Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale (9 page)

When my eyes adjust to the dark, I make out bodies farther away. Some are still blindfolded.

Brigid! She’s but ten paces away. A mixture of sadness and gladness washes over me. I wish she had escaped. But at least we’re together.
Immalle.

I get to my feet. Lord, how it hurts to move.

The leering man unties Brigid’s blindfold. She blinks and our eyes meet. But she quickly glances past me.

I slowly, carefully, sink back to my haunches. My broken rib stabs at my innards. I sit and count the others, breathing shallowly to cut the pain.

It’s hard to be sure, because so much obstructs my vision, but by my best reckoning there are eight prisoners. Two adults—women, I think. The rest of us, children. The crew outnumber us, but not by much. They’re moving about, adjusting the sails, fiddling with gear, so they’re even harder to count accurately.

Three of the children clustered together as soon as their blindfolds came off. They’re trying to talk to one another. The gags make it impossible, of course. But they don’t stop. Stupid peasants.

The last child’s blindfold is now untied. The child runs and falls. He buries his face in the tunic of the other woman—not the weeping one.

My eyes grow watery. I blink and turn my gaze to the water. A choppy, unforgiving sea separates us from the far-off shore. And, oh! It’s on the port side. What?

I stand again—Lord, what pain—and look starboard. No land there. As far as I can see, nothing. Are we really going north again, back toward Downpatrick?

But now I see white cliffs! My heart thumps so
loud, I can’t hear anything else. What a fool I am. We’re nowhere near Downpatrick. We’ve been sailing fast. It must be past midnight. The sky is turning rosy off to starboard. It’s close to dawn.

And the timing is right; if we went south and then crossed the Irish Sea and circled around Wales and headed back up the channel, it’s possible that those could really be the famous white cliffs I’ve heard tales of.

This ship is on the southeast side of Saxon Britain. Never in my life did I expect to be this far from home. The enormity of the distance undoes me. What on Earth is going on? Where are we going?

We have to escape. We must get off this boat right now, before it gets any farther from Eire.

If our hands weren’t tied, Brigid and I could jump overboard and swim for it. We’re both strong swimmers. We swim in the river near the monastery. And we swim in Strangford Lough in summer.

But the sea’s so cold.

And that shore is far.

And my rib is cracked.

And our hands are tied.

I feel heavy and stupid and absent. As though I’m nothing but a pile of dirty clothing, no better than the other poor slobs on this boat.

Morning mist makes me shiver. My tunic is still damp from being pulled through the water. Brigid’s must be too. I assume a wide stance so the wind will dry me.

A crew member walks to the center of the deck and bangs on a metal box. He shouts at us in that ugly, unknown language. He’s short too, but much wider than the leering one who took off our blindfolds. All our eyes are uncovered now, all are on him.

He pushes down on the crying woman’s shoulder till she sits. We understand; those of us standing now sit.

The wide man pulls a basket out from under an animal-hide blanket. It’s a hickory basket, the kind you find all over Ulster. He reaches in and grabs a handful of light-colored things. He drops one on each prisoner’s lap. They’re parsnips. Boiled parsnips. Peasant food. And these are filthy. I can see dirt still pressed in their skin—disgusting. My empty stomach clenches against my will. I salivate on my gag.

The wide man goes from prisoner to prisoner, taking off our gags now. People groan in relief.

“Mother,” cries one of the children in a huddle of three, as the gag falls away. “Mother, help me.”

Neither of the two women responds. And the child doesn’t look at them, anyway. He doesn’t look at anyone.

The man removes Brigid’s gag now. Her eyes flicker toward mine, then away immediately. She turns her back in silence, without even a groan. I must call to her. As soon as this cursèd gag is off, I’ll comfort her.

The wide man removes the gag from the peasant woman across from me. She twists her head and bites him on the shoulder.

He shouts and clubs her across the face with the back of his fist.

Her mouth bleeds. “Dirty devil!” She spits blood on the man’s arm. “God will punish you for this!”

The man grabs the parsnip from her lap and throws it on the lap of the next prisoner, a child. This is the child who ran to that woman as soon as his blindfold was removed. That peasant woman must be crazy. Her hands are tied. What did she think she could do besides enrage the man? Now she has no parsnip.

The child’s eyes look wild. He bows his head quickly
as the crew member ungags him. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t make a peep.

Finally I am ungagged. I glance at Brigid. She’s staring at me. The instant our eyes meet, she looks down. There’s fierceness in her face. She’s trying to tell me something. I wait to see if her eyes will speak again, but she doesn’t lift her head. Why won’t she look at me? For all the world, it’s as though she doesn’t know me.

But, of course! Brigid is clever. If we’re lucky, the crew won’t remember that we were taken together. So long as we do nothing to remind them, they won’t be expecting us to act like sisters. And that could give us a slight advantage. I turn my face to the sky and my heart bangs in excitement; it’s good to have a smart sister.

And her silence is smart too. She didn’t make a groan when her gag fell away. Probably she’s holding her tongue because these men are animals. The man who took us, the stinking man, is worse than an animal. He’s a
beithioch—
a beast. Brigid won’t talk around him. That’s her rule with animals. But silence is also a part of our deception, because our language would give us away as being from the same place.

I won’t speak either.

A crew member comes around holding a beer jug. It’s
the leering one again. He puts it up to the lips of the child near me. My own thirst now scrapes my throat raw. It’s absurd to be this thirsty in just one day. But I am Melkorka. I am a princess. I will not beg with any gesture of face or body. I try to sit tall, but even that small movement causes me to flinch. The skin over my ribs has swollen; I sense the puffiness.

At last the jug comes to my lips. I drink as deeply as I can before the leering man takes it away. Blessed beer; it slakes the thirst, and, once it gets deep within, it will dull the pain in my chest.

When the leering man comes to the crazy woman, he hesitates and says something in that infernal language.

“I’ll bite you, too.” She bares her teeth. “Devils, all of you! You’ll all roast in hell.”

The other crew member, the wide one that the crazy woman bit, the one who uses his fist as a club, says something to the leering man with the beer jug, who moves on to the next prisoner.

That woman is insane. No parsnip, no beer. You’d think she was a deranged princess, the way she’s so haughty. Except for her peasant talk.

Now the wide man—who I think of as Club Fist—unties our hands. All of us except the crazy woman.

I have neither blindfold nor gag now. And my hands
are free. Brigid’s are too. I look toward the land. I can only gaze upward, because the side of the ship comes higher than my level line of vision. But I can still see that, though the white cliffs are past, the coast remains steep and very far. Even if we made it there, where would we climb ashore?

I eat my parsnip. It’s salty.

The child beside the crazy woman looks around. His eyes take in my face but don’t linger. He’s already eaten one parsnip. He holds the other in his hand. Now he jerks that hand quickly toward the crazy woman.

She takes a big bite of parsnip.

The child’s hand is back in his lap in a flash. It happened fast.

I wait to see if a crew member will punish the boy. A child that size couldn’t take a blow like the one I received.

But nothing happens.

The boy’s eyes are scanning everyone again. I cannot believe this; he saw Club Fist hit the woman. He knows what can happen.

His arm jerks out again. And again the crazy woman takes a big bite. That child is as crazy as the woman.

Another crew member, one with a long mustache, shouts at the boy and comes lumbering over.

The mustache man grabs the rest of the parsnip and eats it himself.

And that’s the end of it. Crazy woman, crazy child. My breath comes back.

A man calls out. I look. It’s the man who captured me, the one who stinks of clay. The crew gather at the rear, near the tiller. They eat. I can’t see the food, but I smell it. Cold roasted goat. I salivate again.

When they finish, Clay Man says something to the group of three children and points to the waste pot. One of the boys obediently uses it. Then the other children do. Even Brigid. She acts just like the others—a perfect little peasant. The small boy who fed the crazy woman lifts her tunic for her as she sits on the pot, because her hands are still tied.

And now it’s my turn. My cheeks flame, but I follow Brigid’s example, meeting no one’s eyes. Deception is far more important than this disgrace. And such a minor thing cannot truly sully the soul of a princess. At least our tunics rest on our thighs and offer a vestige of privacy.

As each of us get off the pot, the mustache man ties our hands again. And now the leering man and Club Fist gag us. But they leave us without blindfolds.

Clay Man shouts to the crew. He’s definitely in charge.

The crew members go to their stations. Some work the sails. But some row now too. Sails and oars together. Clay Man must be in a sudden hurry. Why?

I look around. But the sea is empty; the shore is empty. He’s not rushing from anyone.

So he must be rushing toward something.

The oars clunk in the oar holes.
Clunk. Clunk.
Something deep inside my head throbs in the same rhythm. I am nothing but a beat.
Clunk. Clunk.

I sink to the deck, wincing with each movement, and curl up small.

Clattering wakes me. Two boys come tumbling headfirst into the boat. They knock things aside, fighting and flailing in their hysteria. Their hands are tied behind them. They are gagged and blindfolded. They wear only crude Saxon britches and those britches are soaked.

They must be thinking they’ve wound up in hell. And they can be at most only twelve or thirteen. Younger than me, I’m sure of it. What were they doing outside without shirts on? Senseless fools.

One of them knocks into the crazy woman. I expect her to push back violently. But she only tilts her head
sadly toward him. A gesture of pity. So there is some reason in her.

It’s midday and we’ve stopped. Sitting like this, I can see treetops over the side of the ship on both right and left. They’re close. This is a cove.

I look at the new boys again. They have managed to find each other quickly, even blindfolded. They press together on the deck floor. Their hair is dry. So are their backs. That means this cove is shallow enough to walk in. Even for Brigid.

I lower my head so no one can see where my eyes are directed, and I look up at Brigid. Please, Brigid, look at me, too. Please.

Brigid sits with her back against a wooden chest. Her eyes are closed. But I’m sure she’s awake. No one could sleep through that clatter. Besides, it’s broad daylight. Why won’t she look at me? Why won’t she let our eyes talk to each other?

But, oh, she is talking with her eyes. She’s saying no. And she’s right. Broad daylight is exactly the problem. No chance for escape. Especially with our arms tied. I mustn’t be a fool. Picking the right moment is crucial.

The crew members who threw the youths into the boat now climb in. One is Clay Man. The other is almost as tall, with a scar that slants across his forehead
and slashes one eyebrow through the center.

We set sail. With our two new prisoners. All children or women. No men. These crew members are not trying to get back at anyone. They’re just taking random children and women.

Children and women whisked away. I remember Brogan back in Downpatrick talking of his capture, saying “whisked away.” Children and women taken far from home, to lands where we don’t even speak the language, where we can be of use only in the most menial tasks.

Oh, Lord.

A hideous guess has been forming in my brain, and now I am entirely sure it is right, for what other answer is there?

This is a slave ship.

We veer to the right. I stand to see what’s going on. We’re leaving the coast behind, heading out to open water. The winds are high and the boat goes fast. It’s immediately much colder.

Somehow all of us have clustered in the middle of the deck. It’s as though an ancient herding instinct has taken over, for I had no intention of coming together with the other prisoners, but here I am.

A slave ship.

Horror seizes me again, and clarifies my vision—with discouraging results. I would wring my hands if they weren’t tied. The ten of us are a sorry lot, indeed: the two youths from Saxon Britain, one weeping woman, one crazy woman, the four bleary-eyed children, Brigid, and me. I’ve seen no evidence one way or another yet whether the youths are competent. But besides them, I am convinced Brigid and I are the most able. We can’t count on help from the others. It’s up to Brigid and me—it’s all up to us. We have to slip away somehow. This cannot happen. Not to us.