Steel

  The Diana’s crew put woven mats over the side to buffer and protect the hulls and used the ropes to pull the other ship close and secure it. A group of the pirates—still armed, still wild and cackling—escorted their captain over the side and to the other ship. Abe, Jenks, and Henry were among them. Jill moved closer to the side to watch.

  The other crew stumbled and scurried away from the approaching pirates. The other captain, the man in the fancy coat—bright green material, with gold braid and buttons—approached, though warily. When Captain Cooper emerged to greet him, the other captain quailed.

  “Oh God, it’s you!”

  “That’s right, sir, you have been captured by that bloody pirate queen, harridan of the waves and witch of the sea. And you are very, very wise to offer yourselves so freely. Though I rather wish you’d put up a fight—I’m disappointed I won’t be murdering you and sinking your boat. Now—one word of argument from any of you and I will.” She made a stunning picture standing before him, hands on hips, her coat buttoned, her high boots polished, her hat firm on her long, curling hair, and her face like that of an avenging goddess. Her mob of demons was arrayed around her.

  The other captain was on his knees now. “Please, have mercy, I have a wife at home, small children—a daughter! Be merciful, they’ll be lost without me!”

  “On the contrary I rather suspect they’d be better off, given what you are.”

  “What—” the captain stammered, then went silent.

  Jill straightened, curious, as if the movie in front of her had just gotten to the good part.

  “Abe. Bring ’em up,” Marjory said, never looking away from her captured counterpart.

  The quartermaster called to several of the crewmates, who followed him down the dark hatch into the ship’s hold.

  Just as they’d captured them, the Diana’s crew held back their victims by intimidation and possibly reputation. Their seeming madness inspired fear. The other crew cowered, shoving at each other to get farther away from the pirates, and never made a move to resist.

  Jill expected Abe and the others to carry up crates, boxes, barrels. Maybe even sacks of gold. The treasure from a million pirate stories. But that’s not what emerged from below.

  Abe guided a person, holding the man’s arm, helping him step carefully. He was thin, weak, barely able to stand. He moved slowly, shuffling—iron bands and chains weighed down his ankles. His skin was black, his dark hair short and matted. Abe led the man onto the deck and to the side. Behind him came another man with chains banded to his ankles. Behind him, another. And another, and another. Abe and the others led twenty men and women in chains onto the deck.

  This was a slave ship.

  “Valuable cargo, isn’t it then?” Marjory said to the slaver captain.

  “I just transport ’em. That’s all, where’s the fault?”

  Captain Cooper planted her foot on his shoulder and shoved. He sprawled and begged again for mercy.

  When the slaves were all on deck, Abe began leading them over the side to the Diana. It took a long time. With the iron chains, they moved so slowly. Many looked sick besides, thin and weak. They all had red sores where the bands cut into their skin. As they came aboard, they passed by Jill where she leaned on the side. They never looked up; their heads were bowed, their eyes downcast. She wanted to reach out to them, offer some kind of comfort, but she didn’t know what to say. So she just watched.

  Now that some of the gun smoke had cleared, a new smell tinged the air, drifting from the other ship. The smell of illness, of people living packed together without washing, without clean water, without anything. This had stopped being anything like a movie. Or a dream. This couldn’t be a dream. Jill didn’t have the imagination to produce a dream—nightmare—like this. This wasn’t a dream, and she wasn’t going to wake up.

  Back on the slave ship, Captain Cooper was looming over her prisoner.

  “I think I will also be taking that pretty coat from you.”

  When he didn’t move quickly enough, she grabbed the collar and pulled as he tried to scuttle away. With little apparent effort, Cooper twisted and yanked, and the coat was off and in her hands. She tossed it to Henry, turned away from her prisoner, and never looked back.

  To her own crew she said, “Move on, scurvy dogs, scour this wreck for what we can use. Quick now, so’s not to spend more time among scum than we need to.”

  This was obviously a process they’d been through before. Several of the crew kept watch over the prisoners on the deck of the captured ship, keeping muskets trained on them and threatening death. The rest went all over the ship, looking in crates, trunks, and casks. The sounds of smashing and breaking carried from belowdecks; the slaver captain winced at every jolt.

  Soon, a procession started from the other ship to the Diana, crew members carrying not just wooden boxes and crates, but also coils of rope, bundles of sailcloth, and other tools and equipment of obvious use on a sailing ship. None of it was the kind of treasure Tom had gone on about. But Jill considered—what good would chests of gold do out here? These supplies would keep the Diana sailing for months.

  “Move aside, Tadpole, if you can’t be of any use,” Jenks grumbled at her when he came over the side, too close to where Jill was lurking. She scrambled away, but glared after him. He’d gone out of his way to bother her.

  The whole operation took an hour or so. Then Captain Cooper shouted, “Let’s away from this cesspit, don’t make me tell you twice or I’ll throttle ye myself and hang you out to dry!”

  The crew, shouting and jubilant, scrambled back over to the deck of the Diana. Jill crouched by the side, hiding.

  Cooper had put a booted foot on the gunwale, ready to cross back to the Diana herself, when one of the other crew broke away.

  “Take me with you!” the man called, and fell forward, pleading. Really pleading, on his knees, hands clasped and everything. He looked sick, with a long, sallow face and an almost toothless mouth. His hands looked arthritic. But he didn’t seem old. “I’ll sign your code, I’ll scrub your decks, I’ll do whatever you say. Take me with you!”

  Cooper looked down at him. Still imperious and avenging, she seemed to be considering, but no—she was only taking a moment to sneer at him.

  “Keep to the lot you chose, scum.” She returned to her ship.

  The captain of the slave ship took this moment, when the pirates had already left and he didn’t risk retribution, to vent his anger. Sputtering, he clutched the side of his ship with one hand and shook the other, in a fist, at the Diana. “God damn you! You’re not a woman at all, you’re a whore! You’re the devil’s own whore!”

  “Better the devil’s than yours!” Marjory Cooper shouted back at him. “Give my regards to your wife!”

  With more laughter, the ropes between the two ships were cut, and the Diana drifted from her victim.

  The crew did the work of setting sail and steering the Diana away, quick and smooth, in high spirits. The deck was crowded, because the slaves from the other ship were still there, huddled together, looking furtively around. Maybe wondering if they were in worse danger now than they had been.

  Abe passed by Jill on his way to keep watch over the string of prisoners they’d rescued. He glanced at her. “You’re frowning.”

  She was frowning to keep from crying. “I’ve read about this in books. I mean, everyone knows it happened. But I didn’t know…I didn’t realize…”

  How could she realize? Compared to this, her life back home was the dream. She wanted to go home.

  “You have never had to look it in the face, yes?” She nodded, and his smile turned kind. “That it makes you sad is a good thing.” He moved away, to the people in chains.

  Captain Cooper was still hollering orders, and Jill still didn’t know what to do but watch. Abe said something in another language to one of the prisoners; the man shook his head and pointed to another, who came forward and replied. They had a conversation. Meanwhile, somebody ran
forward with a hammer and chisel, and another brought up a big piece of metal—an anvil maybe? The shackles around their feet didn’t have keys. They had to be cut open.

  Jill couldn’t watch, but she couldn’t go anywhere on the ship to avoid the noise of it, and the cries of pain.

  But they were being set free.

  She was about to go belowdecks, to hide away—to stay clear of anyone’s attention. There was a shout.

  “Tadpole, fetch the surgeon!”

  Jill only realized Cooper was talking to her because she was pointing at her. The captain stood near the helm, scrutinizing her. And there was a doctor?

  “Surgeon?” she asked.

  “The prisoner! Go fetch him!”

  That strange, bitter man was a doctor? She had a hard time believing it, but she did what she was told.

  Belowdecks, she unbolted the door to his tiny room and said, “You’re a doctor?”

  The prisoner smirked at her. “Surgeon. What is it, then? Have you stubbed a toe?”

  “The captain—”

  “Ah yes,” he said, sighing, heaving himself from the wall with a great show of effort. “Her majesty the captain has stubbed a toe.”

  “We captured a slave ship,” Jill blurted.

  The man’s indifferent mask slipped, revealing a moment of disbelief. But the scowl returned. “Bloody hell. That’s what all the commotion was, then? Well, let’s get on with it.” He gestured forward for Jill to lead the way.

  She watched the doctor—surgeon—emerge from the hold onto the deck. He squinted into the late afternoon sun, shading his eyes as he regarded the scene. The twenty captives were seated. The crewman with the hammer was still working to free them. Jill could see now that they all had bleeding wounds, either from the shackles or other injuries. The doctor frowned.

  No matter where she stood, Captain Cooper was the focus of attention on the ship. No matter what other activity swarmed around her, the woman was easy to find, even if she was standing still, saying nothing. Now the captain was marching toward her and the doctor.

  The captain didn’t spare Jill a glance, but to the doctor she said, “You’ll keep them alive.”

  “It might be kinder to let them die,” the man answered. “I don’t know where you plan on setting them ashore, but chances are they’ll be captured again and end up worse than they are. Might as well drown them now.”

  Jill couldn’t tell if he was joking. He sounded so harsh.

  The captain didn’t seem bothered. At least her expression didn’t change from its usual hardness. “Treat them as you would any other patient, Mr. Emory, if you please.”

  “Do you take me for a complete brute?”

  “I don’t take you for anything,” she said, already walking back to the helm.

  The doctor stared after her a moment, as if astonished. “Harpy,” he muttered. Then he shook his head and got to work. He pointed at Henry. “Boy! Fetch me some water. Fresh from the scuttlebutt mind you, none of that bilge.” Henry, hanging from some of the rigging to watch the proceedings, scowled but complied.

  Jill continued to stay out of the way and out of notice.

  Supper came late that evening, and the rations were slim since a portion of the food was distributed to the new passengers. Jill didn’t mind; she wasn’t very hungry. The liberated slaves might not have eaten for days, the way they took in the watery soup and hard bread. She could make out ribs on all of them. While eating, they began to smile, and even laugh, almost delirious. Their interpreter spoke to Abe, who answered him as kindly as he’d spoken to her. Jill couldn’t imagine what they were thinking.

  She’d been feeling sorry for herself ever since that tournament, so upset because she couldn’t make a decision about what to do next—but at least she had choices, and a future to go with them. And all she’d done since coming to the Diana was complain that she didn’t belong here. Well, neither did they. And she hadn’t come here in chains. She had nothing to complain about. Nothing. While she still felt trapped here, she suddenly felt lucky.

  Well after dark, the new passengers began to sing. The voices were soft, wavering—still weak. Like the lantern light, the words and tunes seemed to rise up among the sails, to echo above them, sounding larger than they were. Jill sat against the side of the ship, near the stern, just out of sight of the small celebration. She didn’t want to be seen. But she tipped her head back and stared up, watching the patterns of light and shadow on rippling sails, feeling the vibration as someone pounded a beat on the deck.

  When Henry bounded in front of her, dropping from some unseen spot above, she gasped, flinched, and banged her head on the ship’s rail. He laughed, taking a cross-legged seat nearby, a shadow just at the edge of the lantern light. His eyes gleamed, like this was all a big party to him.

  Rubbing her head, she muttered, “What do you want?”

  “I wanted to congratulate you on surviving your first battle,” he said.

  Frowning, she looked away. That wasn’t a battle, it was a raid, a true pirate raid. Or a rescue mission? She’d only watched, dumbstruck. “I didn’t do anything.”

  He shrugged. “You didn’t interfere. You didn’t make an ass of yourself. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for.”

  That almost sounded like a compliment. “What happens next?”

  “I’m guessing we’ll sail for Jamaica. There’s a place there we can let them off and they’ll be safe.” He nodded toward the middle of the ship and the group of former slaves. “Some pirates would sell ’em off in Havana, but not us. We may stop somewhere to provision first. However the captain chooses.”

  None of those plans seemed to offer Jill a way home. But Captain Cooper wasn’t taking her into account—Jill had signed on as crew, hadn’t she? She was bound by the captain’s articles.

  Henry lingered, not smiling this time, not taunting. Just quietly watching her, as if he knew she wanted to talk, which gave her the courage to ask, “Does this happen a lot? Have you done this before?”

  “Done what, capture a ship? Of course, plenty of times.”

  “But a slave ship,” she said.

  He glanced upward, maybe seeing the same patterns she did. But then he’d probably lived on the ship for years. The view may have seemed ordinary to him. “We try. Because of Abe, you see. It’s where he came from. He’d stop every one of those ships sailing from Africa if he could. He’d give up his share of every other haul we make to stop the trade. He can’t. But we try.”

  “What about you?” she said, the question sticking in her throat, because she had a sudden image of Henry, beaten and in chains, and she hated thinking of him like that, however much he might annoy her. It was the opposite of Henry as she saw him now—smiling, bright, fit, alive.

  “What about me? Did I come from Africa on a ship like that?” he said, and shrugged. “My mum did, not that she ever talked about it. I was born here, on the islands. Jamaica, in fact.”

  “And your father?”

  He snorted. “Who knows? Some English sailor stopped in port, I reckon. I was bound to turn pirate, wasn’t I? A half-breed bastard like me.”

  He grinned like it was a joke, but she turned away. She wanted to tell him what would happen with the slave trade, how many more decades of suffering were ahead of them, that it would never be made right. But she would sound crazy. Like she was apologizing for a stretch of history she had no control over. But she felt like she ought to apologize.

  REMISE

  Henry was right, and the captain announced that they’d be sailing for Jamaica next. There had been some debate, back and forth, between Captain Cooper and Abe. “We could go east,” Abe had said. “Take them home.”

  Cooper had refused. “We don’t have provisions for such a voyage, and we can’t be sailing ’cross the Atlantic. Tell them that.”

  So Abe did, explaining in the language they shared that they couldn’t go back home, that they’d be sailing west instead of east. The interpreter seemed to plead with Abe
, who relayed the words to Captain Cooper.

  “Abe, you know as well as I do we can’t take them home,” Cooper said. “And we’re still going after Blane.”

  Captain Cooper put it to a vote among the crew—Africa or Jamaica? Only Abe voted for Africa, so they sailed to Jamaica.

  Again, Jill watched Captain Cooper holding up the shard of rapier blade, watching it turn on its string, following its length with her gaze to stare out at a different part of the horizon than where they sailed to.

  Jill still wondered what the broken rapier meant—how Cooper knew the shard would behave like this, and what the captain hoped to accomplish by following it. And how did Jill fit into that? Or had she been brought here by accident? It was all too strange.

  After spending the night on deck, the former slaves went below to continue resting in semidarkness. They were still sick, and the surgeon, Emory, continued to move among them, checking for fevers, dispensing liquid concoctions. Jill hadn’t learned anything new about him. He glared at everyone and didn’t invite conversation.

  The next day, the captain set her to scrubbing the decks again. The whole thing, all over again. When Jill came to the middle of the deck, where the Africans had first been when they came on board, where their irons had been cut off, she found blood. Drops, smears, and stains of it marring the planks. She scraped with the stone, pressing as hard as she could, ’til the muscles in her arms cramped, but she couldn’t get the wood clean. Choking up, her throat tightening with tears, she kept scrubbing. She’d clean it, make it shine, if she worked hard enough, scrubbed fast enough.

  Startled, she nearly fell over when a hand touched her shoulder. Gasping, Jill saw Captain Cooper standing over her. The pirate’s hand rested on her shoulder, then pulled away.

  “It’s all right, lass. Leave it,” she said, and walked away.

  Slouching, Jill dropped the stone and watched her go.

  Another two days passed.

  Jill learned to sail. She learned that the Diana was a schooner, and while it might have seemed impressive, it was a speck next to a Spanish treasure galleon or an English ship of the line, or so the sailors told her. She learned about foremasts and mainmasts, yardarms and rigging, the bowsprit, larboard and starboard, fore and aft. She learned to tie knots and trim sails. At sea, ropes were called lines. She learned the commands that Cooper and Jenks shouted that made the crew scramble like they were a colony of ants, swarming to this sail or that rope—line—and making the changes that caused the ship to speed up, slow down, heave one way or another, plowing the waves in a different direction. Depending on whether the sails were furled or unfurled, and how, the ship behaved one way and not another. Even if Jill stayed on the ship for years, watching, she wouldn’t understand all the details. Many of the crew had, in fact, worked on ships since they were children.