by Eli Brown
Saturday already, and tomorrow I must feed her again. Having heard the stories from a young age, we may take for granted the water to wine and multiplication of fishes, but making sustenance ex nihilo is no easy miracle, to say nothing of victuals that actually please the palate.
I have separated my stolen potpourri into discrete piles. These are the usable contents: five broken bay leaves; two sticks of cinnamon; a few fragile sprigs of rosemary; several cloves; what I believe to be anise seed (very stale); and a handful of small dried rosebuds. All of these have succumbed to the odor of cedar, that brute. Still, with a little heat, I might be able to coax their whispering voices to sing.
Here in the privacy of my scribbles, I admit that I feel a childish spark in me. Prior to this, all of my study and sweat, no matter the party or circumstance, had concerned no greater stake than the glazing of wealthy tongues. Now the game has changed. Despite the indignity, the debasement, despite my molten outrage, a piece of me is eager to meet this challenge.
I’ve added the cedar to my castile soap, and the result is quite refreshing. My cell affords me privacy, a rare commodity here on the ship, and I’ve taken advantage of it several times to crouch naked over a bucket to wash my clothes. Of course the seawater leaves a white rime no matter how many times I rinse.
It occurs to me that the sailors upon this boat, though slavish to their beloved captain, are not without wiles of their own. Did they not save the horrid Hottentot for last because they knew it would be the end of the party?
My botched attempt and subsequent pickling has me reconsidering my plans for escape. If it is to happen, it must be within clear sight of land, or at least of a rescuing ship, for I cannot risk being lost upon open waters again. My opportunity will, no doubt, appear suddenly, and I must be ready for brave action.
Eager to use the new cabbages before they wilted, I made sauerkraut, that loyal friend. The cabbages were of a Chinese variety unfamiliar to me, their leaves long and their taste mild, striking me as rather a hybrid of cabbage and lettuce. But the hearts were crisp, and I found myself stuffing my mouth like an old goat, so welcome was the crunch of a real vegetable.
I kneaded the shredded cabbage with salt until it sweated brine, then packed it with a few cloves of garlic in a small wooden keg and set a rock upon it to keep the devil out. Sauerkraut will make my internment a little more bearable. It is one of the staples of civilized life that I had taken for granted and now feels to me like a blessed luxury. It has a hundred uses: it cures scurvy as well as limes while aiding digestion, strengthens the heart, sharpens the mind, and makes one’s deposits as regular and well formed as those of an ox. Its juice can be drunk as a tonic and serves as a flavorful replacement for vinegar, while the kraut itself can garnish anything but sweet-cake. I assume that manna was something akin.
As it ferments, kraut whispers alchemical secrets. In two days, it will smell as agreeable as an old pillow still warm from night’s use. In five days it will smell like a horse run to foam. The odor will then lessen as the vegetable begins its tart transformation. It will be good to eat in two weeks, but at five weeks it will reach the zenith of its power, its taste a violin bow drawn across the tongue. After six weeks it will err slowly toward slime. Like hams and men, it gets better with age only to a point.
Mabbot is correct in this: I do have more idle time than I have ever had. Last week I spent it pacing and fretting. Now, after my misadventure in the sea, I take moments to appreciate the air and sun—my left ear, having been thoroughly irrigated, aches when I get too cold—and to watch Bai practice his slow martial dances while Feng angles for opponents over a specially made chessboard whose every square is bordered by half-inch runners that keep the pieces from toppling as the ship rolls.
The Chinaman has ruined chess for most of the crew. While he and his brother are usually as stony as gargoyles, the game brings out a surprisingly uncouth side of Feng. If he had invented the game, he couldn’t take more pride in it. He will play anyone and takes as much pleasure in five-move victories as in the rare hour-long contest. He seems almost addicted to it, and few can face him on the board for long before he snatches their king with a cackle.
As hardly any wish to play him, he is not above bullying passing sailors into a game, saying, just loudly enough for them to hear, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you are a coward” or “You walk like a woman.”
When he wins, as he inevitably does, he lets loose an almost girlish laugh and places his small hand on the loser’s chest to say with mock concern, “Oh, don’t cry!”
When I sat to play him, though, he swept the board into a sack with one quick motion and left me sitting alone. The man’s hatred for me feels personal, though I cannot put my finger on the exact reason for it.
Chinkle, buntline, sheepshank, monkey fist—these sailors have as many names for knots as I have for cheese, and they make about as much sense. They’ve made a game of asking me to identify a given knot, then snickering when I answer incorrectly. They’re happy for their loot, and today I’ve lingered at the periphery of the gangs taking their leisure, listening to their music and jokes, learning from them the complicated craft of keeping the Rose on her tack, which sails are royal and which topgallant, how to secure a line to a belay pin, and how to scale the shrouds. The men even gave me a hempen bracelet for having successfully climbed to the top of the mainmast and kissed the brass cap there.
I can attest that pirates do indeed sing, unceasingly and in ravens’ voices, but not always unpleasantly, as they have plenty of practice and they harass those who break rhythm. Their themes are redundant and, more often than not, pornographic. But I suppose, if one wants hymns, one does not seek out pirates.
They are forever telling stories as well. On any given day, one can hear a variety of outrageous yarns about underwater kingdoms, scandalous assignations, or ghost ships. I admit I was interested to hear one sagacious sailor explain to several of us how Feng and Bai came to work with Mabbot. It was a wet oration delivered around a wad of tobacco in the man’s cheek, and we all had to wait patiently while he spat over the railing every few sentences.
Feng and Bai, I learned, were the youngest of five brothers of the wealthy Tsang family, owners of a great silk-making house. “Their worms,” the sailor said, “produced fabric so light an’ airy that an entire bolt weighed no more than a sparrow. When their father refused to take a warlord’s opium as payment, he was skewered ’pon a pike and the entire house was burned to cinders. The five brothers gave themselves to a Buddhist mystic to learn boxing. Then, years later, they cut their revenge from the warlord, his opium factory, his family, and his workers. But this bloodletting brought back neither their home nor their father, no, not even a single silkworm. Their grief was not slaked. They set themselves against the officials who had cooperated with the warlord. Scores died on their swords before they were eventually ambushed, tried, and sentenced to hang. It was in the Canton cell awaiting their death that they met Mabbot. She’d been captured by the navy and was awaiting transport to England, where the Pendleton Company planned to parade her in the streets before hanging her near the ports as a warning against piracy. Those of us left, myself, Apples, and a few more, used the hanging of the Tsang brothers as a distraction to break her out. Mabbot, though, refused to flee before she’d cut the brothers from the gallows with her own knife, while we fought off the guards.”
“And what became of the other three brothers?” I asked.
“Mabbot could only cut so fast,” he replied, and spat into the wind such that I was obliged to duck a brown string of saliva.
At sunset, I was ambushed in the galley by no fewer than a dozen men who, despite my screams, stuffed my head into a sack and carried me to the mizzen, where I was trussed to a plank like a stuffed goose. My feet left the deck as I was hoisted into the air to dangle helplessly from a spar. The sack was tugged from my head, and in the glare of sunset I saw nearly the entire crew assembled. Their grins made it clear
that my pending execution gave them no end of pleasure. Even Joshua was there laughing with the rest of them, and that betrayal stung deeply.
To my surprise, only crusty old Conrad came to my defense. He croaked, “Aw, how’d he earn this already? He’s only been aboard a few weeks! Cut ’im down!”
He was, of course, completely ignored. Mr. Apples stood imperiously on the poop deck so he would be eye level with me and asked, “Well, Spoons, what do you say for yourself?”
I had no heart to beg. “Is this a court?” I yelled. “Judge yourselves!” As I spoke, the impotent rage that has so darkened my breast burst forth. “Whatever offense you accuse me of, I redouble a hundredfold against you. I accuse and condemn you all, animals, brutes! Let my last words bring a blight upon your wicked hearts.” I spat on the deck (an act I knew Mr. Apples in particular did not appreciate), and yet the men only laughed harder.
The deck rang with jeers as I was swung out over the water and dropped suddenly into the sea. I took a desperate gasp, and, though in the churning I could call no prayers to my mind, I cleaved to the memory of a small wooden Saint Ignatius that stood above Father Sonora’s oven. It had been darkened by soot and its face polished to a shine by Sonora’s custom of touching it as he passed.
Swimming was impossible, and I rolled into the increasingly chilly murk. When my chest began to heave of its own accord and my nostrils filled with the fiery brine, my ropes went tight and I was hoisted up into the light and dropped back upon the deck, where the laughter of the men continued.
I was untied and someone shouted, “He has spunk, I give him that!”
“That he does.” Mr. Apples chuckled before announcing: “Owen Zachariah Wedgwood, having crossed the equator on the Flying Rose, you are hereby initiated into our distinguished ranks as captain’s cook, idler, and general jackass.” He placed a wreath of seaweed upon my head and whispered, “Do not spit ’pon my deck.”
“Piss!” I shouted.
“Spoken like a gentleman. Now, boys, the fun’s over, back to your posts.”
I have approached Kitzu for fish again, but as I have not paid him for his last contribution, he scowled at me and made as if to give me nothing until, finally, he tossed at my feet a speckled and frenzied eel, as one might throw crusts to a dog. The rest of the catch he gave to the crew—as I moaned. Among the knots of seaweed in which my eel churned, I found a small but lovely herring and took that too, and placed them both in a fresh bucket of seawater in my chamber.
After our tiff, Joshua continues to avoid me. I am already missing the lessons with him. I had come to rely on them as a precious, if temporary, diversion from the enervating madhouse of this ship. Now there is no break from my anxious pacing, my worries about how to make comestibles from sawdust. Nevertheless, if the boy wants to learn, he must come to me and make amends.
It doesn’t help that, instead of learning to read, Joshua is being taught to fire cannon. I tell myself I shouldn’t worry—that the boy got along well enough before my arrival—but I cannot keep myself from loitering nearby while they walk him through the tamping of the barrel and the pricking of the charge. I lurk despite knowing that the crew bristle to be watched by an “idler.”
Today, Mr. Apples laughed at me. “What’s the matter, mother hen? Your boy growing up too fast?”
To this, I answered, “Would that he grows well and tall and with all of his fingers intact! He is clever—much too clever to be manning brute weapons!” This last remark earned me such scowls from the gunmen that I rushed straight to my chamber.
Saturday, Later
This evening the men erected a small stage upon the deck, complete with a curtain, lanterns, and a motley orchestra, to put on a bit of theater that they had been preparing. On the whole, it was a rude and rudimentary farce, little more than a medium for artificial blasts of flatulence and an excuse to flounce about, smacking one another’s arses with oars. But those watching lapped it up. Indeed, they barked themselves hoarse with laughter. Mabbot sat at the front in her upholstered chair, smoking an ivory pipe carved from the tusk of a walrus. Having a view of only the back of her head where her red braids parted, I could not tell if she was still upset about the Patience incident.
The “salt opera,” as the men called it, was preceded by a few individual offerings. First Asher plucked a haunting tune from a bean-shaped guitar. This was followed by stoic Feng himself taking the stage and commanding rapt attention with his perfect posture. He took from his belt the mysterious little book, and I readied myself for a pagan sermon. Instead, Feng spoke, quietly and mostly from memory, a Shakespearian sonnet:
As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
… O! let my looks be then the eloquence.
If I hadn’t been so well acquainted with his merciless fists, I would have thought, from this quiet delivery, that he was a tenderhearted schoolboy, trying to woo a maid.
O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.
After the stomping and simian hooting that serves as applause here, the stage was ceded to the evening’s main entertainment.
The show, taking its inspiration from legends of Mabbot’s exploits, was the sort of infantile horseplay that I would have walked away from if I had not been arrested by the costume of one character. By his blue coat and the outlandish mustache made of twisted coconut fiber, it was clear that the man was impersonating my late employer, Lord Ramsey. When he strode across the stage, he was met with boos and hisses. With horror, I perceived the actor wore not just any blue coat; it was, in fact, his lordship’s actual coat with the grisly stain upon the lapel. Honor and duty obliged me to march up and rip the thing from the desecrator’s frame, but I was easily shoved to the deck by those watching before I could touch the man. Fantasies of bloody vengeance rose in me, but I was painfully aware that I was in the wolves’ den, and that there was nothing to do but witness and pray for rescue.
Between the rude crotch-thrusting, which evoked levity every time, and the toots of an old tin horn that stood in for broken wind, a rough plot emerged. The protagonist, ersatz Mabbot (played by Mr. Apples in a horsehair wig, his bosom stuffed with pillows), pranced about the stage with a small papier-mâché ship ingeniously girdling his tremendous waist. Shortly “she” was seized by navy ships and, despite delivering frightful blows upon their heads with her scabbard, was imprisoned in a cell made from a dangling net. Here, she croaked out a falsetto tune:
Life is a drop of water on a stove,
A mouse on a miller’s stone,
Without hope of rescue,
I shall die here all alone …
Mr. Apples’s talents are admittedly impressive. He can negotiate the arc of a cannonball as well as the waltz of knitting needles. He cannot, however, sing. Alas, the audience disagreed with me, clapping as if it were Handel.
The genuine Mabbot, in full view of this farce, didn’t stir. The evening’s entertainment was apparently an attempt to improve her mood. I couldn’t imagine seeing herself played so artlessly would please her, though.
If the drama thus far had been based upon fact, it now swung shamelessly into falsehood as a strange thing happened upon the stage. Ramsey arrived to free Mabbot from her confines and made this apocryphal speech: “Hannah Mabbot, Tiger of the Seas, harken! I offer freedom for your skills! Use them for England! Spain nibbles at our bread! France sends our merchants to dine with Davy Jones. The foreign devils trade in slaves and opium. Protect us, Privateer Mabbot, sail forth and protect us!”
To this, ersatz Mabbot agreed, and immediately there appeared upon the stage men waving French, Spanish, and Portuguese flags, sailing along in their own paper boats. Forthwith and with balletic flourishes, the stage-Mabbot engaged in swashbuckling, dispatching them one by one. Down they went, thrashing and moaning. Here was used, to clever effect, a red kerchief. Whenever a character expired, this rag was fluttered abo
ut the wound to indicate spurts of blood. It was then seized and reused by the next victim. This single cloth embellished and stitched these murders into a grim yet somehow lovely choreography.
But while Mabbot was busy perforating foreigners, Ramsey wrung his hands devilishly and tweaked his mustache. Making a show of his secrecy, he produced a box marked OPIUM and delivered it to a man in a coolie hat, much to the outrage of our audience. Further, he brought forth a man in chains and sold him for a fistful of coins. This treachery elicited hoots and screams of derision from the crowd, who implored Mabbot to turn and see what they saw, but she was busy clearing the seas for the trading company. When her work was done, she sat, mopped her brow, and smoked a pipe. Here Mr. Apples mirrored exactly the real Mabbot watching, much to the delight of the crowd, going so far as to whip a braid over his shoulder just as Mabbot did.
At this point Ramsey and, by his tricolor cockade, a Frenchman came forward to conspire in stage whispers. This Frenchman wore black from his spats to his bicorne hat. To him Ramsey gave a few of the coins and sang:
Laroche, with your ingenuity,
You are the man for me,
Pendleton grows stronger.
Hannah Mabbot, full of wrath,
Of competition hath cleared our path.
We need her no longer!
They shook hands and Laroche, his paper hat askew, drew his sword and sprang upon Mabbot. They fought.
Eventually, Laroche shot Mabbot who clutched her breast and fell into a sea of blue cloth waved by stagehands. As Laroche stepped forward to sing his victory song, though, Mabbot emerged behind him with a demonic twinkle in her eye. As the audience murmured, she plucked the bullet from her chest and tossed it over her shoulder. This time Laroche was sent yelping and covering his arse to protect it from the flailing Mabbot was giving him.
Mabbot, searching for Ramsey, ran to every corner of the stage, while he, still fingering his mustache, lurked just behind her at every turn until she gave up. Then, when Ramsey sat down to a celebratory meal, Mabbot appeared and shouted, “Tell the devil I’ll be late for tea!” and shot him. When the red kerchief fluttered, Mabbot danced a jig over his body.
