The Secret's Keeper and the Heir

by Jackie McCarthy

  Tappan and Rose, unable to help themselves, roared in laughter below. Even Ikpek cracked a smile, the armful of heavy rope falling yet again from his inadequate grip.

  Cricket stopped his pained dance and stood still, one sore foot atop the other. He looked at the shipboys with embarrassment. “What, you see something funny? Huh?” Rushing to the rail that separated them, he pounded a fist upon the well-worn wood. A slight cringe betrayed the pain that this, too, caused the red-haired boy. Biting his lip against the discomfort, he glared at the three below with anger in his eyes.

  The group of newbies had grown silent. Rose knew Cricket to be an unpleasant, slightly crazy sort of boy—quick to anger and hot of temper. Still, she’d never before in their months at sea seen him pushed so easily to violence.

  “Come on, sissies,” Cricket cajoled. “You think something I say is funny, you say so to my face.”

  Tappan held up his hands in surrender, “We didn’t mean anything by it, Crick. It’s been a rough day, is all.”

  “Hector isn’t a person we should be comparing ourselves to, anyhow,” Rose added. “Ordinary people can’t look like that.”

  Rose saw Tappan wince at her words. She realized her mistake when Cricket shot back with, “What, you don’t think I could take that dark-skinned criminal?” He threw his fist into his own open palm. It hit with a sickening smack.

  “Criminal?” Rose couldn’t help but repeat. She looked back towards Hector, but he’d disappeared below decks.

  “Aye,” Cricket spat. He leaned over the rail to be closer to Rose. “Oh, poor Monkey, did I just rat out your hero? Maybe you should try learning something about people before you go idolizing them.”

  “Come on, Cricket,” Tappan soothed, standing, “I don’t think the Captain would let a criminal on his ship—”

  “Aye, well, he did, didn’t he?” Cricket shot back. “Think I’m lying? Ask anyone. In fact, that’s the only thing anyone knows about him: that he bought his freedom working in the Mines of Deep Knells. Escaped more like. Only criminals are sent to labor there.”

  Rose hadn’t heard a lot about the province of Deep Knells, besides that they dug mines for metal ore deep below the earth. It was said to be backbreaking work in a realm unseen by the sun, and she’d heard that some of the poor souls who labored there had been sent as punishment for their crimes. Remembering how her family had been sold, however, Rose knew there were other ways to end up in servitude. She said hesitantly, “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “He was in the Deep Knells?” Tappan said, whistling again. He seemed, if possible, even more impressed. “Now that’s a harsh place. I grew up right near there in Baxley, and that seemed bad enough, but it ain’t half as bad as the other place.”

  “You’re from Baxley?” Rose asked, distracted from Cricket’s accusations. She wondered why she hadn’t thought to ask before, but her assumption had been that all those hired beside her were from the awful city of Portridge. She knew that, like the Deep Knells, Baxley was a mining province of its own, though it was an open-air quarry for stone.  “I was on the other side of the Kent. I heard terrible things from fishermen who floated too far northwards!”

  “Aye, well,” said Tappan, throwing a haunted look across the water towards Illiamna, “they’re all true.”

  Cricket smacked his hands together again. “Hey, old lovers,” he reminded, “are you forgetting what I said about Hector?”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Rose said, recalling several pleasant, if short, encounters with the ship’s First. “He seems like a good guy.”

  “That’s what he wants you to think,” Cricket scoffed. “You know why he has such dark skin, right? Because he’s so full of dark magic,” he said, answering his own question. “And just like a she-witch, he needs to drink blood. Deep in the night, when it’s so dark that he blends right in, he’ll sneak into your bunk and…” he made a violent motion across his neck. “You sissies don’t stand a chance.”

  Rose and the others exchanged a dubious look. “I bet you would, though,” Tappan said with a sarcastic roll of his eyes.

  “I’d give him a left and a right,” Cricket breathed, punching at the air, his muscles tense. He only looked up when he heard their amused reaction. “Oy, what’re you laughing at now? Don’t think I could take him?”

  “I didn’t say anything,” Tappan said, shaking his head in denial. “Whatever you say.”

  “Yeah well, ‘whatever’ to you too,” Cricket spat, crossing his arms. “I was gonna offer my services as an Auk-spotter, but I guess I’ll be leaving you sissies to fend for yourselves.”

  With a huff, the former shipboy had gone, leaving those who remained to their confusion and amusement.

  * * * * *

  Captain Kaille looked wearily at his shiphand, who held between his hands a length of rope upon which Kaille was working. The two stood—shirtless beneath the cloudless sky—braiding together an intricately woven ladder from a mere pile of worn cordage.

  The rope jerked away as Kaille attempted a motion that had already failed several times due to his helper’s inattention. The knife with which he was working missed its mark and passed too close to the Captain’s hand for comfort.

  Kaille rolled his eyes and demanded in an exasperated voice, “Stop fidgeting.”

  “I can’t help it, Eli,” said Jas Hawkesbury, aware enough of his distraction to feel poorly about it. “The suspense is killing me.”

  “Never mind the suspense,” Kaille reprimanded, “if you continue to ignore your job, I’ll kill you.”

  “I’m sorry Captain,” Jas said sheepishly, letting down the woven ladder and rubbing dirty palms into his eyes. “I can hardly sleep. I think of nothing else. I might go mad with curiosity. I don’t know how you tolerate it!”

  “You speak as though there’s a choice to be had,” Kaille said with a grimace. He’d been enjoying the warm afternoon without a thought of Fenric or the mystery that followed him. He sheathed his knife and stretched out his muscular shoulders, sore from being slumped. Taking up his hip flask, he took a swig and splashed a handful of water into his dark, curly hair, then turned to point accusingly at his friend. “Besides, you wanted this. I thought you, at least, would be able to handle the consequences of your request.”

  “I thought so too!” Jas exclaimed, throwing up his hands and leaning against the rail. “But I didn’t think of Whyl! I didn’t think we’d learn mere minutes after setting sail that the man who’d purchased us from our trade route was, in fact, a mass-murderer. And I certainly didn’t think that after such a confession, Whyl would then lapse into a delirious fever these last months. He answers the occasional question, aye, but with nonsense. I can hardly stand it! And you! Despite all of this, you still allow the Scribe to wander among your crew…”

  “I can hardly condemn him based upon a sick man’s ranting,” Kaille said in explanation. “And I have restricted the Scribe: he must remain above decks except under my supervision.”

  “I think we ought to hold off landing until we’ve had a chance to sort this out,” Jas said.

  “Land’s already been spotted from the crow’s nest,” Kaille disagreed firmly, shaking his head. “I can hardly tell the men that we’re to simply not go ashore—not re-supply. Besides, I have every intention of being paid for this.”

  “We were paid,” Jas said. He looked up suddenly. “We’re the proud owners of a mangled piece of the Quartered Crown.”

  Kaille scanned the horizon, squinting against the sun. He shook his head again. “That wasn’t a payment,” he said to the clear blue sky. “That was a display of power. I wonder that you haven’t yet brought it to bear in your anti-Fenric arsenal.”

  “I’m not,” Jas cried in protest, “anti-Fenric.”

  Kaille threw his head back, snorting. “Since the moment you heard of Whyl’s few waking words, you’ve denounced the Scribe and his every intention.”

  “Well,” Jas motioned agitatedly, “they’re sus
picious.”

  “I could’ve told you that. And I could’ve done so before we agreed to take him all the way to Dunsmere,” Kaille said sardonically. “In fact, I likely did. You were the one who—”

  “Aye, I know!” Jas said, very serious, raking a hand along his elbow-length amber hair. “How were any of us to know what would happen once they came aboard? That, I suppose, is why we’re sailors instead of politicians. We wanted—okay I wanted—to be part of the plot. I just…Whyl woke up and said those terrible things, and then he lapsed into an unconscious fever, to regain awareness only long enough to say hysterical things. I need to know, Kaille! Which of them is telling the truth?”

  “I fear we’ll find out either way,” Kaille said with a grin he knew would infuriate his friend, “but we may not like the method of discovery.”

  * * * * *

  Rose, Ikpek, and Tappan each grabbed a bucket of water and carried them to the mid-deck. The afternoon sun beat harshly down, but a cool ocean breeze soothed the worst of it. Tappan had discarded his shirt, tying it round his head so as to shield his eyes from the intruding light. This discomposed Rose somewhat, since she feared she would be expected to follow suit and remove her own garment, but Ikpek remained fully clothed also, and she followed the slave boy’s lead.

  The three settled down to scrubbing the decks.

  “I have to give Cricket some credit,” Tappan said after several minutes. “There’s three of us working now, but imagine having to scrub this entire ship all on your own.”

  Rose looked at him warily. “You don’t think he really had to do it alone, do you? Seems like the other sailors would’ve helped.”

  “I don’t know,” Tappan said with a shrug. “But I keep telling myself, however hard this is, it’d be a lot harder without the two of you.”

  Rose smiled. She’d found that she appreciated Tappan’s warm personality and unfailing work ethic more and more every day. When the work seemed too hard or the sea too wild, his steady presence could make her calm.

  “Well I—” Rose began. Her mind drove a response from her lips, however, as it focused on the dropping of footfalls behind them. Tense and preparing herself for a sharp cuff on the ear, she turned her head, expecting to see the ship’s Second.

  It wasn’t Auk, but Fenric who approached. Rose let out a sigh of relief, but then felt a new kind of unease rising. She readied herself for the encounter.

  Though Rose had daily meetings with the Scribe in his cabin, he’d become no more familiar to her than the enigma who had first been seated at her uncle’s table, introducing himself to her brother’s ghost. They would meet and she would learn her letters—a slow and daunting task to be sure—during which time he would be patient and kind, if a little distant…but then he would come across her working the decks and utterly transform, vocally pointing out to all who would listen her great and feminine flaws.

  Rose drew in a nervous breath. Her companions didn’t share this apprehension, however. Tappan grinned broadly at the gray-haired Scribe.

  “And how is the clear Blue treating you this morning, gentlemen?” Fenric asked. Rose cringed at Tappan, who glowed at the prospect of being considered a “gentleman.”

  “Good, sir,” he said with a nod, “though our backs be sore.”

  “It seems like hard work indeed,” Fenric said in agreement. He then turned his gaze to the others. “Easy there, Misses Rose, don’t want to soil your petticoat.”

  “Misses Rose,” Cricket repeated with a snigger from alongside them. He knew by now to be near when the Scribe sauntered up to the shipboys. He called to the men aloft, “Oy, did you know our Monkey was a Misses?”

  There was rowdy laughter from above, mixed with the sounds of ape-like screeching.

  “That’s not funny, Scribe,” Rose said harshly, trying to bore into him with her eyes. What was he doing, drawing so much attention to her? Why did he behave as though he was two different people? She quailed under the ridicule of her shipmates. “It’s not funny.”

  “Why would a thing have to be funny so long as it’s true?” Fenric asked. He addressed the old hands with a yell, “Gentlemen, you should be ashamed of yourselves for giving such difficult work to this boy. He—and my friend Ikpek for that matter—are mere slips of boys. Don’t you have easier tasks for them?”

  “I reckon we ought,” Cricket called to them. “But look, Misses Monkey disagrees with us.”

  “We don’t need easier tasks!” Rose shouted. She looked at Ikpek, who kept his head down and continued scrubbing. She felt her face burn.

  “How could we have known the Monkey were a girl?” called Sinner Jack in jest.

  “By how much it bickers with its betters, I imagine,” said Rolf bitterly.

  “Nah,” said Sinner Jack in high spirits, “just lift up its skirts.”

  “Set up a jig,” cried Goran, “and see if it dances the man or woman’s parts.”  To illustrate his point, Goran tossed down spare nails from his belt at Rose’s feet and watched as she hopped about to avoid them.

  “If it weren’t for the savage, I’d say you had the most pathetic beard I’d ever seen,” shouted Cricket, his own facial hair tufty and sparse. “But I ain’t never seen a slave boy with a beard.”

  “Oy, Monkey, be ye a savage?” asked Sinner Jack, suddenly concerned.

  Rose couldn’t abide their insults any longer. “I was born and raised in Kentshore,” she snapped up at them, her chin raised and proud, “and that’s all I’ll hear about any of it.”

  “Kentshore?” Cricket laughed derisively, “Not sure that’s a whole lot better. Tell me, are you the only monkey of your kin, or were the whole lot of you born with long tails?”

  “Shut up about my family!” Rose yelled, her face red. Unaware that she’d dropped her scrubbing brush, she began to run at Fenric, but Tappan held her back.

  With a satisfied smile and nod, Fenric walked past them and limped away, his mischief apparently managed. Rose huffed angrily as she watched him go, barely hearing the continued taunts and jeers from Cricket and the other shipmen.

  Tappan handed Rose her dropped brush, his eyes kind. Quietly turning away, he demonstrated how to ignore Cricket, who was rolling around on the deck with laughter, squealing about how “the Monkey had tried to fight an old, gray man.”

  Rose plunged her brush into the bucket of water and then brought it crashing onto the deck, throwing all of her strength into the chore. Above her the old hands chattered, sounding not unlike a tree full of monkeys themselves.

  Cricket eventually caught his breath, and began the quiet chant, “Misses, Misses, Missy Rose.”

  Though she tried to lose herself in peaceful thoughts, his incantation beat its way into her mind. Her head grew hot. She knew she couldn’t endure much more.

  Then, like a beautiful miracle, a distant voice bellowed from the bow of the ship, “Ben!”

  It was the Captain’s call. 

  Rose set down her brush to go answer, her head lowered against those who continued chanting. She trod forward on the ship until their jeering voices were drowned out by the sound of breaking waves off the bow.

  Captain Kaille stood with his shiphand Jas, both bared to the waist in the warm sun. Rose slowed her step for a moment, taking in the broad line of the Captain’s shoulders, the strong curve of his back. Her heart fluttered pleasantly and she drew in a deep breath of salty sea air. 

  She’d felt this way every time she came upon him—light-headed and a little sweaty. It was a constant surprise, to be so drawn by the mere sight of a man. She wanted to be near him—to touch him.

  As she stepped closer to the Captain, Rose heard him saying to Jas, “He’s an old man, you shouldn’t give him so much credit.”

  “Credit?” Jas cried. “I don’t think you give him enough. That man’s dangerous.”

  “He’s lived peacefully with us—” Kaille began.

  “Don’t let his age and mild manners fool you, Eli,” Jas argued. “That man is a
weapon of power. He’s the blade that strikes in the dark of night, the shadow that passes and decides your fate, the fatal calm that strikes at sea, and the whisper of death upon the wind.”

  Rose was distracted from her admiration of the Captain’s muscled torso by the sailor’s poetic speech. When the object of her admiration broke into laughter, therefore, she was somewhat disappointed to have missed his expression leading up to it. She watched him laugh, however, and felt something deep within her laugh as well.

  “Good show, old salt,” Kaille said merrily, “you’ve proven yourself a poet once again.” As he wiped amused tears from his eyes, the Captain spied Rose beside them. He asked her, “Was that speech not the very heart of poetry?”

  Before Rose could answer, Jas chided, “Poetry or not, what’ll it matter once he’s cut your throat? You, boy,” he said, turning his attention to Rose, “what do you want?”

  “You called for me,” Rose said, looking at the Captain.

  Kaille’s mirthful face fell as he realized his mistake. He said defensively, “I most certainly did not.”

  “You…you called for Ben, Captain,” Rose said tentatively. “I’m Benson Rose. There’s no other Ben—”

  “I meant Hector,” the Captain interrupted gruffly. He waved a dismissive hand and turned from her with a brisk, “Go away.”

  Rose immediately regretted her decision to answer his call. She’d learned by now of the Captain’s dead First Mate—had in fact sensed it from an unknown corner of her memory before she’d even been told—and yet she continued to answer when he mistakenly called for a phantom, an error which the Captain couldn’t seem to cure.

  Rose knew she didn’t have to answer. Perhaps she hoped to endear herself to the Captain, eager to further her goal of becoming a great sailor. Perhaps she sought to solidify her alias as Benson by being hyper-aware of her adopted name’s variations. Perhaps she wished to bask in the brilliant blue of his eyes, whatever the cost. Or, perhaps, some part of her felt guilty about the First’s demise—in some distant way—and ashamed of her role in the Captain’s sorrows.