Steel (7 page)

Abe saw her and paused to cross his arms and grin as she slammed into the side.

“Where you going with all that?” he said.

“Jenks said take it to the beach.”

“Here.” He took hold of the coils and lifted them off her. Gratefully, she extricated her arms from the tangle.

With more strength and ability than she would have managed, he swung the gear, putting his whole body, broad shoulders and muscular arms, into the move, and threw them over. They fell on a clear spot on the beach.

“That makes it easier, yes?” Abe said, his smile teasing. “Go on, you’re next.”

Leave it to Jenks not to tell her the easy way to do a job.

Everyone was disembarking. Abe handed her a line—and she went for it. Holding on to the rope dangling from the mast, she jumped over the side and looked down to see frothing waves under her. She was smart enough not to slide—the rough rope would have taken off her skin—but instead lowered herself hand over hand. With a few feet left to go, she let go and dropped into the water, sending up a splash.

Above her, Abe cheered, “That’s it, Tadpole! Soon you’ll be a proper frog!”

She smiled back at him. After the hot days on the ship, the just-cool-enough water swirling around her legs felt wonderful. She stood there for a moment, enjoying it.

Then it was time to get back to work.

Most of the crew landed on the beach in the next half hour, with more armloads of ropes and pulleys, which began to come together in a mechanism. They rigged a pulley system between the ship and a couple of tall, strong palm trees on the beach. When that was in place, they used it to lower cannons off the ship. Jill watched in awe as part of the crew worked to lower six of the huge metal guns to the sand, and another part piled up mounds of sand to mount them on. The remaining two stayed on board as counterweights. They turned the beach into a miniature fort, with cannons resting on mounds of sand, facing outward, toward the water and any ships that might be foolish enough to approach. Jill helped dig when Henry handed her a shovel and pointed.

The
Diana
rested at a steep angle, her hull exposed, especially now that the tide was going out.

Henry seemed pleased at Jill’s awe at the whole process. He joined her while she stood on the beach, staring. “When the tide’s out, we’ll start cleaning,” he said.

“Cleaning?”

“Scrubbing the hull. Don’t worry, you’ll get to help—you should be good at scrubbing by now.”

He led her down the beach and a few steps into the water, until the sloping hull of the
Diana
came into view. The part that was always underwater was black, slick with slime, dripping with fronds of seaweed, and jagged with barnacles.

“We have to clean
that
?” she said, despairing. And she’d thought the deck was bad.

“Three times a year or the hull would rot through.”

So. They cleaned the hull.

A dozen of them, led by Abe, climbed back aboard the
Diana
. Literally, since it was now impossible to simply walk across the deck. They anchored themselves to the side with ropes and made their way down the sloping hull. A few went first with steel blades and rakes, scraping off barnacle shells, which cracked and oozed over the wood, dripping into the water below, turning the wooden surface into a slippery, gooey mess. A few of the others, Jill among them, followed with brushes and brooms. Scrubbing the deck had meant polishing something that was already mostly clean, removing a film of salt water and daily wear. This was completely different. A salty, rotting stench rose up from the slime that they scraped, shoved, and swept back into the sea. Some of the others tied scarves over their mouths; Bessie gave Jill a blue square of cloth so she could do the same. The scarf over her mouth made it hard to breathe; the air she took in was hot, stifling. It was a trade-off—which was worse, not being able to breathe well, or smelling the full force of the rot they peeled off sixty feet of hull? She kept the scarf on.

The water immediately around the ship turned cloudy, filled with debris. Small fish and crabs swam in, darting back and forth, nibbling on bits of barnacle and seaweed.

When she started, Jill was still sore and tired from days of scrubbing the deck. Then she stopped thinking about being tired at all as her movements became mechanical. This was only one side. They still had to roll the ship over and do the other side. She’d have to tell Tom and Mandy how much time pirates spent cleaning. They’d never believe it.

Assuming she ever saw them again and got to tell them anything. She never thought she’d miss them so much.

They didn’t finish that day. The sun set, the sky grew dark, and the hull still had to be examined and damages repaired. That couldn’t be done by the shadowy, flickering light from the fires and torches lit onshore.

The evening routine went on the same as it did on the ship, except dinner included fresh fruit—mangos, papayas, and others that Jill had never seen before, incredibly tart and juicy, so full of flavor they almost burned her tongue. She’d never tasted fruit like this, so fresh, eaten moments after being picked. It made her ration of rum and water taste smoother, brighter. So this was where rum punch came from.

The group of freed slaves stayed together at the edge of the camp, sharing a flask of water and eating food. They had started talking among themselves more, as if waking up, coming out of a nightmare. They looked around with wondering gazes and seemed content to sit in the open air. Among the pirates, they only ever talked to Abe.

The doctor also sat alone, watching the proceedings, not showing any inclination to run away—because where would he go?

Captain Cooper set watches, guards to look for lights and listen for the sound of ships on the water, or anyone approaching from the interior of the island. Watches on land seemed more tense, more fraught than they did on the water. At sea, anything that approached was visible for miles; nothing could surprise them, and they could run in any direction. Here, they were stuck. There were far too many ways to approach them in secret, and not enough ways to flee. And Jill worried along with the rest of them, no matter how much she told herself she didn’t feel safe with the
Diana
’s crew, that she didn’t care. They weren’t
her
people, she didn’t belong here, she didn’t feel any loyalty to them. Let the Royal Navy catch them—even Henry—then she could run away. But that wouldn’t work, either, because Emory was right. As far as everyone was concerned, she
was
one of them. And she didn’t want to get arrested, captured, hanged, or any of the other possible nightmares. So she worried.

The captain assigned Jill to a turn standing watch. More looking out over the water, searching for enemies that might or might not appear as phantoms in the distance. It was a wonder they didn’t all go blind, doing this day after day.

She went out to a spit of land, a sandbar extending from the natural harbor, and found the trunk of a fallen palm to sit on. If she didn’t fall asleep, she’d consider her job done. Not seeing anything dangerous come along needing her to raise an alarm would be a bonus.

Back at the camp on the beach, some of the pirates were still awake, singing and drinking in the shelter of the campfire’s light. They made Jill grouchy; they’d spent all day working their butts off, they ought to be exhausted. How could they be happy here?

Resting her chin on her palm, she stared out over the water, which hadn’t changed at all. It still went on forever, still rippled with endless waves, the same waves she watched back at Nassau, when everything was normal. Now, though, they were flecked silver by the moonlight. Then there were the stars—tipping back her head, she looked up past the palm fronds, past the thin smoke from the fire, and saw a sky bright with stars. The scene was hypnotizing. Staying awake ended up being a big enough challenge in its own right. She’d never been so sore, and she didn’t imagine there was a hot tub around to soak the aches away. She could fall asleep watching the waves, dreaming of hot water and cold sodas. She’d never complain about homework again.

Outside the circle of the camp’s fire, the world was mostly shades of blue, black, and silver. Cool colors, soft and restful. A flicker of yellow at the edges of Jill’s vision caught her attention. She straightened, squinting to better see it. It flashed again on the other side of the cove, like a bit of flame in midair. Past the camp, past the ship, at the very edges of the trees, on the shore looking out over the ocean.

A lantern, she thought. Someone there was holding a lantern.

S
he almost shouted, but stopped herself. Her call would carry over the water, and whoever was holding the lantern would escape before anyone reached the spot. Jill jumped from her perch and ran as well as she could, sliding in the sand, following the edge of the forest.

“Tadpole?” Abe said as she came around behind the camp.

“There’s someone with a lantern out there,” she said. Abe got up and signaled, and he and a couple of the pirates followed her, pistols in hand.

As she reached the end of the cover, the light was still there, and she could see the figure of the man holding the lantern.

It was Emory, the surgeon. She recognized his silhouette by the shape of his clothes and the rough cut of his hair.

“Hey,” she said.

Quickly, he turned around and slammed closed the shutter on the lantern.

“Signaling your navy friends, eh?” Abe said, and he didn’t sound surprised. He might even have been amused.

Emory straightened. Jill couldn’t see his expression clearly but imagined him frowning. “You can’t slip by them forever. They’ll find you, eventually, and you’ll all hang.”

“Get on with you, back to camp,” Abe said. The two others grabbed the surgeon by the arms and led him along, pulling him so that he stumbled. “Good eyes again, Tadpole,” Abe said to her.

Jill didn’t feel any better. She spent a moment looking out to the horizon and didn’t see anything, no sign that Emory was signaling anyone in particular rather than randomly flashing the light in the hope that someone spotted him.

Back at the camp, Abe tied Emory’s hands and feet and left him sitting sullenly near the fire. Then he told Jill to get some rest.

Hard to do when Emory slumped against a barrel, glowering at her where she sat in the sand with a thin blanket she’d dug out of the pile of gear from the ship. Jill had the feeling that the crew wouldn’t have bothered keeping him around at all except his skills as a surgeon were too valuable to let go. But it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Except the alternative was probably not just letting him go, but tipping him over the side. That didn’t seem right, either.

“So you’ve thrown your lot in with them for certain,” he said to her in a low voice that didn’t carry. “We could have helped each other.”

“You’re not helping much of anyone,” she muttered.

“What is your name—Tadpole?” She scowled and he chuckled. “Your pardon. It’s Miss Jill, isn’t it? You don’t belong here. I can see that.”

At least someone could.

The others were scattered along the beach, lying stretched out or curled up, snoring, sleeping off the rum, dead to the world after the day of hard work.

“Where are you from, really?” he said.

Shaking her head, she gave a wry smile. “A long way from here.”

“Philadelphia? Boston?” he said. “Or did you cross the Atlantic to get here?”

There was no point explaining it.

“Jill, the Royal Navy will find us, sooner or later. They’ll take the ship and everyone aboard her prisoner. But if you help me, I can save you. I can get you a pardon.”

“Help you, how?”

“Untie me, and we can both escape. Lead the navy here ourselves and collect the bounty on the pirates,” he said.

“Escape and go where?” she whispered. They were in wilderness. The jungle and hills were a solid wall around them.

“We follow the coast. It’s easy.” He sounded desperate and unbelievable.

She was absolutely sure that Emory didn’t care anything about her, only about getting what he wanted. He’d use her and she might or might not get a pardon out of it. At least Cooper and the others seemed to care about her, so long as she was part of the crew anyway.

“If I untied you, what do you think the captain would do to me?”

They both knew the answer: killed, marooned, both. Emory said, “She wouldn’t, not to you. Not to another female.”

Like that would make any difference to Captain Cooper. Jill moved away to spread her blanket on her own patch of sand, to try to sleep.

But she thought about what he’d said. Getting captured by the Royal Navy would certainly be one way of getting out of here. But it wouldn’t get her any closer to home. She could almost sympathize with Emory, though. This was a strange place for him, too. But his path was so much clearer.

Though exhausted, Jill had trouble sleeping in the open, on a sandy bed in a deserted cove. Wrapping the blanket around herself, she curled up in a warm pocket of sand. The air grew surprisingly cool, even in the tropics, as a breeze blew in from the ocean. She wished for a room and a bed. She was never going to get all the sand out of her hair.

Sleep came in fits and starts. The ground kept moving under her, starting her awake. But no, it was only the phantom movement of the schooner’s rocking that her muscles still braced against. Her arms were numb, dead from the endless work of scraping the hull. The blisters and sore muscles were a solid ache. Her head hurt even worse when she closed her eyes. What kind of life was this? How could the others sing and laugh every night? And the waves never quieted, continually rustling, nudging Jill back into consciousness.

Then the watch shouted an anxious hail—someone was coming. In the shadows of the campfire, wavering against the wall of trees and vegetation at the edge of the beach, silhouettes appeared, human shapes emerging to stand in the open.

“Captain!” the man on watch shouted again. More of the crew awoke; their agitated murmurs grew louder.

“Settle down,” Cooper answered. Unlike the others, she didn’t sound sleepy or worried. The woman’s figure joined the wavering shadows. She was upright, fully dressed, moving quickly, as if she’d never gone to sleep. Maybe she hadn’t.

A dozen people—lithe, dark-skinned—had emerged from the trees. Jill recognized their stances, the way they moved—wary, like they were ready for a fight. They held weapons in front of them—swords with short, thick blades. Machetes, maybe. Some of them held long shotguns—muskets, rather. The firelight burnished them and their weapons to a shade of copper.

The captain faced the new arrivals and said, “Nanny?”

One of the shadows stepped forward—a woman, her hair bound tight to her head; wiry, with powerful limbs, wearing a long skirt and a full blouse. She was shorter than the walking staff she leaned on, but could surely use the length of wood as a weapon. She held it as if she could raise and swing it in a moment.

“Marjory,” the woman said in a low voice that carried over the beach. “You bring trouble.”

“I know, Nanny. I’m sorry for it,” the captain said, and Jill was shocked to hear the deference in her voice. Captain Cooper didn’t defer to anyone. She might have been the strongest person Jill had ever met—but Jill wondered if maybe this Nanny was the strongest person Marjory Cooper had ever met.

“Tell me the story,” Nanny said in a broad, round accent. The woman gestured to the central fire, still burning low in its pit of sand. Cooper led Nanny to it, and they sat in its light.

The others who had come with Nanny stayed around the perimeter of the camp, keeping a lookout.

Jill watched the two women at the fire. She didn’t dare approach, though she was fascinated. But now she couldn’t even try to sleep, so she sat up, wrapped in her blanket, and watched.

“We raided a ship of slavers,” Cooper said. “Abe and me raided it—you know how it is. We couldn’t take them back home so we brought them here. It’s the only safe place for them, Nanny. I know you won’t turn them away.”

“You take advantage of my hospitality. We’ve all escaped, we all fight every day to keep the freedom we won. There are still hunters from the plantations crawling through these trees looking for us. How am I supposed to hide all these folk? And how we going to feed so many new mouths?”

“You’ll find a way. We’ve got some stores on the ship we can give you. But I know you won’t let me take these folk to the market in Havana.”

The woman chuckled, a rich, sly sound. “Oh, you won’t do that, or you would have already. I know you, Marjory.”

The captain looked away, just for a moment.

Nanny said, “Let me meet them, speak to them.”

The group of Africans was still at their own camp a little way off from the others, away from the work, the fire, and the pirates. But they had not left; Jill had expected them to just walk away. Nothing was keeping them from leaving—except the jungle and the unknown. The same reason Emory had tried to signal a ship rather than simply walk away.

Jill supposed she could walk away, except that she still didn’t know exactly where she was, still didn’t have any idea how to fend for herself, how to get food or water, and she didn’t know how to get back home. So maybe she did understand them, a little. But then she didn’t have sores around her ankles like they did, from where the shackles had bound them, so maybe she didn’t understand at all.

Nanny went to the group and spoke in a different language. One of them answered her, and a conversation began. Occasionally one of the others would speak up—and the first one who’d spoken would seem to repeat, but with different words. They didn’t all speak the same language, and maybe Nanny didn’t speak the same languages that Abe did. Nanny asked questions, and the one who understood her answered. Even though Jill didn’t understand what they were saying, she stayed awake, listening to the voices lilting like music.

Captain Cooper remained standing nearby, watching. She sent her own crew to sleep, so Nanny’s people were the only ones keeping watch.

The sky had begun to pale when the conversation stopped, and Nanny turned back to Cooper. “You are a pirate,” Nanny said to Cooper.

“So you say,” the captain answered, tired. “What does that make you?”

“A young woman getting old,” Nanny said. “Your orphans, I’ll take them home with me, like you knew I would.”

“Thank you,” Cooper said, and seemed relieved.

“But you owe me,” Nanny said, pointing with the staff.

“Put it on my account, woman.”

The camp began to wake, the fires were fed, voices murmured with greetings of the morning. Jill watched, dazed, still in a dream. When she woke up, she’d be in her own bed, in the modern world, where she belonged.

Nanny had moved off to talk to one of her guards, and the Africans were standing, stretching, as if getting ready for a walk. Captain Cooper came toward Jill.

“Have you been up all night, listening in on us?” the captain said, looking down on Jill with a furrowed brow and a quirked smile. Jill nodded meekly. The captain shook her head. “You’re such a tadpole.”

Jill certainly felt small at the moment.

“Get up, then,” Cooper said. “There’s a group going inland for fresh water. You’ll go with them.”

Jill was tired of work, sweat and dirt, blisters on her hands, and not understanding what was happening. But following orders was easier than arguing. She picked herself up, stretched, tried to brush some of the sand off, and didn’t succeed.

Every new job she was given was worse than the last. Nanny’s people told them that there was a creek with clear, fresh water just a little ways into the forest. The mouth of it was up the shore half a mile. All they had to do was get one of the rowboats, row the barrels there, fill them up, and bring them back.

The barrels were as big as Jill. She could hide inside one if she scrunched up. While others continued scrubbing the hull, Jill helped wrestle the empty water barrels up from the hold, lower them into one of the rowboats, and row to the mouth of the stream, which was narrow, rocky, and crowded with overhanging branches and foliage. The others made her the guinea pig, testing the water every few yards, tasting handfuls of it until it turned fresh. She must have spit out a dozen mouthfuls of briny, mucky water. Then, when they finally reached fresh water that hadn’t been tainted by the tide rolling in from the coast, they had to fill the barrels, load them back in the rowboat, and return to the shore to load the barrels back on the
Diana
.

She hadn’t understood the phrase “backbreaking work” until the last couple of days. She was beginning to think she’d never done any work at all. She’d had an easy life, wandering on the beach on vacation; she wanted to go back to her easy life.

She had tied her hair up with a scarf to keep sweat from running into her eyes. Her clothing was soaked with it. She was so hot, she only wanted to run into the water and float there, rocked gently by the waves. After helping to guide the rowboat back to the ship, Jill rested at the edge of the sand, catching her breath, feeling the sweat drip off her in rivers. Her face was red and burning.

She didn’t notice that she had stopped next to Nanny, who was watching her, head tilted with curiosity, suppressing a smile.

“You look terrible, girl,” the woman said. Jill nearly cried. She might have whimpered.

“And what’s your story?” Nanny said, leaning on her staff. “Has Marjory found her apprentice to be the next pirate queen?”

Jill shook her head. “I don’t even think she likes me.”

At that, Nanny smiled wide. “Sit down here in the shade. Marjory won’t care if you rest a moment.”

Nanny moved to the edge of the foliage, in a spot of cool shade, and sat cross-legged. She waved Jill over, and Jill followed. The shade felt blissful. She closed her eyes to rest them.

“So, where are you from?” Nanny asked. “No real pirate would row a boat like you did, splashing the water all about.”

Jill sighed. “I’m from a long way away.”

Nanny furrowed her brow and said, “Just how far?”

Maybe because she was a stranger, a disinterested third party without a hold on her, Jill told her everything. Not just the boat tour from the modern Bahamas, falling overboard, and being pulled out by the unlikely Captain Cooper and her crew. But even before then, her frustration with her family, with herself, with her fencing and not qualifying for the world championships by half a second. And the realization that if she didn’t have fencing, she didn’t know what she had, or who she was. She didn’t know why she was here. She was adrift with strangers on a wide ocean.