Centuries of June

by Keith Donohue

  It was Mr. Chard who first approached Jane about being the go-between. “We need someone who won’t be missed, lad, and someone who can be trusted. Take this food and follow the trail to the clearing where first we found the wild boars, and there turn east and travel about one hundred steps where you’ll find a bower, and behind the palms, there is a cave, and in that cave, you’ll find Robert Waters. Go to it, boy, and be quick and silent as a hare. You know Samuell had it coming.”

  For two weeks, she crept about the woods at morning and at night, through the winter cold and wind, to Mr. Waters a-hiding in the cave. The darkness so thick and the man no more than a shadow, she did not find him first but rather he found her, sneaking up and grabbing her, clamping a hand over her mouth. “And who be this?” he snarled at her and lifted his fingers so she might answer.

  “Long John Long. I’ve come to bring your supper.”

  “Set it down, boy, and sit where you are. Move not.” Waters fell upon the food, and in the pitch black of the cave, his slurping and chewing sounded like a rough beast or monster. “Tell me,” he said between bites, “what news. Am I to be stretched?”

  “They look for you, Mr. Waters, but cannot find you. You are hid as in a dog’s belly, and the good men of the crew will not let Gates hunt and hang you.”

  “Zounds, child, and why should I be? For it was no crime but an accident.”

  “That’s what they all say. Mr. Chard and the other mariners. They say Samuell provok’d the blow.”

  “Edward Chard is a good man and a stalwart judge. Would that he, not Gates, were king of this island.”

  So Long Jane played the go-between, a secret kept within her bigger secret of girl disguised as boy, bringing food and news to Mr. Waters. He often kept her long in the cave, anxious for some conversation, desperate for reprieve, and within two weeks, the governour relented, and Waters was freed. “I shall not forget your kindness, John,” he told him. “There will come a day when you are repaid.”

  And while Gates later granted Waters and the other mutineers clemency, not all escaped his government. A man named Paine was later hanged for some offense, justice meted swiftly, and Mr. Waters felt the phantom rope for weeks afterward. Six in all remained forever on—or should it be in—the island: besides Mr. Paine and Mr. Samuell, there were Jeffery Briars, Richard Lewis, William Hitchman, and the baby girl born to the Rolfes, who had been christened Bermuda, buried there nearby Sir Somers’s garden.

  They were nearly a year in making two smaller ships, which Gates, he named Deliverance and Somers, he named the other the Patience, both hewn from the native cedar and the oaken remnants of the Venture. Jane labored as a boy alongside those shipbuilders, taking care at all times to disguise herself and keep her womanhood hid, never to wash, to hack at her hair when it grew long, to sweat, to swear, to feign to drink, and seem as black and rough as any mariner. When the cahows, or the devil birds, so called for the hellish noise of their nightcalls, a clamor of unholy voices that would set fright to any Christian, when they built their nests and laid their eggs, she joined the hunting parties, tho to call it a hunt makes more sporting the outright killing of these birds. They were so tame, so plentiful, and so curious, complete in fearlessness, that the men could wander among the nests with clubs and smite the cocks and hens, taking in a single night a hundred or more, which when cooked in water or roasted were as good as any English goose. The bird hunters would return to St. Catherine’s Beach laden with their fare, and Jane among them, burdened under the weight of a score or more.

  As water is in water or a palm tree in a winter fog, she vanished as a true person, hidden but still there, plain to see. No one knew her as anything but a boy without a master, for Ravens had flown away, and she had no true friend but Mr. Chard, who sought her out once again as April gave way to May and the new ships were judged ready for the sea. He approached her at evensong, took her arm and led her away from the others to a private spot beyond the thatched cabin that constituted Mr. Bucke’s church.

  “I have a mind to stay,” he told her. “Why trust yourself to the mercy of these wondrous false crafted boats, these paper sailors? Think on Ravens, the best navigator among us, and he and the men and the boat at the bottom of the cold, dark sea.”

  She shuddered at the picture in her mind, remembering the houricane and a world made of water. Why had she left The Moon and Seven Stars, her mother, and her four baby sisters?

  “And what is in Virginia that can better what we have here? I have heard tell that savages haunt the woods near James’s Town, red men who go about naked and not a word of English. The people there live in fear of their very lives and suffer want of food and shelter. The winters worse than the highlands of the Scots, and the summers hotter than Hades. Why leave this Eden for that purgatory?” Chard threw his arm around John’s shoulders and drew the boy to him. “Stay with us, I entreat you, and spare the risk. If they live, they will surely send ships from England, much better beamed and planked. Mr. Carter will remain and Mr. Waters and myself.”

  A strange comfort to be under Chard’s wing, and she thought of that night at St. Catherine’s Beach when they first shared a bottle of palm wine, and how fine he seemed to her, the warmth of his bronzed skin, the wildness of his beard, his hair, his eyes. “Yes,” she said, “yes. I will wait with you. Wait for rescue from an English ship and not these barks out in our own bight.” Thus casting her lot with him, she longed for some sign of his affection, but Chard did nothing more than clap a broad hand against her narrow back and chuckle with approval.

  Great ceremony attended the launch of the Patience and the Deliverance on the fair day in May of 1610 when the marooned company departed from Bermuda for the bays of the Chesipiak. Gates had erected a cross made of timber from the wreck and to it nailed a twelvepence coin and a copper sign Jane could not read. ’Twas Christopher Carter who told her the words were of the Sea Venture’s arrival upon this shore a year ago, and how this fair cross was praise for their great deliverance. Despite the pleadings from the Rolfes, from Mr. Strachey, and Somers himself, she would not join the sojourners but hid herself with the other three upon a promontory to watch the ships set sail and diminish to mere toys before falling off the edge of the world.

  A kind of desolation fell upon us all in the bathroom, as we witnessed the ships sail away across the sink, and from person to person passed a profound loneliness of spirit as if we, like those left behind in Bermuda, were the only four people in the wild world. Dolly fidgeted next to the old man and sighed in a drawn-out manner, and he had a faraway look, contemplating a horizon visible only to the inner eye, gathering in the monotonous waves on the vast and endless ocean. In her gaze, Jane, too, seemed to be recalling a distant time and the prospect of those stranded mariners, not knowing what fate awaited but certain that they were now most desperately alone. As for myself, I was astounded by the girl’s feckless bravado.

  “Were you unconcerned,” the old man asked, “to be stranded with those three salt-crusted knaves?”

  She rolled her eyes and parked a curl behind her left ear.

  Tho by all appearance and demeanor she was one of them, a boy among men, Long John fared no better than a woman. Not only did she must keep her sex hidden at all times, but she must play the lad. The three sailors—Christopher Carter, Robert Waters, and Edward Chard—became three masters, and where in the past she had been attendant upon Ravens, she now found herself looking after three, cooking all the meals, fetching clean potable water, tending to their meager garden, mending holey breeches, and every sundry office required by her youth and station. While she oft resented her duties, they were light, and often whole days would pass with nothing to be done but to languor upon some shaded spot for hours, the men reluctant to move or bother themselves to act at all. Crab, who was Mr. Carter’s pet, could be her boon companion when the sailors were indisposed. One month gave way to the next, and when no ship appeared to rescue them before summer’s end, they contented themselves
to remain on Smith’s Island of the archipelago, fishing the rich waters or killing a hog or brace of cahows for their supper, and poking through the woods or along the shores for distraction or adventure. Small treasures could be found—a trunk drifted in from the Sea Venture’s skeleton, an oyster once with a pearl inside, and all manner of shells shed from the creatures of the sea.

  Of the three men, Mr. Carter kept most to himself and paid scant attention to the boy. He occupied his time with the few books left behind, seizing upon and rereading the Geneva Bible that once belonged to Mr. Bucke, complete with strange numbers at the verses and notes printed in the margins to explain the more uncertain tales. Or else he scribbled in a journal fashioned from a ship’s log commandeered from the effects of Master Ravens. On those few occasions when alone in the boy’s company, Carter sought to instruct him in how to distinguish the letters among the alphabet and in six months’ time had conveyed an elementary understanding of the art of reading. Robert Waters, who had late killed a man, she avoided as best she could, but he was forever near Mr. Carter or Mr. Chard, anxious in his solitude, as if plagued by the memory of his foul deed and discharge of his temper. Whenever alone with Long John, Waters bore a smile upon his face, made all the meaner for the disappearance of both teeth that some call the eyeteeth and others the dogteeth, for they are pointed and sharp in some mouths. How he became untoothed Waters never said, and he also walked with a bandy-legged strut, and she guessed that upon the sea so long he had suffered the sailors’ disease on a distant voyage. In all, an agreeable chap, if not for the murderous heart, and he had not one ill word for her in the entire time on the islands.

  As for Mr. Chard, Edward, she found him the most fascinating of the three, for he evinced, at first, a most easy and ready character, adapting to the islands as if he had always lived there, clambering like a monkey up the palms to gather nuts and fronds, keen at spearing fish, roping hogs, digging turkle eggs. Chard went about shoeless in the long summer months, and his stockings had long since gone to tatters. At comfort in the presence of his male comrades, he soon was blouse-less, too, in hot weather, his skin baked to cedar. Whene’er he grew nosesick of his own odour, or when he simply cooled in the waters, he would strip off all clothing, his lower half pale in contrast and his pizzle in plain sight. Her discomfort on the initial occasion of seeing him thus gave way to wicked delight, so that she ofttimes wished the sun to blaze just to see him cavort, tho in his nakedness, he cajoled the others to join him in the cool ocean waters. Jane never chanced a moment in the sea save for the rare times when she’d slip away with Crab while the others dozed, and on the other side of the island, she could bathe, certain that the dog would play the sentinel and bark as if mad should anyone approach. Vigilance was her motto, and she kept herself bound.

  They passed the seasons in this manner, carefree summer giving way to autumn rains and then the chilly nights of winter. No sail appeared on the sea, tho in the springtime, great herds of whales, as big as their expeditionary fleet, passed by. The four castaways gathered upon a clifftop to watch the great fish play and feed in the clear waters. From above, the leviathans seemed as small as the dolphins and porpoises that frequented the coast of Bermuda.

  “ ’Twas one of these,” Mr. Carter informed them all, “what ate the prophet Jonah.” He opened his ever-present Bible and found his page. “Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” With his finger, he followed to the note in the margin. “Thus the Lord would chastise the Prophet with a most terrible spectacle of death, and by this also strengthened and encouraged him of his favour and support in this duty which was commanded him.”

  “Rubbish,” said Chard. “Three days and three nights. What I eat lasts not more than a day in the belly. The most base superstition. Have you never seen a whale close up, Mr. Carter?”

  “That I haven’t.”

  “The humpedback has no teeth but a comb in its mouth whereby it brushes the water, and into the hairs many shrimps are fastened and it is these the whale swallows and spits the water through the hole in its head.”

  Mr. Waters laughed and spat a seed onto the ground. “ ’Tis true, marry, but there is whales with teeth. Have you never heard tell of the spermaceti? That man has teeth the size of yon Crab there and could swallow whole a dog or hog or man. ’Twas the sperm whale ate Mr. Jonah, I’d imagine, a brute beast, big as a church and more fearsome.”

  Drawing her knees to her chest, Jane wrapped her arms around her legs and considered with wonder the lives of such seafaring men. Chard plucked a blade of sawgrass and stuck the root end between his teeth. “Onct a-sea in the good ship Forbearance, hard off the coast of Aifric, I saw one of them monsters come roaring through the surface in a death struggle with a mighty sea spider. Huge it was, with long suckered arms wrapped around your man’s massy head, its great eye bigger than a cask of ale, never blinking, and the sperm whale jaw snapping and biting like a shears, and then down they go in a splash and ne’er drew air again, so far as I can see, and Lord knows the victor.”

  “I’d have liked to have my hands on that whale,” said Waters, “and gashed the head, for the head’s where the gold is. The amber grease what foulness from which they make sweet perfume, tho the good Lord knows how, and a nugget of that stuff would make a man rich.”

  “A whale is just like Lord Gates, a rich man who never leaves off gaping till he swallows all.”

  “A pretty moral,” said Carter. He had his head buried in the book and read again. “I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, thou heardest my voice.”

  Waters stood suddenly and looked at the horizon. “Perhaps we should have gone away with the rest. They are not coming back, are they?”

  Carter began again to tell the true story of Jonah, complete with annotation, but the other two drifted far off to the recesses of their minds till they were gone entirely. By the end of the tale, Waters lay sleeping in the sunshine, and Chard seemed as if he had not heard a word of the sermon for the stories in his own head.

  In such discourse and observation they spent their days and nights, regaling one another with tales of the sea, and it would have been a happy life had such remained their intercourse, tho every paradise has its dangers as surely crawled the serpent in the garden of Adam and Eve. To mark the second anniversary of their departure from England, Mr. Chard and Mr. Waters concocted another batch of their brew, and Mr. Carter made waste to a sea turkle and stewed it in a great vat with the berries and nuts that shewed their heads in early June. A splendid party was thrown, two days and two nights of drink and feast and merrymaking. Even Mr. Carter had his cup. “To the new world,” he cried out on the second evening just before passing out on the strand next to the dozing Mr. Waters, who slept with his head on the dog’s belly. Seeing his boon companions in Morpheus’s snare, Chard roared out to the wide Atlantic. “I’m afire,” he cried. “Imagine, John, hot on a night in June. We aren’t in England anymore.”

  She pulled back her long hair and wiped the perspiration from her neck as she watched him strip of all clothes and wade into the surf. “Come, boy, and keep me company. Cool yourself. No need to worry, old Chard won’t bite.” Seeing no consent, he strode from the water and grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her across the sand and into the ocean that rose to their knees. The half-moon threw light upon the waves, silvering them in their rise and fall. Palm wine scented his every breath as he whispered to her. “I shall not hurt you, John Long.” He drew her toward him, gathered her hair in his free hand and bared her neck. “I have been too long without company,” he said, and pressed his lips against her nape. She trembled at the strength in his grip and felt him stiffen against her. “No more unnatural with a boy. I am so fond of you—”

  “I am no boy,” Jane said, the wine pulsing in her temples. “But a woman hid these two long years.” Taking his hand, she guided him to her sec
ret proof, and a wide grin split his beard in twain.

  “Boy, woman, what are thou?” He fondled her and said, “More’s the better, for what we are about to—”

  She clamped her mouth against his to stop his words and begin all else.

  Thus love in idleness was born, and they kept the matter secret between themselves the next morning and in the weeks to come, sneaking away from the others when they could to enjoy each other’s passion in dark places, and careful when the others were near to put on the weeds of boy and master. At first, Jane thought him Janus-faced and most mercurial but soon came to realize that he was but playacting around Carter and Waters, merely feigning to treat her more severely than heretofore. The gruff commands to clean or cook or fetch were but his way of shewing that nothing passed between them, for he would wink or smile at her the moment their backs were turned. Entwined in a private Eden, he played most sweetly, whispering his love, tracing the curve of her naked hip with the tips of his fingers, cooing as a dove, laying his bushy head upon her breast like a little boy lost. The more Chard plied her with tenderness when alone, the more he bellowed like a tyrant when all gathered, and truth be told, the difference thrilled her and strengthened the bond of their shared confidence.