by Paula Guran
“We’re to make him a sailor, then?” Rennie McAlonie called out before anyone could move.
“You’re to cast off the lines, you poxy Scots bastard.”
“Aye, that’s what I thought.”
“And you . . .” The boy cringed and Hennet softened his voice to a growl. “For now, stay out of the way.”
He didn’t know where out of the way was. After he’d been cursed at twice and cuffed once, the big man the master called Hennet shoved him down beside the chicken coop and told him to stay put. He could see a bit of Master Cabot’s leg so he hugged his knees to his chest and chewed on a stalk of wilted greens he’d taken from an indignant hen.
* * *
The tenders rowed The Matthew down the channel and left her at King’s Road, riding at anchor with half a dozen other ships waiting for an east wind to fill the sail.
“Where’s the boy?”
“Now that’s a right good question, Mister Hennet.” Rennie pulled the ratline tight and tested his knot. “Off somewhere dark and safe’s my guess.”
The mate snorted. “We’ve ballast enough. Master Cabot wants him taught.”
“It’d be like teachin’ one of the wee folk. He’s here, but he’s no a part of us. It’s like the only other livin’ thing he sees is Master Cabot.”
“It’s right like havin’ a stray dog around,” offered another of the crew, “the kind what runs off with his tail ’tween his legs when ya tries ta make friends.”
Hennet glanced toward the shore. “If he’s to be put off it has to be soon, before the wind changes. I’ll speak with Master Cabot.”
“Come now, it’s only been three days.” Rope wrapped around his fist, Rennie turned to face the mate. “This is right strange to him. Give the poor scrawny thing a chance.”
“You think you can win him?”
“Aye, I do.”
The boy’s eyes were the same color as the piece of Venetian glass he’d brought back for his mother from his first voyage. Wondering why he remembered that now, Hennet nodded. “All right. You’ve got one more day.”
Master Cabot wanted him to be a sailor and he tried, he truly did. But he couldn’t be a sailor hiding in dark corners and he couldn’t tell when it was safe to come out and he didn’t know any other way to live.
He felt safest after sunset when no one moved around much and it was easier to disappear. Back pressed up against the aftcastle wall, as close to Master Cabot as possible, he settled into a triangle of deep shadow and cupped his hand protectively over the biscuits he’d tied into the tattered edge of his shirt. So far, there’d been food twice a day, but who knew how long it would keep coming.
Shivering a little, for the nights were still cold, he closed his eyes.
And opened them again.
What was that sound?
“Ren, look there.”
Rennie, who’d replaced the shepherd’s pipe with a leather mug of beer, peered over the edge of the mug. Eyes that gleamed as brilliant a blue by moon as by sun, stared back at him.
“He crept up while you was playin’,” John Jack murmured, leaning in to his ear. “Play sumptin else.”
Without looking aside, Rennie set down the last of his beer, put the pipe between his lips and blew a bit of a jig. Every note drew the boy closer. When he blew the last swirl of notes, the boy was an arm’s reach away. He could feel the others holding their breath, could feel the weight of the boy’s strange eyes. It was like something out of a story had crept out of the shadows. Moving slowly, he held out the pipe.
“Rennie . . .!”
“Shut up. Go on, boy.”
Thin fingers closed around the offered end and tentatively pulled it from Rennie’s grasp.
He stroked the wood, amazed such sounds could come out of something so plain, then he put it in his mouth the way he’d seen the red-haired man do.
The first noise was breathy, unsure. The second had an unexpected purity of tone.
“Cover and uncover the holes; it makes the tune.” Rennie wiggled his fingers, grinned as the boy wiggled his in imitation, and smacked John Jack as he did the same.
Tam covered each hole in turn, listening. Brows drawn in, he began to put the sounds together.
Toes that hadn’t tapped to Rennie’s jig, moved of their own accord.
When he ran out of sounds and stopped playing, he nearly bolted at the roar of approval that rose up from the men, but he couldn’t take the pipe away and he wouldn’t leave it behind.
Rennie tapped his front teeth with a fingernail. “You’ve played before?” he asked at last.
Tam shook his head.
“You played what I played, just from hearing?”
He nodded.
“Do you want to keep the pipe?”
He nodded again, fingers white around the wooden shaft, afraid to breathe in case he shattered.
“If you stay out where you can be seen, be a part of the crew, you can keep it.”
“Rennie!”
“Shut up, John Jack, I’ve another. And—” he jabbed a finger at the boy “—you let us teach you to be a sailor.”
Recoiling from the finger, Tam froze. He looked around at the semicircle of men then down at the pipe. The music made it safe to come out so as long as he had the pipe he was safe. Master Cabot wanted him to be a sailor. When he lifted his head, he saw that the red-haired man still watched him. He nodded a third time.
By the fifth day of waiting, the shrouds and ratlines were done and the crew had been reduced to bitching about the delay, everyone of them aware it could last for weeks.
“Hey, you!”
Tam jerked around and nearly fell over as he leapt back from John Jack looming over him.
“You bin up ta crow’s nest yet?”
He shook his head.
“Well, get yer arse up there then.”
It was higher than it looked and he’d have quit halfway but Master Cabot was standing in his usual place on the fo’c’sle not watching, but there, so he ignored the trembling in his arms and legs and kept going, finally falling over the rail and collapsing on the small round of planking.
After he got his breath back, he sat up and peered through the slats.
He could see to the ends of the earth, but no one could see him. He didn’t have words to describe how it made him feel.
Breezes danced around the nest that couldn’t be felt down on the deck. They chased each other through the rigging, playing a tune against the ropes.
Tam pulled out his pipe and played the tune back at them.
The breezes blew harder.
“Did you send him up there, McAlonie?”
“No, Mister Hennet, I did not.” Head craned back, Rennie grinned. “But still, it’s best he does the climb first when we’re ridin’ steady.”
“True.” Denying the temptation to stare aloft at nothing, the mate frowned. “That doesn’t make the nest his own private minstrel’s gallery though. Get him down.”
“He’s not hurtin’ aught and it’s right nice to be serenaded like.”
“MISTER HENNET!” The master’s bellow turned all heads.
“I don’t think Master Cabot agrees,” Hennet pointed out dryly.
The breezes tried to trip him up by changing direction. Fingers flying, Tam followed.
Although the Frenchman seemed to be enjoying the music, Master Cabot did not. Lips pressed into a thin line, Hennet climbed onto the fo’c’sle.
He barely had his feet under him when Master Cabot pointed toward the nest and opened his mouth.
Another voice filled the space.
“East wind rising, sir!”
Tam’s song rose triumphantly from the top of the ship.
* * *
“Get him down now, McAlonie!” Hennet bellowed as he raced aft.
“Aye sir!” But Rennie spent another moment listening to the song, and a moment more watching the way the rigging moved in the wind.
Once out of the channel and sailing hard
toward the Irish coast, the crew waited expectantly for Tam to show the first signs of seasickness but, with the pipe tied tight in his shirt, the dockside brat clambered up and down the pitching decks like he’d never left land.
Fortunately, Master Cabot’s Genoese barber provided amusement enough.
“Merciful Father, why must I wait so for the touch of your Grace on this, your most wretched of children?”
Tam didn’t understand the words but he understood the emotion – the man had thrown his guts into the sea both before and after the declaration. Legs crossed, back against the aftcastle wall, he frowned thoughtfully. The shivering little man looked miserable.
“Seasickness won’t kill ya,” yelled down one of the mast hands, “but you’ll be wishing it did.”
Tam understood that too. There’d been many times in his life when he’d wished he were dead.
He played to make the barber feel better. He never intended to make him cry.
“What do you mean, you could see Genoa as the boy played?”
The barber feathered the razor along Cabot’s jaw. “What I said, patron. The boy played, I saw Genoa. I was sick no more.”
“From his twiddling?”
“Yes.”
“That is ridiculous. You got your sea legs, nothing more.”
“As you say, patron.”
“What happened to your head, boy?”
Braced against the rolling of the ship, Tam touched his bare scalp and risked a shrug. “Shaved.”
Hennet turned to a snickering John Jack for further explanation.
“Barber did it ta thank him, I reckon. Can’t understand his jabbering.”
“It’s an improvement,” the mate allowed. “Or will be when those sores heal.”
“That the new world?” “Don’t be daft, boy, ’tis Ireland. We’ll be puttin’ in to top the water casks.”
“We can sail no closer to the wind than we are.” Cabot glared up at an overcast sky and then into the shallow bell of the lateen sail. “It has been blowing from the west since we left Ireland! Columbus had an east wind, but me, I am mocked by God.”
Roubaix spread his hands, then grabbed for a rope as the bow dipped unexpectedly deep into a trough. “Columbus sailed in the south.”
“Stupido! Tell me something I don’t know!” Spinning on one heel, balance perfected by years at sea, Cabot stomped across to the ladder and slid down into the waist.
Exchanging a glance with the bow watch that needed no common language, Roubaix followed. At the bottom of the ladder, he nearly tripped over a bare leg. The direction of the sprawl and the heartbroken look still directed at Cabot’s back told as much of the story as necessary.
“He is not angry at you, Tam.” The intensity of joy that replaced the hurt in the boy’s stare gave him pause. He doubted Zoane had any idea how much his dockside brat adored him. “He only pushes you because he cannot push the winds around to where he needs them. Do you understand?”
Tam nodded. It was enough to understand that he’d done nothing wrong in the master’s sight.
“What’s he playing?” Hennet muttered, joining Rennie and John Jack at the bow. “There’s no tune to it.”
“I figure that depends on who’s listenin’,” Rennie answered with a grin. He jerked his head toward where Tam was leaning over the rail. “Have a look Mister Hennet.”
Brows drawn in, Hennet leaned over by the boy and looked down at the sea.
Seven sleek, gray bodies rode the bow wave.
“He’s playing for the dolphins,” he said, straightening, and turning back toward the two men.
“Aye. And you can’t ask for better luck.”
The mate sighed. Arms folded, he squinted into the wind. “We could use a bit of luck.”
“Master Cabot still in a foul mood, is he?”
“Better than he be in a mood for fowl,” John Jack cackled. Two days before, a line squall had snapped the mainstay sail halberd belaying pin and dropped the full weight of the sail across the chicken coop. The surviving hens had been so hysterical they’d all been killed, cooked, and eaten.
A little surprised John Jack had brains enough for such a play on words, Hennet granted him a snort before answering Rennie. “If the winds don’t change . . .”
There was no need to finish.
Tam had stopped playing at the sound of the master’s name and now, pipe tightly clutched, he crossed to Hennet’s side. “We needs . . .” he began then froze when the mate turned toward him.
“We need what?”
He shot a panicked glance at Rennie who nodded encouragingly. He licked salt off his lips and tried again. “We needs ta go north.”
“We need to go west, boy.”
His heart beat so violently he could feel his ribs shake. Pushing the pipe against his belly to keep from throwing his guts, Tam shook his head. “No. North.”
Impressed – in spite of the contradiction – by obvious fear overcome, Hennet snorted again. “And who tells you that, boy?”
Tam pointed over the side.
“The dolphins?” When Tam nodded, Hennet turned on the two crewmen, about to demand which of them had been filling the boy’s head with nonsense. The look on Rennie’s face stopped him. “What?”
“I fished the Iceland banks, Mister Hennet, outa the islands with me da’ when I were a boy. Current runs west from there and far enough north, the blow’s east, north-east.”
“You told the boy?”
“Swear to you, not a word.”
The three men stared at Tam and then, at a sound from the sea, at each other. The dolphins were laughing.
“North.” Cabot glanced down at his charts, shook his head, and was smiling when he looked up again at the mate. “Good work.”
Hennet drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. He didn’t like taking credit for another’s idea but he liked even less the thought of telling the ship’s master they were changing course because Tam had played pipes for a pod of dolphins. “Thank you, sir.”
“Make the course change.”
“Aye, sir.” As he turned on his heel to leave the room, he didn’t like the way the Frenchman was looking at him.
“He was hiding something, Zoane.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” Smiling a little at his own suspicion, Roubaix shook his head. “But I’ll wager it has to do with the boy. There’s something about those eyes.”
Cabot paused at the cabin door, astrolabe in hand. “Whose eyes?”
“The boy’s.”
“What boy?”
“Tam.” When no comprehension dawned, he sighed. “The dockside boy you saved from a beating and brought with us . . . What latitude are we at, Zoane?”
Face brightening Cabot pointed to the map. “Roughly forty-eight degrees. Give me a moment to take a reading and I can be more exact. Why?”
“Not important. You’d better go before you lose the sun.” Alone in the room, he rubbed his chin and stared down at the charts. “If he were drawn here, you’d remember him, wouldn’t you?”
“S’cold.”
“We’re still north, ain’t we; though the current’s run us more south than we was.” John Jack handed the boy a second mug of beer. “Careful, yer hands’ll be sticky.”
He’d spent the afternoon tarring the mast to keep the wood from rotting where the yard had rubbed and had almost enjoyed the messy job. Holding both mugs carefully as warned, he joined Rennie at the south rail.
“Ta, lad.”
They leaned quietly beside each other for a moment, staring out at a sea so flat and black the stars looked like they continued above and below without a break.
“You done good work today,” Rennie said at last, wiping his beard with his free hand. He could feel Tam’s pleasure and he smiled. “I’ll make you a sailor yet.” When he saw the boy turn from the corner of one eye, he turned as well, following his line of sight, squinting up onto the darkness on the fo’c’sle. There could be no mis
taking the silhouette of the master. “Give it up, boy,” he sighed. “The likes of him don’t see the likes of us unless we gets in their way.”
Shoulders slumped, Tam turned all the way around, and froze. A moment later, he was racing across the waist and throwing himself against the north rail.
Curious, Rennie followed. “I don’t know what he’s seen, do I?” he snarled at a question. “I’ve not asked him yet.” He didn’t have to ask – the boy’s entire body pointed up at the flash of green light in the sky. “’Tis the Fir Chlis, the souls of fallen angels God caught before they reached earthly realms. Call ’em also the Merry Dancers – though they ain’t dancing much this time of year.”
When Tam scrambled up a ratline without either speaking or taking his eyes from the sky, Rennie snorted and returned to the beer barrel. John Jack had just lifted the jug when the first note sounded.
The pipe had been his before it was Tam’s, but Rennie’d never heard it make that sound. Beer poured unheeded over his wrist as he turned to the north.
The light in the sky was joined by another.
For every note, another light.
When a vast sweep of sky had been lit, the notes began to join each other in a tune.
“I’ll be buggered,” John Jack breathed. “He’s playin’ fer the Dancers.”
Rennie nodded. “Fast dance brings bad weather, boy!” he called. “Slow dance for fair!”
The tune slowed, the dance with it.
The lights dipped down, touched their reflections in the water and whirled away.
“I ain’t never seen them so close.”
“I ain’t never seen them so . . .” Although he couldn’t think of the right word, Rennie saw it reflected in the awe on every uplifted face. It was like . . . like watching angels dance.
The sails gleamed green and blue and orange and red.
All at once, the music stopped, cut off in mid-note. The dancers lingered for a heartbeat then the sky was dark again, the stars dimmer than they’d been before.
