Cinnamon and Gunpowder (28 page)

When I feel the phantom foot cinched within the invisible vise, I am forced to beg for help from the twins. Their needles, their massage, their smoldering mugwort, and their bleeding cups are the only things that keep the soreness at bay. The effect of their care is instantly soothing, and I feel my spirit appeased. The surgeon had demonstrated his one use in sawing off my leg. Unlike that foul and drunken butcher, these doctors treat the body whole—humors and spirit as well.

I have too much time to ponder my fragility and the care those ebon-haired twins have shown. My thoughts inevitably become confused: Could it really be black magic if it soothed so completely? Had God given their land this saving knowledge but not the means for eternal salvation? Such questions make my nights long indeed.

Sunday, October 10

This morning Joshua, grinning like a split melon, woke me and, though I had not yet had tea and was not in the mood for games, led me out of my chamber, across the deck, and down the starboard companionway to a hold that used to contain great coils of rope. The place was transformed. The hull now framed a port window of wooden slats. The air was sweet with pitch and sawdust. The hooks that used to hold mattocks, spikes, and other tools were now hung with pots and spoons. The little iron stove had been set up against the back wall and secured to the floor with bolts, its chimney poking through a hole still ragged from the cooper’s saw. Behind the stove, the wood had been shielded with a sheet of hammered tin that reflected morning light from the window. It was a small kitchen, even smaller than Conrad’s galley, but it had a proper stove, a basin stand, and a block for chopping.

As I marveled, Mabbot appeared in the doorway behind me and asked, “Will it suit?” She was hiding something behind her back.

“Much better, Captain,” I answered. “It will be cramped with Joshua and me—I’ll need a stool. But I’m glad for it.”

“Thank Kitzu,” Mabbot said. “With all the repairs, the man hasn’t slept since we anchored. Something else”—she held out a copper box that I had seen pillaged from the
Patience
. Inside, the box was divided into tiered chambers, each with a lacquered lid, and these held a selection of ground and whole spices: sage, turmeric, cumin, ginger, mustard, cinnamon, asafetida, mace, cayenne, and cloves. I felt like an emperor receiving the treasures of a new country. The odor rising from the box was like a clambering vine wrapping itself thickly around my head, musky with the deep minerals of the earth and dusting my shoulders with a rainbow of pollen.

“I could have used these in weeks past.”

“Last month I was in no mood to make gifts.”

It was a ransom of spices, a small fortune, and yet out here, with no buyers, they were worthless as ash to all but myself. Only my presence imbued them with value.

Despite my decision not to brave those jungles, today I spent several hours upon the riverbank, bathing and enjoying the blessed constancy of soil with the other men. I forget for long moments that I am a prisoner, and then I am so frightened at having forgotten that my heart races and sweat beads on my brow. Though Mr. Apples keeps his eye on me, I must not slacken in my search for freedom. I am still thin, though, and after only an hour upon unfamiliar terrain, my shoulders ache and tremble from the crutches.

Monday, October 11

Today the
Rose
was ready for open seas, but Mabbot insisted that we stay and gave the men a full day’s rest. As a result, and though it was only midday, the men not on watch were quite drunk when a ship was spotted approaching the mouth of the river, causing a panic.

Happily, the vessel was merely a Japanese whaling ship, and emissaries from both were sent to meet in longboats to trade tobacco, spices, liquor, and spermaceti for Mabbot’s lamps. I went along.

It was a strange impromptu marketplace we made, four small boats rocking in the tide, tethered to one another by thrown ropes and goodwill. Kitzu translated, though we had to wait long spells as he gathered news of his homeland from the whalers. The others spent tremendous amounts of silver wheedling knives from the Japanese and suggested I do the same. Instead, I convinced two of the whalers to row back and bring me samples of every foodstuff in their galley.

Paying with silver pieces Mabbot gave me for the purpose, I thus obtained a pot of fermented paste Kitzu called “miso.”

I cannot say for certain what it is made of. Kitzu tells me miso is comprised of “winter rice and beans.” Neither rice nor beans ever looked, smelled, or tasted like this, and so I know Kitzu is having fun at my expense. The paste has a rich, meaty smell, and I’ve been assured by the whalers it will keep for a month at least. Kitzu told me it would last ten years, proving that the man is either lying or confused. Still, it is wonderful stuff—would that I could have bought an entire barrel, for, first thing upon regaining the
Rose
, I boiled a bit of water, and the miso made an excellent broth that will serve well as a replacement for beef bouillon. Further, I bought a pot of savory black soy liquor—salty but, though I cannot yet imagine what to do with it, no doubt valuable.

Macau is deep in the South China Sea, and Mabbot has plotted a course past Cochin China. When the evening tide allowed, we finally left our river retreat and headed again for the vast dark expanse, hoping to put at least a full night between us and Laroche, wherever he may be lurking. The crew is wary, as am I, but there is nothing I can do except focus on my own tasks.

In anticipation of Sunday’s meal, I have taught Joshua the quick and kind way to wring the neck of one of the pheasants kept in wicker cages. We cleaned and plucked it, then hung it in a lidded cauldron in the cool lower holds to age along with a small pot of the salted gizzards, heart, and liver. Such provisions make me feel almost wealthy.

16

TEACHING A DOG

In which Mabbot surprises me and I receive a gift

Friday, October 15

We are again surrounded by sea, and though I loathed to see that fertile and giving land disappear, I knew that it was nothing but a mermaid’s song. My only way home is to press further into the wilderness.

I am beginning to learn how to watch the sky for weather. The lavender furls on the northern horizon are as lovely as they are ominous; I’m told they are distant monsoons and that our course will bring us to meet them. Just as haunting are the boat-sized manta rays that fly in languid flocks under our hull.

While I was explaining to Joshua how to make mirepoix to anchor a sauce—a purely fanciful exercise, as we have no carrots or celery—I was interrupted by Mabbot, who threw a bundle of clothes at me and demanded that, prior to our next meal, I shave. The clothes were finely sewn and included linen pants and a silk undershirt. An entirely different class of garment from the stiff and salt-crusted canvas clothes I’d been wearing for weeks. I guessed they had come from the captain of the
Patience
.

“I cannot wear the clothes of a murdered man,” I said.

“Then wear them and live,” she replied, and left. But her threats no longer have the sting they used to. I do not doubt that Mabbot, in a fit of rage, could have me flung overboard, but, though I do not wish to die, I no longer tremble at the threat. I now have some intimacy with death, and like the hops in a beer, it has both embittered and fortified me.

Mabbot is nothing so much as a spoiled child playing with dolls. She props me in a seat to make tea-talk, and I find myself charmed. When bored, she throws tantrums and lashes out. My task is merely to survive intact and to remember that I must not come to like too much the dark beauty of distant storm clouds or the dreamlike flavors of island fruits—to remember that, though it seems a pale shadow now, my real life awaits me somewhere beyond this rolling deck.

I have made an audit of the foodstuffs loaned me, the portions I owe and to whom. These men know to come to my chamber on Monday morning for their leftovers. My contract with certain members of the crew has borne a curious phenomenon. Men have begun, a few times a day, to knock at my door offering trinkets such as mother-of-pearl boxes or mummified monkey’s hands. One offered to wash my clothes, which I would have agreed to if I had another set to change into in the meantime. (Better to do it myself than wait naked while a pirate disappears with my clothes.) They all want me to cook for them, and I am forced to turn most of them away. One man, though, offered a small bag of dried tomatoes (of an uncertain age but still piquant) that he had been rationing.

This man I kissed on both cheeks, though I am not known for displays of affection. I have been unable to put down this bag of tomatoes for fear it might disappear, and instead keep it in my pocket. I still wear my tin of yeast dough upon my person as well, feeding it when necessary and taking a comfort from its familial smell.

The surgeon, it seems, does have one other skill. When he’s not passed out or lopping limbs, the man whittles naked women from Kitzu’s scrap wood. He churns out various poses at an alarming rate and trades them for rations. These shameless fetishes, which the men call “Pine Pennys,” proliferate until one cannot take three steps without his gaze falling between the spread legs of a doll stashed in the crook of a bulkhead or tucked into a seaman’s belt up to the bulging mammaries. This is the surgeon’s chief occupation.

Some of the men rub them for luck. A nervous energy is growing day by day. We’re closing in on Cochin China, and while some are excited to be closer to apprehending the Fox, others worry aloud about the naval patrols that guard the tea routes here. While the occasional sight of a distant shore is a poultice for my heart, those around me feel that we’ll soon be fenced in by Borneo and Malaysia. “Too easy to trap us there. We’d have to have wings to find open water,” they say. Mabbot, though, is undeterred, driving us at top speeds into the heart of Pendleton territory.

My returning health has renewed my dreams of escape, though they are now infused with a draft of hard-won cynicism. As often as not, these fantasies end with me eaten by a leopard or pressed into service in an emerald mine. I know next to nothing of the lands we visit. The explorers and merchants who have conquered these jungles have all been valiant and well funded, escorted by guides and pack animals. How would I fare with my sack of figs and my flattened spoon? Further, those explorers were imbued with God-given courage and an insatiable lust for adventure, whereas I have been known to pay too much for beef at the Smithfield market for fear of harsh words.