Cast Off (8 page)

Helping Jaya the cooper make barrels was a good way for me to catch the captain's eye. 'Twas hard work and we did it outside in the waist, the open part of the upper deck that was amidships directly in view of De Ridder's quarterdeck.

Two weeks at sea, and we was well under way. The weather was cloudy but comfortable. A fresh breeze had come up and we was moving at a good clip.

Petra'd done a fair job of cutting wood staves for the barrels, and I had a batch over a fire, cooking in a pot of water 'til they got soft enough so Jaya could bend 'em. My job was to keep sponging 'em down, which was hot work and I had the blisters to prove it. Jaya's job was to winch 'em into the right shape and pound 'em into the iron loop at the bottom of the barrel. We used three dozen staves per barrel, and after four barrels we was running low.

“You have more staves, my brother?” Jaya asked.

Jaya was really Mulawarman Wijaya, but no Hogen-Mogen Dutchman could get his mouth around those names. He was a little cove, not much bigger than me, but strong. Like me, he was Indies-born, but not like me, he was full-blooded, which he never let me forget. He didn't do anything outright, but 'twas there in how he said “my brother.” If you knew what to listen for, you'd know I was no brother of his.

Jaya didn't leave the Indies 'til he was full grown, and it showed in how he talked. After I was around him for a while, it showed in how I talked too.

“
Ya, Om,
I got more.” Jaya was a good friend of Pa's, so I called him “uncle.”

“How much is the number?”

“Don't know for sure. Plenty plenty.”

“
Plenty plenty
, Brammetje,” said Tixfor, one of the ship's boys. He was servant to Isaac Van Swalme, a gentry cull who repped the VOC in Batavia. As senior merchant, Van Swalme was the highest-up cove on board—higher even than De Ridder, whose cabin he shared. Tixfor thought some of Van Swalme's clout rubbed off on him. He was probably right. “Oh, yaaaa, you do every
ting
plenty plenty now. Plenty plenty staves, plenty plenty oakum, plenty plenty paint, plenty plenty sharp sharp, plenty plenty cut cut!”

“You funny, boy,” Jaya said. 'Twas a warning to Tixfor, but not much of one.

“How you do so much plenty plenty, Brammetje?” Tixfor went on, ignoring Jaya. “The men say you're a demon, you stay up all night, no sleep sleep. Is
dat
true?”

What was true was I wanted to punch him in his smart face plenty plenty.

“I think I hear your master calling you, Tix,” I said.

Tixfor laughed and skipped off. Jaya spit betel nut juice into a cup he always kept with him. The stuff turned his teeth red as blood. It reminded me of my granny. She chewed betel too.

“Go and get some more staves, then,” he said to me.

The staves was in the hold with Petra, so I headed aft. A blockhead mistake—in my mind I was still beating on Tixfor—'cause the room under the fo'c'sle was the other way, and that's where Jaya would expect the staves was.

“Bram,” Jaya called. “Where you going?”

“To get the staves,
Om
. I stowed 'em in the hold.”

“The hold? Why do you—”

“Be right back!” I called, hoping he'd let it drop if I got away fast enough.

I found Petra knee-deep in guns. She had muskets and pistols piled up around her, and a bunch of open crates told me where she'd got 'em. There was black dirt all over her face and even in her hair, which I still hadn't gotten used to, tied back in a short pigtail under her knit cap. At least her togs looked like everybody else's now. Grimy.

“What are you
doing
?” I whispered.

“Cleaning guns,” she said. “I've gone through all the rope you left me, and the rest of the staves are over there.” She pointed to a neat bundle leaning against the bulkhead.

The guns was brand-new, but I couldn't stop to wonder why Petra thought they needed cleaning. She was no lazy rich girl, I'd give her that. She did all the work I brought her and asked for more. She wanted to know the names of all the ship's parts and the crew, so I drew 'em in my sketchbook for her and she flipped through the pages over and over until she had it all fixed in her head. Petra didn't know why I wanted her to do my work. No reason to go into all the ins and outs of being a no-name by-blow. So she didn't savvy why it did me no good for her to clean up a bunch of guns with no one the wiser. And with Jaya maybe coming after me, I had no time to explain it to her.

“I'm sure the guns look much better now, Miss Petra, but even so, you got to pack 'em all up.”

“But I haven't finished yet!”

“I know, but—”

“You are here, Bram?”

Jaya
.

“Hide, Miss Petra,” I whispered. “Quick!”

She was up before I got the words out, and away into the dark.

“Bram?” Jaya called again.

I kicked Petra's slippers into a corner, then grabbed the staves and ran out to the main hold.

“Bram, what are you—”

“Sorry, I was just getting these,” I said, holding up the staves.

Jaya sized me up good. I stared back 'til my eyes hurt from looking innocent.

“You are hiding something.” He spit into his cup. “I know this.”

Sweat ran down the side of my face. I could smell my own fear, and I bet Jaya could smell it too.

“What you hide, Bram?”

I didn't give him an answer, so Jaya started looking. He moved slow, going from box to box, from tarp to tarp.

Petra could be behind any one of 'em.

“You got it wrong,
Om,
” I said. “There's nothing going on.
Ayo,
please, let's go finish the barrels.”

“We finish barrels after I find what you are hiding.”

Jaya pushed past me and went into Petra's back room, where he found four boxes of the VOC's best new guns spread over the floor.

“I thought it was funny you keep staves in hold and not in cabin where you make them,” Jaya said, shaking his head. “That is why I come down here. Maybe you have some food, bottle of gin, maybe some tobacco. But no. You have guns. Why you do this, my brother? You think you sell guns when we are in Batavia? You think you make big big money that way? VOC pay is so small that you—and me—we are like coolies. Slaves. Is that why you do this?”

What was worse? Slipping Petra or letting Jaya think I was a thief? Men got hanged for a lot less than filching guns. If I said nothing, I'd swing for sure. But if I slipped Petra, Jaya would think she was the thief and she'd swing for me.

Before I could answer him, Jaya raised his arm and I set my teeth against the blow. But the slap landed on my back, not my face.

“I understand, my brother.”

“You do?”

“
Ya
. But this is not the way. You are too small and too lonely to steal guns. Put them back now.”

Before Jaya could change his mind, I scooped up an armful of muskets and loaded 'em into a crate.

“You are quick boy. Very smart. Very hard work,” Jaya said, watching me. “You should have money. But this is not the way, my brother.”

My brother.
'Twas the first time he'd said the words like he meant 'em.

“Miss Petra, I brought you a treat!”

After a month at sea, everyone'd eaten most of what they brought with 'em, and treats was rarer than a blue moon. I came down the ladder and stuck my candlestick in the wall. Petra was standing stock-stiff next to her bed, looking like I'd caught her at something.

“A treat?” she said.

“Aye, look and see.”

I handed her a small jar. Petra pried off the top and looked inside.

“Is it—?”

“Aye. Honey. A cove gave it to Pa after he fixed his sea trunk for him, and Pa gave some to me. Here's a biscuit to go with it.”

But Petra didn't take the biscuit. She just stood there with her nose in the jar.

“Miss Petra?”

“Hmm? Oh! Forgive me. Th-thank you, Bram. Thank you very much for sharing your treat with me.”

Petra looked odd. Her eyes was all puffy like she'd been crying, and her hands shook a little.

“The honey's meant for eating, not for sniffing,” I said, trying a joke.

She might've gone red. I couldn't tell in the dim light.

“Yes, I know. It's just that the honey smells so good, and, well . . .”

I knew what she meant. The honey smelled like honey, and the hold stank of dirty water and dead rats.

We ate ship's biscuits and honey and talked for a bit, and Petra's hands stopped shaking and her face started looking more regular.

“Did you bring more oakum for me?” she asked.

“Not today. You picked all a cove could possibly do twice over yesterday. It'd seem off if I showed up with more.”

Her face was grim, like she was sorry she didn't have more neck-cricking, finger-pricking work to do. It must be dull as doors down here. I looked round her quarters. The boxes was stacked so each one lined up just so with the next. And they was grouped in size order with—I counted—exactly six boxes in every stack. The barrels was grouped in fours—four together on the bottom, four on top—lined up like the boxes so no edge hung over another. I bet if I wiped the floor, my hand would come away clean.

This was what Petra did when there was nothing else to do. And when she ran out of stuff to straighten, I bet she did it all over again.

“Pretty dull down here?” I asked.

“Oh, I make do,” she said, her hands shaking again. “There are always rats to chase, and I make up stories for myself . . . poems . . . that sort of thing. It's quite nice, actually, no one telling me what to do. I can sleep as much as I want! I've grown quite lazy.”

Sweep, shuffle-shuffle-shuffle.

“And then, of course, there are the soldiers, right up there, just a few feet from my head. So it's not as if I'm alone. Not really.”

She said all this cheerly enough, but she said it too fast and too bright.

“What's that?” I asked, pointing at a pile of rags on her perfectly neat bed.

“This?” she said, holding up the pile. “It's nothing. Just a doll I made for company. Twelve is too old for dolls, but I just thought . . . under the circumstances . . .”

The thing was made of linen scraps with charcoal eyes and oakum hair. 'Twas the saddest, ugliest doll I'd ever seen.

Rats, dolls, and soldiers. I'd brought Petra down here. Now I had to get her out.