Deluded Your Sailors (23 page)

At table with the Truscotts, that evening, I ate with them for the first time not as an invalid but as a guest, and this change called for an entirely new chart of manners. Gritting my teeth against their scrapes and slurps and licked fingers, I looked at them, made conversation with them. After the exercise of the day, the climbing down to the beach, then up the hills, I would have much welcomed one more night curled in bed, mashing tack with my tongue against the roof of my mouth. However, I had bolted back to civilization, so my plaster self must be made to smile. Properly witty conversation, however, lay beyond me. It mostly certainly lay far beyond Tom Truscott, who began with, ‘You met the Admiral today.'

I chewed and swallowed with more delicacy – codfish, codfish, codfish – then asked if he meant Lacey. Truscott said, ‘Admiral Lacey. There's none calls him by his surname alone, sir. Offends him. Best remember that.' I remarked how this Admiral Lacey seemed young for his rank and asked when he'd retired from the navy. From there, Truscott offered a treatise on the venerable office of the Newfoundland fishing admiral, a tawdry arrangement of migratory convenience, power, and, sometimes, surrogate judiciary. Before settlement, the strongest fishing captain would take control of an area, reserving the best ground and facilities for himself and his ship. He might be called Lord as well as Admiral, these titles seasonal but weighty. He might then delegate authority to second-in-command, a captain crudely called Lady. These admirals had charters and necessity supporting their authority, but as Truscott told it, authority was an expedient, law a nuisance and profit the goal. Like men anywhere, the admirals could be benevolent, incompetent, or cruel – it was business. Should a man not enjoy life under a particular fishing admiral, there was naught he could do except wait for the next season and hope for someone better, or at least someone else; woe to the conquered. Even today, writing this note, I care naught, fishing admirals being neither of my time nor my concern. Besides, I believe the seasonal despots helped settle the island. Lacey had even arranged to bring women over to Port au Mal. Very cunning man, Robert Lacey, and quick to adapt.

‘So Admiral Lacey,' continued Truscott, ‘still be the fishing admiral, in his way. He arrived first three years in a row, young man, too. And he gave passage to our wives. One year he said he'd take only married men, so we double-hooked the hammocks and only married men crossed. Cramped days, til we landed. Back and forth to the ship then until the houses got built, the Admiral looking after us, food and all. We owe him. He got us across the ocean and through that first winter. There's much to be said for the devil you know, Englishman. Cannard. We called you
Englishman
for so long tis hard to remember you got any proper name.'

‘But you're English, Truscott. We're all English. Why do you mark me out?'

‘I'm Cornish. English was shoved down our throats when ye forced us to eat the Book of Common Prayer. Now we belch it out like the rest of ye. And what of you, then, John Cannard? Bristolman?'

‘Very good, sir. Did my name give it away?'

‘Nay, your accent.'

‘No Bristol speech leadens me, sir. Cambridge has seen to that. My education – I am an Englishman. Indeed, sir, my lands are widespread. I've small holdings in Kent, tenants in Ireland (God help me), and aye, land and houses in Wales. Granted to the family by King James, sir. That is good enough for God and good enough for me.'

I told the lies comfortably, for how would the likes of Tom Truscott ever discover my deceit? I could not claim a blade of English grass. Even those miserable Irish farms had been sold to shore up Cannard and Son and to build my
Bonny Jane
. One hundred feet of dependable brig. I'd specified plenty of room for the men to sleep so they might rest without jostling one another.
Bonny Jane
: graceful, pretty, mine.

The following morning I begged to take up work. Lacey would not hear of me going out in the dories, and his command there suited me, for I'd sworn my next taste of salt water would be my last, would be my voyage home. But I needed to make some small gesture of thanks before leaving Port au Mal for Harbour Grace, where I would arrange my passage to England. I told Lacey of my clerking and accounting work for Cannard and Son, of my religious background.

Lacey nodded and gave me an axe. I cut firewood.

Humiliating and exhausting work, this, and very slow, but it drove the last scraps of fever and dreams from me. One afternoon I decided to take a walk and ease my shoulders, so I ventured into the woods behind the Admiral's Hall. Nancy spied me from the stage, bundled up her skirts and ran towards me. I ignored her as long as I could. As she stood next to me, panting a little, asking if I had done with the wood, I wondered if she'd dare bid me to go work at the stage. Unlikely, I reasoned, as dressing fish took delicate hands. Deciding I must begin to set things right, I interrupted her litany of tasks awaiting me and demanded Lacey's whereabouts.

Most helpfully: ‘Admiral Lacey be not here.'

‘I know that, woman, and so I ask you where he is.'

‘He's got business in Harbour Grace.'

At this I felt such a rush of passion I feared apoplexy. My papers and strongbox rotted at the bottom of the sea, but I knew some of the contents. I could at least sketch the contents to the men awaiting me. And after that, start for England.

‘Harbour Grace? Is it near here? How far is Harbour Grace?'

‘Dark flush taking you. Will you sit down?'

‘
How far?

' ‘Days. The Admiral's been gone two weeks now. Sometimes he's gone more than a month.'

‘For Christ's sake, Mrs Truscott, how does he get there? He cannot fly. Truscott will take me.'

‘Tom be out fishing. And he be the Admiral's Lady. He does nothing without Lacey's command.'

‘Talk sense. See now, see my plight. I did be voyaging to Harbour Grace when I got wrecked. I have King's business there.'

‘You said that in delirium.'

‘Then does it not stand to reason it is true?'

‘I got work to be at. If you want to go to Harbour Grace, talk to the Admiral.'

‘When does he return?'

‘I know not. But I can tell you this: he will not take you.'

Disgusted, I turned quickly from her and strode to the grave of my men. Fog and rain already marked the plank. In another few summers the gouged words might be quite worn away. Of course I would be long returned to England. Who would remember
Bonny Jane
then?

That night, I asked Truscott directly to bring me to Harbour Grace. ‘It is my true destination. Truscott. You must, in the name of the King and all that is right, take me there.'

‘How do you see that?'

‘See what?'

‘See I must. Our charity not enough? You receive comfort like cold porridge. Thrown out of the sea, breathing and sound, not even a broken bone.'

‘I lay feverish sick for months.'

‘Hundreds of miles of broken coast, and you drifted to the shore of an English settlement. See that first. Second, you need see with mine and the Admiral's eyes. This be a new settlement, and delicate. The Jackmans' boy be the first child born here to live his first year. Good lungs. Could hear that one cry a mile off. God suffers our presence here. But we've seen no decent catch for four years now. Tomorrow we might catch more than the whole season. And when we catch naught, it is time to set traps and haul wood. Winter is a few days from now.'

‘You exaggerate, Truscott. Tis but the end of August.'

‘A few days to work what remains. A day's work undone now means a week's famine this winter, and you will not see that. Did you think you could sit and stare at the sea all day like a blessed mooncalf? Wag your Bristol tongue and lord over us? No. You shall work for every bite you swallow.'

‘I have been working, Truscott, and for very wretched bites and swallows. Could we not just sail on Sunday to Harbour Grace?'

‘Sail? Born with a caul on your face? Still there. Hitch that to a mast. Get out. Go weep at the sea. I be sick of the smell of you.'

I departed, equally sick of him, and as my eyes picked out the fire rocks in the dark, I saw I had been arguing with the wrong man. Only Lacey could help me. I petitioned him promptly upon his return, so promptly that his boots still tracked water from hauling a laden dory ashore. Men and women made quick work of unloading that dory as Lacey heard me out. His ketch,
Boyne
, lay at anchor safely past the fire rocks, and, wading a few steps with him, I fell into the dory. I explained myself further as he rowed back out.

Boyne
lowered goods by block and tackle, and I quickly found myself in the way.

Lacey gestured to the men on
Boyne
and watched the cargo descend. ‘Take the spare oars and help me row us back. I need your help on shore. We'll discuss this once we've unloaded.'

Back on shore, both of us soaked, Lacey waved at Boyne, and the ketch made moves to depart.

‘Admiral Lacey, have you heard naught? I must get to Harbour Grace. Please, sir, you must help me row out to
Boyne
. At once.'

‘Absolutely not. That ketch is due elsewhere. Mind that fatback!'

‘Then give me a boat, a chart, and a compass. I'll row to Harbour Grace myself.'

‘Mr Cannard, please. Each dory is used each day by a fisherman. A compass, if I owned one, would be useless. Myself, I think tis the rock here sets a compass to dancing. Likely now it played a part in your wrack. How long would you last in a dory, pray? And a chart? Do you think this is the Admiralty Office? I am but a landed fishing admiral, and one of a vanishing breed at that. I have no way of getting you from here to anywhere else. Flour, one hundred pounds –'

By now we'd reached his Hall. ‘Then I am your prisoner.'

‘No. Necessity's. And necessity calls out work only a lettered man may do. God, man, you've gone death pale. You see those barrels there against the wall? You'll be leaching from them soon enough.
Boyne's
skipper knows when to come fetch me. He is indebted to me, like all the fishermen here. I sell their catch, then buy food and gear and dole it out accordingly. How much they eat correlates to how much they catch. But there be a year's gap, for I buy in advance, the spring before they go out, then pay last year's debts with this year's catch. Precise calculating, I can tell you. Keeps me up many a night, figuring fair. Not one bite more than they're worth, unless they wish to lengthen the debt. Indebture, I call it, abeysance and indebture. Now I would think, John Cannard, that lists and figures is work more fit for your talents than chopping wood or catching fish. I'll be blunt: I'd be mighty feared to set you out on the water, for you'd slip overboard in no time, if you weren't shoved. So I invite you to be my clerk.'

My voice caught on the necessary speech. ‘You are very gracious, Admiral Lacey.'

‘You can sleep here now, in the Hall. I'll need you to start with the cataloguing of what I have brought back from Harbour Grace and what we salvaged from your ship. When you have finished, we can work out conversion tables from the catalogues of what food exists and what each man caught. Then there be the advances I spoke of. By God, I can't tell you how much I need the help.'

If invisible Newfoundland lies pinned to my table, then Benvolio hides, far off the edge and part way to my wall. Runciman's interests in Benvolio, revolution's warp and woof, might have been directed by that hushed foreign policy kings did not acknowledge. Wren, my unfortunate captain
,
told me four days out he could smell Runciman off me. When I asked how Wren knew Runciman, Wren hesitated. ‘By his trade. Some men call him
Owl
. It will work as a strange reference for you, this task, for it will be only men of Runciman's cut will hire you from here. Tis thick money.'

Here in my telling one winter's night in 1754, Aurelius Jackman interrupted, asking me, ‘What be an owl?'

I sighed. The first child born here to survive his first year, the man grown from the snotnosed brat hovering with the women at the stages my first day on my feet, and he did needs ask me what is an owl. ‘The bird of Pallas Athene. A night bird. Great staring eyes that nictate. It calls hoo, hoo, like the question. It – there must be owls in the woods here?'

Jackman looked at me slyly. ‘Gulls cry out like people.'

‘Fine, fine, like a gull then.'

‘Yet how is it a man – that Runciman – might look like a bird?'

I could have recanted the Apostles' Creed. ‘He simply did!'

‘A scavenger then?'

I banished Aurelius Jackman. ‘Out, out! You have sucked my patience dry. Begone, man, until I might stand the sound of an idiot more.'

I will not resume that story.

16) MENHIR
L
ATE SUMMER
1723, I
SLE OF
B
ENVOLIO
,
AS TOLD
J
UNE
1734
TO
L
IEUTENANT
J
OHN
K
ELLY
, RN,
BY
C
APTAIN
C
HRISTOPHER
M
ATTHEW
F
INN
.