Jill woke up cramped, uncomfortable, with a headache that grew worse, throbbing at her temples, when she tried to sit up, which she couldn’t do very well because she was rolled into a hammock. The ship was still rocking, and the hammock, suspended from the beam above, swung with the motion. Like the rest of the ship, the room she was in smelled of damp wood, salt, and slime, and it was dark. The only light came in through the hatch at one end. Bright sunlight. Even though she was twenty feet away from it, she squinted and turned away. Some dream this was. She ought to be able to skip over this part.
Her head hurt every time she moved.
She was below the main deck. Hammocks hung from every beam, maybe two dozen of them, in a space that didn’t seem very large. Most of those were empty, swaying with the creaking ship. The few bodies that lay sleeping here didn’t seem much better off than she was; they were either snoring in deep sleep or groaning in hungover pain.
“There you are, awake at last!” Henry climbed down the steep stairs and blocked the sunlight from the hatch. Jill wondered how she’d made it down those narrow steps last night.
A couple of the others moaned louder and grumbled insults at Henry, who grinned at them.
Henry came over to her and loomed. She rolled out of the hammock just to keep him from staring down at her. Her balance still wasn’t working right, though; she landed on her knees and had to hold on to the hammock’s ropes to keep from falling further. She glared at him.
“Bright eyed and ready to start the day, I see.”
“I want to go home. This is a mistake.” Slowly, moving her head as little as possible, she pulled herself to her feet.
“Nonsense. You signed on, you’re crew now. Time to get to work.”
She wondered if this was punishment—she’d wanted to get away from her life, and here she’d gotten her wish. Maybe she should just go along for the ride, until she woke up for real.
She wasn’t sure she could let go of the hammock yet. She didn’t seem to be able to stand up straight and kept swaying with the motion of the boat. “What if I say no?”
Henry shrugged. “Then you don’t eat. Or maybe we’ll pitch you over the side.”
Someone laughed. Someone always seemed to be laughing, mocking.
She followed Henry to the steps and up to the deck.
“Is there any water?” she said, thinking a gallon of water would make her feel a tiny bit better.
There was, stored in a barrel on deck at the front of the ship. Henry had recovered her tin cup, which still smelled of rum and sent Jill’s head spinning again. But she drank two cupfuls of water and felt much better.
For another day, she scrubbed decks.
She forgot about being seasick, and forgot about being scared of the pirates. Mostly, it was strange, because they didn’t act like terrifying criminals or happy-go-lucky cartoon pirates. They worked—the chores on board seemed never ending: cleaning, repairing, working on the sails and rigging, working on weapons, sharpening knives and checking pistols. Amidst all that they seemed laid-back, easygoing, enjoying drinking and singing, and they seemed to respect the captain, who stayed on deck most of the day, watching the crew or the sea. Jill supposed that they all had to get along well, or they wouldn’t survive very long cooped up on the tiny ship for weeks at a time.
She kept expecting to wake up from a dream. Being here, among the constant ripple of sails, the forest of mast and rigging, seeing nothing but ocean around them, was so surreal, it couldn’t be happening. When she fell overboard, maybe she’d been knocked on her head and was lying on a hospital bed in a coma. That seemed more likely. But she could smell salt on the air, and she tasted the sea on her lips.
She wondered if her parents were looking for her. Or sitting next to her hospital bed, holding her hand, begging her to wake up. Jill thought she should have known what was happening, if that was the case. She ought to hear her mother yelling at Mandy and Tom in the background.
A third day passed, then a fourth. Jill’s skin dried out and browned, and she could now walk across the deck in a straight line no matter how much the ship swayed.
Henry stopped supervising her on every little chore, but they continued talking. He showed her the ropes, literally, teaching her how the rigging worked, how the sails worked, what they all needed to do when the commands were given, working as a team to keep the ship moving. He seemed to be the youngest one on board, close to her own age even, though it was hard to judge ages here. They all might have been young, but worn out from hard work and living in the elements. Like that grizzled, wiry tour guide.
Jill had the impression that the captain was always watching her—like she still thought Jill was a spy for this Blane guy, and that she’d give herself away eventually. Marjory Cooper was intimidating; Jill felt herself grow smaller under the woman’s gaze. But Cooper was better than some of the others who seemed to study her when they thought no one was looking. Jenks, the bald first mate, for one.
According to the articles the pirates had a law against rape—the punishment was being marooned, set alone on a beach with a bottle of water and a pistol with one shot loaded. Jill would rather not find out how well the ship enforced its own rules, and stuck close to Henry, Abe, some of the crew who’d been friendly to her, and even the captain.
Jill was scrubbing the deck near the wheel—the helm, Henry called it—when Abe called the captain over and handed her a telescope—no, a spyglass. A brass cylinder on a lanyard. The captain brought the instrument to her own eye.
Looking out to what they studied, Jill couldn’t see anything. She squinted into the bright sunlight reflecting off the water, all the way to the haze on the horizon, and saw only ocean. But Cooper and Abe saw something.
“On its way to the market at Havana, I’ll wager. It’s off our course,” Captain Cooper said finally, handing the telescope back. She took the broken piece of rapier from her pocket and suspended it on its string. The length of steel swung for just a moment before pointing solidly in one direction—leaning, almost, in defiance of gravity. West, Jill thought, while the object of their attention was southeast.
It was just a chunk of rusted metal. No magic to it at all. But then, how had she come here? No, it was all a dream, she reminded herself. It didn’t have to make sense.
“But, Captain,” Abe said, wearing his constant wry smile. “We must, yes?”
The captain set her jaw and sighed. “I suppose we must.” She turned away from the rail and hollered, bellowing so that her voice carried over the whole ship, to the top of the masts.
“Ready about! Hoist the colors, ye dogs!”
A cheer went up, adding to the noise, until it sounded like a storm, thunder and rain pounding against wood. Then sailors ran to their duties.
Jenks was at the helm and spun the wheel. The Diana heaved over, tipping as it changed direction. Jill stumbled a couple of steps but didn’t fall, braced, and considered it a victory.
The vessel, which had been traveling peacefully, cutting through waves on what seemed to be a gentle breeze, became fierce. It slammed into the next set of waves, and water sprayed up, over the railing. Sails slacked and rippled, seemingly confused for a moment, before finding the wind again and filling, wide and taut, sounding like cracks of thunder. The ship raced forward. Hoisted on a line, a black flag rose to the top of the mainmast. It showed an image in white: a leering skull, with a sword and stemmed rose crossed beneath it. Captain Cooper’s flag.
Shouting and calling, members of the crew rushed over the deck. It looked chaotic to Jill. No one seemed to have any direction in mind, but the purpose soon began to emerge: several men came from belowdecks carrying armloads of weapons—swords and guns. Others grabbed the weapons and distributed them, until everyone was armed.
Henry passed by with a sword in hand, and Jill held his arm to stop him. “What am I supposed to do?”
He looked at her, looked out to sea, then at the captain. He seemed to be debating whether to annoy Captain Cooper with such a problem. The answer must have been no, because he said, “Well, we’ve seen you’re not a fighter, so you’d best get below.”
But she could fight, she was a fighter, they’d seen her handle a sword and hold her own against Henry. But the captain had been right, and she’d never fought for blood, and she didn’t want to have to kill anyone. So better that she stay out of the way.
Ahead now, Jill could see it—another ship, so far away it looked like a toy, bobbing on the waves. The Diana raced toward it. Jill couldn’t tell which way the wind was blowing—the sails above her seemed to be moving in a storm of breeze, sound, and motion. But the direction didn’t matter, because they were definitely drawing closer to the other ship. It was much larger than the Diana, with three masts and a crowd of sails. But it was slower. While the Diana skimmed over the waves, moving fast and sending up sprays of white, the other ship swayed along at the mercy of the waves.
Jill couldn’t quite bring herself to go belowdecks.
The crew gathered, preparing to attack, and it wasn’t what Jill was expecting. They didn’t look like warriors ready for battle—trained, lined up, weapons prepared. Instead, they stood on the side of the ship, or clung to parts of the rigging, baring their teeth and shouting curses. Some of them fired their guns, making noise and putting black puffs of smoke in the air, which began to smell like burned sulfur. A pair of the cannons had been rolled forward, and doors in the side of the ship opened so the mouths protruded, visible to the other ship. A couple of men held lit torches, waving them over their heads, which seemed like a terrible thing to do on a wooden boat. Others shook their swords, held daggers in their teeth, jumped from mast to deck and back again, and screamed with laughter. A few had smeared lines of soot on their cheeks; a few others had taken off their hats and shaken out their hair to make it wild and tangled.
They looked like madmen.
As they drew close to the other ship, Jill could see the other crew running in a panic. Men on the masts began loosening lines, letting sails hang heavy and useless, leaving their ship effectively helpless, dead in the water. A flag that had been flying on the central mast—it had a red and white pattern, but Jill couldn’t identify it—disappeared.
A man in a fancy, decorated coat stood by the side closest to the Diana and waved a white handkerchief over his head.
The other ship was surrendering without a fight.
The crew of the Diana cheered and fired another round from their pistols. Captain Cooper, who’d been watching the other ship through her spyglass, Abe at her side, lowered the instrument and gave a nod of satisfaction.
“Jenks, prepare for boarding. Let’s put on a good show for them,” she said. The first mate shouted orders. Ropes and hooks appeared, the helm turned, and the sails went slack as the ship slowed and came up alongside the other.
It was all a show. Side by side, the Diana was clearly smaller than the other ship, which was wide, large, and presumably packed with cargo. But it didn’t seem to have any cannons or as many crew members—only a dozen stood on the deck. Maybe it could have outrun them, but it hadn’t even tried. The Diana’s crew had won by intimidation. Somehow, it made them even more frightening than if they had won by force.
The crew who were involved with throwing ropes and hooks over to the other ship continued hanging on the side, brandishing weapons, shouting war cries and insults to the other crew, who watched, backing away from the side, wide-eyed and cowering.
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.