“All hands! Calashee! All hands! Calashee watch!” the boatswain suddenly bellowed to the crew. Various octaves of deep immutable voices replied from just as many different locations across the ship’s expanse, “Calashee watch, aye! All watches, calashee!”
“Ma’am, you’ll need to get back. Ma’am?”
Startled, Mary turned to see a young deckhand pulling a thick rope through a block and up into the tackle of the mast. Before she could respond, another voice boomed from the poopdeck above, “Sailor, leave the good lady be!”
“Aye, Captain,” the crewman replied smartly.
“Ma’am, ye’ll have a better view from up here.” The man smiled. “And there won’t be any swabs swinging yardarms at ye while ye contemplate.” Mary flushed with the realization that the captain had been watching her pray. “I’ll help ye up,” he went on, motioning to the steep steps.
“Captain.” She acknowledged, curtsying politely before heading up the stairway. As she reached the top, the Courtmain began to come about, and she nearly lost her balance. The captain offered his hand, and she took it uncomfortably. “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “You’re very kind.”
“Captain Thomas Hendry, at yer service, ma’am.” He bowed, tipping his hat.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Mary replied with a forced smile. Her gaze returned to the nearing shore and the myriad of ships surrounding them. Feeling the captain looking at her, she tugged at the hood of her cape.
“Strangest thing, this wind,” Captain Hendry said.
“How so?”
“‘Tis usually a following wind, off St. George’s. Not a head wind like this. Can be a right bit dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” She feigned slight distress.
“Aye,” he went on, motioning beyond the rail, “there are a few things we could hit out here, and she moves rather fast close-hauled like this.”
Mary studied the flock of white sails overhead, each taut and straining against the frenetic air slipping by them in vigorous bursts. She didn’t know what to say to the captain. He was obviously flirting with her, but she was in no mood. The sun’s brightness forced her to look down again and she returned to watching the grey and white churning waves around her, seeing them as a mass of roiling, snow-capped mountains, as if she were a bird or a spirit, far above. Noticing Captain Hendry had stepped closer, she winced and stepped away. It was time to remove herself, she reasoned. Time to move back to her quarters. “Thank you, sir, for the explanation.”
Just then the first-mate stepped onto the quarterdeck and yelled, “Captain, sir. It appears that Herrick’s Quay is laden.”
Captain Hendry pulled up his brass scope and extended it, then studied the far docks and quays of Bristol. “So it does!” he shouted back. Then he swung round, apparently exploring another area in the distance. Leaning on the fife rail, Mary noticed the first-mate below. He was wearing his own hair, tied at the back, and there was something familiar about him. Probably because he looked so terribly common, she reasoned. “Mr. Parker, take her into Bishop’s Quay. That’ll suffice.”
“Aye, aye, Captain!” The first-mate was also looking through a scope, apparently studying Bishop’s Quay. “Helmsman!” he yelled down into the dark wheelhouse. “New bearing—port three points!”
“Port, three points. Aye!” echoed a faint voice from somewhere below Mary’s feet.
“Well done,” Captain Hendry said to himself, putting away his scope. Mary started toward the steps. “Ma’am, are ye stepping down?” asked the captain, sounding disappointed.
“Aye, Captain. I must prepare my things. I do thank you for your hospitality. She is a lovely ship.”
“Thank ye, ma’am.” He tipped his hat, then followed her to the top of the railing. “If I may be so bold. I fear I did not learn yer name. May I have the honor of knowing it?”
Mary smiled meekly. “Lady Anglesea. I was.” She paused, unhappy that she still reflexed so. “Mary Sheffield.” From inside her cape, Mary pulled a black handkerchief, revealing her official state of mourning. Even though the custom, of which she was instinctively aware, dictated that she was to be fully attired in black for a husband so recently departed, she had decided to only carry the black handkerchief, which reflected the mourning of distant relative. It seemed more than enough to her.
“Oh…I’m sorry,” stammered the captain, staring at the handkerchief. “My condolences.” His face had died, falling white and empty, as if he had just seen the head of Medusa and was now reduced to a crumbling pillar of salt. “So, ye’re the wife of Arthur…the late Earl—”
“Yes. You knew my husband?”
Hendry stared past her, not answering. The Courtmain was coming through another tack, but he seemed oblivious. Finally, he took a few paces back and muttered, “Aye, well . . . I suppose I do. I mean, I did.” His eyes shifted away, then rapidly back again, then finally turned up at the mizzen sails as if they demanded his immediate attention. “Good day, ma’am,” he blurted in a dull flat tone.
“Good day to you as well.” Mary turned away, saddened. She carefully stepped the remaining way down to the quarterdeck and entered the roundhouse. She was accustomed to men hating Arthur, but Captain Hendry’s reaction had been different somehow. Unusual. It infuriated her that she was still feeling apologetic for Arthur, even after his death. She hated him. It had been years since he had thrown her from Dunmain House, with his false allegations about Tom Palliser. He got what he deserved for what he did to that man. Arthur had been so wrong. And then he went too far altogether—forbidding her from ever again seeing her boy. Two long years. She hated him for that. But she had hated him long before then. She hated Arthur for what he had done to her, for what he had stolen from her—things that had never been his.
Mary’s father had been Queen Anne’s favorite secret lover, and as such had been granted the title of the First Duke of Buckingham. Having built Buckingham Palace, he was as elegantly rich as he was elegantly handsome, as powerful as he was loved by the royals. And yet he was a poor husband and a non-existent father. Mary’s mother was of little consequence, having died not long after Mary’s birth. Mary was raised in the splendor of English royalty, playing and schooling with Princess Anne and Princess Catherine, the haughty daughters of King James II, for whom Mary’s father worked. Princess Catherine was Mary’s age, and when they were both nineteen, Catherine married the Fifth Earl of Anglesea, a favorite friend and supporter of King James II. But that Anglesea Earl beat Catherine severely, leading her sister (by then Queen Anne) to authorize their quick divorce. Soon thereafter the Fifth Earl was murdered—whispers put it as the Queen’s doing—and the Earlship transferred to the dead man’s brother, Arthur, the Sixth Earl of Anglesea, and leaving the other, younger brother, Richard, fuming in the wake. After the divorce and death, Princess Catherine, then twenty-one, was once again available for marriage. Thus, Queen Anne arranged for her sister Catherine to marry the Duke of Buckingham, then fifty-four—the Queen’s secret ex-lover, a widower, and the absentee father of Mary, also twenty-one.
With her father impenetrably focused on matters of the royal court, Mary fell to the devices of her ex-friend, her new stepmother, now re-titled Duchess Catherine. Within a month of the wedding Mary was quietly banished to a country house outside London—far away from the new family that Catherine planned with the Duke. Though Mary had gone, dutifully with her servants, including Charity, she was heartbroken that no one had objected, not even her father. Then after a few years, even Mary’s occasional visits to Buckingham Palace became too much for Catherine, and a new plan was conceived. Catherine knew her ex-husband’s brother, Arthur Annesley, was looking for a wife. The plan was born, and Mary’s immediate dislike for everything about Arthur was of no relevance. They were married and she was shipped to Ireland with the drunkard, with his fists and virulent mouth. Duchess Catherine had calculated correctly—Mary was no better treated by the Sixth Earl of Anglesea than Cath
erine had been treated by the Fifth.
Now, journeying back to England, Mary had nothing to show for the years of misery and torment. She was returning with less property, less pride, and less worth than she had when she first left, over fourteen years earlier. And she had no home to go to in London. She doubted the country house would even be available. She would have to survive on the mercies of her stepmother Catherine and her aging father whom she barely knew. And most damning to her—she was returning without her son.
*
An hour later, in the between-deck of the Courtmain, Jemmy awoke to the fetid smell of bilge water commingling with his own vomit. His entire body ached with an abhorrent pain greater than any he had ever known. He had once heard that being burned was the worst pain a man could endure, and now he felt as though he had been burned from head to foot. As he tried to lift his head, the palpitations seared his skull. He was sweating and clammy. He lowered his head against the hard, wet, putrid floor. Managing one eye open and finally the other, he saw light and sounds enveloping him. Feet were moving on all sides of him, men’s voices yelling over the scratching, bumping sounds of crates and trunks being dragged across the floor. After a while he tried to sit up again but the misery in his neck and head reminded him that he had been knocked unconscious twice in the last two days. He pulled against the stiffness, disregarding the pain, forcing himself upright, then leaned against the rough post around which his bruised wrists were still shackled. A short crewman came to him with a bilge mop, and Jemmy noticed the sailor was young, not much older than himself. He watched as the boy began dabbing at the vomit with the old broken mop, swishing it around, not absorbing much. The only thing he seemed to accomplish was to splash the muck against Jemmy’s legs and stir the stench farther into the stale air. The young crewman, grunting in disgust, finally gave up and left. Looking around, Jemmy saw that most of the crates and trunks were gone, along with the wretched old man. Then he realized the ship was not under sail, only swaying lightly against its mooring. The soft lap of the waves caused a burbling echo throughout the hold. Where were they? Where had they been going? He tried to remember, tried to center his murky thoughts. Bristol, he realized. They must be in Bristol, in England. He brought a knee up to scratch his nose. Suddenly he understood—Bristol! His mind screamed, his matted eyes popped wide. Bristol! He turned to the right, examining the hold, searching desperately, frantically, scanning the few remaining trunks. He strained against the agonizing pain, peering at and past everything, hoping he had missed it somehow, hoping he was wrong, hoping his muddled head had forgotten something, something important, something that would explain the absence, some reason he was not seeing it. He stretched one way, then the other, then finally he slowed, slackening against the shackles, finally letting himself believe what seconds before he would have sworn could never be, could never have happened. But it was obvious. Quite simply the bleakness, the narrow hollow realm under that sagging ceiling, the dense nasty air, all of the nothingness, the worthless pain, the vast hopelessness of what surely was to come had all united into one singular agonizing truth. It had confirmed James Annesley’s deepest fear—the large blue humpbacked trunk was already gone.
Chapter 12
James Dempsey, examined — “I am about thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age. I went to Mass. My parents were popish. I was not acquainted with Lord Anglesea before I was employed as tutor to his son. Mr. Annesley wore his own hair—flaxen hair—when he was at school with me. I saw the boy in Dublin. I heard that he was in Dublin later, and that he was transported. To what place? I do not know; to where people are transported.”
— trial transcript, Annesley v. Anglesea, 1743
I hate to be near the sea,
and hear it roaring and raging
like a wild beast in its den.
It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts
of the human mind,
struggling to be free,
and ending just where it began.
— William Hazlitt, 1823
Later That Month
At sea — in route to the British Colonies in America
Like a blossom closing for the night, the sea slackened, drawing in upon itself, relaxing, preparing to absorb the sun, which was hovering just over her furthest reach, over the very edge of the world. The thick waters rolled up against the Courtmain’s red and gold sides, then receded again, easing her to slumber. The galley bell rang out calling the first-dog watch to eat. They quickly descended the ratlines, having flown the light kite-sails for the evening. Most of the crew and passengers had dined at noon, but the evening watch had successfully petitioned Captain Hendry for a later victual. For Jemmy, it was another opportunity to get a meal. Standing on the maindeck, he watched the sea slowly calm as he finished his small ration of salt pork.
He was beginning to like the grey-blue ocean, even when she was in a rage, pitching and buffeting them about as she had done for weeks since the Courtmain lost sight of England. The first days of the voyage had been a painful blur of raging headaches and wrenching nausea. On the sixth day, a passenger, chosen because he had registered as surgical apprentice, examined Jemmy and then informed Captain Hendry, in Jemmy’s stunned presence, that Jemmy had “ship’s fever” and would be dead before the morning watch. Jemmy was immediately unshackled and given a separate bunk in the halfdeck near the helmsman’s berth. But then the storms hit and though the heavy sea had done no serious damage, it had managed to carry away a section of the port rails, wash two sea chests overboard, and jostle Jemmy unmercifully in his berth. But it was better than the between-deck. Anything was better than the between-deck.
He was not sure why he liked the ocean. Perhaps because he had stopped fearing her. Perhaps because she seemed to protect him, for a while, from indentured servitude, enslavement, or whatever it was that awaited him on the other shore. Perhaps it was her consoling touch, her rolling lifts and falls, holding him through his grieving. She lulled him as he wept in the dark, her waves whispering to him as he moaned alone, curled, imagining his mother, missing Mr. Kennedy and Seán, shuddering again and again through Juggy’s death. Finally the images had subsided, lessening. He avoided thinking about them, letting the ever-present sea and the bounds of the tall-ship fill his mind, just as he was doing now, in the middle of the cold Atlantic, leaning over the railing of the Courtmain, studying the settling blackness below him, feeling both excited and soothed in the same bracing moment.
“What do ye think of her, James?”
Jemmy turned to see Captain Hendry approaching. “Who, Captain?”
“My ocean!” Hendry stepped up on a wooden box and swept his arm imperially across the vast expanse. “What do ye think of her?”
Jemmy smiled hesitantly, wondering if the captain might be drunk again. “Oh, aye,” he said, nodding. “She’s grand, sir.”
“And my argosy? A leviathan, no?” He turned to Jemmy.
“Aye, sir,” Jemmy agreed, wondering what either was.
Captain Hendry stepped to the railing and lit his pipe. They joined in a silent stare at the fire of the falling sun, each lost in his own secrets. The enormous deep-blue sky was streaked broadly with hundreds of golden-orange shafts erupting from one horizon to the other. The plunging sun ruptured, blasting all its colors free as if it knew they would be terminally lost in the blackness of the sea. It reminded Jemmy of Ireland, particularly Dunmain, of memories he had been trying to keep buried. He pictured the evenings he had spent with Seán climbing the Norman ruins atop the big hill south of McCreary’s farm, and how they had tossed rocks, played mumblety-peg and dueled with wooden swords until the sun disappeared. They were sure that Dunmain had the best sunsets in all of Ireland. But then they moved to Dublin and neither seemed to notice a sunset again. Least not till this one, at sea. Would the Colonies have sunsets like this? Indentured slave—the phrase froze him. And with the sun nearly gone, a frigid emptiness bludgeoned him even more. He miss
ed Dunmain terribly. Taking a deep breath of salty dark air, he closed his eyes and the image of Fynn Kennedy filled him, as if he had inhaled his face from that same temperate air. He longed to feel Mr. Kennedy’s powerful grip, the weight of the man’s arm on his shoulder. He missed his soothing voice telling him everything would be all right, all right in God’s time. Even though it had not come true and perhaps never would.
Then his thoughts turned to Seán. He would love to be there, at sea. Seán had often talked of becoming a Royal Marine. If only he were there. Aye, ye’d like this Seán, ye would indeed. He breathed deep. He was tired of remembering them, but he knew neither of them would ever withdraw from him, never abandon his mind—they would never pass away. He was the one who was gone, gone for almost a month. Opening his eyes, Jemmy saw the sun had already vanished and was amazed at how quickly it had gone. Anger jabbed him—anger at himself, anger for having missed the sun’s last few living moments.
“How are ye feeling today lad?” asked Captain Hendry.
“Fine, sir,” replied Jemmy, looking up at the tall, square-shouldered captain. The man kept a proud air and spoke in a lilting Irish accent. Jemmy hoped that someday he would stand as tall and proud as Captain Hendry. They even shared a scar on their cheeks, though Jemmy’s was on his right side and at five inches was twice as long as the captain’s. In the last couple of days he had even begun to hope that he too would be a gallant ship captain, wearing the distinctive dark-blue fearnought jacket and tarpaulin cocked hat over a tight groomed wig, just like Captain Hendry—free to be true, free from the tangled evil of men like Richard. He could see himself skippering a crew of loyal men on a magnificent ship across an endless, peaceful ocean.
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