Apprentice To The Sorcerer

I woke. Half the crew’s number shared the hold with me now. I looked at Pintel’s coveted timepiece. I had hours yet before my shift, but I needed to get up and move around. My head hurt something fierce and I longed for a drink of water.

Gradually I made my way to the topmost deck. No one else shared that section of the ship with me for once. Glad for the respite, I leaned my back against the rail and stared up into the Pearl’s restrained sails. The click of a pistol hammer brought me out of my introspective mood quickly. Slowly I turned to see a man climbing on board, one hand on the rail and one hand on his weapon. By the moonlight I could see him easily.

It was the Malagasy barkeep.

“You got something I want, little man,” the man whispered. “Don’t make no fuss and I let you live.”

“What do you want?” I said lowly, raising my hands.

“You,” the man answered, licking his chapped, rubbery lips. “But your arsehole will do fine.”

A dark shadow separated from the other shadows on deck. I flicked my eyes toward the movement before I could think better of it. My assailant turned quickly, having seen my eyes move, but he wasn’t quick enough. The shadow bent his head back with a deft, almost loving touch to the forehead. A blade arced out. The barkeep’s skin erupted. Noiselessly, he fell to the planks, his sightless eyes staring up at me. I caught the scents of patchouli and molasses, mingling in the salty breeze with the coppery tang of the blood pooling at my feet.

Jack coalesced from his shadowy form, stepping around the body. Briefly, he bent and wiped his knife on the corpse’s shirt. Almost as an afterthought, he picked the man’s pockets. His search yielded several rings, a dagger, and small bottle. Jack sniffed the contents of the bottle. Grimacing, he stood up, rolled the body to the rail with his foot, and hefted the body overboard. “You want his swill?” Jack asked politely.

“No, thank you captain,” I answered, proud of how steady I sounded.

Jack tossed the bottle over the side and approached me. “Doin’ all right there, lad?” The gentle chime of the trinkets in his hair made the most beautiful music.

“I’m well, thank you,” I replied. “Though I wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t been out here, I fear.”

“You’d have thought of something,” Jack replied, and his voice held confidence in me so true I couldn’t disbelieve him. “I wanted to talk to you and I didn’t feel like waiting for you to act, my apologies.”

It struck me that though Jack usually employed very poor speech patterns and lazy enunciation, he actually was well spoken. Still a bit shaky from my close encounter with death, and Jack’s apparent skill at slitting throats, I walked closer to him. “What do you want to talk about?” I asked quietly.

“The pipes,” he said in a solemn tone. “Have you tried them yet?”

“No, I’ve just been figuring out the music and trying to memorize songs,” I admitted. “I didn’t think I could hold sheet music while I attempted to play.”

“Good enough,” Jack intoned. “Here, I found a case for it.” He handed me a small wooden case with a lanyard looped through it. “Protect it from the weather you know,” he went on.

He made small talk with me a few more minutes before wandering off, muttering something about coffee. I went to the main deck and relieved a man early. I had a lot to think about and a lot of nervous energy to burn.

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We sailed without incident and without much direction for a few days, which I found out from Gibbs was Jack’s way of ensuring rest for the crew. Whenever he couldn’t grant shore leave he did this, the quartermaster claimed. Which brought Gibbs to speculate just what Jack had us all resting up for. I didn’t care.

Of all the things I had seen Jack do, the simple act of him slitting a man’s throat had thrown me off balance. Jack remained a good man in my mind, but I thought he would never have been so casual about taking a life when I first knew him. So, he had changed, I would decide, but then the next minute I would think about his deliberate baiting of Will, of stoically taking Will’s abuse and enduring injuries on top of it. If Jack wanted to fight Will, Will would be dead. Yes, Will probably held the title of superior swordsman, but Jack had a million tricks up his dirty sleeves.

Or was that a million dirty tricks up his sleeve?

All the leisure time we enjoyed sparked a new interest in Mokulu’s hair. I ended up making ropes for three more men. I didn’t mind, really. The activity gave me a chance to shut down my mind and still stay occupied.

In the time I wasn’t doing my light duties or playing hairdresser, I read my medical books. I also studied Tia Dalma’s notes. She had a contraceptive recipe that intrigued me, and several paragraphs written about the use of a clean sea sponge soaked in lemon juice and inserted into the body. Queen Anne’s Lace seeds, when taken after sex, prevented pregnancy too, according to her. I wondered how many of the men on board the ship had ever been required to use a leather sheath over their penis when visiting the strumpets in port.

Jack had interesting ideas about labor, I realized on our third day out of Madagascar. He came out to his morning shift, namely me, Mokulu, Lloyd, Gibbs, Danielson and Wight, swinging a slate board. We answered to the imperious beckoning of his first finger like vassals approaching their king. He pointed to a graph he’d drawn. In the squares corresponding with today’s and tomorrows dates, the spaces were empty. “No work for you five today or tomorrow,” he said. “Everyone else works double. After you go back to work, you’ll be working double for another five to have time off. Regular crew still works around the clock.” He flicked his hair off the slate, where it had begun to erase his work. “The beauty of this rotation is that every fifteen days we usually make port somewhere, starting afresh. No man must work harder than another just because rotation has changed.”

Most of Jack’s crew had trouble reading, but I noticed they all understood math fairly well. When Jack called the rest of his crew topside to show them the chart and explain it, no one complained about the change. In fact, most of them seemed to expect it once they saw the slate. I looked at the trusting faces turned toward Jack and realized that they all respected him. They didn’t expect him to abuse them.

Faraday took the slate to the crew’s flop so everyone could consult it. Nearly anyone could recognize his name and the days of the week. Those who didn’t had neighbors and partners to ensure their compliance. When I understood I had two days that I didn’t have to do anything on board ship, I smiled. I could study on deck where the breeze refreshed and the sun warmed.

“We have our heading, Gibbs!” Jack shouted, snapping his compass shut. My heart lurched. I hadn’t seen Jack consult his wonky compass since I knew him as Elizabeth. Gibbs bent his head toward Jack’s and they spoke a few minutes. “Short way from ‘ome,” I heard Gibbs mutter, but he didn’t sound too upset over the idea. “-worth it…” Jack muttered. “Home is relative, Mr. Gibbs.”

“Everything is relative,” Ragetti said thoughtfully, pausing in his scrubbing the deck.

“And you’ve got ‘em all over the ocean,” Pintel laughed nastily.

“Got what?”

“Relatives!”

Mokulu clonked Pintel on the back of his head. “You know he not,” he admonished. Ragetti was only just then getting Pintel’s joke. He laughed so hard he lost his brush over the side.

Jack shook his head, looked at the planks, but his lips were smiling.

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