Cat O'Nine Tales

by Julia Golding

  ‘Good, I see you understand. Now get lost. I don’t want you within six feet of my little cabin boy. Got that?’

  Syd swung his arm.

  ‘Syd!’ I shrieked, pushing against Maclean so that he stumbled back out of range. The punch missed – just. ‘Don’t, please! For my sake!’

  With a great effort at self-control, Syd turned on his heel and left the cabin.

  ‘Glad you know your own interest, my dear,’ chuckled Maclean. He released the grip on my neck. ‘Keep your friends in order and you at least might survive this voyage.’

  Blown to within fifty miles of the coast of America, well off course, the Courageous did not look very brave after the storm. When the winds finally dropped, the deck had been so battered it looked as if it had been on the receiving end of the enemy’s broadside. The foremast was an ugly stump, our remaining sails in shreds. The first job was to get her back into a condition to limp to shore and this was why I found myself doing the last thing I expected.

  ‘Sewing!’ I groaned, sitting cross-legged with Pedro as we repaired what appeared an acre of canvas.

  ‘Chance for you to shine then, Cat,’ Pedro remarked as he made beautiful neat stitches up his side of the tear. ‘All those lessons with Mrs Reid finally come into their own.’

  ‘You forget, my son, that I was the one chucked out of the wardrobe department for my complete lack of skill with the needle.’ I threaded the twine through the blunt instrument I’d been given and attacked my side of the problem. ‘I don’t know what it is about me and sewing; we will never be good friends, I fear.’

  ‘Ssh!’ Pedro nodded to where the captain was striding among the men. Barton was a sight in his patched uniform, lace dangling from his sleeves like a hound’s slobber. If anyone needed the attention of a good needlewoman, it was him, but he appeared not to notice his own slide into slovenliness. He approached our little sail party and stopped just behind Pedro.

  ‘Excellent, my lad!’ said Captain Barton, patting his favourite on the head, treating him rather too much like a dog for my liking. He turned to my efforts. ‘Ah, it’s you. So, you thieving rascal, show me what you’ve done.’

  It appeared that he wasn’t ever going to let me forget that accusation; I was marked as a bad lot. I held up my patch of canvas for inspection. It looked all right to me, much neater than my usual.

  ‘Can you do nothing right, boy? You’re mending a sail, not embroidering a lady’s petticoat! If you carry on making tiny stitches like that we’ll be here until doomsday. Mr Lely!’

  The first lieutenant bobbed up at the captain’s side immediately. ‘Sir?’

  ‘See this boy gets extra practice at sewing.’

  ‘Aye, captain.’

  My emotions had all been in a scramble since the terrible night of the storm. I almost burst into a fit of insane giggles. All my employers had taken this view of my handiwork, but for very different reasons. Too clumsy for the wardrobe; too fine for the sea. Of course, I bit back my laughter: far too dangerous to risk any show of emotion near the captain, let alone something that could be construed as disrespect.

  The captain strode off and Pedro finally dared meet my eye. He said nothing, just raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t say it, Pedro!’ I warned him, knowing full well what he was thinking.

  He grinned. ‘I was just wondering what Mrs Reid will say when I tell her that you were accused of doing too dainty stitches.’

  ‘She won’t believe you,’ I said flatly, setting to with more freedom now I had been ordered to speed up. The stitches were big but tight. Was this what was wanted?

  ‘No, I agree. It is far more incredible than the story of how you came to be sewing sails in the first place.’

  Mr Lely paced back to inspect our progress. A heavy hand patted my shoulder.

  ‘That’s more like it, lad,’ the first lieutenant said. ‘We’ll make an able seaman of you yet.’

  I felt a warm glow in the pit of my stomach, a feeling that had long been a stranger to me: satisfaction.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Carry on, carry on. The captain said to practise.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Mr Lely strode off, hands clasped behind his back. I paused to thread my needle again, waiting till he was out of earshot.

  ‘That does it,’ I whispered.

  ‘Does what?’ asked Pedro.

  ‘If I’m getting extra sewing as a punishment, I’m definitely jumping ship.’

  Pedro began to chuckle. ‘You endure the hold, storms, false accusations, half rations and I know not what, but it’s sewing that finally breaks you?’

  ‘Too right. It was the needle that broke this camel’s back.’

  After the battering we had taken, the Courageous had to reach landfall before we could make ourselves fit for open sea again. Most pressing was the need to replace our water: ten barrels had been damaged during the storm when the foremast came down. The captain also wanted to replace the lost mast, which meant finding a tree of sufficient size to rig up in its place. All of this meant one thing.

  ‘It has to be Georgia,’ declared Mr Lely to Belsize as the two walked the main deck where I was sewing yet more sail. They didn’t notice the small person practically buried under the swathes of canvas. Pedro had gone with the rest of the men to collect their grog, but as I was on half rations, I would not get mine until the evening. No loss in my opinion: I still hadn’t taken to the stuff.

  ‘M-must we go to America, sir? Can’t we make it back to Bermuda?’ asked the junior officer, scanning the horizon suspiciously.

  Lely shook his head. ‘You know I do not always see eye to eye with a certain person,’ he said and they both looked instinctively up to the quarterdeck, ‘but I agree with him in this. We have to risk rebel shores or risk dying of thirst.’

  Belsize tapped his hands on his sides nervously. ‘A-at least we’re no longer at war – th-that’s one good thing.’

  Lely paused and drew Belsize into the shadow of the stairs, the older man standing protectively over his young colleague.

  ‘That would be true – in any other ship.’ He looked furtively around, speaking in a whisper. ‘But our illustrious captain earned himself something of a reputation during the war. The Yankees still clamour for him to be handed over to answer for his crimes. If they find out he’s replenishing the ship on their territory, they’ll descend on us in force.’

  Belsize’s inexperience showed in his shocked reaction. ‘B-but he’s an officer in the king’s navy – th-they wouldn’t do that!’

  Lely gave a hollow laugh. ‘Are you so sure, Belsize? You’re too young to have served in the war, but these are still the same rebellious American colonists we are talking about. You expect them to respect the envoy of the king they rejected, especially a man responsible for a massacre of American civilians?’

  I shivered, burrowing down into the sail cloth: I sensed that I was about to learn more than I wished about the demons that pursued our captain.

  ‘S-so it’s true then, sir? He did order the savages to pillage that man N-North’s estate?’ asked Belsize.

  Lely dropped his voice another notch; I bent forward to listen. ‘Yes – though the captain told us then that he saw North as a leader of the revolutionaries and a threat to British rule. He thought the man’s family and loyal slaves were fair game too.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Lely stood up and curled his lip in distaste. ‘He managed to persuade the rest of the slaves to turn on the family by bribing them with a promise of freedom. So Barton and his crew attacked at dawn with a party of Creek Indians. With the help of the slaves he’d bribed, they killed the whites and any loyal blacks that tried to defend the family, then retreated to the ship. A miserable business and it achieved nothing but bloodshed.’

  ‘So the f-family were k-killed by their own servants?’ wondered Belsize aghast.

  ‘Slaves, lieutenant, not servants. If you keep men like beasts, you should not b
e surprised when they turn and savage you. You can’t blame them really – the black slaves, I mean: by all reports, North was a cruel master.’

  Belsize rubbed his hands in a nervous gesture. ‘B-b-but still, they betrayed their own master!’

  ‘In the hope of something better. For them, Captain Barton was their only chance of freedom; the proud boast of American independence was never going to extend to slaves. Still, the Yankees have never forgotten that day: they’ve mercilessly pursued those involved in the attack and I can tell you now that they’d be very pleased to get their hands on Barton to punish him for what he did.’

  Belsize coughed as if he could already feel the halter at his neck. ‘S-so is it really wise to go ashore on American soil?’

  Lely smiled, his gaunt features lighting up for a rare moment. ‘There’s a little place I remember – an island. The fort’s been abandoned for some years but the mooring’s still good. It’s very out of the way so the captain has decided to risk it.’ He gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘Of course, we’ll all be in trouble if the American navy get wind of our presence. I imagine the captain will order extra gun training in anticipation of an engagement with the old enemy.’

  ‘And the inhabitants of the island?’

  ‘Friendly in the main. And the fort? Only the Creek Indians go there these days.’

  Belsize gave a whistle. ‘You’re a g-genius, sir. They’re probably the only people in America that would give us a w-welcome.’

  ‘I didn’t say they’d welcome us. Their brief cooperation with the captain was some time ago. But I think we stand a better chance there than anywhere else within five days’ sail.’

  SCENE 3 – FORT FREDERICA

  My mind was now made up to leave the Courageous, come what may, but I wondered how to make my farewells. Syd and Frank would try to stop me so it was best they knew nothing. I did not want to risk them accompanying me in case they were recaptured. With one flogging apiece already on this voyage, I did not want to guess what Barton would see as a fitting penalty for two runaways. Desertion was punishable by death. Even Pedro might baulk at the idea of me going alone and argue that he should come too. But I wasn’t about to lead my friend into a country where, as I had just heard, his fellow Africans laboured under the cruel yoke of slavery. It was dangerous enough for me; for him – well, let us say that I judged it much safer that he stayed with Frank in the hope that my absence provided a chance for the truth to emerge.

  So I decided to say nothing to any of them, though I was tempted every moment to break my resolution.

  We were bound for the abandoned fort on St Simon’s Island at the mouth of the Frederica River. It commanded a good position on a bend of the river, which would give the crew warning of any unwelcome visitors in the shape of George Washington’s navy. I could see the fort’s outline on the horizon as we approached, the walls oddly geometric against the untidy wilderness of scrub and forest that surrounded it. Harkness, a veteran of the American war, told me that the fort had once stood at the head of a settlement with neat houses laid out in straight lines. After a fire, the place had been left to disappear back into the sandy margins and the villagers had long since gone. Now the Courageous dropped anchor a short distance from the rotting jetty – a short distance that could be swum, if a girl knew how to swim, that is.

  This girl doesn’t. Not much call for swimming in Drury Lane. I knew the theory: thrash your arms and legs about and try not to drown, but I preferred not to put it to the test. Fortunately for my plans, Maclean had to go ashore to supervise the refilling of the water casks and he decided it was safer to take me with him.

  Maclean and I had barely spoken since that terrible night during the storm. Our messmates could not fail to notice something was even more wrong than usual and I’m sure our presence cast a shadow over each meal. Mrs Foster put it all down to my ‘master’ still being angry about my ‘pilfering’ from the stores and, kind soul that she was, decided that it was high time we made our peace. With this in mind, she approached me as we loaded the casks into the boats and took me aside.

  ‘Looking forward to putting your feet on dry land, Jimmy?’ she asked, giving me a friendly squeeze around the shoulders.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Be a good boy and I’m sure your master will come round,’ she said in an undertone, pressing a little parcel into my hand.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Oat cakes. Made them myself with the last of my stock. They’re for your dinner.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You see, you do not have to steal to receive good things, Jimmy.’

  ‘I know, ma’am.’

  She tutted and shook her head. ‘Your master may seem harsh but he has to be cruel to be kind. Boys have to be curbed.’

  It pained me that Mrs Foster thought me a thief. Then again, she also thought me a boy so everything about our relationship was false.

  ‘I’m not bad, Mrs Foster. Whatever Mr Maclean says to you, please believe me: I just want to do what’s right.’

  She chuckled and hugged me closer. ‘I never said you were bad, Jimmy. A young’un’s stomach takes a lot of filling and it’s a sore temptation to be down in the hold surrounded by victuals, perhaps only a saint could withhold his hand from taking a quick sample. But we have to resist, especially on board a ship like this. You know that now, I hope?’

  I nodded, then felt my ear pulled.

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Foster, but the boy has work to do.’ Maclean was on my back the moment he saw me having a half decent time.

  ‘I know, Mr Maclean,’ she said primly. ‘I was just having a quiet word.’

  ‘Well, less of that, if you don’t mind. You mustn’t spoil him by kindness.’

  Mrs Foster folded her arms over her generous chest. ‘A young lad needs sunshine as well as showers, Mr Maclean. Too much cruelty pushes them away.’

  ‘I thank you for not interfering,’ snapped the purser, propelling me towards the boats. ‘He’s my business, not yours.’

  ‘More’s the pity!’ she called after us. ‘Bye, Jimmy!’

  I saluted, thinking it was the last I’d probably see of my kind protector. Maclean grunted angrily and shoved me towards the rope ladder. Once down, I huddled in the bow of a boat as the rest of the landing party climbed in. I could see my other friends going about their business: Syd was watching me from the yardarm. I gave him a nod to signal that all was well. Frank was leaning on a mop, chatting to another sailor, unaware that he was missing my departure. Pedro was perched on a coil of rope on the main deck, tuning his violin – the captain had ordered a concert that evening and he’d been given time to practise. It seemed a strange way to take my leave. I wondered whether I would see any of them again. And now I had no time to say any of the things I wanted: how much I cared for all of them, how much I admired each and every one of them.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I murmured to my friend, the buxom figurehead, as the rowers strained on the oars. ‘And God speed.’

  My first step on American soil was not auspicious: my foot passed right through a piece of rotten planking as I clambered out to tie up the boat. The fragments splashed into the water below but I managed to stay dry. Looking about me I took in some deep breaths of fresh air. It was a cold day: if Spring did come earlier in these southern climes then it was taking its time. The grass on the shore had a tired dark green hue, the trees were still bare and a chill wind whipped up the river from the sea bearing spits of rain. Most of what I saw was familiar from home, but then an unexpected note would emerge: an exotic tree with thick spiky leaves, strangely shaped crab shells picked clean by long-necked white birds. It was both familiar and foreign at the same time. I began to wonder if it was such a bright idea to jump ship after all.

  ‘Stop gawping, boy, and do some work!’ grumbled Maclean. He glanced nervously over his shoulder towards the treeline.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mr Maclean?’ asked Harkness, putting his shoulder to a b
arrel to roll it to the stream. ‘What are you afraid of: ghosts, Indians or Yankees?’

  ‘Or all three,’ quipped a sailor in a red cap.

  ‘Hold your tongue!’ Maclean glared at the man and pushed me ahead of him.

  Harkness sidled up to me as we wrestled the barrels into a deep clear stretch of the stream.

  ‘You know what’s eating your master, don’t you, Jimmy?’

  I shook my head. To tell you the truth I wasn’t bothered about Maclean; I was thinking about how to make my escape.

  ‘You’d better know or you’ll only get into more trouble. He was with him, you know,’ continued Harkness in an undertone.

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘Barton – on the North raid. Surely you heard the whispers about that?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Maclean was the captain’s agent with the Indians. He’s almost as popular with the Yankees as our beloved leader.’

  Yes, that fitted somehow. Civilization sat ill with Maclean: I could imagine him relishing a bit of murder and pillage with the red-skinned men. All the stories I’d ever heard of the Indians bore witness to their savagery and violence. If they were friends of his, they were the last people I wanted to meet right now.

  ‘Lovely man,’ I said sardonically. ‘Aren’t I just the luckiest lad alive to have him as my master?’

  Harkness chuckled. ‘It could be worse.’

  ‘Could it?’

  He noted my serious tone. ‘Aw, Jimmy, nothing lasts for ever.’

  No, it doesn’t. Particularly not if you stop dithering, Cat, and get on with what you know you have to do, I told myself.

  Our barrel successfully filled, I waded ashore. All this running water had given me an idea.

  ‘Sir,’ I said meekly, tugging at Maclean’s shirt, ‘I need a moment to myself.’

  ‘No,’ he said sharply.

  ‘I really need a moment, sir,’ I said more urgently, hopping from leg to leg. ‘Please!’ I leant forward and whispered, ‘It’s woman’s stuff; I have to do something about it or they’ll notice.’