Steel (6 page)

Abe guided a person, holding the man’s arm, helping him step carefully. He was thin, weak, barely able to stand. He moved slowly, shuffling—iron bands and chains weighed down his ankles. His skin was black, his dark hair short and matted. Abe led the man onto the deck and to the side. Behind him came another man with chains banded to his ankles. Behind him, another. And another, and another. Abe and the others led twenty men and women in chains onto the deck.

This was a slave ship.

“Valuable cargo, isn’t it then?” Marjory said to the slaver captain.

“I just transport ’em. That’s all, where’s the fault?”

Captain Cooper planted her foot on his shoulder and shoved. He sprawled and begged again for mercy.

When the slaves were all on deck, Abe began leading them over the side to the
Diana
. It took a long time. With the iron chains, they moved so slowly. Many looked sick besides, thin and weak. They all had red sores where the bands cut into their skin. As they came aboard, they passed by Jill where she leaned on the side. They never looked up; their heads were bowed, their eyes downcast. She wanted to reach out to them, offer some kind of comfort, but she didn’t know what to say. So she just watched.

Now that some of the gun smoke had cleared, a new smell tinged the air, drifting from the other ship. The smell of illness, of people living packed together without washing, without clean water, without anything. This had stopped being anything like a movie. Or a dream. This couldn’t be a dream. Jill didn’t have the imagination to produce a dream—nightmare—like this. This wasn’t a dream, and she wasn’t going to wake up.

Back on the slave ship, Captain Cooper was looming over her prisoner.

“I think I will also be taking that pretty coat from you.”

When he didn’t move quickly enough, she grabbed the collar and pulled as he tried to scuttle away. With little apparent effort, Cooper twisted and yanked, and the coat was off and in her hands. She tossed it to Henry, turned away from her prisoner, and never looked back.

To her own crew she said, “Move on, scurvy dogs, scour this wreck for what we can use. Quick now, so’s not to spend more time among scum than we need to.”

This was obviously a process they’d been through before. Several of the crew kept watch over the prisoners on the deck of the captured ship, keeping muskets trained on them and threatening death. The rest went all over the ship, looking in crates, trunks, and casks. The sounds of smashing and breaking carried from belowdecks; the slaver captain winced at every jolt.

Soon, a procession started from the other ship to the
Diana
, crew members carrying not just wooden boxes and crates, but also coils of rope, bundles of sailcloth, and other tools and equipment of obvious use on a sailing ship. None of it was the kind of treasure Tom had gone on about. But Jill considered—what good would chests of gold do out here? These supplies would keep the
Diana
sailing for months.

“Move aside, Tadpole, if you can’t be of any use,” Jenks grumbled at her when he came over the side, too close to where Jill was lurking. She scrambled away, but glared after him. He’d gone out of his way to bother her.

The whole operation took an hour or so. Then Captain Cooper shouted, “Let’s away from this cesspit, don’t make me tell you twice or I’ll throttle ye myself and hang you out to dry!”

The crew, shouting and jubilant, scrambled back over to the deck of the
Diana
. Jill crouched by the side, hiding.

Cooper had put a booted foot on the gunwale, ready to cross back to the
Diana
herself, when one of the other crew broke away.

“Take me with you!” the man called, and fell forward, pleading. Really pleading, on his knees, hands clasped and everything. He looked sick, with a long, sallow face and an almost toothless mouth. His hands looked arthritic. But he didn’t seem old. “I’ll sign your code, I’ll scrub your decks, I’ll do whatever you say. Take me with you!”

Cooper looked down at him. Still imperious and avenging, she seemed to be considering, but no—she was only taking a moment to sneer at him.

“Keep to the lot you chose, scum.” She returned to her ship.

The captain of the slave ship took this moment, when the pirates had already left and he didn’t risk retribution, to vent his anger. Sputtering, he clutched the side of his ship with one hand and shook the other, in a fist, at the
Diana
. “God damn you! You’re not a woman at all, you’re a whore! You’re the devil’s own whore!”

“Better the devil’s than yours!” Marjory Cooper shouted back at him. “Give my regards to your wife!”

With more laughter, the ropes between the two ships were cut, and the
Diana
drifted from her victim.

The crew did the work of setting sail and steering the
Diana
away, quick and smooth, in high spirits. The deck was crowded, because the slaves from the other ship were still there, huddled together, looking furtively around. Maybe wondering if they were in worse danger now than they had been.

Abe passed by Jill on his way to keep watch over the string of prisoners they’d rescued. He glanced at her. “You’re frowning.”

She was frowning to keep from crying. “I’ve read about this in books. I mean, everyone knows it happened. But I didn’t know…I didn’t realize…”

How could she realize? Compared to this, her life back home was the dream. She wanted to go home.

“You have never had to look it in the face, yes?” She nodded, and his smile turned kind. “That it makes you sad is a good thing.” He moved away, to the people in chains.

Captain Cooper was still hollering orders, and Jill still didn’t know what to do but watch. Abe said something in another language to one of the prisoners; the man shook his head and pointed to another, who came forward and replied. They had a conversation. Meanwhile, somebody ran forward with a hammer and chisel, and another brought up a big piece of metal—an anvil maybe? The shackles around their feet didn’t have keys. They had to be cut open.

Jill couldn’t watch, but she couldn’t go anywhere on the ship to avoid the noise of it, and the cries of pain.

But they were being set free.

She was about to go belowdecks, to hide away—to stay clear of anyone’s attention. There was a shout.

“Tadpole, fetch the surgeon!”

Jill only realized Cooper was talking to her because she was pointing at her. The captain stood near the helm, scrutinizing her. And there was a doctor?

“Surgeon?” she asked.

“The prisoner! Go fetch him!”

That strange, bitter man was a doctor? She had a hard time believing it, but she did what she was told.

Belowdecks, she unbolted the door to his tiny room and said, “You’re a doctor?”

The prisoner smirked at her. “Surgeon. What is it, then? Have you stubbed a toe?”

“The captain—”

“Ah yes,” he said, sighing, heaving himself from the wall with a great show of effort. “Her majesty the captain has stubbed a toe.”

“We captured a slave ship,” Jill blurted.

The man’s indifferent mask slipped, revealing a moment of disbelief. But the scowl returned. “Bloody hell. That’s what all the commotion was, then? Well, let’s get on with it.” He gestured forward for Jill to lead the way.

She watched the doctor—surgeon—emerge from the hold onto the deck. He squinted into the late afternoon sun, shading his eyes as he regarded the scene. The twenty captives were seated. The crewman with the hammer was still working to free them. Jill could see now that they all had bleeding wounds, either from the shackles or other injuries. The doctor frowned.

No matter where she stood, Captain Cooper was the focus of attention on the ship. No matter what other activity swarmed around her, the woman was easy to find, even if she was standing still, saying nothing. Now the captain was marching toward her and the doctor.

The captain didn’t spare Jill a glance, but to the doctor she said, “You’ll keep them alive.”

“It might be kinder to let them die,” the man answered. “I don’t know where you plan on setting them ashore, but chances are they’ll be captured again and end up worse than they are. Might as well drown them now.”

Jill couldn’t tell if he was joking. He sounded so harsh.

The captain didn’t seem bothered. At least her expression didn’t change from its usual hardness. “Treat them as you would any other patient, Mr. Emory, if you please.”

“Do you take me for a complete brute?”

“I don’t take you for anything,” she said, already walking back to the helm.

The doctor stared after her a moment, as if astonished. “Harpy,” he muttered. Then he shook his head and got to work. He pointed at Henry. “Boy! Fetch me some water. Fresh from the scuttlebutt mind you, none of that bilge.” Henry, hanging from some of the rigging to watch the proceedings, scowled but complied.

Jill continued to stay out of the way and out of notice.

Supper came late that evening, and the rations were slim since a portion of the food was distributed to the new passengers. Jill didn’t mind; she wasn’t very hungry. The liberated slaves might not have eaten for days, the way they took in the watery soup and hard bread. She could make out ribs on all of them. While eating, they began to smile, and even laugh, almost delirious. Their interpreter spoke to Abe, who answered him as kindly as he’d spoken to her. Jill couldn’t imagine what they were thinking.

She’d been feeling sorry for herself ever since that tournament, so upset because she couldn’t make a decision about what to do next—but at least she had choices, and a future to go with them. And all she’d done since coming to the
Diana
was complain that she didn’t belong here. Well, neither did they. And she hadn’t come here in chains. She had nothing to complain about. Nothing. While she still felt trapped here, she suddenly felt lucky.

Well after dark, the new passengers began to sing. The voices were soft, wavering—still weak. Like the lantern light, the words and tunes seemed to rise up among the sails, to echo above them, sounding larger than they were. Jill sat against the side of the ship, near the stern, just out of sight of the small celebration. She didn’t want to be seen. But she tipped her head back and stared up, watching the patterns of light and shadow on rippling sails, feeling the vibration as someone pounded a beat on the deck.

When Henry bounded in front of her, dropping from some unseen spot above, she gasped, flinched, and banged her head on the ship’s rail. He laughed, taking a cross-legged seat nearby, a shadow just at the edge of the lantern light. His eyes gleamed, like this was all a big party to him.

Rubbing her head, she muttered, “What do you want?”

“I wanted to congratulate you on surviving your first battle,” he said.

Frowning, she looked away. That wasn’t a battle, it was a raid, a true pirate raid. Or a rescue mission? She’d only watched, dumbstruck. “I didn’t do anything.”

He shrugged. “You didn’t interfere. You didn’t make an ass of yourself. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for.”

That almost sounded like a compliment. “What happens next?”

“I’m guessing we’ll sail for Jamaica. There’s a place there we can let them off and they’ll be safe.” He nodded toward the middle of the ship and the group of former slaves. “Some pirates would sell ’em off in Havana, but not us. We may stop somewhere to provision first. However the captain chooses.”

None of those plans seemed to offer Jill a way home. But Captain Cooper wasn’t taking her into account—Jill had signed on as crew, hadn’t she? She was bound by the captain’s articles.

Henry lingered, not smiling this time, not taunting. Just quietly watching her, as if he knew she wanted to talk, which gave her the courage to ask, “Does this happen a lot? Have you done this before?”

“Done what, capture a ship? Of course, plenty of times.”

“But a slave ship,” she said.

He glanced upward, maybe seeing the same patterns she did. But then he’d probably lived on the ship for years. The view may have seemed ordinary to him. “We try. Because of Abe, you see. It’s where he came from. He’d stop every one of those ships sailing from Africa if he could. He’d give up his share of every other haul we make to stop the trade. He can’t. But we try.”

“What about you?” she said, the question sticking in her throat, because she had a sudden image of Henry, beaten and in chains, and she hated thinking of him like that, however much he might annoy her. It was the opposite of Henry as she saw him now—smiling, bright, fit, alive.

“What about me? Did I come from Africa on a ship like that?” he said, and shrugged. “My mum did, not that she ever talked about it. I was born here, on the islands. Jamaica, in fact.”

“And your father?”

He snorted. “Who knows? Some English sailor stopped in port, I reckon. I was bound to turn pirate, wasn’t I? A half-breed bastard like me.”

He grinned like it was a joke, but she turned away. She wanted to tell him what would happen with the slave trade, how many more decades of suffering were ahead of them, that it would never be made right. But she would sound crazy. Like she was apologizing for a stretch of history she had no control over. But she felt like she ought to apologize.

H
enry was right, and the captain announced that they’d be sailing for Jamaica next. There had been some debate, back and forth, between Captain Cooper and Abe. “We could go east,” Abe had said. “Take them home.”

Cooper had refused. “We don’t have provisions for such a voyage, and we can’t be sailing ’cross the Atlantic. Tell them that.”

So Abe did, explaining in the language they shared that they couldn’t go back home, that they’d be sailing west instead of east. The interpreter seemed to plead with Abe, who relayed the words to Captain Cooper.

“Abe, you know as well as I do we can’t take them home,” Cooper said. “And we’re still going after Blane.”

Captain Cooper put it to a vote among the crew—Africa or Jamaica? Only Abe voted for Africa, so they sailed to Jamaica.

Again, Jill watched Captain Cooper holding up the shard of rapier blade, watching it turn on its string, following its length with her gaze to stare out at a different part of the horizon than where they sailed to.

Jill still wondered what the broken rapier meant—how Cooper knew the shard would behave like this, and what the captain hoped to accomplish by following it. And how did Jill fit into that? Or had she been brought here by accident? It was all too strange.

After spending the night on deck, the former slaves went below to continue resting in semidarkness. They were still sick, and the surgeon, Emory, continued to move among them, checking for fevers, dispensing liquid concoctions. Jill hadn’t learned anything new about him. He glared at everyone and didn’t invite conversation.

The next day, the captain set her to scrubbing the decks again. The whole thing, all over again. When Jill came to the middle of the deck, where the Africans had first been when they came on board, where their irons had been cut off, she found blood. Drops, smears, and stains of it marring the planks. She scraped with the stone, pressing as hard as she could, ’til the muscles in her arms cramped, but she couldn’t get the wood clean. Choking up, her throat tightening with tears, she kept scrubbing. She’d clean it, make it shine, if she worked hard enough, scrubbed fast enough.

Startled, she nearly fell over when a hand touched her shoulder. Gasping, Jill saw Captain Cooper standing over her. The pirate’s hand rested on her shoulder, then pulled away.

“It’s all right, lass. Leave it,” she said, and walked away.

Slouching, Jill dropped the stone and watched her go.

Another two days passed.

Jill learned to sail. She learned that the
Diana
was a schooner, and while it might have seemed impressive, it was a speck next to a Spanish treasure galleon or an English ship of the line, or so the sailors told her. She learned about foremasts and mainmasts, yardarms and rigging, the bowsprit, larboard and starboard, fore and aft. She learned to tie knots and trim sails. At sea, ropes were called lines. She learned the commands that Cooper and Jenks shouted that made the crew scramble like they were a colony of ants, swarming to this sail or that rope—line—and making the changes that caused the ship to speed up, slow down, heave one way or another, plowing the waves in a different direction. Depending on whether the sails were furled or unfurled, and how, the ship behaved one way and not another. Even if Jill stayed on the ship for years, watching, she wouldn’t understand all the details. Many of the crew had, in fact, worked on ships since they were children.

She divided the crew into two camps: the ones who hassled her and the ones who didn’t. In the former camp were some of the men from that first day, the ones who harassed her as soon as she came on board—Jenks, John, Martin, and a hulking man the others called Mule, who did much of the heavy lifting. Some of the crew in the second camp ran interference for her: putting themselves between her and the others, butting in before teasing got serious with jokes and laughter of their own. Jill had started to trust some of them—Henry and Abe, and Bessie and Jane, two of the other women on board.

Shrouds were the lines that anchored the masts to the ship. Part of the constant sound of creaking and straining were the tall masts pulling and flexing against the lines. The masts were like the tall trees they’d been made from, always groaning and moving, however slightly, in the constant wind.

The ship had eight cannons on the main deck, locked down and silent for now. Slots in the side of the ship would open and the cannon would be shoved forward if the ship went into battle. Jill wasn’t sure she wanted to see a real battle—as opposed to the one-sided raid on the slave ship—but she was curious. She imagined seeing the whole rank of cannons firing would be exciting—as long as she was someplace far away, watching safely through a telescope.

“Have you been in many battles?” she asked Henry at supper, the usual stew of dried meat and potatoes, along with the usual serving of rum. She’d learned to drink it slowly, with plenty of water.

“Of course I have.”

“I mean real ones,” she said. “Not ones where you run up the black flag and scream and the other ship surrenders without firing a shot. I mean have you ever been shot at.”

“Oh,
real
battles,” he said, chuckling. “I suppose next you’ll be wanting us to fight with honor, all lined up like redcoats.”

“I just wondered what it was like,” she said.

“It’s a lot of fire and a lot of smoke. It’s nothing,” he said. His smile was bright as ever, but he looked away, hiding a troubled gaze.

They didn’t have any battles over the next few days, and they avoided any other encounters. Once or twice the crew on watch shouted out, identifying another ship within view. Usually the other ship was far distant, hard to see, little more than an incongruous shape against the waves. Captain Cooper or Abe would look through the spyglass and call out colors, the patterns of the flags—English or Dutch, sometimes Spanish or French. The captain would order them to sail on, turning to avoid the ship if need be. They sailed fast to their destination.

Jill learned to climb the tall mainmast, hauling herself up on the jungle of lines, and to keep a lookout, tying herself in so she wouldn’t fall, eyes squinting against the wind and sun, and to recognize the smudges on the horizon that meant land. They passed islands, small, uncharted, nameless. Captain Cooper seemed to know which ones they were without consulting any maps, which ones had food and water, which provided good harbor, and which were off-limits because other pirates—or worse, some nation’s navy—anchored there.

One day, catching sight of the rapier slung on Captain Cooper’s belt, Jill realized she hadn’t thought about that qualifying tournament, her last bout, and the lost half second in days. She was too busy working, and too tired at night to do anything but sleep in her swaying hammock. She had stopped planning, stopped worrying about what happened next.

It had been far too easy to fall into this life—she was becoming one of them. Someone looking at her from the outside wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

She wondered when she’d finally wake up.

On her second watch, Jill spotted a shape far distant on the water. She thought her eyes were playing tricks, that the light on the water was making her see things. The object seemed to be moving along with the waves, flashing in the sun—light reflecting off sails?

She didn’t want to call a warning and be wrong about it—what sort of nickname would that earn her? They didn’t think much about learning curves around here; they expected her to just know things she couldn’t possibly know. But she watched that spot in the distance for five minutes, rested her eyes by looking around to the horizon and the open water surrounding them, and when she came back to it, the object was still there. It had to be a ship.

“Ahoy!” she called down, as those on watch had done when they saw something. Far below, the captain, Jenks, and others looked up at her—they probably didn’t think she knew what she was talking about. “Ship to larboard!” she called, and pointed.

Captain Cooper, identifiable by her coat and fall of auburn hair around her shoulders, went to the port side of the
Diana
and looked through her spyglass. Jill expected her to look a moment, then shout up the mast that she was crazy and seeing things. But Cooper kept staring through the glass.

She put it away with a sense of urgency.

“It’s Royal Navy,” Cooper said. “Let’s get out of their way before they can follow us.”

Jill was right, and felt oddly satisfied by it.

Cooper shouted commands for sails to be trimmed, and the ship turned and their speed increased. The movements were subtle. The ship Jill had been watching had come close enough that she could discern the wide hull, three masts, sails, and colored pennants flying from the top of one mast. It might have seen them and started to follow, but the
Diana
skipped away and sped out of view, and the other ship must have decided it was too much trouble to give chase.

When Jill’s shift at watch was over and she climbed down the mast, Captain Cooper was waiting for her on deck.

“Good eyes, Tadpole,” she said. “The navy patrols are common this close to Port Royal, and it’s best we stay out of their way.”

Jill didn’t want to feel pride, didn’t want to feel like she’d just won a touch against a difficult opponent. She wanted to be angry at Cooper for keeping secrets about the rapier shard—and for showing absolutely no interest in getting Jill home. She definitely didn’t want to get used to being here. But she did feel pride, and she was getting used to it.

The sun set on another day.

“We’ll careen her once we pull into the cove,” the captain announced the next morning. “It’ll take time to get everyone sorted, might as well take advantage.”

Land had come into view, a looming shape of island larger than many others they’d encountered, but not as large as Hispaniola or Cuba, which they’d slid past without approaching. This was Jamaica, their destination.

Jenks shouted orders, and the
Diana
changed direction, veering away before they’d drawn close enough to even make out trees and hills on the landmass.

“We want to stay out of the way,” Henry said, noting Jill’s confusion. “Port Royal’s south, and more trouble than we want just now.”

While they never left sight of the island, they didn’t draw any closer until late in the afternoon. They’d furled sails and tacked slowly into a western wind, making little progress. But Cooper stood on the foredeck, brass spyglass to her eye, searching for something. Once, she handed it to Abe, who called out and pointed.

Their port was deceptive. Jill would have sworn they sailed toward a solid piece of land, but as they drew closer, she saw that it was a separate island, long and thin, with beaches and palm trees, but no more than thirty feet wide. They rounded it, sailing into an inlet, calm and narrow, between the slender island and a corner of the Jamaican coast.

Jill’s heart sank. When they reached land, she’d assumed there’d be a town, some kind of civilization. Then she could escape—and do what? She still didn’t know. She’d still be stuck a long way from home.

“Where’s the port?” Jill said. She stood at the side with Henry to watch the ship’s approach to land.

The captain overheard. “And have us all caught and hanged? The big ships can’t get in here, and the spit of land’ll hide us. We can stay here long as we like.”

Jill said, “But I was hoping…I thought—”

“Thought what?” Cooper said.

“If we’re in a city, I’d have a better chance of finding my way home.”

“You signed articles, you’re crew now. This is your home.”

“But—”

“That’s enough of that.” Cooper walked off, and Jill had to leave the argument there.

The empty beach drew closer and closer, until a shudder passed through the hull, and the ship listed, then didn’t move at all. Jill grabbed a rope to keep from falling over. They’d run the
Diana
aground.

Then the work began. Dozens of sailors moved cannons on their wooden frames, securing them all to the port side of the ship, which, with all the weight on one side, began leaning sharply. Abe gathered the African passengers together and handed them ropes, gesturing them over the side. Emory, the doctor—surgeon, rather, though Jill hadn’t quite figured out the difference—was brought up on deck, squinting in the bright sun and beach, looking bedraggled in an untucked shirt, trousers, and scuffed shoes. One of the men tried to hand him a crate to carry to shore. Emory sneered and crossed his arms. After that, people ignored him. Even though he was a prisoner, no one bothered locking him up. But it wasn’t like he had anywhere to go. Just like Jill.

While she was watching, listening to the ominous creaks and groans the ship was making, Jenks came at her with a load of rope and pulleys. He was struggling to stay upright on the now steeply leaning deck—Jill herself didn’t dare let go of her handhold.

“You! Tadpole!”

Jill wished that name hadn’t stuck.

Jenks stumbled up beside her and leaned on the mast. “Take these to the beach.” He started transferring coils of ropes from his shoulder to hers; she scrambled to grab hold of them without letting them drop into a tangled mess. Square wooden pulleys, block and tackle, banged against her. The gear looked heavy when he’d been handling it. She thought she was going to fall over under the load.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Don’t you know anything?” He marched off, shaking his head.

They were wrecking the ship—but she had to trust the pirates wouldn’t do such a thing. No one else seemed to be panicking. And as usual, they were happy to give her jobs to do without explaining how to do them. She heaved her load more firmly onto her shoulder, looked around, and aimed for Abe, who had one foot propped on the side of the ship, keeping balance as he helped the last of the Africans off the ship.

Then she let go. Leaning back against the slope, she let gravity pull her along, half trotting toward the side. She concentrated on standing upright; she could see herself falling, pulleys knocking into her, rope tangling her up as she rolled along. Then the crew would come up with a better name than Tadpole for her.