The Wolves of Andover

CHAPTER 10

THE RAT, TO his own knowledge, had never been on dry land. The ship had been the sum total of his world, and had he gone blind, he could have found his way by touch and smell alone from the bottom of the hull, stinking of pig iron and refuse, up to the forecastle, where the teeming seamen hoisted or lowered the square-rigged sails, and aft again to the raised deck where the captain stood, and never wavered, never stumbled, as though his feet had been nailed to the planking.

The captain rarely asked questions of the Rat, and even if he had, the boy could not have answered in words, being mute as he was. But the Rat was quick in his other senses, and the captain had seen fit to have the first mate give him lessons a few hours every Monday in seamanship—navigation and sextant use—and in languages, the written form at any event: English, Dutch, and a smattering of French. Understanding the other languages in their nautical sense was of practical use in case of a quick decision to board another, less agile merchant ship packed with raw goods from the Americas. The captain’s ship was a pinnace. Dutch-built, fast, and shallow in draught, whereas an English ship of a comparable size would need thirty men, the Zwaluw, The Swallow in Dutch, needed only ten able-bodied seamen to rig and maneuver the sails. Every man on the Zwaluw held a cutlass close at hand and could have been called a pirate but for the British royal license to “reconnoiter” other ships perceived to be hostile.

The captain was known to be of Dutch origin, owning the Dutch-sounding name Koogin, and though he could speak the language like a native, he had no accent and spoke English like every other member of the crew. His success in trading with his clients, English and colonial alike, gave testament equally to his indifferent loyalties, his willingness to traverse the Atlantic during the most unfavorable seasons, and his ability to hold his patronage in the strictest of confidence. He never interfered with another man’s livelihood where it didn’t intersect his own interests, so there were no questions asked when five men from London boarded the ship at Plymouth port with passage for Boston.

First on deck from the transport wherry was a man named Brudloe, certainly the group’s leader, and as densely muscled as a pit cur. He grinned tightly at everything, an unpleasant lifting of the lips, expressing mirth that stopped well below eyes that were pinched and distrustful. His gaze shifted restlessly at all times, as though assessing every portal and expecting trouble.

Next on board climbed a tall man with a pallid face and a set of slightly stooped shoulders. There was something menacing hiding behind his soft chin and pale skin that made the Rat suck in his breath. Once Baker caught his eye and slowly winked at him, and it was like watching a great northern shark closing its inner lid before feeding.

After Baker came a man as large as a Lebanon cedar. He clumped noisily onto the deck, already unsteady on his feet though they hadn’t left port, carrying a boy who was only slightly older than the Rat. This older boy looked dead drunk, or drugged, and was quickly conveyed belowdecks.

The last man to climb over the railing was a fop, wearing a shirt with more flounces than a woman’s and a velvet coat. He was called Thornton, and he answered every hail and every instruction with a silent sneer. Whether at rest or in motion, Thornton had a grace and a barely suppressed energy that might have, with enough experience, made him a superior seaman on the bucking deck of a sailing vessel.

Once the ship was under way, the four older men would often come up to the deck to desperately gulp at the air. But the boy, never; he was always left belowdecks.

The Rat frequently grinned to himself, thinking how quickly the London men’s swagger left them once the ship headed past the Isles of Scilly and the headwaters of the Channel. He often stood in the webbing of the bowsprit and watched impassively the four landies hanging over the sides, their eyes bulging, expecting to see their shoes coming up through their mouths. He himself clung effortlessly to the ropes like a monkey, impervious to their curses and threatening gestures, laughing silently at their distress, and waving extravagantly to the forlorn outcroppings of the Isles to show the Londoners that there would be no more sightings of land for many weeks.

The Rat had heard the captive boy crying from the Londoners’ section of the hold. There were no barriers or separate cabins in the hold, but the four men had hung a blanket for privacy, and when the boy went on sobbing for too long, the Rat could hear first the thud of a swinging boot to the ribs, and then the groan before the captive was kicked into silence again.

The Rat knew, of course, about impressment. The seas would dry up before the practice of kidnapping a man off the docks onto a ship would come to an end. But those who were captured were usually grown men, most of them seasoned on at least one trip on a ship; otherwise they would prove useless, especially on such a small craft, where every sailor had more than one duty to perform. This captive, he was sure, had never before been on a ship and couldn’t have been taken for ransom, as he was ragged beyond simple poor. He had the ground-in dirt of a river urchin, a lifetime spent in the sucking muck of the Thames up to his knees, grubbing for barnacles or bait or a ha’penny accidently dropped into the reeking tidal wash.

One day he heard an odd, repetitive moaning, like chanting, coming from the captive, and he realized the boy had been mindlessly singing to himself. The boy’s voice had a high-pitched quavering sound, like a wounded bird, or like a man stuttering out his prayers as he’s swaying, storm-ridden, on the yardarms, his fear giving desperate music to the pleading.

The Rat crept beyond the blanket when all the Londoners had gone topside, and crawled to where the boy lay bound with his hands behind his back, his knees drawn defensively up to his belly. He sat awhile looking at the older boy sleeping fitfully, noting the bruised, tender-looking swelling over one eye. As though feeling the Rat’s presence, the boy opened his eyes, which were not brown as the Rat had surmised but the blue of an island shoal. The boy’s brows knitted together, pleadingly, and he opened his mouth to speak. But the Rat heard the ponderous, slapping footfalls of the men returning, and he darted away into the shadows. From behind stacked barrels of powder he watched the men’s shadows thrown up by lantern light against the curved ribs of the hold.

The Londoners talked amongst themselves of plans and schemes, their voices getting louder the more rum they drank. They bragged of their fights and the prodigious pay for their robberies and murders, conversing at length of the man in the new England they were sent to capture or kill, or die trying.

Baker, the soft-spoken man with the eyes of the dead, talked of the plague ten years back and of the numberless bodies stacked in the pit at Houndsditch. Frequenting the Pye Tavern hard by the burying grounds, Baker would place winning bets on the exact number of dead piled onto the passing carts, like guessing the number of beans in a bottle.

But as the days went on, the ship heaving and creaking through stiff westerly winds, the men grew silent. The group lay on the floor to sleep, to be battered and rolled about, instead of hoisting a proper hammock. Eventually the men left off even dicing and playing cards, spending more and more time topside, leaving their captive alone, seeking through drink to numb their misery only to wake to a rebellious stomach and a throbbing head. In a way, the Rat thought the most pitiable was the oversize Cornwall, who drank the most but could not eat, spending his entire day amidships, his meaty hands grasping at the ropes for balance until he was chased away by the seamen seeking to trim the sails.

As the Rat worked on deck cleaning the chains, or with tar and oakum patching cracks in the deck, he would watch the captain watching the men, the captain’s expression carefully neutral. At one point, Thornton, his fine shirt soiled, the neck lace limp with seawater, approached the captain for a discourse. Without offering the Londoner so much as a “by your leave,” Koogin abruptly turned away, retreating to his quarters.

AT THE STEERSMAN’S strike of eight bells, the end of the middle watch, the Rat woke and lay in his hammock, which swung in a deep pendulum, following the yaw of the ship. He could hear the seaman next to him wake and deftly roll from his own hammock. There was a rustling of a shirt quickly tugged on and then retreating footfalls as the seaman crossed to the ladder to the open deck. Soon, the man he replaced at watch swung himself into the empty hammock and within the space of ten breaths was snoring gently.

It would be another half hour before the Rat had to begin his duties with Cook, and he took his time thinking of the boy, and how it would be to have a true companion. One who could serve as the Rat’s voice, whispering or howling his way through the oft-mapped lines of latitudes and stellar declinations like a singing fish through an invisible net. In all the years spent in the company of seamen, he had never had a shipmate even close to his own age.

The Rat would gladly, if only given the opportunity, share with the boy all his own hard-won knowledge of the ship, not just the trimming of sails or the climbing of the yards, but the listening for the gunshot sounds of a breaching right whale, or the sighting at night, midsummer, of the green glowing ribbons dancing in currents of water so deep they could never be plumbed.

He remembered with a growing anxiety the previous night, when he had overheard the four landsmen arguing over where and when to throw their captive overboard. He had been standing just behind Thornton, coiling a rope, when Brudloe caught sight of him and landed a quick kick to his side, sending him sprawling against the deck. The Londoner glared down at him, the white channel of scars in stark contrast to his weather-burned face, and all motion ceased for the briefest of moments, the seamen poised and wooden in their rigging.

The ship’s boatswain, directing the halyards, roughly brushed passed Brudloe, hauling the scrambling Rat back up to his feet. He bent down and whispered hoarsely, “Maggoty pie.” The Rat grinned widely behind his hand and nodded. He was to change out that very morning a fresh fish for an old one on top of the flour barrel. A dead fish, with its rotting flesh, was used to bring the maggots up out of the flour. He would later take the worm-ridden, stinking carcass and roll it into Brudloe’s blanket.

The Rat wasn’t certain if the captain knew of the plans for the bound boy, but he had felt a growing tension in the captain’s demeanor, like a rogue wind pulling a sail tight against its rigging.

After his morning duties with Cook, he stood on the open deck and happened to see the captain leaning down towards him from the halfdeck, a deep furrow between his brows. His eyes flicked ahead to the cresting waves, peaking at fifteen feet or more, and then back again. “Boy,” the captain called to him. He motioned for the astonished Rat to come up the ladder and stand beside him. The wind whipped stingingly at them on the raised deck, and the two swayed in unison for a moment in silence, each hunching into his own shoulders for greater warmth.

The captain brought out his compass, the thirty-two-point placard that rotated magically beneath the true needle, like the single rose the boy had once seen in the captain’s quarters floating in a bowl of rainwater. The captain’s eyes then raked over Cornwall, clinging miserably to the grating over the weathered deck, where he had fallen moments before. The forecastle of the ship plunged into a trough as the ship came about for the tack, spraying the struggling Londoner with frigid seawater.

“Do y’know what signals a good seaman, boy?” the captain suddenly roared, looking pointedly at Cornwall. The Rat cocked his head to show he was listening. “Knowing best when to cut a bad line.”

He then dismissed the Rat, but called after him in Dutch, “Het donderend geluid, jungen!” Thunder comin’, boy!

LATER THAT NIGHT, the Rat learned from Cook that the captain would be inviting the four landsmen to eat in his quarters. In addition to rum, the Rat was told, the captain would be offering a bottle of Madeira steeped in wormwood.

“Which will, Rat,” the cook barked, “give them fuckin’ landies a long sleep and a relief from the pukes, and afterwards, a fuckin’ head from Hell.” The cook laughed, but then quickly frowned, pointing belowdecks. “It’s a shame, that. What’s goin’ on below.” The Rat nodded his head in agreement, sadly staring at the boards below his feet.

At four bells on the first dogwatch, the four landsmen drew straws for who among them would be declining the captain’s invitation, staying behind in the hold. It would have taken a cretin not to know that it signaled a long walk on a short deck for the bound boy that night. The Londoners had been too puffed up and careless in talking of their plans of ridding themselves of the boy and taking his share of some unspecified bounty for the entire crew not to have heard. A blind spot between the masts, a moment’s distraction, and the bound boy could be shoved over the railings in the blink of an eye. And who was to prove it was not an accident?

The Rat had not heard the boy crying the whole of the day and he suspected even the captive knew his time was drawing to a close. He also suspected the landsmen were unaware of the battering storm beginning to bear down on the ship.

Soon the three passengers Brudloe, Thornton, and Cornwall, led by the Rat, were groping their way aft across the open deck, leaving their companion, Baker, behind with the captive. The wind had taken on a new, shrieking quality, tearing steadily from port-side, as the three landsmen struggled into the rear galley for the captain’s meal.

Brudloe, the first blown into the aft quarters, cast his eyes immediately on the open decanter of Madeira skating across the tilting table, and said, “Damn me, Captain, if it’s not a vicious blow.”

The captain looked at the huddled three, damp and reeking as doused dogs, and answered carefully, “Yes. It may even come upon us rough tonight.” Then he turned his back on the men and, handing the Rat another bottle, told the boy, “Give this to the man below.” And then in Dutch, he added quietly, “Wel opletten dat hij het drinkt, hoor.” And make sure he drinks it.

As the Rat departed, he uncorked the bottle and sniffed the contents. A dark, unctuous smell riding below the sweetness of the wine brought to mind the tar he used for plugging the hull; but deeper still was the odor of a Danish mast, freshly planed, still weeping sap.

He took the bottle and, on his way to the landsman’s tuck, counted eight heads: all the able-bodied seamen along with the carpenter. The crew had been sent below, clearing the decks for the worst part of the storm. The only men on deck now would be the steersman and the first mate watching the pattern of the cresting waves.

The Rat found Baker sitting on a weighted barrel with his back and arms pressed into the steeply curved hull, his legs dancing from one side to the other as he attempted to stay aright against the violent pitch of the ship. The Rat saw a bucket close by his feet that held the bile from the man’s last meal. Baker’s face had taken on an ashen shade of gray, his eyes pressed tightly shut. He was shivering, the air from the more northerly latitudes suddenly cold and saturated with a creeping damp.

The captive looked up at him from his place on the floor. Carefully, but deliberately, the boy’s lips parted and he mouthed the words “Help me.”

The Rat’s eyes quickly darted to Baker’s face but the man’s lids were still closed, one hand now clamped firmly over his mouth, damming up whatever bit of remaining stew threatened to spill from his gullet. A thought as brief as lightning crossed the Rat’s brain: to make a grab for the boy and hope for aid from the crew. But the first rule of the ship was to be deaf and blind to the doings of the passengers.

In that moment, Baker opened his eyes and startled to see the Rat standing there. He spied the bottle of Madeira and, with an unsteady hand, reached out to take the proffered gift. His fingers, uncallused and cold, made the Rat think of the fish on the flour barrel.

“This from your captain?” Baker croaked.

The Rat nodded, gesturing that the man should drink. Baker uncorked the bottle and poured some of the wine into his mouth. He swallowed, shuddering violently, and said, “Boy, give me that blanket.”

Crumpled next to Baker’s feet was a thin quilt that had slipped off the man’s restless shoulders. But the Rat, instead, picked up another blanket, one he had expertly rolled into a tight bolster. As the blanket unfurled, it spilled from its innards the rotting fish that was meant for Brudloe to find. The carcass lay on the floor in gelatinous pieces, a heaving mass of maggots that had gained momentum from the blanket’s warmth. The stench rose up and filled the small space like an uncovered burial trench.

A sudden lurch of the ship loosed the bottle from Baker’s hand. The bottle went rolling wildly astern, spilling the rest of the dark liquid onto the boards. Baker, cursing, began to retch again into the bucket.

He groaned wildly, coughing and gnashing his teeth. The ship, hit with a wave broadside, juddered massively, knocking Baker off the barrel. He lay on the tilting boards, panting and tearing at his hair. When next he looked at the Rat, all of his former composure was gone. The Rat had seen the look before; seasickness, day after day, hour upon hour, unhinged some landsmen to the point of madness.

At the ship’s heaving to port, Baker staggered to his feet, tearing his way through the hastily rigged partition. He looked desperately about, the startled crew, only partially illuminated by the wildly swinging lanterns, remaining silent and watchful.

“Air… I must have air…” He was thrown hard against the foot of the main mast, where he steadied himself, tightly grasping at the wooden pillar with both arms. “I must go on deck,” he pleaded, his knees buckling.

The carpenter, showing teeth the color of cloves, called out, “There’s a storm out there, man. You’ll be crossin’ an open deck.”

Baker, seeing the Rat nearby, balancing expertly against the movement of the ship, jabbed a finger at him and shouted, “Him. He’s going to take me up.” He tore at the neck of his shirt, raking at his face with his nails. “Take… me… up,” he screamed, retching once more onto his shoes.

It was seventeen paces from the waist of the ship to the ladder topside. Plenty of time for the Rat to palm a piece of rope, hiding it under his shirt, so that he could tie himself to the lifelines already strung across the railing. Most men, especially a landsman, not tied fast to the ship would be swept overboard by the storm waves. He nodded to Baker and motioned for him to follow.

The floor around the ladder was soaked from the hatch above, even though the grate was layered over with oiled canvas, and at the next pitch to the fore, they both slid hard into the rungs. Baker shoved the Rat from behind to climb the ladder quickly, and it didn’t take long for him to beat the framing loose at the hatchway. The Rat crawled onto the deck and waited an instant for the leeward listing of the ship. Using the momentum, he rapidly slid to the port-side railing and tied himself to the lifeline with a slipknot.

Baker came soon after, pulling himself onto the heaving deck. The wind hammered water into his face, blinding him briefly. The ship in that moment had begun its roll to starboard, and the Rat could already see the man’s building terror as he looked through the standing rigging and saw for the first time the towering black water that roiled into collapsing valleys and then upwards to crushing peaks. Baker grabbed at the starboard lifelines in panic.

The spars dipped heavily towards the advancing waves, which crashed over the deck in cascades of stinging foam, and Baker’s eyes widened as if with an immediate, savage awareness that there was no end in sight to the ocean surrounding the boat. The horizon, blended into a gunmetal sky, had become a vast, limitless circle wherein nothing of man’s designs, nothing of the stationary planes and inviolable right angles of land-bound dwellings held sway or could tame the farthest-reaching vanishing point. He once grasped at the rigging to stand, but he could only crawl on his hands and knees as seawater pummeled over the decks in funneling shocks. The Rat instinctively knew that he would not have much longer to wait.

The ship began its methodical tilt to starboard once more but passed beyond its veering arc at forty degrees, dipping farther and farther away from its vertical axis, seeming to settle its mast into the waves that rushed to drown the deck, spilling over the railings in torrents. The Rat closed his eyes, feeling the immense drag of the waves against his tethering rope, until he felt the vessel righting itself, and when he opened his eyes again, he saw the steersman still straining at the whipstaff. When the Rat cut his eyes to the side of the deck where Baker had last been crawling, the man was not to be seen.

The Rat lengthened out the slipknot and slid across the deck to the opposite side, carefully peering over the railing to scan the waves. He was astonished to see that Baker had managed to cling to the ship, both hands entwined in the standing rigging where it was pinned to the outer hull. The man’s fear had given him the strength of desperate action, and he began to climb back up, his feet scrabbling frantically against the gun-port lids and the outboard channel. The man found footing, slipped, then found footing again when the next swelling wave lifted him towards the deck.

Pressed up against the railing, the Rat felt cold metal against his belly, and he remembered a jerry iron tucked into his waistband. The Rat had employed it many times, using its sharp, angled blade to pull old oakum from the seams of planking.

The Rat saw one of Baker’s fine, long-boned, even delicate, limbs reaching, clasping the railing. The Rat pulled from his trousers the jerry iron and brought it down fiercely onto the man’s hand, separating the large joints of his two middle fingers. Baker howled in pain and surprise as his body pitched backwards into the water that swelled up to engulf him.

His chest heaving raggedly, the Rat lowered himself protectively against the inside railing, almost dizzy with the exultant thought that the captive would perhaps now be safe. Now that Baker was dead, he believed, he hoped the crew would help him to ferret the boy away in some hidey-hole belowdecks, bringing him food and water. He would work all the harder for the crew’s approval, making sure the boy did his share of a seaman’s work as well. The Londoners, recovering from their drugged sleep, would think Baker had tumbled over the side in the storm along with the captive.

As the Rat pondered all these things, he watched the raging water but Baker never again broke the waves. For a long time after, the Rat would wonder that a man so determined, so self-possessed and dangerous, should not have recoiled to the surface, if only for the briefest of moments.