The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor Read online

  “Thank you, captain. But I must attend my husband.”

  “Of course you must. But should he be sleeping well and you would perhaps enjoy some conversation, please speak to me.”

  The flicker of a glance the captain tosses her way tells Charlotte that she will not soon be joining this man for supper.

  She brings the water back to Tommy. He guzzles it, wiping his mouth and licking the drops from his fingers. Then he shivers, though the hold is stifling. She takes the scarf she’s wearing and wraps it around his neck. “Try to rest some,” she tells him and heads back to the sleeping quarters.

  To pass the time, the men often gather on the upper deck to listen to the captain tell stories about crossings past. On the evening of July 6, Charlotte joins them, staying well back of the men. She wants to hear the chronicle but also hopes to avoid Skinner’s glance. She knows he thinks she’s fair game for the suggestive attention he pays to her. She finds a secluded spot behind the rigging and listens to his description of the shipping business and the islands in the Caribbean. She learns that hundreds of ships cross these waters every year from May to October, some to the West Indies, others to British North America. Those that are late arriving have to winter over; if it’s in the West Indies, soft summer breezes, fruit falling out of the trees and palm trees laden with coconuts make the stay a pleasure. But those who get stuck in British North America are as likely as not to perish in the dreadful winter months. She’d heard about the ice and snow from the men who met with her father to discuss shipping routes and cargo. She’d listened to tales of the savagery of the Indians and the ferocity of the beasts that roamed the forests. Her father had told her about the French Acadians—traitors, he said, who plotted against England and were a constant threat to the good British settlers who struggled to make shelters and find enough food to stay alive. The West Indies, in contrast, sounds like paradise.

  “There’s where you’ll shape your future, boys,” Captain Skinner is saying. “For women, of course, it’s a different story.” Charlotte leans closer. “Concubines are commonplace on Jamaica.” Murmurs of assent all round. “Marriage—well, marriage is hardly heard of—and there’s some here aboard who’ll be glad of that, gentlemen, I tell you.”

  General laughter. Charlotte’s face reddens. There could be no mistaking it: he is speaking to her.

  “There’s little monogamy there,” says Captain Skinner, warming rapidly to his topic. “Every man may have several wives and several children with each one. Their real families are back in England—where they belong!” Laughter. “A man may buy himself a whore for what he pays to fill his pipe!”

  Loud and sustained laughter.

  Several men turn to look back to where Charlotte stands. She struggles for her dignity but cannot tolerate such raillery. She turns and strides to the hatch.

  “Though a pipe may often give as much pleasure!” Captain Skinner calls after her and the men roar.

  The moment her feet touch the passengers’ deck, she feels a surge of anger. She pushes past two men lounging in the dim passageway and hurries to the bunk she shares with Pad. He’s on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  “You’ve not told me the truth, Pad! You’ve lied to me.”

  He sits upright, looks puzzled.

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’ve deceived me and taken me for a fool.”

  “I’ve done no such thing. What do you mean, Charlotte?”

  Old Hutchins, who bunks across from them, looks over with mild curiosity, but drops his eyes when Charlotte gives him a look.

  “You’ve told me you were taking me to a paradise, where we’d live and be free. But as far as the captain says, it seems to be a paradise only for men. Women there are nothing more than goods to be bought and sold in the market, like the poor Africans.”

  “It’s not so, Charlotte.”

  “Is it not? The captain’s been there a few times more often than you have, Pad Willisams!”

  “We won’t be anybody’s slaves, Charlotte, I know that much.”

  “You mean you won’t!”

  “No, I won’t. The slaves are Africans. The native blacks they call the coloureds. We’re regarded altogether different.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “What is it then?”

  Charlotte takes a long breath.

  “Pad,” she says, “will we be living with the English and the other whites? Tell me the truth.”

  “I … I don’t know, Charlotte. Not with perfect certainty. But I do know we’ll have nothing to fear from slave masters.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Friends.”

  “Friends who?”

  “Friends I have—I had—in service.”

  “And what did they know?”

  “They knew.”

  “Pad, did they know that Jamaica is a godless place where women are concubines? That marriage has no meaning?”

  “The captain must be a liar, Charlotte.”

  “A white woman has nothing to fear,” a raspy voice says. Charlotte turns to see Hutchins propped on one elbow. “They respect a white person, never mind man or woman.”

  “What do you know?” Charlotte demands.

  “Lived there fourteen years,” Hutchins says. He fades back onto his mattress, as though he’d spoken his last words.

  Charlotte makes a short sound, not quite a laugh.

  “Did you? And did you have a wife there too?”

  “Three,” Hutchins says without opening his eyes. Charlotte rolls hers. “But none of ’em was white,” the old man adds.

  Charlotte looks back to see Pad’s reaction, but his eyes are closed, shutting her out.

  ON THE MORNING of July 7, she comes on deck to find the sails full and the spirits of every person on board lifted. She can’t find young Tommy. Her affection for the boy has grown so much, she worries about him constantly. The kittens are having their way all over the ship with the captain’s grudging approval. Lucifer is back on the prowl, hardly noticing the brood she’d birthed on board. The stalls are bare, the animals consumed. But Tommy is nowhere to be found. She knows his ailment is getting worse. He seems to be even smaller and his cough sounds like glass breaking in his lungs. When she finds him at last, he is lying on a heap of straw at the bottom of the ladder down to the storage hold, shaking with fever and talking gibberish. “Tommy, it’s me, Charlotte.” The boy moans, slurring words rapidly one into the other. She can’t make out his meaning, but it seems he is being chased. As hard as he runs with his words, his lungs cannot catch up. His breathing is ragged, noisy, his chest caving in with every heaving breath. She’s certain now that he is contagious, that touching him could bring about her own demise, but the pathetic sight of this blameless child overwhelms her. She gathers his puny frame into her arms, wraps her skirts and shawl around him and strokes his brow while whispering soothing thoughts in his ear. “You’ll stay in the islands with me. I’ll need a good boy like you to help me. You’ll see, Tommy, this voyage will end and there will be a new beginning.”

  She stays there for hours, trying to will him to live. He sleeps a little, stirs as if in another nightmare and slips into suspended consciousness again. Then he wakens and begins to cough, to choke, she fears. She can feel his ribs against her arms as the cough tears through his emaciated body. The light around the ladder to the stalls turns to dusk, then dark. Pad finds her where she cradles Tommy; he brings them biscuits spread with molasses and strong tea. He warns her of the danger to herself, and suggests she leave the boy where he lies. The kittens, and Lucifer too, have found the heap of woman and boy and taken their places around them, burrowing into the warm, damp folds of Charlotte’s skirts. She wets Tommy’s lips with the tea, tries to dribble some liquid into his mouth. Pad returns with his own great coat. “I’ll tuck it under him. It might give some warmth to Tommy and protect you as well.” Charlotte knows Tommy needs more than a coat, more than her own ministration.
“He needs decent food, a doctor.” Pad just shrugs—there is no one onboard except the incompetent Parsons.

  The ship sails into the night. A brisk wind means they’ll change hands on deck and take advantage of the blow. The only sound is the snapping of the sails, the voices of the men above her head. Charlotte naps, wakening when Tommy’s coughing wrenches through both of them. Then suddenly he sits up, looks straight at her and in his peculiar way of speaking says, “Yer fair of face, Miss Charlotte. Yer eyes take the colour of the sea. Yer scent is fragrant, like the cattle.”

  “Like the cattle!” she replies with mock horror, delighted to be teasing him. She thinks it must be a turning point, that the boy has gained his senses. But as quickly as he’d risen, he collapses again like a wicker basket suddenly disassembled. Then his eyes close and he becomes so still she finally realizes he has stopped breathing.

  “You poor small boy,” she croons to the little body in her arms. “You never managed to find the shore.” She’s never seen anyone die before, much less held a lifeless body. She rocks the bundle in her arms and tries to reckon what will happen next.

  A LOUD CLAMOUR of bells and the captain’s voice shouting words she can’t hear. Charlotte leaves Tommy’s body with Watkins, who had appeared with first light, and hurries onto the deck.

  “Get below!” he commands her. “Get below this instant!”

  She retreats in confusion. Several men jump through the hatch to the lower deck. Others push her toward it, then pass her down what seems like a moving platform of hands.

  “Hasten now!” calls a sailor at the bottom of the ladder and points her toward her bunk.

  “What’s happening?” Charlotte demands.

  “Pirates,” the sailor shouts as he runs toward the stern. Charlotte feels the frisson of fear. Had they come so far and suffered such discomforts to die now? She hurries to her lover.

  “Pad! There’s pirates!”

  He jumps to his feet, grabbing Charlotte and pushing her behind him.

  “You best get yourself down in the hold, mistress.” Hutchins lies on his filthy mattress, his face betraying no alarm. “You’ll be prize booty for ’em, that’s sure. They’d kill us all to have you. Not that I’d fight ’em. I’m too old for that. Get down in the hold, I say.”

  Charlotte turns to Pad. “There’s hardly strength enough left on this ship to take on boys, much less bandits.”

  Pad takes her hand and keeps her close while the other passengers huddle in silence. But she detests this, waiting like cattle in the hold for slaughter. She lets go of Pad’s hand and crosses through to the aft passageway. There is no one there and she wonders where she might best hide. Ten yards along, she sees light overhead. The second aft hatch is open. She hears distant voices and can’t resist the mad impulse to see for herself and climbs the ladder just far enough to peek above the level of the deck. A hundred yards to port is another ship, a large single-masted sloop on a parallel course. It is the first evidence of humanity beyond this ship they have encountered since they had left Bristol, and it has come to devour them.

  She looks up and is surprised to see that the Anton carries only light sail, although the breeze is strong.

  “Surely we must try,” she thinks. She looks along the deck to where Skinner and two officers stand at the rail. They face the approaching sloop and are waving their arms. The sloop draws close, its enormous mainsail billowing. Charlotte feels her throat constrict with anxiety so palpable she can hardly draw breath.

  Men stand along the rail of the sloop with drawn blades and muskets. What chance has she to hide from these pitiless bandits? They have only to put a few of the Anton’s men to torture or the sword and her presence will soon be revealed. A voice rises above the sound of the rushing water.

  “Heave to! Heave to now!”

  It is spoken by a tall man who stands a head above the other pirates.

  “Heave to! We’re boarding. Lay down your weapons and you’ll every one have mercy from us! Heave to!”

  Captain Skinner waves again and calls out.

  “Help! Help! We need water! Help!”

  “Heave to, skipper!” calls the pirate captain. His hair is black and unbound, as Charlotte had always imagined a pirate’s hair would be. It is clear that fear had unmanned Skinner entirely. Her mind races. What can she do? What can she say?

  “Help us!” calls Skinner.

  “What’d ya say?” calls the pirate.

  “Help! Hasten! The pox has struck and we’re desperate for water. Take what you will but give us water, we beg of you! Help!”

  Charlotte sees four of the Anton’s crew appear from beneath the quarter deck. They bear a plank bound with a body wrapped for burial. Charlotte is torn between fear and grief. Another body follows the first. They are tipped overboard with awful slowness and when they are gone, one of the sailors who had carried them slumps to the deck and lies motionless. The others back away from him and turn to the rail.

  “Water!” they call out. “Water!”

  “What have you aboard?” calls the pirate leader.

  “Good cotton!” Skinner replies. “You may have it all, what we have not wrapped the dead with.”

  For some time the two ships sail on in parallel, not fifteen yards of sea between them, as the pirates talk among themselves. Another of the Anton’s crew crumples to his knees; the others give him wide berth.

  “How many have you lost?” the pirate calls.

  At that moment two sailors appear with yet another bound body. The pirates gather at their rail again.

  “What’s in that there?” calls their captain.

  “A lad who has just died,” says Skinner.

  The pirate ship veers a little off, then closes again.

  “Let’s see ’im, then!” calls the pirate.

  Skinner looks pointedly at his men, and with great care the two sailors expose Tommy’s face to the sun.

  “We’re short o’ water ourselves!” shouts the pirate captain. “Steer straight on! You’re not far now!”

  The pirate sloop heels to starboard and veers across the wind. Within ten minutes, she is well off.

  It is an old trick, as Charlotte later learned, but done well, it always stood a chance. No sailor wanted smallpox aboard. Coming on deck, Charlotte looks at Skinner’s leather face and feels an unexpected admiration for him. He makes his living on a dangerous sea and he has the gumption to see danger through. They owe their lives to him, and to the special instrument of their salvation, Tommy Yates.

  At noon they stand at the rail as Skinner mumbles from the Book of Prayer. They bind a ballast stone to the boy for weight, his frail corpse not heavy enough to sink. They tip the plank forward and he is gone. Charlotte rushes to the side and looks. The scarf she had put around his thin neck trails behind as he plunges into the deep.

  THEY SAIL ON under a strong wind. Danger, Charlotte thinks, is a matter of perspective. The captain’s audacity gulled the pirates, but his failure to make a timely landfall or reckon the proper provisions has primed them for death of another sort. The water is nearly gone and their false pleas to the pirates echo in all their ears. Charlotte uses some of the last of the cloudy liquid rationed to her and Pad to make two cups of tea. She crushes a few biscuits under a piece of planking and mixes the crumbs with dregs of molasses she has scraped from the side of the barrel.

  “Here’s to our good health,” she proposes to Pad, who grins back at the strong-willed woman he loves. It had been nine miserable weeks. “If pirates came to us from land, land cannot be distant now,” she says.

  That evening a young sailor named Jake approaches her. She had found his leering most distasteful when they had first come aboard, but she feels obliged to hear him out.

  “I see ye can read words. Can ye tell me the meaning of this?”

  He thrusts a bit of paper into her hand. She reads: “Yorkshire Plantation, Jamaica, The West Indies. Courtesy, Master John Frye.”

  “What does that mea
n to you?” she asks.

  “I’ll not be worked to death by some friend to the damned captain who brings men to load ships at the docks. I know Master Frye and I mean to find himself when we reaches the land.”

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Charlotte and Pad lie listlessly on their bunk, bored, testy and tired of the interminable voyage.

  “Land ho!”

  It sounds distant and for a moment she wonders if this is indeed the call. Then again.

  “Land off port bow!”

  Charlotte looks along the passage. No one moves. Has every passenger been struck dumb by the news? She and Pad climb from their bunks. Others still sit like statues, though some are smiling. Perhaps the notion of salvation is percolating into their souls, thinks Charlotte, but she for one is going on deck. Abruptly they rise together, clamber to the ladder and crawl up its greasy rungs.

  Green masses of land bumping up out of the sea make islands of every shape. Most have rugged mountains that fall into forests the colour of emeralds. Others are hilly with flat plains dotted with palm trees. The islands are surrounded by exquisite turquoise water and edged with white sandy beaches. They can see military forts and battlements on the hills and columns of smoke swirling skyward, a sign of civilized life here in the New World. The softest breeze she’s ever felt blows in Charlotte’s face.

  While the captain negotiates the tricky channel toward the harbour in Jamaica, Charlotte stands at the rail chattering like a child about the wise decision they’d made. For Pad, it is a relief beyond measure. He’d used all the bravado he could muster in telling Charlotte of this place, which in truth he knew almost nothing about. But it was the only place he could think of where he and Charlotte could have a life together. From their vantage point, the island looks indeed like the Garden of Eden. As they get closer they can see the town of Kingston and beyond to great mansions perched on the surrounding hillsides. The plantations she’d heard about spill out of these estates and roll out to what looks like a bustling centre of commerce. Imposing buildings with commanding columns, presumably government houses, are decked in flags and smaller ones, perhaps trading establishments, fill in the rest of what appears to be the main thoroughfare. Between that orderly looking town centre and the dock is another reality. Crowded shanties lean against one another like broken clay pots. Every alleyway produces another angle of huts teeming with mothers and babies, hawkers selling their wares, a scene so colourful—brown skin, vibrant orange, red, green and blue clothing, trays of pink and purple fruit—the scene is like a mural that hangs in the great hall at the governor’s mansion in Sussex, back home. The port in front of them is layered with row upon row of warehouses. Soon, she thinks, they’ll quit this horrible ship and begin their lives anew.