The air belowdecks filled with smoke and the women began a chorus of wailing that we were all to perish. From overhead a short silence broke with a weary-sounding round of cheer. For several hours the English sailors boarded and returned, taking goods from the Castellón to the Falls Greenway. Now and then a call echoed above but I grew tired of watching. Patience was not curious and cared not at all to do it. She took off her petticoat again and rolled it for something to put her head upon. She lay there at my feet, staring at the beams overhead whilst I stared out the hole. I wondered if all this fighting and plundering would take the place of our morning goat soup, and I pressed against my middle, wishing I had another of those precious stolen oranges.
The day waned and the sailors talked more loudly. Some moaned in pain. Others shouted and called to each other. Hour after hour, the sounds did not change. Then, a surprise came such as I had never imagined. Music! I heard a fiddle and drums, and some kind of high-pitched flute. The fiddler played and played, and stamping feet joined in the beat of the drum. The sounds became more drunken and loud, the music less easy to follow. The hatch above us opened. Rafe MacAlister came down the ladder steps followed by a sailor and stomped straight to the cage that held Patience and me. He motioned the man to open the lock, and took Patience by the arm. She went with him. He stepped through the gate as the sailor looked through the women and chose an African slave. “Know ye English words?” he asked her. “I favor singing and dancin’.”
“I come by some,” she answered.
“Up top wid ye.”
Later, I heard music again. Patience did not come down. I thought about the Irish girl with the long red hair. How she had been taken to the banquet. Maybe Patience was dancing and eating. I thought about the splashes late in the night and I tried not to think about Patience eating until she burst, or of her falling overboard. I tried not to think about the sounds of the laughter and dancing. Foreign, delicious smells wafted through the wooden floor. I imagined them having all my favorite sweets. I vowed to try not to think of them eating but the more I tried the worse my hunger grew, so I closed my eyes. I hummed to the tunes amidst the perfume of turtle soup and roast pork haunch.
I thought about the rules of pudding instead. I do not know who made rules about pudding, but there are rules. Pudding should always be larger than the smallest child’s head, was one rule. And if it had fruits it should not have hard sauce, but without fruit it should always have sauce. Sauce, I decided, was better when it was warm. And if it had rum in it and Pa lit it at the table that was always nice. I liked the way it glowed around the edges of the flames, kind of blue-green, as the color of the bay most days. I liked the way it was sweet and hot and left a hot place in the back of my throat after I swallowed it. If Patience was having a banquet with pudding I should like to know what kind of pudding was made by pirates, who might not follow the rules. If they had no pudding, I supposed after a difficult day as this when they had been tricked and fought for their lives, one should understand. A roast leg of pork or mutton would do. Perhaps chicken. A string of drool slipped from my lip and drizzled onto my chin. I wiped it away, angry because I had no pudding.
Without food, the other thing I longed for was sleep. That night it did not come, so empty was the place where Patience should have slept. All the other women around me were asleep when the sound of the jail door opening and shutting cut through the rhythmic breathing of midnight.
Patience tiptoed over sleeping women to what had become our place, again carrying a parcel, and again she laid herself down, curled tight as a snail, away from me. She spoke not a word but soon in her sleep she moaned and whimpered. I lay beside her but did not sleep. After a while, she began to whisper, “No. Please not again. No, no.”
I did not touch her, but I wondered if her feet had blistered from too much dancing. Familiar sounds awoke me, the watch changing, the clanking of chains, thumping of hard boots on the deck above, men calling orders. Light came in the hole above the wale. Most of the sailors above slept, their raucous snores a constant hum. Women in my cell sat up and stirred.
When Patience sat up, I looked on her with horror. Her face was blue and one eye swollen, her top lip had blood matted in the corner and it was as round as if she had hidden an egg in it. She put the parcel in my lap and lay back, covering her eyes with her arms. Her gown was nearly gone, worn out and torn; it was all but indecent.
“What you got there, missy girl?” a woman asked.
I peeked into the parcel. It was a cake or loaf of some kind. It smelled fruity and tangy. “It is Patey’s,” I said. “From the dancing.”