Patience laid her hand on my arm. Fresh scabs covered her knuckles. I looked from her hand to the loaf to the woman. The women around us shushed and gathered close. Wretched hunger painted all their faces gray as a tombstone. My eyes rested on Patey’s, and she nodded to me.
“It is—to share,” I said, too softly. I repeated it louder, feeling my heart sink as I said the words. I could have gobbled the whole thing. I had just been thinking that I did not want to share it, even with Patey, rather steal it for myself and eat the entire cake. And here stood twenty-one other people to take a bite. I stuck my thumb into the loaf and pulled off a chunk about an inch wide. I held it to the closest person. For a moment I wondered if they would come for it and beat me and take the thing, but each one waited, silently. Because they were gentlewoman-like about it, I did my best at making the same-sized pieces. When each person had had a token amount there were about enough crumbs left for three more. I pressed a hunk into Patey’s hand.
“I do not want it,” she said.
“You eat dat, girl,” came a voice. Others chimed in. “Don’t spare you’self. You take some!”
I took a bite of my piece. It tasted sweet but strange. “It is not bad,” I said. “’Twould be much helped by rum and hard sauce.” Some of them thought that was wondrously funny, and many women laughed.
Then one came to Patience and put her hands comfortingly on Patey’s head. “We know, girl, what dat cake cost. You keep t’inking how you save all our lives with it.”
I said, “There’s one extra piece. Who shall have it?”
The woman who held Patience’s head said, “Give it to dis girl, here. Keep her heart strong. When you eat dat, girl, you takes all our hearts in with it. Dat keep you.”
I looked at the African woman more closely as Patience dutifully sat up and chewed on the morsel of cake. She was the woman who had gone up the ladder with Patience, but she had not come down with cake, or with bruises. She must not have dared to steal some, too.
After that time, the system of feeding and airing prisoners changed. There were so few sailors left whole from the surprise attack that to man the Castellón had left the Falls Greenway shorthanded. Both ships moved slowly under half sails. Often they brought us abovedecks and left us for hours at a time. I heard one of the English tell a lady that she would get a larger share of food by some mopping. I think it was not a question but an order, for they put us all to cleaning and scouring. They sent me around with a raveled rag to polish the brightwork.
Much as I rubbed, not much changed, but I cared not the least. What mattered was that I was above and fed and could feel the air on my face. In short order I grew to love the sea spray and the sight of dolphins running alongside us, even the rocking of the ship as she moved through the water. There was a certain front-to-back, side-to-side sway that felt as comforting as a hammock on a summer day. Our friend the African slave woman had told us her name. Her slave name was Cora, but she said her real name was Cantok. She said to call her Cora until she died, to pray for Cantok so the spirits in heaven would know who I meant. She calls me “Miss Resolute” and Patience is “Miss Talbot,” instead of “Missy,” which is proper. It was convention that made that rule, rather like not scratching yourself in public, for I think she is not as old as Patey, and could be our friend and playmate if we were all back at Two Crowns. Cora can read as well as Patience and she has sworn us not to reveal that, too. It is quite a responsibility keeping someone’s life inside my heart and not letting any of it slip out my mouth, so I must think about things I say. Captivity was closing my lips.
CHAPTER 4
October 29, 1729
I had almost forgotten we were sailing north, until one day August approached me again. It had been a fortnight since I had seen him last, and he had changed. His face appeared gaunt and hollows had sunken his eyes. The eyes themselves held no sparkle but were dull and lifeless, withered as if the spirit in him had fled and naught was left but the skin. I turned away from him and worked my rag around the knob on the captain’s door.
“You’re alive?” he asked.
“I am,” I said. “Are you? You look as if the duppies have taken your soul to hell and left it there.” I said that because I wanted to hurt him for being a traitor. He had seemed so robust while boasting about signing articles.
“Maybe they did. So many was—butchered. Like swine.”
“I heard one of the English say the ship was trapped.”
“Bloody—I have never seen so much blood.”
“And did you fight?”
He gulped, trying not to gag. “Spaniards.”
“With pistol and cutlass? You fought?” I could not imagine August, slight and gangling, brandishing a cutlass and flying from a yard.