Young Woman in a Garden

by Delia Sherman

  I dropped a curtsy, my eyes downcast, trying very hard not to laugh. He was so ridiculous after all, whipping his sailors to show them that he was as fearless and lawless as the ocean he sailed upon. But his swanking could not fool me. Under his sour odor of sweat, tobacco, and stale gin, I could smell the fear upon him sharp as a knife.

  Captain Pelican hitched up my chin with his finger and leered down into my face. His pale eyes were rheumy. “Mr. Fletcher has pumped you some bilge about sherry wine and thanks, but I intend you no such courtesy. You’ll spend a watch or two in my bunk, doing what a woman does best, and then I’ve promised my crew they’ll get what’s left.”

  He showed me his tobacco-stained teeth, waiting, I suppose for some sign of revulsion or terror. I thought of tearing out his throat or singing such a sea-spell that he would face the world with a walrus’s head upon his shoulders and clapped my hands together like a child.

  “O, thankee, sir, thankee,” I cried. “Thee has no notion what weary company a maidenhead be, and no proper man for to lighten me of un.”

  Captain Pelican looked taken aback by this speech, and not so happy as one might expect. “Well,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Always glad to be of service to a lady. Some sherry wine?”

  I clasped my hands over the greasy arm of his jacket and smiled. “Come, my dear, thee ben’t shy?”

  “There’s no hurry,” he said hoarsely. Without taking his eyes from me, he shouted for Mr. Fletcher to bring the wine and two glasses and led me to the wooden bench that ran along the stern of the ship.

  By this time, I could all but taste the captain’s blood on my lips. I sank onto the bench and into his arms. He bent to kiss me, his massive head and shoulders black against the silver moonlight, his breath rank in the clean, salt air. Eagerly, I raised my face to him.

  “Captain Pelican, sir,” came Mr. Fletcher’s prim voice. “Your sherry wine, sir.”

  The captain released me unkissed and, damning Mr. Fletcher for a fish-buggering old woman, poured and handed me a glass of wine.

  Sipping the sherry gave me time to reflect. The moonlight glittered at me from the watchful, rat-bright eyes of the crew. While they might stand by and cheer while I tore out their captain’s throat, they were unlikely to set me safely ashore when I was done. Lust for my body or lust for my blood, both were alike to them. If I killed their captain, they were apt simply to skewer me where I sat and throw my body overboard with his.

  When Captain Pelican finished his wine, he laid aside his glass and began to fumble at my bosom. I smiled, took a deep breath, and began to sing. Startled, he drew back his hands, lifted them to muzzle me, hesitated, and then, as the spell caught him, let them drop to his knees.

  My song was the lament that the heart of every seaport woman sings when her man sets sail. Its notes were love and longing and the dark night watches when a woman’s spirit is at low tide and every breeze seems to sigh with the last prayers of downing sailors. My seal’s voice, low-pitched and resonant, carried its plaint to each crewman’s bones. Not only the captain, but every man on that ship heard my song, and in my wordless melody, heard the ceaseless calling of his wife, sweetheart, sister, mother. From the foredeck came the sound of weeping.

  The captain glared at me, tearless, stiff, and resistant.

  I wove into my song the slow, sleepy brush of waves over sand. The captain’s lids drooped, and he began to slip sideways on the bench, the hilt of his sword poking into his ribs. Wind breathed in the rigging and sent small waves shushing gently against the hull. The Cape Town Maid slept.

  Now, I thought, and turned to the silent figure slumped against the stern railing. I rolled his heavy body off the bench and tore open his coat and his shirt. Shadow caught in the folds of his untanned throat as if already it ran with blood. He’s a monster, I thought as I crouched over him; I have wanted to kill him since I first saw his ship in my bay, and I will kill him. Now.

  I lowered my mouth to his throat. His skin against my tongue was foul and slick as rotting fish. I recoiled and spat and scrubbed my mouth with my skirt. Thoughts chased one another through my mind, cold and bright and quick: to murder will make me human; to flee will make me animal; there are more kinds of virginity than one.

  The moon was slipping down the mainmast, barring the deck with black shadows, silvering the hair on Captain Pelican’s bared chest. I brushed my fingers over the thatch. It gave under my touch, springy as uncarded wool. Although his pelt was thick, there was not enough hair to weave a mat. But it might be worked into a larger pattern. Humming thoughtfully, I gave the hair a little tug. It came easily free from his skin.

  Singing as I worked, I opened and laid back the wings of his coat and linen shirt and plucked the hair from his chest. Under my busy hands, his naked skin shone almost luminous in the moonglow, its pale expanse broken only by the faint shadows of his nipples. I cupped them in my palms; the flesh beneath them stretched, softened, swelled.

  Song welled up within me, flowed from my lips and fingers, guiding and guided by the movement of my hands. I caressed the knot from his throat, stroked the stubble from his cheeks. Wherever my hands passed, the texture of his skin became finer, denser. When I had done with his face, my fingers wandered down across the heavy, round breasts to unclasp the captain’s belt and rest on his belly. As my witch-song sank into his flesh, the world narrowed to the beating of my blood and his and the echo of the tide flowing in the notes of my song.

  Captain Pelican gave a great cry that flew from his altered throat like a sea gull’s plaintive scream and died away to a whimper. So, too, died my song.

  I knelt shivering on the deck until my limbs unknotted, then rose and went to the captain’s cabin. I found there a sea chest, from which I took six pieces of gold as payment for my slaughtered sheep, a brick of black tea, and a length of sea-green silk. When I came up again, I searched for Mr. Fletcher among the coiled ropes and the snoring sailors and found him folded like a sleeping sheep at the foot of a companionway. From him I took the tarnished locket that held the silhouette of Nancy Bride and his clasp knife. I stove in five of the ship’s longboats and, freighting the sixth with my booty, lowered it to the sea.

  The moon had long since sunk behind the cliffs and set. By the time I pushed off, dead night shrouded The Cape Town Maid and her slumbering crew. In a little while the sky would lighten, the tide would turn, and the crew would wake and sail the Maid out of my bay. With luck, they’d be well away to Salem before they had attention to spare for their captain, asleep on the wooden boards at the stern of the ship. As I paddled the longboat back to the shore, I wondered what they would make of what they found.

  Acknowledgments

  “The Maid on the Shore” was written in 1986. “The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor” was written in 2011. That’s twenty-five years. I cannot hope to remember everyone who helped me with criticism, encouragement, advice, research, and occasional stern talkings-to (especially at the beginning), but I do have some very particular thanks to render.

  To all the librarians, docents, guides, and chance-met acquaintances, for answering searching questions about seals, Darwin, tropical fish, the Siege of Paris, ghosts, Cajun patois, 16th century jewelry-making, lighthouses, Texas tall tales, and Impressionist painting with patience and humor.

  To Greer Gilman, for reading endless drafts of “The Maid on the Shore,” “Nanny Peters,” “Miss Carstairs and the Merman,” and “Land’s End.”

  To Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, for inspiring me to write “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche,” “La Fée Verte,” “The Red Piano,” “The Printer’s Daughter,” and “The Fairy Cony-Catcher.”

  To Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, for being not only the best publishers a writer could hope for, but excellent critique partners and even better friends.

  To Ellen Kushner, for everything.

  About the Author

  Delia Sherman was born in Japan and raised in New York City. Her work has appeared most recently in the anth
ologies Naked City, Steampunk!, and Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells. She is the author of six novels including The Porcelain Dove (a New York Times Notable Book), The Freedom Maze, and Changeling, and has received the Mythopoeic and Norton awards. She lives in New York City.

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