she didn’t know if it was the Bahamas, and she didn’t think she could swim so far.

Then Henry was standing before her holding a brick-size rock, like a pumice stone, and a bucket. “Don’t take it personal. The newest bloke always scrubs the decks.” He held the stone and bucket out to her.

The deck, which was probably only sixty feet long and twenty feet wide, suddenly looked as large as a football field. “The whole thing?” she said. “With this?”

“Now you can guess why it’s always the job of the new bloke.” He was enjoying this.

“But…I mean why bother? People walk around on this all day. It’ll never stay clean. Why bother scrubbing it?”

“You don’t know? Really?” She looked blankly at him. “It’s the damp, the salt air, the mildew. It’ll rot the wood if we don’t keep it scrubbed. Wait’ll we have to careen her and scrub the rot off the hull. There’s a bloody dire job.”

Stone in hand, Jill knelt and dreaded starting because it would take forever. She started in one corner in the back and ran the stone over the wood, polishing it. The deck was pale and smooth from all the previous scrubbing.

Henry watched, sitting up on the side, leaning against a length of rigging, whittling on a piece of wood with a penknife, dropping shavings on her nice clean deck. Teasing her.

“Do you have to sit there?” she said.

“I need to keep a close eye on you. Make sure you don’t miss an inch. Try scrubbing in circles, it works better.”

So she did, shifting sideways, until she’d reached the other side of the ship. Then she worked her way back. She could feel Henry watching her, an itching down her spine. He seemed to be far too pleased, watching her working on her hands and knees. Like he was gloating.

“I gotta ask,” he said, putting the knife away. “Where’d you learn to fight so pretty? Like a picture in a book, you are. That’s no use in a real fight.”

A real fight—that tournament
was
real fighting. At least, she’d thought so then. It was all this that wasn’t real. She paused a moment to glare at him. Just like she thought, he was teasing, and he didn’t let up. “I’m just trying to figure out what your story is. Most of us have pretty good stories, but you, finding you alive in that wreckage—seems like it ought to be right impressive.”

“I don’t know what happened,” she said, her voice flat.

“Don’t be sore. I’m just trying to be friendly,” he said.

She glared again. She wasn’t in the mood.

“Don’t you want to know how I ended up here?”

“Not really.”

“I was a lad on a merchant ship that the
Diana
captured. I got much the same offer you did, sign on with the crew here or be set adrift. But I didn’t have to think it over. My old captain was a mean one. A right bastard. Held back rations to raise profits, and us at the low end got shillings for our troubles, never mind shares. I tell you true, this place is a world better than where I came from. I wouldn’t trade it.”

In spite of herself, she’d stopped scrubbing to listen to him, trying to imagine the world he might have come from. And she couldn’t. “I don’t belong here at all,” she said.

“Then you’re not one of those girls dresses up as a lad and goes looking for adventure?”

“No. I keep telling you, it was an accident.”

“You look it, with your hair cut. It’s what we all thought.”

“I—I’m not sure what happened.”

“Lost your memory, then?”

“Yeah, I guess I did,” she murmured. It seemed as good an explanation as any.

By the end of the day, the ship had lost sight of land. No chance of swimming for it now.

She must have worked ten straight hours that day. Henry was called away on another chore, something to do with the sails, but Jill couldn’t stop working because someone was always around, climbing rigging, mending sails, keeping lookout, or doing one of the other mysterious jobs on a boat like this. She scrubbed, and her hands and arms grew cramped, her fingers sore and cracked, and the sun beat down on her. She’d never worked so hard and could feel herself getting sunburned, despite the long sleeves and pants. Her nose, ears, and the back of her neck stung.

As they sailed on, the view never changed, and she had no indication that time was passing except for the sun moving overhead.

It was almost at the horizon when Henry returned and took the stone from her, grabbing it right out of her hands. She stared at her empty hands a moment, then looked at him, almost hurt. She wasn’t done yet—at least she didn’t think she was. But she might have gone around the whole deck twice for all she knew.

“Come on then, time for supper,” he said, and gestured her toward the middle of the deck.

She needed a long moment to stand, straightening the kinks out of her back. She’d thought she was in good shape.

The crew, thirty or forty people, gathered in the widest, most open part of the ship and made a rowdy line in front of two men, who carried what looked like a cast iron pot and a small wooden barrel: dinner.

Jill was starving, but she hung back, not wanting to get caught in a brawl. She couldn’t tell if the yelling and jostling was in earnest or in fun. But no fighting broke out among them—just like the articles said.

Abe stood near the men with the food, facing out, supervising. Abe was the quartermaster and almost as important as the captain on a ship like this. He was in charge of supplies, rations, and treasure, and of ensuring that everyone got an equal share and that no one tried to take more behind the others’ backs. This position was, like the captain’s, elected, and the quartermaster was the one everyone trusted. When he saw Jill, he smiled, but like with Henry she couldn’t tell if he was laughing at her or honestly trying to be friendly. After all his talk, Henry hadn’t seemed to hold the grudge against her. She looked at every member of the crew, searching for the hostility they’d shown when she first came on board. Mostly, they ignored her.

At sunset, lanterns were hung about the deck, from hooks on the masts and railings, and the cook—a thin, bearded man who didn’t look anywhere near clean enough to be serving food—distributed supper under Abe’s watchful gaze. Henry found Jill a tin cup and a dented metal bowl. She waited at the end of the line because she didn’t want anyone staring over her shoulder. And no one could give her a hard time if she put herself at the end. She wanted to hide, mouselike. But she also wanted to eat.

Then she got a look at what the cook was serving, smelled it—and it didn’t smell like food. Overcooked, vaguely rotten, vaguely stale. She wasn’t hungry anymore.

When she reached the cook, Abe handed her a plate, already filled with a spoonful of cooked potatoes, dried meat, and a roll that was so hard it rattled. “Take that to the prisoner, belowdecks and aft.”

She frowned. “Another job for the rookie?” she said. Abe only shrugged.

She went to the hatch and down the steps below. Steps—it was almost a ladder, they were so steep and narrow. As she eased herself down, she kept a grip on the side.

While she still didn’t know her way around the ship, she figured it couldn’t be that hard to find someone. The ship wasn’t that large. But she suddenly couldn’t remember which way was aft. After looking back and forth for a moment, into the creaking shadows, she gave up and called out, “Is there a prisoner down here?” She walked along the center of the hold, calling, feeling ridiculous.

“Here.” A muffled voice came from farther back. Jill quickened her pace, moving among hammocks, crates, bundles of ropes, and barrels of who knew what.

In the very rear of the ship was a small room, no bigger than a closet, with an iron latch on the outside. This must be it. She slid the latch back and opened the wooden door.

Some lantern light came through a row of holes in the roof that must have led up to the deck; Jill could make out a few details. A man was sitting on a plain bench. He wore a grungy shirt that might have been white once, open at the collar; tan-colored trousers; and worn boots. His sandy hair was tied in a short ponytail. He was older, middle aged maybe, with a cynical glare in his eyes. He leaned back against the wall and regarded her.

“New recruit?” he asked, a wry quirk to his lips.

She stared fishlike for a moment before handing him the plate. “Here.”

“Ah. I’m overjoyed,” he said flatly, but he took the platter and dug in, scooping the potatoes with his fingers.

“So what do you have to do to get locked up on a pirate ship?” she asked.

“I didn’t sign the articles. Not like you did, I wager.”

She felt herself blush; but she was also relieved that she had signed and wasn’t locked up here with him.