CHAPTER 7
ABOARD PRINSESSA
The ship Prinsessa had once been Swedish but now flew Spanish colors; she carried dry goods to Mobile, and her mate kicked and cursed the crew. Her American captain, Addams, was one of those driven from his country during the embargoes to find work where he could. Gideon seemed to remember hearing an unsavory story about a Captain Addams from Marble Head, but he could not remember the details.
There were twenty other passengers, most of them heading for New Orleans, where many owned land or had places of business. No Spanish ship would head directly to New Orleans for fear of Baratarian pirates; to sail to Mobile was risky enough. Gideon shared a little cabin with his sole companion, Grimes, his steward and suspected cousin.
His legendary uncle Malachi had apparently left a few indiscreet bastards in Caribbean ports; it had been a family anxiety that one of them would arrive one day to claim an inheritance. But the worry had waned over the years— at least until Grimes, with his smooth mulatto features, fine manners, and utter ignorance of the sea, had walked aboard General Sullivan two years before when Gideon was making his first Caribbean voyage after the disaster of the embargoes. Grimes had been able to offer no evidence, and his handsome, impassive face certainly bore no family likeness, but the claim that he’d been fathered on a freed-woman named Sarah by an American captain named Markham struck Gideon as far too likely for comfort. The family orphan was adopted as a servant and proved to be a good one: somewhere in his forty years he’d learned discretion, excellent manners, and acceptable cooking.
Wallace Grimes spoke Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, French, and other Caribbean languages— he seemed to have inherited Malachi’s gift for tongues— and had been taken to Havana as interpreter. The ride in General Sullivan’s old pinnace had taken two days, and then Gideon had spent three days hiding in a dark, stifling Havana pensión while Grimes went out in search of transportation to Mobile or at least Pensacola, the only significant Gulf port still in Spanish hands.
Transportation on a Spanish ship to Mobile was hard to come by, for Mobile had been seized earlier in the year by James Wilkinson, American general and former Burr conspirator, thus ending a long quarrel over whether West Florida was part of the Louisiana Purchase or not. The seizure had been made on the grounds that if the Americans didn’t take the place, the British soon would in order to use the harbor as a base for an attack on New Orleans. Wilkinson had been supported by the American government, but Spanish resentment over the loss of the finest port on the Gulf easily explained Cuba’s less-than-courteous treatment of American privateers found sailing within their jurisdiction.
Nevertheless Prinsessa, a Spanish ship, was bound for Mobile. It carried dry goods that would command high prices there no matter whose flag was flying over the fort at the bay’s entrance. It was luck, and extraordinarily good luck, that Prinsessa came into port to water, take on passengers, and receive instructions from the ship’s owners just a day after Gideon Markham had sailed past Havana’s elaborate fortifications and anchored the little pinnace in the harbor.
His fellow passengers struck Gideon as a trivial collection of people, thirteen men and six women, most of them Spanish gentry, chattering away at the breakfast table in their musical, frivolous-sounding language. Gideon said a quiet grace over his meal and tried to suppress his irritation when the others who bothered to say their grace also crossed themselves—a custom that annoyed him. A few polite Spanish questions addressed to him were met by his annoyed apologies in English. One of the lady passengers, whose head was wrapped in a fashionable lace veil that hung dramatically over one shoulder, seemed to consider him particularly amusing. He’d eaten quickly, gulped his final cup of breakfast coffee, and-excused himself.
On deck he’d almost taken his habitual place on the weather quarterdeck, but he was warned off at the last minute by a glare from the mate. The weather quarterdeck was another captain’s privilege, and Gideon’s privilege had been lost along with his quarterdeck. The reminder of his loss sent a bitter spike of anguish into his heart. As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me, he thought, and why was I then more wise?
Blind to the glorious summer day, to the sparkle of the foam, and to the weird buzzing leaps of the flying fish that surrounded the vessel, Gideon paced out the watch. The new watch was driven on deck with blows and curses and sent aloft to set the studding sails. The captain, an odd, bent man in black, came on deck in the company of some of the passengers.
The passengers clustered by the rail to watch the flying fish, and the captain took his place on the weather quarterdeck, spitting Spanish curses at the crew as they struggled to set the studding sails in the brisk breeze. Gideon cocked an eye at the mainmast. The studding sails were being set clumsily, it was true, but the combined oaths of the captain and the mate were doing little but confusing the situation. What the crew needed was practice, not curses. And perhaps a mate who was willing to go aloft and show them the work rather than swaggering on the foredeck and swearing.
In due course the studding sails were set aloft on their booms, and Prinsessa sped through the water, the great canvas sails billowing full, the clipper prow slicing through the green waves. Gideon spared himself a moment of grudging admiration. Prinsessa was yare, whether she was badly served or no. The Swedish designers must have taken a few pointers from the Yankee ships that passed through the Baltic every year—or had, before Tom Jefferson had forbidden it and the war ruined the trade.
“Captain Markham?” It was Prinsessa’s captain, a rough old brute by his looks.
“Aye,” said Gideon.
“Gideon Markham of the New Hampshire Markhams?” Captain Addams persisted. He was a tall man, but bent, almost twisted, like a tree planted on an exposed cliff and bowed by the winds. He was dressed in a battered black coat and an old Quaker-brimmed hat, his white hair straggling out from underneath.
“I am he,” said Gideon. “Captain Addams, is it not?”
“Aye, that’s me,” Addams said, clasping Gideon’s hand firmly. “Peter Addams of Marble Head.”
Gideon almost shrank away from the smell of rum. It was three hours to noon, and the man had been drinking already.
“ ’Tis good to see a New England man after all these years,” Addams declared. “I’ve been living among these garlic-eating dagoes ever since Mad Tom Jefferson made it impossible for a seaman to earn a living where he was bred and born. I believe I know your brother, Obadiah. I was once interviewed for the post of the master of the Abigail, but I suppose it didn’t work out.”
“Abigail? That was my first command,” said Gideon. “I’d come back from the Mediterranean unexpectedly and was given the schooner.”
“Aye, I see,” said Addams. His grin was friendly, but there was bitterness in his eyes.
“I suppose that’s what families are for,” Addams said.
Gideon remembered Abigail well, the little two-masted schooner, over twenty years old but still as seaworthy as the day she was launched. He’d loved every plank and line of her, even the cranks and crotchets, the unexpected leaks and the way she hesitated slightly before answering the helm. He’d been newly married then. After each voyage, to Baltimore or Halifax or the Mediterranean, Betsy had welcomed him home to the warm house of New Hampshire granite he’d built for her. It was those lost years of happiness to which his bitter imagination returned again and again, preventing the scars from healing; to those years before the Embargo when he had sung daily to his God of blessedness and gratitude. Before the Embargo wrecked it all.
“The Abigail,” he said, remembering. “She was broken up six years ago, during the Embargo. She was worth more as scrap.”
“Aye, the Embargo,” said Addams bitterly. “I was begging for my bread for two months before I got the chance to ship out on a dago ship, some old Portuguese hooker with a British master. I know men that died of starvation rather than beg.”
“Women, too,” Gideon said, seeing in his mind the little room, the single candle, the cold ashes and bloody handkerchiefs...
“Damn Tom Jefferson to hell!” Addams spat. He turned suddenly on his heel and roared an order to the mate, who in turn seized one of the sailors who had been standing too closely to one of the lady passengers; the mate threw the man against the mainmast fife rail and thrashed him with a colt until he fell to the deck and cried for mercy. The passengers watched impassively. Captain Addams turned back to Gideon.
“It’s scum I’ve got for a crew, Captain Markham,” he said. “None of ’em know a rat’s ass about discipline, and none of ’em want to know. They’d be playing their guitars and singing their sad, sad songs all day if I didn’t watch ’em. If they weren’t stealing the passengers’ watches and jewels, that is. Did ye see how them stuns’ls were set? By Christ, if I only had New England men!”
“Your men are untaught, Captain,” Gideon said. “If they were shown patiently what they were expected to do—”
“Patience, hell!” Addams swore. “They think it’s weakness if I’m not always hazing ’em to do better. Threats and blows are all they understand.”
“I wish you might moderate your language in the presence of ladies, Captain,” Gideon said with an uneasy eye toward the passengers. Addams laughed.
“Moderate!” he said. “They can’t speak English! Besides, they’ve probably heard far worse in their time. There’re a few stories I could tell you— perhaps we could step below for a spell and yarn over some Jamaican rum?”
“Er— I’m temperance, Captain,” Gideon said. “But I thank ye for your offer.”
“You’re welcome any time you wish,” Addams said. He scratched his chin and began to ramble on about his adventures, apparently not needing the encouragement of Jamaican rum to do so. Gideon let the battered, twisted figure talk, Addams wandering on about his adventures and ill-luck, Gideon gazing out to the far horizon and wrapped himself in his own black meditations. Gradually it began to dawn upon Gideon that Addams, in his plodding, discursive way, was trying to ask for a job.
Gideon was then obliged to explain how the Markham family business was no longer dependent entirely upon shipping, and how his elder brother, Obadiah, and his brilliant cousin, Lafayette, had turned the family business toward small manufacturing, timber harvesting, and land speculation. After the Embargoes the shipping part of the business had been neglected and almost sold altogether; the Markham family, once known as merchants and shipowners, had become landbound capitalists, and the only reason a few ships still carried the Markham name on their books was that Gideon would not countenance another trade. There were no jobs to give, at least until after the war when the shipping business might be expected to increase.
Addams shouldered his disappointment and left the poop, presumably for his appointment with a bottle of Jamaican rum; Gideon saw him speak to the mate before going below. With a weary, uncomprehending shrug the mate turned to bawl a series of orders to the crew, and the hands turned out to hose and wash the deck. Gideon frowned. On his own vessel the task would have been done before breakfast.
The passengers came up the poop ladder or went below as seawater began to gush over the maindeck. With the sudden crowding on the poop Gideon was unable to continue his pacing; he stood at the lee rail, watching Prinsessa’s wake widen as it passed from beneath the ship’s graceful stern.
“Beg pardon, sir. You are an American, are you not?”
It was one of the lady passengers, the woman with the dramatic veil that fluttered out a good three feet in the wind; she spoke English with a surprising Dixie accent.
“I am, ma’am,” he said, a bit taken aback at her forwardness. “I’m from New Hampshire.”
“I am from South Carolina,” she said. “I apologize for my directness, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone on this ship who could introduce us. It’s good to talk to a fellow American!”
“I’m pleased, ma’am,” said Gideon. She was about thirty and tall, with broad, almost masculine shoulders. She wore the white, European gown with a short blue spencer jacket to keep off a chill, that is if a chill could be found in the Caribbean in August. Her face was pleasant, expressive, almost pretty— but for Gideon’s taste there was too much boldness in her eyes.
“I am Captain Markham,” said Gideon.
“Maria-Anna Johnson de Marquez,” she said and dropped a curtsey.
“Señora Marquez,” Gideon said and bowed.
“Are you a sea captain? Or do you hold a commission in the militia?”
“I am a privateer, Señora,” Gideon said. She looked at him with curiosity; he felt obliged, for no reason he could understand, to offer further explanations.
“The Lord willed that I should lose my ship,” he said. “ “I’m preparing to meet another vessel in Mobile, of which I shall have the command.”
“I’m sorry for your first ship, sir.”
“The Almighty would have it so. We are not to question His purposes.”
“Amen,” she said, a touch too lightly.
There was a long silence. The flying fish whirred about the ship, scattering droplets of water that gleamed in the sun.
“There’s my maidservant, talking to a sailor again,” Señora Marquez said, pointing out a pretty, dark-haired girl with disheveled hair standing next to one of the hands who was engaged in scrubbing the planks.
“I cannot teach that girl discretion!” Señora Marquez frowned. “She’s mad about sailors. I can’t seem to keep her away. It can only do her harm at that age.”
“It’s good that you’re concerned,” said Gideon.
“Campaspe!” she called. The girl heard and ran to her side. Señora Marquez spoke to her fiercely in Spanish; the girl nodded, answered in a respectful tone, and then turned to go below. But as her mistress turned back to Gideon, he saw the girl turn and flash him a dazzling, impudent smile, cast at him from behind her mistress’s back. The girl went below, tossing her head.
“My adopted cousins, the Spaniards, fear privateers from America,” Señora Marquez was saying. “Those that fly the Cartagenian flag. They are called pirates by the Spanish.”
“Those would be the Baratarians, Señora,” Gideon said, as he began to recover from that audacious, astounding, and entirely shameless smile. “They are ruled by two men named Laffite. I have met one of them, Pierre, in New Orleans... and your Spanish friends are right; they’re pirates. I am a lawful privateer, and I take only British prizes.”
“I’m sure I did not think otherwise, Captain Markham. Is it profitable, this trade of yours?”
“It is profitable or not as the Lord wills,” Gideon said.
“And as luck and talent may provide, I’m sure,” she said with a smile.
Gideon had been subjected to one easy smile already; he did not entirely approve of women who smiled so easily. His answer was deliberately grave.
“Luck and talent come from above, Señora Marquez.”
“To be sure, Captain.” The mate bawled out an order from forward. There was a rush to trim the sails.
“Does your wife await you in Mobile, Captain?” she asked. “Or in some other port?”
Gideon’s eyes did not leave the sea.
“My wife and son are with God,” he said.
“I am sorry, Captain. I’m sorry as well for my tactless question.”
The mizzen yards creaked as they were trimmed to the wind, which had backed a point since sunrise. Gideon turned to the woman beside him, a kind of impatient distaste rising like bile in his throat. He had almost welcomed the gap of language that had separated him from the others aboard Prinsessa; now that the gap had been bridged, he wanted nothing but to return to his own solitude.
“Perhaps you should go below, ma’am,” he said. “They are about to wash the deck here.”
“Thank you, Captain. You are kind.”
He watched her go as he cut himself a plug of tobacco, her lace veil fluttering out behind her as she walked down the poop ladder, surefooted in her slippers. The muslin gown was thin and showed her form, but he could find no reaction within him, neither lust nor disapproval, nothing but he yearning to set foot on his own deck again, with the invisible line of the quarterdeck to separate him from the rest of mankind.