by Peg Kingman
“Because even soldiers could sail a ship in such a wind?” Catherine ventured.
“Precisely.”
“Pray, how did you feel, Mr Fleming, the first time you went to sea?” asked Catherine. “How did you feel to see your native shore sink to an invisible nothing behind you, the deep blue sea surrounding you, and nothing but six inches of oak planking to hold you safe from it?”
“Ah! I was but two weeks old for my first sea voyage, an infant in my mother’s arms, so I cannot report my sensations on that occasion. But when next I went to sea, at the age of fifteen, I felt free and light for the first time in my life. Have you dreamt that nightmare in which you must run, though you are mired in a bog? That is what land-bound life—all the life I had known—had seemed to me, all slow heaviness. I had supposed it was the lot of humankind to trudge. Imagine then my exhilaration at this novel sensation of movement and gliding ease! I remember marveling at the seabirds coasting above our fantail, hanging on the wind without effort. I fancied that their freedom and lightness was hence to be mine as much as theirs. So I have stayed at sea as much as possible ever since.”
“But to leave the place of your birth…?”
“The place near Sluys where I was born was lost to the sea many years ago when a dike broke. The entire district was flooded, and it has never yet been reclaimed, for it was of only marginal value as farmland.”
“Near Sluys? That is in Flanders?”
“Yes, we shall pass near it, if not quite above it!”
“So you are quite literally a Fleming by birth, not just in name.”
“No,” he said, smiling. “I am quite literally a native of this sea.”
“Ah! Well, I will admit that being abroad upon your native sea is not so dreadful as I had feared,” Catherine said. “This ship does seem so very solid.”
IN THE MORNING, Sharada, humming quietly under her breath, came in carrying a tray, and set it on the little gimbled stand beside Catherine’s sofa bed. Seeing that Catherine was awake, Sharada adjusted the blinds at the big stern window to let in the early light. With a murmur Grace turned away from the brightness, but she did not awaken. Catherine sat up enough to see out: blue sea, blue sky. Sharada deftly arranged a bolster and two pillows behind her back, to lean against. Then she disappeared, still without speaking, into the tiny compartment beyond which she shared with Anibaddh.
The tray bore a teapot; two cups; a milk pitcher. Catherine filled a cup, splashed in milk, tasted. Excellent tea. She had slept deeply and long, gently rocked by the easy regular motion of the ship. She pressed against the pillows at her back. As she swallowed the fourth mouthful of tea, there washed through her like a change of tide a perfect ease, an unexpected sense of well-being.
Presently she found herself thinking of the exquisite little Indian paintings in Mr Clerk’s collection, upstairs in his handsome Edinburgh house. The lovers in those paintings disported themselves among exquisite silken embroidered cushions and brilliant damask bolsters. The feather pillow at her back was covered in serviceable bleached linen, wrinkled now but formerly well pressed, the flax fibers still flat and shining from the heat and pressure of the flatiron. In her imagination Catherine transformed this pillow into a wide soft bolster covered in gold silk with a saffron fringe and blue embroidered birds. She adjusted the scene: a bolster, a nest of soft brilliant cushions in a pavilion set in a teeming green garden, in a warm soft dusk. Someone is coming; the beloved one is coming, with music. Here, he arrives at last!
But where his face should be, there is only a blur, a blank.
There is no one. The face of the beloved is lost; it cannot be remembered. Nor even imagined. The damage is done.
Catherine blinked away this disturbance and resettled herself against her rumpled white linen pillows, but the quill of a feather kept pricking her.
Beyond the thin board partition, someone was humming quietly: Sharada, of course. She was humming the traditional MacDonald tune they had taught her in the steam launch at Grangemouth; the tune that had brought Grace safe. Grace stirred once more, and Catherine saw her eyes open, pale lashes blinking at the sunlight.
SHARADA APPEARED AND disappeared like incense smoke, humming quietly to herself almost all the time, sometimes audibly and sometimes under her breath. She was always at hand when required: she fetched warm water for washing, brought boiled eggs and bread with cheese and ham for breakfast, combed Catherine’s hair in the morning, waited on her at dinner, helped her undress at night, carried away the pot from under the sofa bed. But at other times Catherine had no idea where Sharada was or what she did.
Anibaddh liked to take her work up on deck, where she would sit upon an enormous coil of rope with the wind in her face, the sun on her back, sewing in her lap. There was always work to be done. Her own dress, savagely ripped in the nettles, she had neatly repaired. The gown that Catherine had been wearing that night had been washed too; and now Anibaddh was replacing its ribbon trimmings, which she had had to remove, launder and press separately. Grace had quickly become Anibaddh’s pale silent shadow, helping when she could.
Grace had her meals in their cabin, privately. Anibaddh would bring food on a tray, then retire to the adjoining closet so that Grace could eat alone.
TOWARD EVENING OF the fourth day at sea, after dinner, Catherine noticed that the waters were becoming distinctly crowded. Considering that no land was in sight, there seemed a remarkable number of boats. Many were broad-beamed fishing boats flying triangular-rigged sails in a vivid orange hue; others were scantily manned small trading brigs and sloops, all making their way busily somewhere, or from somewhere, but where? She scanned the horizon, searching for land, but none was to be seen. There were only masts and sails. Behind her, Mrs Todd was seated out of the wind, painstakingly working over a drawing pad, with the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth.
“Oh, Mrs MacDonald,” said Mrs Todd presently, looking up from her work. “The captain mentioned it, and I have been wanting to ask you—is it true that your Hindu maid will not remain with you in Antwerp? That she hopes to make her way to India?”
“She intends to return to India as soon as she can get a passage,” said Catherine.
“Pray, do not think me impertinent. But you see, Mr Todd and I made our preparations so quickly that I could not engage a maid before sailing; I expected to manage for myself until we get to India. But then I thought, why not take your maid, if she is not to remain with you in any case. And if you have found her satisfactory.”
How desirable and convenient an arrangement, both for Sharada and for Mrs Todd! But Catherine found herself saying instead, “My destination is not…not fixed with absolute certainty. It may be that…in short, it may be that my maid may continue in my service after all.” She was not ready to say aloud, But I am thinking of proceeding to India myself. She had not till now quite realised how seriously she was considering this: To India, herself! Because sometimes she did not quite believe what she had been told about the fate of her sly, slippery darling, her twin.
“Oh! I beg your pardon,” said Mrs Todd. “I must have misunderstood the captain. Well, here is another thing I’ve been wondering: Do we go first to Antwerp, then to Anvers? Or the other way about? I cannot make it out from what everyone says.”
“But,” said Catherine, “but they are the same, you see. They are only the two names of the same city. Antwerp is its Flemish name, and Anvers is its Walloon name—that is to say, its French name. Mostly I think it is called Antwerp.”
“Oh, dear! I’ve gone and betrayed myself again! Now you know what an ignorant goose I am, if you didn’t before. Mrs MacDonald, you won’t mention it to Mr Todd, will you? He is just a little annoyed with my—my foolishness. I haven’t had great opportunities come my way. But I have resolved to make use of my time during this voyage to improve my knowledge and acquire some ladylike accomplishments. I thought of trying my hand at drawing; here is a sketch of that picturesque Dutch fishing boat we have bee
n overtaking. It is only a first effort, of course, but what do you think?”
Catherine kindly looked at the drawing pad offered for her inspection. “I am no judge,” she said, “but it seems to me that you have succeeded in capturing the feeling of—of movement.”
“I thought I might ask Mr Sinclair to give me a few tips and pointers.”
“I expect that Mr Sinclair would be happy to be of use.”
Before dusk, Captain Mainwaring set Increase’s crew to cleaning her channels and washing her sides, as though landfall were imminent. Still there was no land to be seen. Then Catherine realised she had been looking much too high; she had been scanning the horizon for distant hills, hills like Scotland’s. The Netherlands had no hills. What she had taken for distant masts and sails resolved themselves instead into steeples and windmills arising directly out of the water, or so they first appeared. Then arose trees, towers, and dikes. And finally, as it grew darker, she could make out flat, smooth green land itself, low and sedgy.
But as they came closer inshore, it seemed to Catherine that they must have mistaken their landfall; this was only a long blank low piece of coast. Then, looking around, she realised that they had already entered the Westerschelde’s broad open mouth and were already passing over its shallow shoaled outfall, over choppy muddy water. The mouth of the river was broad—as wide as the mouth of the Forth—but slow, shallow, sluggish, phlegmatic. Increase and the beamy Flemish fishing boats converged, taking advantage of the last light and a favorable tide to make their way up the sluggish channel. It seemed to Catherine that she was looking down onto the fields; the low wet green land was much lower than her high vantage point, and seemed even lower than the level of the water itself.
After dinner, as night came on, Increase steered a little out of the main shipping channel and hove to. At the same time, Catherine noticed a particular fat little Dutch boat coming down the estuary, drawing apart from the general traffic in the channel. It drew near, was hailed, replied, then came in under Increase’s lee quarter.
“Who is this?” asked Catherine of Mr Fleming, the only other passenger remaining on deck. “What is that boat?”
“That will be our pilot coming aboard; he will bring us up the channel to Antwerp,” he replied.
“What an odd-looking boat,” said Catherine. It was deep, round, and broad, with a marked curve to both stem and stern.
“It is called a ‘poon,’ and a very worthy and handy little craft it is for inland work.”
Catherine saw an active little man come aboard, climbing up Increase’s side ropes as easily as a spider climbs its web. He was met by Captain Mainwaring, who took him along to his private cabin. After a moment, Mr Fleming went away, too, leaving Catherine to observe the poon. She thought it would cast off again directly, but instead it remained alongside, its crew in it. And she expected that Increase would brace up her yards and get under way upriver again, to make the best of the favorable tide and fair wind. But no one seemed to feel any urgency.
The moon was high and near full. It made a wide silvery track over the wrinkled water. There was a brackish smell of tidal mud, very different from the pure air of the open sea; and mixed with it was tobacco smoke from the pipes of the sailors in the boat at Increase’s flank who sat smoking in complete silence. Looking down, Catherine could now and then make out the glow of a tiny orange ember.
“Now that is an excellent smell, an excellent healthful smell,” said Dr Macpherson as he poked his head up through the hatch and emerged on the main deck. It was his habit before bed to come up and smoke a last pipeful, while taking a few turns up and down the deck. He had tried each night to get Hector to try some of his excellent tobacco, and Hector had invariably declined. “Good evening, Mrs MacDonald,” said Dr Macpherson. “A beautiful evening, beautiful. Whose tobacco do I smell? Ah, the Dutch sailors’. The Dutch have excellent tea and fair tobacco. Fair, I say, but not as good the Virginia leaf my Glasgow merchant gets for me. Your brother must try it; I have told him so. It will do him good. It is my only indulgence, and an expensive one, it must be admitted; but then it is so healthful.”
As Dr Macpherson talked, Catherine became aware of some activity deep in Increase’s cargo hold. Someone came up to remove the gratings from around the capstan, then disappeared.
“Simultaneously a relaxant and a stimulant, a benign and harmless kind of stimulant, you understand, Mrs Macdonald,” Dr Macpherson was saying, “with the capacity to sharpen the mental capabilities, to whet the wits if you like….”
Several of Increase’s sailors came up and rigged a pair of tackles in the dark, tailing them through a snatch block and to a windlass. Then they let down the heavy iron hook into the hold.
“But can you find the smoke itself anything but unpleasant?” asked Catherine while she continued to observe the sailors. “I cannot bring myself to enjoy breathing smoke. Even a smoky chimney always makes me cough, and coal smoke is said to be unhealthy.”
Dr Macpherson’s reply was lengthy, and referred to the essential differences between fumes of vegetal origin and those of mineral origin: “And thus it is that smoke of vegetal origins actually has a healthful influence upon the pulmonary and bronchial systems—that is to say, Mrs MacDonald, in laymen’s terms, upon the lungs themselves. Indeed, tobacco smoke is proven to have a pronounced preservative effect!”
“Oh, indeed?” said Catherine when she noticed that he was waiting for this pronouncement to have its due impact. There were six men at the windlass, and in response to a signal from below they bent to it. She heard the creak of its working.
“Oh, yes, quite proven. But it is a principle with which you, Mrs MacDonald, are already well acquainted, I daresay. Just consider, if you will, the ham—the simple country-cured ham. Now, what preserves it from putrefaction? I shall tell you….”
Catherine saw a large crate slowly emerge, rising from the dark hold, dangling, then rotating queasily as it cleared the cargo hatch. Someone steadied it with a gaff and a guy line. Catherine could tell even in the dark that the man was Hector.
“And that of course is the smokehouse. Now, the healthful preservative effect of the smoke operates upon our tender pulmonary tissues, just precisely as it does upon our hams—not to say our hams, but hams in general, of course. They are hardened and toughened by the smoke, and thus are they rendered far less susceptible to the harmful effects of damp, of infection, of rot and putrefaction!”
Catherine saw the inboard tackles eased, the outboard ones taken up; and the enormous crate was slowly maneuvered out over the rail and above the waiting poon. On command it was gently let down and, with a faint bump, eased onto the deck of the smaller boat.
“I venture to predict that the smoking of a quantity of tobacco every day will soon be recognised as the best, the most efficacious of treatments in cases of consumption! It is not too much to hope that it may perhaps even prove valuable as a preventive in those families with a history of unsatisfactory lungs.”
The hook was disengaged, and the tackles were hauled inboard again, drawn up, and made fast. The gratings were replaced around the capstan. The Flemish crew on the poon quickly secured the crate with cables and draped it with sailcloth. Then they set the sail and cast off just as Captain Mainwaring gave the command to brace up the yards and get Increase under way again.
“So you see, Mrs MacDonald, you might try your influence with your brother, for the sake of his health, particularly in damp conditions such as one invariably encounters on a long ocean voyage. Why, there is your brother now, up on that deck with Captain Mainwaring. I wonder where he has been all this time and what he has been doing. It is a pity that I have nearly finished my pipe already this evening! Pray excuse me, Mrs MacDonald; I must go and speak with him.”
Catherine could see her brother and the captain and the active little pilot up on the quarterdeck in silhouette. Was that Mr Fleming up there with them? Left alone again at the rail, Catherine watched the poon glide away, watched i
t sail up the silvery track of the moon across the wide water until she lost it in the darkness. Increase lurched gently; then, slowly gathering way, water chuckling now against her hull, resumed her stately progress up the estuary.
In the morning Catherine awakened before dawn. The cabin felt close and stuffy, so she put on a wrapper over her nightdress, and a cloak over the wrapper, and went up onto the main deck. A thick fog shrouded the ship; the tops of the masts overhead were invisible. Peering upward, Catherine noticed that Increase was again hove to, her main yards braced sharp ’round with main-topsail backed, and making no way at all. She saw that the gratings around the capstan had been lifted and the tackles rigged. There was an air of hushed surreptitious business as half a dozen crew members awaited orders near the windlass. Catherine went to the lee rail and saw what she had seen before: a poon riding there on a couple of long spring lines—the poon she had seen last night, or its twin. How deeply interesting, thought Catherine.
She settled herself on a neat stack of spars, and watched. She saw again what she had seen before by moonlight: a great crate hauled up from the hold; the tackles belayed to lift it out over the lee rail; the crate lowered onto the deck of the poon and deftly secured there. The active little Flemish pilot who had come aboard last night lightly swung himself over the rail and climbed down to the poon. Someone else climbed down after him, awkwardly. It was Hector, with a satchel slung over his back, the strap diagonally across his chest. The poon cast off and made sail, disappearing silently into the fog. After a few moments, Increase was making way again too. The leadsman in the bow called his soundings.
Mr Fleming came past—startled, Catherine saw, to find her there. “You are awake very early, Mrs MacDonald,” he said. “A pity the fog is so thick. There is so little to be seen.”
“On the contrary,” she said. “I have seen a great deal, and I am full of questions. I wonder if you will answer them for me.”
