Third day of my captivity
Wednesday, March 23, 1814
Day commences with fresh gales, flying clouds, and cold oatmeal. The ship is noisy and never sleeps. I can make more of the sounds than I could at first. Feet run, ropes scuttle, the ship’s timbers thump as if to protest being used as a battering ram against millions of tons of water, and the wind whines in the sails. On deck they talk, shout to each other, and sing; sometimes there’s a fife playing, sometimes a violin. I’m beginning to recognize Cat’s footsteps, being as they’re especially quiet. Asked him if that was how he got his name, but he didn’t answer, only looked sardonic, so I suppose that it’s not.
Fourth day
Thursday, March 24, 1814
Squally during last night, with rain and thunder. Seasick again thisA.M.Cat gave me a preserve for it, with wormwood, rose petals, ginger, and lemon, which he doesn’t appear to have much faith in as a remedy, but I think I am better because of it. Have finally figured out how the ship’s bell sounds the hours. Eight bells is four o’clock, eight o’clock, midnight, and noon, and the uneven numbers—one, three, five, and seven—mark the half hours.
Can’t see from the windows today; half the time they are fogged inside, the other half outside. Drew some blunt outlines of horses on the windowpane, but they ran. Which is a rather good pun, and I’m sorry there is no one here to share it. I think Cat’s earring is a diamond. Lots of sparkle.
Aunt April, have you given me up for dead? I worry often about you worrying about me, about how grieved you must be. I pray that you don’t blame yourself for my disappearance, thinking it was your fault I am missing because you decided to bring me with you to England. It wasn’t your fault. How could you have known about theBlack Joke?
Fifth day
Friday, March 25, 1814
There is too much time to worry about what it would be like to be a slave in the Indies. Devon would probably be happy to know I am very fearful, if he has thought about me at all, which he probably has not.
Have become obsessed with food and dream of roast goose with currant pudding, fresh strawberries, and white bread with sweet butter. The food on theJokecomes in combinations of salt beef and stale peas, salt beef and stale beans, salt beef and pickled fish, and for dinner salt beef and salt beef. The ship’s biscuit is called hardtack, which is apt. Fresh water is stored in metal-lined casks, so it reeks of tin sweat and damp wood and tastes like a foot bath for gout. Cat says I am too finicky, and I will lose weight. Maybe no one will want to buy me then.
Sixth day
Saturday, March 26, 1814
Light breezes and a clear sky. Misery! This morning I realized that I’m going to begin to menstruate. What will I do? Tell Cat, I suppose, but I would rather die. There were worms in theA.M. hardtack. Cat says, “Don’t think of them as worms. Think of them as meat.” When I said “But they areworms!” he offered to pick them out for me, as though that made it any better, which shows, if nothing else, that we don’t look at things the same way. Am not afraid of him anymore. Which is extraordinary, when you think of it.
Where is Devon? Will Michael Granville guess who was behind the theft of his papers?
Seventh day
Sunday, March 27, 1814
Pleasant weather outside. Gloom within. Appetite nonexistent. Bored. Frightened. Can’t seem to pretend anymore that I am neither. Started my courses. Had to tell. Cat very matter-of-fact about it and helpful. Much better than Aunt April. The hardtack is tough as a stone. Cat says soak it in coffee.
When Cat returned that night, the stars were twinkling through the window, haloed by mist, their image blurred by an occasional splash of spray. Merry sat at the table, her head pillowed on her folded arms. Diagonals of reedy light picked out golden pinpoints in her hair, lying over her face and shoulders like swirling crimson smoke.
The boy’s hands were not pretty, being ridged with tendons and scars, but they moved with delicacy in her hair as hestirred it to expose her pale profile. She sat still as an idol, the blue almond line of her eyelids closed as though in sleep or death. Through parted, barely moving lips, she said, “I think I’m getting scurvy.”
Morgan’s antiscorbutics were the best in the Atlantic; scurvy was never seen on theBlack Joke. And, for God’s sake, she’d only been at sea for a week. Cat opened his mouth to enumerate the reasons why she couldn’t have scurvy and then shut it again without a word. As much as she, the young pirate had noticed that their differing logic could pass cheek to cheek in the same current without stopping to tip hats.
“Why?” he said.
Silence from the head on the table. Then, “What’re the symptoms?”
“Let me see,” he said. “Have you got eruptions?”
“Eruptions!”
“I hadn’t finished. Are there eruptions on your arms and legs that look like fleabites?”
Her head came up, and the shiny disturbed mass of her hair fell in a soft slither down her neck as she pushed back the tight sleeves and anxiously studied the white skin on her arms. With reluctance she admitted, “No. What else do you have with scurvy?”
“Loose teeth. Do yours wiggle?”
Damned if she didn’t try them. Every blasted tooth in her head. And when they were all discovered in perfect health, she had the nerve to insist that there must beothersigns.
