Voyage of Plunder (2 page)

My father sat by himself in a pew. The pews were of the hardest wood, straight-backed, meant for keeping one awake. They were divided into squares, and my father had the best pew square in the meetinghouse, directly before the pulpit. The Seating Committee had assigned it to him because he was a goodly man, the wealthiest, and had once been married to the governor's daughter. My father's name was Robert Markham, and he was a merchant. On that Sunday he wore a powdered periwig, its voluminous curls lending my balding father both warmth and dignity

(Just that morning, while we were getting ready for Sunday meeting, my father had called for me; he had misplaced his spectacles and needed help finding them. After a bit of searching, I found them tucked in the curls of his periwig! We shared a hearty laugh, and I warmed despite the frosty air. “Ah, Daniel,” my father had finally gasped, his eyes sparkling with tears of laughter as he drew me into a fatherly embrace, “whatever would I do without you?”)

Now, at the meetinghouse, at the start of the sermon's second hour, the commotion began. If it could be called a commotion. A cough, weak and delicate, coming from the women's section. It was Faith Grey. (No one can leave during meeting, not unless one is dying. And so Faith coughed.) Heads turned. The minister frowned. The sermon paused, started, paused. I was relieved by such an interruption. I rubbed my hands and stamped my feet and the deacon didn't notice, so upset was he by all the head turning.

Then Faith stopped coughing. But even though she stopped, one head kept turning—my father's. Every few seconds he turned to look at her, not seeming to care that the minister frowned and the sermon faltered once again. I could tell by the sinking of my heart that things were about to change. And they did.

A year later, Faith Grey and Robert Markham were married, and Faith moved into our house. Immediately the men stopped coming. There were no more whispers, no more treasures, no more Josiah Black.

I hated Faith.

Skin pasty white, hair mousy brown, eyes not even brown or green but in between and so nothing at all. Plain, plain, plain was Faith. What my father saw in that drab mouse I cannot say.

She pretended to be my mother, once calling me “son,” smiling her drab smile. I told her not to call me “son,” that she was not my real mother. My
real
mother … Abigail, the daughter of the former governor of Massachusetts. Abigail, who died of fever when I was three years old. I had vague memories of my mother's arms wrapped around me, the brush of her lips against my forehead.

I knew my real mother was beautiful, for I had a golden locket with her miniature and I had been told many times by my father while he sat by the fire with that wistful look in his eye. My mother had eyes the color of the ocean, like my own. Tawny hair streaked with gold—the color of a sunset—like my own. A smile that was not drab like Faith's, but full of laughter and ease. A straight nose—a heavenly nose, my father called it—so unlike that round nothing-nose Faith was always blowing, raw, moist, and tipped with pink.

Often, I stared at my mother's miniature, imagining what she would look like if she were still here. She would look nothing like Faith, of that I was certain. I snapped the locket shut and pressed it against my lips.

Now, when school let out for the day, I did not return home until late.

Instead, I visited my mother's grave in the churchyard. I knelt, the tombstone cold and gritty under my fingers, telling her
things I would not tell another. I told her my secrets and my sorrows. About Josiah, wondering where he was and whether I would see him again. About my father loving Faith now.

Once, lying beside her grave, I fell asleep; hours later I awakened, much stiffened.

The wildflowers I'd laid on the grassy mound were already wilting. I sat up, stretching, surprised to discover that someone had covered me with a cloak while I'd slept. And lingering on the fibers of the wool was the scent of tobacco and rum.

Josiah?

I jumped to my feet, casting my gaze about. The tombstones. The trees rustling in the evening breeze, pink blossoms falling gently like snow. The church with its towering steeple. “Josiah?” I said aloud.

But, alas, there was nothing.

Nothing but the beat of my heart.

In my fourteenth year, I began apprenticing at my father's place of business.

It was located at the wharf, the sign reading
ROBERT G. H. MARKHAM, MERCHANT.
Inside it was cramped and cluttered. It smelled of beeswax polish, wood smoke, tobacco, and ale. I enjoyed working there because then I could be with my father without Faith around. I could pretend that everything was the way it used to be.

One day I sat at my desk beside the fire and watched as my father conducted his business. Beneath his wig, his features were soft, rounded, for he loved rich foods and fine ales. He talked with customers, with ships’ captains, added columns of numbers with a flourish of his quill pen. I grew drowsy.

“Done with your work, Daniel?”

I jerked my head up off my desk, realizing with a start that
all the customers had left. Outside the panes of leaded glass, it was dark. I must have dozed.

“Not quite. I'll be finished in a moment.” Embarrassed to have been caught napping, anxious to please my father, I stifled a yawn and reached for my last bit of paperwork, rubbing a dent on my cheek where my quill had made an impression.

I studied the parchment for a moment, puzzled, still half groggy with sleep. It was a ship's manifest—a list of cargo: iron ingots, sugar, gold, jewels, silks … A princely treasure certainly, but that was not what caught my attention; it was the ship's name:
Norfolk.

I arose from my chair and approached my father. “Wasn't the
Norfolk
looted by pirates a few months back?”

“Eh?” He looked up from what he was doing.

“Wasn't the
Norfolk
looted by pirates? The news was all over Boston.”

He frowned as if not remembering.

I held the parchment in front of his face. “Then why would we have its manifest?”

He took the document from me, studied it briefly, then put it aside. “I'll take care of it later.”

“But why—”

“Daniel, please. Not now. Pray be a good boy and listen to me. I must have a word with you about something else.” He paused, glancing at me before looking away. “I've made a decision, son.”

I held my breath, suspecting that things were about to change again, as at the meetinghouse two years before.

Digging in his pocket, he pulled out his snuff box and handkerchief. He inhaled a pinch of snuff, sneezed, wiped his nose, then cleared his throat, his eyes a little watery. “Now then. Daniel, you're a smart lad, and I'm sure you'll understand that
this is difficult for me to say. Please don't make it harder than it already is. You see, Daniel, your mother and I—”

I stiffened. “She's not my mother.”

For a few moments he said nothing, shuffling a few papers about his desk before turning back to me with a sad look on his face. “Yes. Well. I have decided that matters have become much too difficult here in Boston.”

“What do you mean?” My chest squeezed, and I felt as if I could not breathe.

“What I mean is,” he said, giving my shoulder a pat, “Faith is to have a child. Daniel, it sorrows me to tell you this, but I've decided that your mother's health is too weak for the northern winters. She's of a delicate constitution. Therefore, come the end of the week, we'll be leaving Boston, just the three of us. There is a plantation in Jamaica that my agent has secured—”

But I heard no more. I brushed my father away and fled the room. I don't remember opening the door, except there was a blast of cold air and suddenly I was outside. Running. Past the wharf, down the streets, dogs yapping at my heels.

Faith.

I hated her.

t the water's edge, a cage dangled from a gibbet.

I stared, shuddering in horror.

It was the first day of December, 1696, and I stood at the rail of my father's ship, the
Gray Pearl,
as she sailed out of Boston Harbor, past Bird Island.

The cage was shaped like a man, with head and shoulders tapering down to the feet. Inside the cage, a corpse rotted. The body was tarred, banded with ribs of iron. Ravens pecked at what flesh they could find while the cage slowly rotated round and round, metal grating.

Empty sockets stared back at me. The lips were gone. Teeth gleamed. I glimpsed bleach-white bone. Strands of hair. A scrap of tattered clothing.

It was a pirate.

Executed and doomed to rot as a warning for all.

Out on the open waters, the wind stiffened, blowing from our starboard quarter. As the captain had predicted, we made good speed. I felt a lump in my throat as the land grew smaller and smaller, as we left behind everything I had ever known. Boston … my home … a thread of black upon the horizon.

Fare thee well, Mother.

I ignored my father's invitation to join him for supper and instead went below to my cabin. I had been to sea once before, when I was just four, maybe five years old. I remembered it as a wooden world of laughter and sunshine, sailors and yarns and sitting perched upon my father's shoulders. But it was nothing like that now. The constant heaving, rolling, and seesawing back and forth made my head spin and my stomach queasy. By the end of the second day my cabin smelled foul, reeking of my insides.

Every few hours, my father begged me to come on deck, saying the fresh air would revive me. But I turned my face away.

Three times per day a sailor brought me food, emptied my bucket, and replaced the candle in the hanging lantern if it burned low. The lantern casing was metal, punched with holes. The pinpricks of light did little to chase away the darkness. Always I was starving and gobbled every scrap of food, but always it came back up. Afterward, I lay on my narrow bunk, exhausted, clasping my locket, tears stinging my eyes.

That Faith had bewitched my father, I had little doubt.

I had heard of such things—of witches casting spells to snag a husband, tricking the husband into doing whatever she wished. I knew that in his right mind, my father would
never
have left Boston. After all, not only was he a holder of the best pew square at the meetinghouse, but he owned a fleet of ships, including the
Gray Pearl.
In short, he was a very important man. Why, then, would he suddenly move to Jamaica? It made no sense. Except that he was under a spell.

And so on our third day at sea, when my father entered my cabin, I felt it my duty as a good son to tell him. “Faith is a witch,” I said, my voice as raspy as two stones rubbed together, “and you are under her spell. Why else would you have left Boston?”

“Daniel, I don't expect you to understand. But trust me, please trust me; this is for the best. Now, I want you to forget this nonsense about—”

“You don't care about Mother anymore.”

A shadow of hurt crossed my father's face, like the passing of a cloud. He said nothing, merely studying my face for a few moments. Then he left, latching the door softly behind him.

I turned toward the wall. Pinpoints of lantern light streaked back and forth, like stars falling. Tears pressed hot against my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Instead, I clenched my jaw, longing for the days before Faith had ruined everything. Days when it was just my father and me and the many men.

The next morning the cry of “Sail ho! Off the port quarter!” pealed through the ship. At first I rolled over and tried to ignore it. Then from above my head came the command of “All hands! All hands on deck! Ready about! Stations for stays!” Then the running of feet and the thump of tackle.

Why would there be such a commotion over the sighting of a ship? Weren't ships common enough? After all, this was the Atlantic.

Suddenly tired of my cabin, I sat up. My head reeled. I gritted my teeth and climbed out of my bunk, slipping on my breeches and a cotton shirt and vest. After hurriedly braiding my
hair in a queue and then pulling on my stockings and silver-buckled shoes, I donned my cocked hat and staggered onto the upper deck. My eyes watered in the freshening breeze.