Cast Off (13 page)

I swallowed the lump that had swelled in my throat. “This is too much. I can't possibly repay—”

“Don't go crying like a girl now,” Goth said, making my lump double in size from fear. “Think of it ath a welcome aboard from your new mateth.”

“Albert Jochims!” called Louis Cheval from across the deck, pronouncing my name in the French fashion.

Louis trotted up to us, smiling. “'Ello, Albert Jochims. I am 'appy to see you are alive. Are you French like your name?”

“I'm afraid not,” I said, relieved that Louis seemed not to recognize his old hat on my head.
“Mais je parle français très bien
.
”

Louis looked aghast. “Please, Albert, never do that again. Your French is too 'orrible. But we can be friends anyway.” Turning to Bram, he said, “
Monsieur
Bram, I 'ave a message for you from the captain.”

“Aye?” Bram said.

“ 'E would like you to join 'im for dinner tomorrow.”

'Twas usual for De Ridder to sup with his officers, and most days he added a crewman or two, picked 'cause they did something extra. Today that crewman was me. But I was asking myself, was the something extra hiding a stowaway or steaming all those barrels?

I could hardly keep my eyes open after downing what must've been a gallon of wine. With the ship's beer stores long drunk, I was used to just three little cups of gin a day. Plus all the slimy water I could drink. 'Twas good to have all your teeth, 'cause they kept the water worms from going down your throat, though the scum did turn 'em green. Come to think of it, the water at the captain's table was hardly wormy at all. Seemed the officers got a better class of bever than we crew.

The captain's table was something to behold. Each man had his own plate and we drank out of glasses so fine I feared I might snap mine in two if I held it too tight. Even the salt came in a fancy silver pot.

Every couple of minutes the captain would jump up and say, “Why, gentlemen, we can't have you looking low! Allow me to refill your glasses.” Well, no wonder our glasses needed refilling when every cove at the table felt like it was his duty to offer a toast—or three—to Holland, to wives and sisters at home, or to “catching a fish,” which was another way of saying taking a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure. The law said if two nations was at war, 'twas fair for the ship of one country to plunder the ship of another. Now, my mind couldn't work out the difference between this and what pirates do, but I wouldn't say no to my share of the purse.

I got my toast out of the way early on: “To fair skies and following seas!” Petra'd told me that's what the letters spelled on the fancy needlework that hung on the captain's wall, and I couldn't think of anything better.

The rule was that no man at the captain's table could speak without the captain speaking to him first, and I was glad of it, since I had no idea what to say to all those officers and high-ups. When De Ridder finally called on me, the glazed goose in my belly turned to stone.

“Mister Broen. I've seen you hard at work these last weeks. Well done.” I perked up a bit. Maybe 'twas making the barrels and not hiding Petra that got me invited. “Your efforts at repairing the rigging were quite impressive.”

“Well, sir, my mother's people was fishermen, so I know a fair bit about rigging.” During the years Pa was at sea, which was most of my life, I'd lived with my ma and her family on Java.

“Were they?” he said. “And do you know how to swim?”

“I do, sir.”

“Such a useful skill,” boomed Isaack Van Swalme, the VOC's rep and the most important cove on the ship. Nary a hair graced the man's head, but he made up for it with a white mustache that swooped down from his upper lip under his cheeks and up to his temples like a topsy-turvy heart. Plus two blobs of beard stuck on his chin like fat cotton balls. The whole effect was ridiculous, if anyone asked me, which they didn't. “Did you dive for crustaceans or was it just nets and boats?” The merchant's voice seemed to float over the table from a league away.

“We did both, sir.”

“Ever find a pearl, Bram?” Midshipman Johann Majoor leaned in like it was time for dessert, which, I'm sorry to say, it wasn't. 'Twas the first time he'd spoken to me like a mate. He was an officer, as was his right by high birth, and I was crew and always would be. The wall between us didn't allow for friendly conversation.

“Just little gray ones.” Majoor looked let down, so I said, “But my cousin found one once as big as his thumbnail.” I didn't tell him that nine people ate for a month thanks to that pearl.

“Pearl fishing is an unreliable business,” said Van Swalme, cotton balls bobbing while he chewed.

“I'm sure you can tell us a better one,” said Clockert.

Van Swalme pegged the doctor with a stern eye. “I most certainly can, gentlemen. African slaves.”

A murmur went round the table.

“Have you experience in the industry?” the captain asked.

“I do not,” said Van Swalme, mopping up red sauce from his plate with a piece of gooseflesh and stuffing it into his mouth. “But I mean to. It's the only form of private trade permitted by the Dutch West India Company and as such has none of the bureaucracy we merchants suffer in the East. New Netherland has a dire need of slave labor—Stuyvesant is practically begging for hands to build his fortresses and till his fields in New Amsterdam. A smart man can fill a ship in African Angola with four hundred slaves at fifty-five florins a head and unload them in the Caribbean for two hundred eighty. Then he sails up to New Amsterdam to fill his hold with lumber and skins for the journey back to Europe and repeats the process until he retires in comfort.”

I didn't like this talk of slavery. I'd seen too much of it on Java, and if I went back there, my own life would be almost near as bad. But Clockert was like a dog after a bone.

“Fascinating,” he said. “Mister Van Assendorp, I believe you've spent some time on slave ships, have you not?”

“I have,” said the commander of soldiers. His white scar stood out on his weathered face like a crescent moon in a dirty sky.

“What do you think of
Monsieur
Van Swalme's assertions that slavery is our next growth industry?” Clockert asked.

“I wouldn't presume to guess, sir,” Van Assendorp said. “Mister Van Swalme is a successful gentleman merchant. I'm only a soldier.”

“What was it like, Commander? Is it true the slaves eat their own young?” It had to be the wine that made Majoor bold enough to ask, because any dolt should know that a slave ship had to be the closest thing to hell on earth or sea.

“The Africans are devil worshipers,” said that cod's head Van Swalme.

“There isn't a man, woman, or child among them that isn't spending every waking second trying to kill himself rather than be a slave,” Van Assendorp said. “The crew spend much of their time trying to prevent suicide.”

Those slaves knew what was in store for 'em and they'd rather be dead. I couldn't say I'd feel otherwise if I was in their place.

“My very point indeed,” said Van Swalme. “Murder and suicide are mortal sins.”

“As is the wasting of good food,” said the captain, who clearly had no liking for the direction the parley had taken. “Slippert!”

The steward poked his whiskered face around the door. “Sir?”

“More goose, please.”

“Right away, sir.” Slippert backed out of the cabin.

“An excellent dinner, Captain.” The cotton balls on Van Swalme's chin was stained blood red from the duck sauce. “You are fortunate in Happy Jan.”

“Thank you, Isaack. Yes, Jan joined me two voyages ago in Cape Town. He had tired of being a supplier in the black trade and desired a fresh beginning. I am fortunate in much of my crew. Van Plaes has sailed with me since I was first mate and he a midshipman on the
Full Moon
.”

“Sheep will always follow a strong shepherd,” said Van Swalme.

“Yes, well, I know little about sheep, but it has been my experience that loyalty follows respect, and respect must be mutual,” the captain said.

The recipe works 'til you add three million florins to the pot. I was sober now but wished I wasn't. My head was crammed with pictures of dead African slaves and of Captain De Ridder, marooned by his greedy crew on some lonely island with a one-shot pistol and a sack of salt pork and dried peas.

The sun had peaked when my new messmates and I ate brown beans and salt cod from a shared bowl in the waist. The day was hellishly warm, and the crew sprawled on the deck, stockings and jackets off, sweating through their shirts and trousers. I felt no better with my wounds stinging and my bandages growing damp. Poor Bram. It must have been hotter still in the captain's cabin where he was supping.

Jeronimo Lobo the gunner, who wore his shabby sailor's jacket like an aristocrat's frock coat, raised his cup. “To our new mate, Albert Jochims!”

Paulus tapped Jaya's cup with his own, and as one, they all took a swig of gin. I followed and gagged on the fire, but it was better than slimy green water.

I lifted a ship's biscuit to my mouth, when Lobo shot out a hand to stop me. “Like this,” he said. He rapped the biscuit on the deck and small insects scurried out. “Tastes better without the weevils.” He grinned, giving me an opportunity to appreciate white teeth whose shine matched the gleam of his gold earrings.

The decks were crowded with men seeking fresh air in the hot weather. German, Swedish, Polish, French, Flemish, Portuguese, and Malaysian mixed with Dutch to create a seafaring lingo that was somehow understandable to everyone on board, although not, as yet, to me.

Behind our group, the Polish trio—the smith, the gun maker, and the sword keeper—were eating together. I knew them from Bram's drawings. The sword keeper was a small wiry man who could boast of having all his teeth but no tongue since he lost his in a bar fight in Tangiers. He approached our group and waited for the men to notice him. When they did, the sword keeper removed a leather cloth from inside his jacket and slowly unwrapped it to reveal a gleaming new short knife. Why the knife was called “short” was beyond me, but all sailors carried them and called them so. The single-edged blade was about six inches long and blunt at the end, with its handle wrapped in twine for a good grip. To my surprise, the sword keeper bowed and presented it to me.

“He says it is having good balance with sharp edge that cuts one hundred sharks to pieces,” Kosnik the enormous smith said in passable Dutch. I had to wonder how the tongueless sword keeper managed to communicate all that to his mate.

Lobo took the knife from me and tapped another biscuit on the deck. When the weevils scurried out, he sliced one clean in half.

“She's beautiful,” I said to the sword keeper, taking back the knife. “I shall use it well.” The knife would be infinitely useful. I was already thinking about the sheath I would make so that I could wear it on my hip as the crew did theirs.

The sword keeper crossed his fists over his heart. The letters tattooed on his knuckles spelled
angelika.

After the sword keeper rejoined his mates, Lobo said, “All right, Jochims, out with it.”

“Out with what?” I said, my mind clouded with gin and heat.

Little Louis Cheval plunked down next to me. “'Ow did you stow away?
Why
did you stow away? And 'ow did you not to get caught for three months?”

The eyes of all my new messmates were on me, as well as those of a good portion of the other men on the fo'c'sle. Once again, I decided the truth—even a partial one—was easier to tell than a lie.

“I stowed away because of a personal matter, gentlemen, and I'm sorry I can't say more than that except I'm not in any trouble with the law—”

“You're the only one here, then,” said Lobo, and the others laughed.

“I hid in the hold,” I continued, “and only came out at night for food. Happy Jan caught me once, but I told him I was Van Swalme's boy and he let me go.”

“You want to steer clear of 'appy Jan for a while,” Louis advised. “'E won't like being tricked.”

“Louis's right,” Paulus said, a frown on his freckled face. “Don't cross Happy Jan. The cove made slaves of his own people.”

“How?”

“When he live in Angola, Happy Jan capture other Africans and sell to slave traders for money.” Jaya leaned over and spit betel juice through the rail. “Keep far from him. A man such as this would sell his own mother.”

I vowed that I would.

“It seems you did more at night than take food from the galley,” Lobo said, changing the subject.

“I can't deny it.” I felt myself blush. “It was I who made all the mischief on board, cobbling sails and sharpening swords. I'm sorry if I put anyone out.”

“No, no. We are grateful. You did much work for many of us,” Jaya said. “Tell us. Was it also you who made my staves?”

“Not I, sir,” I said, hoping my face didn't look as hot as it felt. “I'd no part in your staves.”

“That was Bram, remember, Jaya?” Paulus said. “Now, Jochims, you left out the best parts of your story: How'd you come aboard and why'd you come out?”

“I came aboard with the chickens,” I admitted, grateful to Paulus for turning the conversation from my secret activities, for I was half sure he suspected me of helping Bram. “And I came out because the sailor who carried me lay gutted on Clockert's table and needed my help. It was only fair, gentlemen.”

The sailors relished the idea that Barometer Piet had smuggled me on board without knowing it and that I in turn had found a way to repay him.

“Welcome to the sea,
Monsieur
Jochims,” said Louis, raising his cup. “A merry life and a short one!”

“Longest liver takes all!” offered Lobo.

All the sailors nearby cheered and slapped the deck. Except for Kaspar Krause, who huddled in a corner staring out to sea.

Paulus followed the direction of my gaze. “He's been demoted, you know.”

“Krause?”

“Aye. Our surgeon's mate is just another ordinary seaman now.” He scanned the nearest mast to the top, barely visible in the relentless glare of the afternoon sun. “Hope he has a good grip.”

I thought the only good grip Krause had was on a bottle. “I didn't mean—”

“No one says you did, Jochims. A ship has no room for lubbers,” said Jaya in a voice loud enough to carry to Krause's corner. I knew there was nothing the men hated more than a lazy mate.

Krause pushed himself up and shuffled to the nearest hatch.

“Who's ready for a swim!” shouted a sailor.

“Aye to that,
amigo
!” Lobo leaped to his feet.

Within moments, shirts and breeches went flying.

“I thought the men couldn't swim,” I squeaked. “And what about sharks?”

“No need to worry,” Paulus said, taking off his tool belt. “The men'll rig a sail in the water for a little pool. And they'll tie up the edges so sharks can't get in.”

Stamp my vitals, Bram's father was unlacing his trousers!

Worse, Lobo extended his hand to me, naked but for the tattoos on his— “Come on, Jochims! Have a swim.”