Steel

7 REDOUBLEMENT

She almost shouted, but stopped herself. Her call would carry over the water, and whoever was holding the lantern would escape before anyone reached the spot. Jill jumped from her perch and ran as well as she could, sliding in the sand, following the edge of the forest.

“Tadpole?” Abe said as she came around behind the camp.

“There’s someone with a lantern out there,” she said. Abe got up and signaled, and he and a couple of the pirates followed her, pistols in hand.

As she reached the end of the cover, the light was still there, and she could see the figure of the man holding the lantern.

It was Emory, the surgeon. She recognized his silhouette by the shape of his clothes and the rough cut of his hair.

“Hey,” she said.

Quickly, he turned around and slammed closed the shutter on the lantern.

“Signaling your navy friends, eh?” Abe said, and he didn’t sound surprised. He might even have been amused.

Emory straightened. Jill couldn’t see his expression clearly but imagined him frowning. “You can’t slip by them forever. They’ll find you, eventually, and you’ll all hang.”

“Get on with you, back to camp,” Abe said. The two others grabbed the surgeon by the arms and led him along, pulling him so that he stumbled. “Good eyes again, Tadpole,” Abe said to her.

Jill didn’t feel any better. She spent a moment looking out to the horizon and didn’t see anything, no sign that Emory was signaling anyone in particular rather than randomly flashing the light in the hope that someone spotted him.

Back at the camp, Abe tied Emory’s hands and feet and left him sitting sullenly near the fire. Then he told Jill to get some rest.

Hard to do when Emory slumped against a barrel, glowering at her where she sat in the sand with a thin blanket she’d dug out of the pile of gear from the ship. Jill had the feeling that the crew wouldn’t have bothered keeping him around at all except his skills as a surgeon were too valuable to let go. But it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Except the alternative was probably not just letting him go, but tipping him over the side. That didn’t seem right, either.

“So you’ve thrown your lot in with them for certain,” he said to her in a low voice that didn’t carry. “We could have helped each other.”

“You’re not helping much of anyone,” she muttered.

“What is your name—Tadpole?” She scowled and he chuckled. “Your pardon. It’s Miss Jill, isn’t it? You don’t belong here. I can see that.”

At least someone could.

The others were scattered along the beach, lying stretched out or curled up, snoring, sleeping off the rum, dead to the world after the day of hard work.

“Where are you from, really?” he said.

Shaking her head, she gave a wry smile. “A long way from here.”

“Philadelphia? Boston?” he said. “Or did you cross the Atlantic to get here?”

There was no point explaining it.

“Jill, the Royal Navy will find us, sooner or later. They’ll take the ship and everyone aboard her prisoner. But if you help me, I can save you. I can get you a pardon.”

“Help you, how?”

“Untie me, and we can both escape. Lead the navy here ourselves and collect the bounty on the pirates,” he said.

“Escape and go where?” she whispered. They were in wilderness. The jungle and hills were a solid wall around them.

“We follow the coast. It’s easy.” He sounded desperate and unbelievable.

She was absolutely sure that Emory didn’t care anything about her, only about getting what he wanted. He’d use her and she might or might not get a pardon out of it. At least Cooper and the others seemed to care about her, so long as she was part of the crew anyway.

“If I untied you, what do you think the captain would do to me?”

They both knew the answer: killed, marooned, both. Emory said, “She wouldn’t, not to you. Not to another female.”

Like that would make any difference to Captain Cooper. Jill moved away to spread her blanket on her own patch of sand, to try to sleep.

But she thought about what he’d said. Getting captured by the Royal Navy would certainly be one way of getting out of here. But it wouldn’t get her any closer to home. She could almost sympathize with Emory, though. This was a strange place for him, too. But his path was so much clearer.

Though exhausted, Jill had trouble sleeping in the open, on a sandy bed in a deserted cove. Wrapping the blanket around herself, she curled up in a warm pocket of sand. The air grew surprisingly cool, even in the tropics, as a breeze blew in from the ocean. She wished for a room and a bed. She was never going to get all the sand out of her hair.

Sleep came in fits and starts. The ground kept moving under her, starting her awake. But no, it was only the phantom movement of the schooner’s rocking that her muscles still braced against. Her arms were numb, dead from the endless work of scraping the hull. The blisters and sore muscles were a solid ache. Her head hurt even worse when she closed her eyes. What kind of life was this? How could the others sing and laugh every night? And the waves never quieted, continually rustling, nudging Jill back into consciousness.

Then the watch shouted an anxious hail—someone was coming. In the shadows of the campfire, wavering against the wall of trees and vegetation at the edge of the beach, silhouettes appeared, human shapes emerging to stand in the open.

“Captain!” the man on watch shouted again. More of the crew awoke; their agitated murmurs grew louder.

“Settle down,” Cooper answered. Unlike the others, she didn’t sound sleepy or worried. The woman’s figure joined the wavering shadows. She was upright, fully dressed, moving quickly, as if she’d never gone to sleep. Maybe she hadn’t.

A dozen people—lithe, dark-skinned—had emerged from the trees. Jill recognized their stances, the way they moved—wary, like they were ready for a fight. They held weapons in front of them—swords with short, thick blades. Machetes, maybe. Some of them held long shotguns—muskets, rather. The firelight burnished them and their weapons to a shade of copper.

The captain faced the new arrivals and said, “Nanny?”

One of the shadows stepped forward—a woman, her hair bound tight to her head; wiry, with powerful limbs, wearing a long skirt and a full blouse. She was shorter than the walking staff she leaned on, but could surely use the length of wood as a weapon. She held it as if she could raise and swing it in a moment.

“Marjory,” the woman said in a low voice that carried over the beach. “You bring trouble.”

“I know, Nanny. I’m sorry for it,” the captain said, and Jill was shocked to hear the deference in her voice. Captain Cooper didn’t defer to anyone. She might have been the strongest person Jill had ever met—but Jill wondered if maybe this Nanny was the strongest person Marjory Cooper had ever met.

“Tell me the story,” Nanny said in a broad, round accent. The woman gestured to the central fire, still burning low in its pit of sand. Cooper led Nanny to it, and they sat in its light.

The others who had come with Nanny stayed around the perimeter of the camp, keeping a lookout.

Jill watched the two women at the fire. She didn’t dare approach, though she was fascinated. But now she couldn’t even try to sleep, so she sat up, wrapped in her blanket, and watched.

“We raided a ship of slavers,” Cooper said. “Abe and me raided it—you know how it is. We couldn’t take them back home so we brought them here. It’s the only safe place for them, Nanny. I know you won’t turn them away.”

“You take advantage of my hospitality. We’ve all escaped, we all fight every day to keep the freedom we won. There are still hunters from the plantations crawling through these trees looking for us. How am I supposed to hide all these folk? And how we going to feed so many new mouths?”

“You’ll find a way. We’ve got some stores on the ship we can give you. But I know you won’t let me take these folk to the market in Havana.”

The woman chuckled, a rich, sly sound. “Oh, you won’t do that, or you would have already. I know you, Marjory.”

The captain looked away, just for a moment.

Nanny said, “Let me meet them, speak to them.”

The group of Africans was still at their own camp a little way off from the others, away from the work, the fire, and the pirates. But they had not left; Jill had expected them to just walk away. Nothing was keeping them from leaving—except the jungle and the unknown. The same reason Emory had tried to signal a ship rather than simply walk away.

Jill supposed she could walk away, except that she still didn’t know exactly where she was, still didn’t have any idea how to fend for herself, how to get food or water, and she didn’t know how to get back home. So maybe she did understand them, a little. But then she didn’t have sores around her ankles like they did, from where the shackles had bound them, so maybe she didn’t understand at all.

Nanny went to the group and spoke in a different language. One of them answered her, and a conversation began. Occasionally one of the others would speak up—and the first one who’d spoken would seem to repeat, but with different words. They didn’t all speak the same language, and maybe Nanny didn’t speak the same languages that Abe did. Nanny asked questions, and the one who understood her answered. Even though Jill didn’t understand what they were saying, she stayed awake, listening to the voices lilting like music.

Captain Cooper remained standing nearby, watching. She sent her own crew to sleep, so Nanny’s people were the only ones keeping watch.

The sky had begun to pale when the conversation stopped, and Nanny turned back to Cooper. “You are a pirate,” Nanny said to Cooper.

“So you say,” the captain answered, tired. “What does that make you?”

“A young woman getting old,” Nanny said. “Your orphans, I’ll take them home with me, like you knew I would.”

“Thank you,” Cooper said, and seemed relieved.

“But you owe me,” Nanny said, pointing with the staff.

“Put it on my account, woman.”

The camp began to wake, the fires were fed, voices murmured with greetings of the morning. Jill watched, dazed, still in a dream. When she woke up, she’d be in her own bed, in the modern world, where she belonged.

Nanny had moved off to talk to one of her guards, and the Africans were standing, stretching, as if getting ready for a walk. Captain Cooper came toward Jill.

“Have you been up all night, listening in on us?” the captain said, looking down on Jill with a furrowed brow and a quirked smile. Jill nodded meekly. The captain shook her head. “You’re such a tadpole.”

Jill certainly felt small at the moment.

“Get up, then,” Cooper said. “There’s a group going inland for fresh water. You’ll go with them.”

Jill was tired of work, sweat and dirt, blisters on her hands, and not understanding what was happening. But following orders was easier than arguing. She picked herself up, stretched, tried to brush some of the sand off, and didn’t succeed.

Every new job she was given was worse than the last. Nanny’s people told them that there was a creek with clear, fresh water just a little ways into the forest. The mouth of it was up the shore half a mile. All they had to do was get one of the rowboats, row the barrels there, fill them up, and bring them back.

The barrels were as big as Jill. She could hide inside one if she scrunched up. While others continued scrubbing the hull, Jill helped wrestle the empty water barrels up from the hold, lower them into one of the rowboats, and row to the mouth of the stream, which was narrow, rocky, and crowded with overhanging branches and foliage. The others made her the guinea pig, testing the water every few yards, tasting handfuls of it until it turned fresh. She must have spit out a dozen mouthfuls of briny, mucky water. Then, when they finally reached fresh water that hadn’t been tainted by the tide rolling in from the coast, they had to fill the barrels, load them back in the rowboat, and return to the shore to load the barrels back on the Diana.

She hadn’t understood the phrase “backbreaking work” until the last couple of days. She was beginning to think she’d never done any work at all. She’d had an easy life, wandering on the beach on vacation; she wanted to go back to her easy life.

She had tied her hair up with a scarf to keep sweat from running into her eyes. Her clothing was soaked with it. She was so hot, she only wanted to run into the water and float there, rocked gently by the waves. After helping to guide the rowboat back to the ship, Jill rested at the edge of the sand, catching her breath, feeling the sweat drip off her in rivers. Her face was red and burning.

She didn’t notice that she had stopped next to Nanny, who was watching her, head tilted with curiosity, suppressing a smile.

“You look terrible, girl,” the woman said. Jill nearly cried. She might have whimpered.

“And what’s your story?” Nanny said, leaning on her staff. “Has Marjory found her apprentice to be the next pirate queen?”

Jill shook her head. “I don’t even think she likes me.”

At that, Nanny smiled wide. “Sit down here in the shade. Marjory won’t care if you rest a moment.”

Nanny moved to the edge of the foliage, in a spot of cool shade, and sat cross-legged. She waved Jill over, and Jill followed. The shade felt blissful. She closed her eyes to rest them.

“So, where are you from?” Nanny asked. “No real pirate would row a boat like you did, splashing the water all about.”

Jill sighed. “I’m from a long way away.”

Nanny furrowed her brow and said, “Just how far?”

Maybe because she was a stranger, a disinterested third party without a hold on her, Jill told her everything. Not just the boat tour from the modern Bahamas, falling overboard, and being pulled out by the unlikely Captain Cooper and her crew. But even before then, her frustration with her family, with herself, with her fencing and not qualifying for the world championships by half a second. And the realization that if she didn’t have fencing, she didn’t know what she had, or who she was. She didn’t know why she was here. She was adrift with strangers on a wide ocean.

She finished, rubbing her hand over her gritty hair, staring out at waves crawling up the beach a dozen yards away, at the blue morning sky. Her eyes stung, but she hadn’t cried. She felt wrung out and tired, though. Like now that she’d told the story, told everything, she was empty. Ready to be filled up by sun, wind, and waves.

“Captain Cooper seems to think it’s all tied up in that broken piece of sword,” Jill said, and sighed. “But as far as she’s concerned it’s not about me, it’s about this Blane guy.”

“Yes. Edmund Blane. Your captain—”

“She’s not my captain.”

Nanny raised a brow and gave her a look. Jill shut up. “Your captain has good reason to hate him and will fight him if she can. If she thinks you have a way for her to get to Blane—she’ll keep you close. You and that bit of sword.”

“Can that little piece really find him?” Jill said.

“I think—I think the sword will want to be whole again.”

“And will that help me get back home?”

Dark eyes shining in a shadowed, sculpted face, Nanny shifted her grip on her staff and looked out at the sea and the crew still scrubbing the hull of Diana, and the others working on the beach, slow but steady. Her expression remained wry.

“Sometimes you can’t go back. These people, these stolen slaves, maybe they go back someday. Probably not. So you go forward instead. Don’t find your place in the world, make your place. I was a girl, stolen from home in Africa. I still dream of going back. But here, I have a calling, taking care of these people. I can’t argue that. Maybe you’ll get back to where you came from, but is it really home?”

Jill wiped her eyes, which were threatening tears again.

From the hills deep within the forest, the sudden noise of barking dogs sounded. Activity on the beach stopped a moment.

Nanny looked up and frowned. Planting her staff, she used it to pull herself to her feet. “We’ve got to move.”

“What is it?”

“Plantation foremen’s hounds tracking us.” She called out to her people.

Jill stood, gingerly straightening cramped muscles and aching joints. “What if they find you?”

She chuckled. “They won’t find us.”

“But what if they come here?”

“Oh, they won’t mess with Marjory’s crew. Good luck to you.”

“Thanks.”

“And if Marjory asks you to be her pirate queen apprentice, tell her no. That girl is trouble.”

If Jill hadn’t been so exhausted, she might have laughed. Nanny squeezed her arm with her calloused, bony hand, and strode across the beach where her people had gathered. The Africans stood with them, stretching their muscles, looking into the jungle with a mix of hope and trepidation. At least they had hope. Abe stood by and waved a farewell as they trekked into the trees, and away.

The work went on.

That night at suppertime, the crew gathered around the fire, and everyone moaned and complained about sore muscles and blisters. Some of the crew had gone hunting and killed one of the feral pigs that roamed the jungle, and they celebrated the good roast meat. Even Jill enjoyed the fresh food, though she wasn’t happy seeing the pig butchered. She decided she preferred fresh meat that came wrapped in plastic.

When she had her tin plate of food and mug of rum, she found Henry and sat near him.

Jill leaned close and spoke softly, “Why does Captain Cooper have it in for Edmund Blane? What happened?”

Henry glanced at her. “How much have you heard already?”

“Nothing, really. The captain hates him, from the way she talks about him. I didn’t know his whole name until Nanny told me.”

He chuckled. “Grandy Nanny is a right fierce woman, isn’t she?”

“How does Captain Cooper know her?”

“Not sure, it was before my time. But I know there’s a story there. Nanny was a slave on a plantation, but escaped. She’s been helping others do likewise ever since. You say her name in Kingston, and the white folk’ll curse you down the street.”

“She sounds like a hero to me,” Jill said.

He shrugged. “We don’t get to decide who the heroes are, do we?”

He was right, she supposed. “What about Blane?”

Henry watched the fire a moment and took a drink of rum. “He’s evil. He’s the kind of pirate that other pirates despise. How’s that for a hated man?”

“What’s he done?” Jill asked.

“What hasn’t he? Burned, destroyed, raped, looted. He’ll give a ship quarter, then slaughter everyone aboard. I don’t know what exactly he did to our Captain Cooper, but I do know they started a voyage on the same boat, and when it ended he had the boat and she was a castaway.”

However Jill felt about Captain Cooper, even that shred of story made her angry at Blane on Cooper’s behalf.

“If he’s so bad, how does he even get a crew to sign on with him?” Jill asked.

“Because some men like the kind of power he has. It’s like they hope it’ll brush off on them. But they’ll end up worse than the folk we rescued off that slave ship.”

“And Captain Cooper wants to take revenge on him.”

“I expect so.”

“What’ll she do when she finds him?”

“Oh, that’s an easy one. She’ll try to kill him. We’re all headed for a battle with him and his ship. We followed him to the Newark, where we found you—and nothing but wreckage. Then he got away from us.”

The singing started again, and the drinking progressed in earnest until Jill could smell the rum on the air. Captain Cooper, out for revenge, was apart, perched on a barrel, looking to the sea, as if she could find Blane just by staring at the horizon.

And what did any of it have to do with Jill?

Maybe you’ll get back…. And what if she didn’t? She couldn’t think like that—she’d get home somehow. Because she wanted to get home—to get back to her life. She missed her old life, she realized, all of it. But that meant she had to stop sitting around, just another member of the crew, waiting. If they were heading for a fight with Blane, she had to be ready.

Jill said, “I can fight, you know. I am a fighter.”

“What?”

“When we boarded the other ship, you said I’m not a fighter. But I am, even though no one fights for real anymore where I come from. At least not with swords. But I can.”

“You’re not. You’ve never drawn blood.”

“Have you?” she countered. “You didn’t exactly do any fighting on the slave ship. Is it really a battle if no one actually hits anyone?”

“You can’t deny us the victory.”

She couldn’t, but it still seemed like something other than a battle. Then again, they were pirates, not the navy.

“Let’s practice,” she said. She had blisters on her hands and her arms still ached from all the work. Despite all that, she itched to show him that she did know how to fight. At least, she thought she could.

“Practice?” he said.

“Yeah. How else am I going to get good enough to draw blood?”

He seemed to consider her a moment—maybe deciding whether or not to treat her request as a joke. Then, he smiled. “Don’t want to stand around and miss out on the fun next time, eh? When we meet Blane, maybe?”

“Maybe I just want to hold a sword again.” Prove to herself that she still could. Prove that the bout in the tournament was a fluke, and that she could fight. If not back home, then here.

“Fair enough. And you have a good arm, I remember. All right, then. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, before the sun gets too high and before Jenks or Abe gets on us for slacking our work.”