I moved without sound, bare feet on wood planks, to the place he chose for me to stand. I chanced to look beyond the rail to the dark form that approached us out of the rust-colored sky. Everyone held quiet. Even the sea stilled and the wind paused as the hulk came within hailing distance and crossed our bow. I heard a loose sail flap on the ship across the waves.
Captain Hallcroft took his chin in his hand and frowned. “Not a light. Not a sound. She’s dead in the water.”
A lone seagull begged exception from above. Then, no doubt at the same moment the others saw it, I perceived a swarm of gulls on the deck, circling, quarreling, chasing up and down the rigging. The great, lumbering ship of the line was adrift. A voice just audible above the screeching gulls floated on the wind, saying, “Ohé, ohé. La peste! Sauvez-vous! La peste!”
I watched Hallcroft sneer and turn to Dinmitty, whose mouth opened wider than his eyes. “They have the plague, sir. Make sail immediately.”
“Ask him how many are alive.”
Dinmitty went to the railing and called out, “Combien en vie?”
“Aucun,” came the answer. “La peste.”
“None, sir,” Dinmitty said. “Even the warning man must be afflicted.”
The sailor prodded me in the side and I began the descent into the hold, but I heard Hallcroft say, “Burn it to the waterline.”
From my peephole I could not see the death ship but I heard the call for archers to ready their oil pots and bows. I put together the whole story from the springing sound of the arrows’ flight, the roiling sound of angry, hungry gulls, the crackling of burning timber, falling rigging, and great exploding powder kegs. I smelled the reek of broiling flesh burned too long. From my wee hole I saw that the sky again turned orange and bright for many minutes before darkness fell around us.
Another call sounded from above. “Rats! Rats!” men shouted. Hundreds of desperate, swimming rats came this way after leaving the death ship.
Cora said, “Rats will bring plague to us all, then,” and she rolled over and said no more. I heard hissing, as if gravel fell from the sky, and though it was dark outside, I stood and put my eye to the hole again. I could not make out the calls overhead. I pictured the pelting sound on the water being the feet of hoards of black rodents running across the surface of the sea clambering over each other toward this ship. I kept my face away from the wood itself, afraid the rats might see me and scurry right into the peephole. After more shouting, the crew spread a path of oil and tar around us. I watched an arc of fire go across the sky; sizzling, it vanished into the water. Another dot of fire soared off the top deck and this time it hit something in the water and flames spread across the waves and came to life.
The rats swam into the flames. Their other choice was to drown. I saw a fin. A shark had come to dine. I smiled, wondering how he would enjoy roasted rat instead of raw fish. All that mattered was that the rats did not make it onto the ship. Whether a shark took the plague and died I cared not at all.
The waves kept on, but at length the heavy splashing and the frantic small splattering sound ceased. The flames died at last. Darkness covered the deep, and there was naught to see or hear. I sat, my back against the hull, and stared into the emptiness in my soul. “We shall get home, again,” I said. “I know we shall.” I curled up next to Patience.
Cora lay on Patey’s other side and said a single word and nothing more. It was enough. “Plague.”
*
Full seven hungry days came and went without further events except one. Patience had gone above the night before, then woke me one morning, and asked, “Did you move my shoes?” She called out, “My shoes are gone. Who has taken my shoes? I will tear your hair out and chop you into shark bait.”
“Patience,” I said, raising my voice to the level of hers, “what a threat to make. Ma would be ashamed.” Had she learned such glorious villainy from dancing with the sailors on those nights when she went above? I had never heard such abuse from a female and I enjoyed the power of it. She was filled with venom and I wanted to remember the words for the sheer strength they implied.
“I want my shoes.”
No one made a sound. My own slippers were long gone. They would not have fit her anyway, but there was nothing I could offer. “Maybe someone borrowed the shoes.” I turned toward the other women. “Some person has borrowed Miss Talbot’s shoes. They should hand them back and no trouble will come to them.”