Cast Off (5 page)

In my experience, boxes sometimes got things inside 'em they shouldn't. I opened a salt pork cask once and found maggots. Found a scorpion inside a jar of nails and five stuiver coins in a fish's belly. But I never found a girl in a storage locker, dead or alive. This one was alive.

And rich, by the look of her. She had on more clothes than a seaman's got in his whole chest. I held up the lantern. Leather slippers too.

She stared at me. I stared at her.

She looked about my age. Yellow hair, blue eyes the color of water, a triangle face. The locker fit her so close 'twas like it was made to hold her.

I'd bet a month's rations the bosun didn't know anything about this girl in his cabin. So who prances around a Dutch East Indiaman in leather slippers hiding in lockers? A rich girl on a lark, that's who. She had to be the daughter of some high-up
VOC
cove, heart all aflutter over her first big out-and-about. Her ma and pa's gone ashore and she sneaks off to see how the sailors slum it down below. Then she hears some noise or other, gets white-livered and ducks.

Here we go, then.

I stuck out my hand. “Can I help you up, miss?”

“I—” She let the word hang like she couldn't find another to hook to it.

“Would you like help getting out of this storage locker and finding the way to your cabin?”

She sat up then and cleared her throat. “Good evening, sailor,” she said in the voice rich girls save for talking down to
mestizos.
“Thank you for your offer, but I've no need of assistance.”

Good. “As you wish, miss.”

She climbed out of the box and stood there looking fore toward the bow of the ship, when her cabin was sure to be aft, at the stern near the officers' digs. She'd be in one of the fancy passenger berths with a proper bed, not like the hammocks us crew slept in.

“Miss? Your cabin's the other way.”

“Of course. I must have got turned around momentarily, er, somehow.” Her eyes hopped around the room like a nervy cat. Something was off about her, I just couldn't work out what.

But it didn't matter, 'cause the girl went aft like she should. Or she started to, at any rate. I followed her into my digs, but when she got to the door that went to the crew's quarters, she stopped and grabbed the frame. Her shoulders shook.

Crying
. What next?

“You
are
a passenger, aren't you, miss?” I asked.

“Not exactly.” She picked her head up and stared at the ceiling.

“Why are you here, then?”

Slowly, she turned around to look at me. “I've nowhere else to go.”

In my experience, girls with ten layers of clothes and gold crosses around their necks generally have homes to go to. “There must be someplace. Some family that misses you.”

The girl lined up three nails that was in a pile on my sea chest into a neat row. She studied my drawing of the chair, traced the albatross with her finger. “My father will kill me if I go back.”

So she'd fought with her father—it explained the split lip and the bruise on her cheek—and now she had some romantic idea about running away to sea. “I'm sure it feels that way, miss. My own father gets powerful angry with me from time to time. But—”

“My father will kill me.” She said the words louder this time. “He nearly did so last night. I have nowhere to go, Mister . . .”

“Broen,” I said. “Abraham Broen.”

“Mister Broen.” She stood full up, which about brought her to my nose. “Forgive me. I know I take a great
liberty when
I ask you for a favor that puts your career and well-being at risk. I assure you I would not ask had I any other choice. Had I even one small alternative. But my mother is long dead and I have no particular friends. And it seems that, although I'd not intended to be, I am discovered. So I ask you now for your discretion. Please. Let my presence on this ship be a private matter between just ourselves. And also—” a tear spilled over. She swiped it off. “If I may prevail upon you even further, would you be so kind as to direct me to some dark, unused corner of the ship where I may hide myself for at least a portion, if not the duration, of our journey?”

Zounds.
A rich Dutch girl just confessed to me that she was alone in the world and wanted to stow away on the
Lion
because she was afeared for her life otherwise.

How could a girl like her be alone in the world?

Mother dead, no friends, and a father that tried to kill her.

Or so she said.

“Prove it,” I said.

“What?”

“You want me to put my head in the noose for you? Prove you're as bad off as you say you are.”

“I can't think of how I can possibly do that,” she said.

I waited.

The girl picked up the nails. Put 'em down again. Then held out her hands. They was cracked and red, a housemaid's hands.

“If my mother were alive, would my hands look like this?”

“Maybe.”

“They wouldn't. But why would you take my word for it?” She reached for her necklace. “I can compensate you for your efforts.”

I held up my hand to stop her. I didn't want her jewelry.

“What can I do to make you believe me?” she asked.

“You tell me one true thing about being alone in the world. Do that, and maybe I'll believe you.”

The girl shut her mouth. Then she stuck out her chin. “Sometimes I dream I'm a canal rat. And when I wake in the morning, I wish it were true.”

“Why d'you wish a thing like that?”

She gave me a half smile. “Have you never seen a canal rat, Mister Broen? They're slippery beasts, able to squeeze in and out of the tightest holes. Even the best ratters have trouble catching them. They're fat too, and not just from garbage in the canals. They eat from the best pantries in Amsterdam. And I'll tell you something else about canal rats. I've never seen one alone. They always travel in pairs at least. Why, I've seen as many as ten or twelve writhing together over our neighbor's table scraps.”

She dreamed of being free, fed, and friended. So maybe she wasn't lying, then. Maybe, like me, this girl had nowhere else to go.

Up on deck, a few sailors stomped around, back from the alehouses. Any minute and they'd be coming down here. I weighed the fors and againsts of the situation. The againsts was heavy: fifty lashes, getting tied to the mast for days in all weathers, getting kicked off the ship at Cape Town, letting down Pa.

I couldn't think of any fors.

Except one.

“You're a girl,” I said.

“I am,” she said.

“You can sew?” I asked.

She gave me an eye. “I sew, I knit, I cross-stitch and crochet, and I've a fair hand at embroidery.”

Which meant weaving cordage would be no trouble. Nor picking oakum.

“You strong?”

“Strong enough,” she said. “I can carry a feather mattress down a flight of stairs and beat the dust out of it.”

Not having ever seen a feather mattress myself, I had
to take
her word for it that she was strong. Strong
enough to
cut fifty staves at a go and still have strength left for fifty more? Pa said I had to do the work of two men. What if she was one of 'em? Or even half of one of 'em?

“There's a place I can think of where no one will find you and you won't be too uncomfortable.”

“
Thank you,
Mister Broen—”

“You won't be too comfortable, either.”

“That's no matter. I shall make do with any small space. I shall not allow one person to see me. I promise this shall be the last kindness I ask of you. I swear it.”

Not likely. Staying hid would be near impossible. She'd have to ask a lot of kindnesses of me before we got to the Indies.

“But you'll have to do something for me too. I'm sticking my neck out for you, and fair's fair.”

The girl got a cagey look. “As you say. If it's within my power, I shall do anything you wish.”

“Oh, it's within your power. And it won't put you in danger, either. You see, I got a lot of duties, and I'm thinking you can help me with some of 'em. Things like making rope or cutting up pieces of wood.”

“I shall be only too happy to help you,” the girl said, looking easier. “After all, it's the least I can do.”

“That's settled then. I'll take you to your new quarters.” I filled a sack with a blanket, a candlestick, some candles, and a slop bucket. That done, I grabbed the lantern and moved past her into the crew's quarters. “Follow me, miss.”

The crew was still mostly gone but for the German, Kaspar Krause, who'd been sleeping off his drink since seven bells in the afternoon watch.

“Don't mind about him, miss. He's good and bowsy.”

Sure enough, Krause didn't so much as crack an eye when we passed his hammock.

“Just a quick minute while I check the galley, miss.”

The girl pressed her back against the mainmast, which went through the deck all the way to the bottom of the hold. I popped into the kitchen. 'Twas no more than a closet with a brick stove and racks of pots and cooking tools. Plus all kinds of grub, some of which I filched for the girl. “All clear, miss. Happy Jan the cook must still be ashore.”

“Forgive me, I should have introduced myself at the beginning of our acquaintance,” the girl said while we walked. She had a funny way of talking. Her fancy words fit her like a dress two sizes too big. “I'm Petra De Winter.”

“Tell me, Miss De Winter—” I stopped. Might as well hammer out a few things now. “How do you plan on eating while you're aboard?”

Clearly, she hadn't thought that far ahead, but she did now. “I suppose I shall wait until the middle of the night when the ship is quiet and then I shall forage here in the galley or perhaps down in one of the holds. I see what you're thinking, Mister Broen. I know it's wrong to steal, but I shall compensate the captain when I find myself settled again.”

“When the ship's quiet, you say?”

“I think that's best, don't you?”

Aye, except the ship wasn't ever quiet. There was always a watch on duty, usually at least half the crew. “And if you don't mind me asking, what's your final plan? Where do you plan to settle, since it's against the law for you to be in Batavia, which is where we're headed?”

“Against the law?” she sputtered.

“No Dutch ladies are allowed in the East Indies except family of VOC high-ups. Didn't you know that?”

“I did not.” She stuck her chin out. “But I've a year to sort it out.”

“Six months,” I said. “De Ridder's fast.”

“All the better.”

“Your bunk's through there.” I pointed to the next cabin. “It'll take me a minute to get it ready.”

I followed Broen into a long, good-sized cabin that looked as though it hadn't been cleaned since Henry Hudson claimed New Amsterdam. The front end where Broen and I stood was an office. Against the near wall was a small desk covered with papers, pincers, and knives, with a quill floating in a pond of ink in the midst of the clutter. Bowls, basins, and nests of stained cloth covered a worktable, and clumps of hair and sawdust blanketed the floor. At the far end of the cabin were empty cots with a curtain that could be pulled closed for privacy but was open now. I'd visited medical men with Albertina in Amsterdam often enough to determine that this place of appalling filth was the barber-surgeon's office, where men came for a shave or a dose, depending on which they needed more.

A massive trunk doubled as a bookshelf against the long outside wall, which had two portholes that would let in a bit of air and some natural light during the day. Attached to the long inside wall was a door that ended just above my head, perhaps a foot from the ceiling, sealed with a padlock. Broen pulled a key from his pocket and started to work the lock.

“How do you happen to have the key?” I asked.

“I'm carpenter's mate. I built the storeroom,” he answered without turning around. “We're lucky to have a proper surgeon. Most ships get by with the cook taking care of the doctoring—the cutting and dosing and such. But De Ridder likes to sail with a medical man. He likes it so much he had Pa and me build the cove his own digs.” The lock clicked open. Broen slid it off and opened the door, revealing a large closet. “This way, Miss De Winter.”

The storeroom was full of crates marked
gin
and
wein
. There was just enough room for a small person to perch on top of the gin with her back against the wein. My heart sank. How was I to spend six months in such a space without being found?

“Mister Broen.” I cleared my throat, which felt thick of a sudden. “You are very kind to find me any hiding place at all. And one so near a porthole and fresh air is more than I could have hoped for. It's only that I worry about being found out when the surgeon wants some of his libations.”

“I see your meaning,” he said, holding back a smile. “But Master Clockert bunks with the junior officers, and besides he don't want his
libations
very often, what with them being his private stash for selling in Batavia. Also, this isn't where you'll be bunking.”

Ah.

He opened a hatch in the floor. I leaned over and peered into the hole where a peg-ladder disappeared into the dark.

“You'll be bunking here in the hold where all the ship's stores is stowed,” he said. “This part right below us is a separate cabin for supplies we're carrying to East India—bricks, tobacco, cloth, those kinds of stuffs. No one should touch 'em for months unless we need to rebalance.”

The hold. I knew little of ships but enough to understand that this would be the lowest, darkest place on board. Here I would live beneath the sea like a mole beneath the earth.

What had I done?

I straightened my back even as my spirits sank. “It's perfect.”

Broen handed me the canvas sack and used his lantern to light a candle, which he put in a holder shaped like an upside-down L with two pointed ends. “You carry it around with you and stick the bottom or the side piece in the wall or wherever's handy,” he explained. “But be careful, Miss De Winter. Nothing's more deadly than an open flame on a wood ship. The light should be enough for you to get stowed away, and I'll be back before long. Is there anything else you need?”

He'd already risked so much, I wouldn't dream of asking for more.

“I'm perfectly content. Thank you, Mister Broen.”

“Bram,” he said.

“Then you shall please call me Petra.”

And I stepped down into the blackness.