Fortunate Son (10 page)

“Screamin' fer yer mummy, are ye
Tiarna Óige
?” The crackling laughter resumed.

Jemmy strained against his shackles, listening. Nothing. Again he yelled, “Mother! Mother! Motherrr!” He screamed again and again, “Motherr! I'm down heerre!”

On deck, crewmen were bustling about. “All hands aloft!” was shouted and seconded across the deck as the mainsail and jib scurried up their ropes to guide the ship from the harbor. The few passengers were in the roundhouse, on the aft quarterdeck near the stern of the ship. Sitting, huddled among them, trying to find shelter from the wind's rush, was Mary Sheffield. As the wind shifted and the ship swayed to conform, Mary thought she heard a familiar voice, faint and far away. She stood, stepping around the other passengers, making her way down to the main deck. There she heard it again. Something distant. But she couldn't make it out. Moving back quickly, she dodged the elbows of a crewman spinning a massive wench. Then she leaned on the railing and looked up. Seagulls were riding the wind that streamed around the masts and booms. Again she heard the sound. Then again—and again. Something faint. It sounded like someone calling her name, saying “Mary” or was it “mother”? The wind whipped at her skirts, and the squeaking of the pulleys and wenches harmonized with the loud seagulls. Soon, she was hearing her name in everything—the ropes grinding against their blocks, the tackle clanging against the masts and yardarms, the sails popping like whips, the ship shoving against the cresting waves—everything resonating in a melodic moan, a unified sound of straining against the wind, against the unseen forces that bound them all—and it all sounded like her name. Feeling dizzy, she grabbed a rail to steady herself, slowly making her way back to the other passengers. There she sat down and leaned her head against a stack of rolled sails. Closing her eyes, she was convinced of her own delirium. She fell asleep long before the sound of her name left the wind.

Jemmy's throat was burning from screaming, but he kept calling over and over, “Motherr! Maaryy Maary! Down herre! Mother! Motherrr!”

“Shut your bloody mouth!” A new voice barked from the other side of the crates.

“Mother! Motherrr!” he continued, ignoring the order.

A crewman pushed the crates and trunks from his path and came straight for Jemmy, brandishing a crank handle. “Idiot lad! Simpleton! Your mother's not coming for you. You're on a ship, you stupid boy!” He raised the handle in his right hand. “Now, are you going to be quiet or aren't you?”

Jemmy could not be quiet. He would not. His mother hadn't heard him yet! She hadn't come for him. He was still shackled. It wasn't happening as it was supposed to. He couldn't stop yelling. How else could she find him? She hadn't come. She wasn't holding him. “Mother! Mot—” The handle smashed into his jaw, knocking him violently to the floor, unconscious.

The
Courtmain
was pitching and heaving in the rough northern sea, waking Mary. She opened her eyes, listening to the wind slapping the enormous square sails, luffing them through each tack. She was accustomed to voyages across St. George's Channel, even violent storms in that sea, but something was different about this. Rising from her pallet, she walked from the roundhouse onto the quarterdeck, scooting aside to avoid the crewmen buzzing around her. She found an open rail and held on, watching the organized chaos on the maindeck below. The crewmen were swarming the decks and shrouds, fighting the strong wind, and she found their intensity captivating. When the wind whipped her long loose hair, she pulled at the hood of her cape, tying it. Ahead was the nearing shore, her homeland, though it now seemed so terribly foreign. For the first time, she realized she would never return to Ireland. Never again. It would have been a pleasant thought, but she was leaving her boy behind. She felt wicked and ashamed. But hadn't she tried? What more could she have done? For a moment, the tormenting images absorbed her and she turned away from the movements of the crew, placing her face squarely against the stinging wind, toward England, and began to murmur a prayer. “Lord God forgive me….” She paused to cough, then closed her eyes, pulling the salt air through her nose. “I don't know what to do. I don't know what I've done. Please help me. Watch over my Jamie. Please send your angels to my boy.”

“All hands! Calashee! All hands! Calashee watch!” the boatswain suddenly bellowed to the crew. Various octaves of deep immutable voices replied from just as many different locations across the ship's expanse, “Calashee watch, aye! All watches, calashee!”

“Ma'am, you'll need to get back. Ma'am?”

Startled, Mary turned to see a young deckhand pulling a thick rope through a block and up into the tackle of the mast. Before she could respond, another voice boomed from the poopdeck above, “Sailor, leave the good lady be!”

“Aye, Captain,” the crewman replied smartly.

“Ma'am, ye'll have a better view from up here.” The man smiled. “And there won't be any swabs swinging yardarms at ye while ye contemplate.” Mary flushed with the realization that the captain had been watching her pray. “I'll help ye up,” he went on, motioning to the steep steps.

“Captain.” She acknowledged, curtsying politely before heading up the stairway. As she reached the top, the
Courtmain
began to come about, and she nearly lost her balance. The captain offered his hand, and she took it uncomfortably. “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “You're very kind.”

“Captain Thomas Hendry, at yer service, ma'am.” He bowed, tipping his hat.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Mary replied with a forced smile. Her gaze returned to the nearing shore and the myriad of ships surrounding them. Feeling the captain looking at her, she tugged at the hood of her cape.

“Strangest thing, this wind,” Captain Hendry said.

“How so?”

“‘Tis usually a following wind, off St. George's. Not a head wind like this. Can be a right bit dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” She feigned slight distress.

“Aye,” he went on, motioning beyond the rail, “there are a few things we could hit out here, and she moves rather fast close-hauled like this.”

Mary studied the flock of white sails overhead, each taut and straining against the frenetic air slipping by them in vigorous bursts. She didn't know what to say to the captain. He was obviously flirting with her, but she was in no mood. The sun's brightness forced her to look down again and she returned to watching the grey and white churning waves around her, seeing them as a mass of roiling, snow-capped mountains, as if she were a bird or a spirit, far above. Noticing Captain Hendry had stepped closer, she winced and stepped away. It was time to remove herself, she reasoned. Time to move back to her quarters. “Thank you, sir, for the explanation.”

Just then the first-mate stepped onto the quarterdeck and yelled, “Captain, sir. It appears that Herrick's Quay is laden.”

Captain Hendry pulled up his brass scope and extended it, then studied the far docks and quays of Bristol. “So it does!” he shouted back. Then he swung round, apparently exploring another area in the distance. Leaning on the fife rail, Mary noticed the first-mate below. He was wearing his own hair, tied at the back, and there was something familiar about him. Probably because he looked so terribly common, she reasoned. “Mr. Parker, take her into Bishop's Quay. That'll suffice
.
”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” The first-mate was also looking through a scope, apparently studying Bishop's Quay. “Helmsman!” he yelled down into the dark wheelhouse. “New bearing—port three points!”

“Port, three points. Aye!” echoed a faint voice from somewhere below Mary's feet.

“Well done,” Captain Hendry said to himself, putting away his scope. Mary started toward the steps. “Ma'am, are ye stepping down?” asked the captain, sounding disappointed.

“Aye, Captain. I must prepare my things. I do thank you for your hospitality. She is a lovely ship.”

“Thank ye, ma'am.” He tipped his hat, then followed her to the top of the railing. “If I may be so bold. I fear I did not learn yer name. May I have the honor of knowing it?”

Mary smiled meekly. “Lady Anglesea. I was.” She paused, unhappy that she still reflexed so. “Mary Sheffield.” From inside her cape, Mary pulled a black handkerchief, revealing her official state of mourning. Even though the custom, of which she was instinctively aware, dictated that she was to be fully attired in black for a husband so recently departed, she had decided to only carry the black handkerchief, which reflected the mourning of distant relative. It seemed more than enough to her.

“Oh…I'm sorry,” stammered the captain, staring at the handkerchief. “My condolences.” His face had died, falling white and empty, as if he had just seen the head of Medusa and was now reduced to a crumbling pillar of salt. “So, ye're the wife of Arthur…the late Earl—”

“Yes. You knew my husband?”

Hendry stared past her, not answering. The
Courtmain
was coming through another tack, but he seemed oblivious. Finally, he took a few paces back and muttered, “Aye, well . . . I suppose I do. I mean, I did.” His eyes shifted away, then rapidly back again, then finally turned up at the mizzen sails as if they demanded his immediate attention. “Good day, ma'am,” he blurted in a dull flat tone.

“Good day to you as well.” Mary turned away, saddened. She carefully stepped the remaining way down to the quarterdeck and entered the roundhouse. She was accustomed to men hating Arthur, but Captain Hendry's reaction had been different somehow. Unusual. It infuriated her that she was still feeling apologetic for Arthur, even after his death. She hated him. It had been years since he had thrown her from Dunmain House, with his false allegations about Tom Palliser. He got what he deserved for what he did to that man. Arthur had been so wrong. And then he went too far altogether—forbidding her from ever again seeing her boy. Two long years. She hated him for that. But she had hated him long before then. She hated Arthur for what he had done to her, for what he had stolen from her—things that had never been his.

Mary's father had been Queen Anne's favorite secret lover, and as such had been granted the title of the First Duke of Buckingham. Having built Buckingham Palace, he was as elegantly rich as he was elegantly handsome, as powerful as he was loved by the royals. And yet he was a poor husband and a non-existent father. Mary's mother was of little consequence, having died not long after Mary's birth. Mary was raised in the splendor of English royalty, playing and schooling with Princess Anne and Princess Catherine, the haughty daughters of King James II, for whom Mary's father worked. Princess Catherine was Mary's age, and when they were both nineteen, Catherine married the Fifth Earl of Anglesea, a favorite friend and supporter of King James II. But that Anglesea Earl beat Catherine severely, leading her sister (by then Queen Anne) to authorize their quick divorce. Soon thereafter the Fifth Earl was murdered—whispers put it as the Queen's doing—and the Earlship transferred to the dead man's brother, Arthur, the Sixth Earl of Anglesea, and leaving the other, younger brother, Richard, fuming in the wake. After the divorce and death, Princess Catherine, then twenty-one, was once again available for marriage. Thus, Queen Anne arranged for her sister Catherine to marry the Duke of Buckingham, then fifty-four—the Queen's secret ex-lover, a widower, and the absentee father of Mary, also twenty-one.

With her father impenetrably focused on matters of the royal court, Mary fell to the devices of her ex-friend, her new stepmother, now re-titled Duchess Catherine. Within a month of the wedding Mary was quietly banished to a country house outside London—far away from the new family that Catherine planned with the Duke. Though Mary had gone, dutifully with her servants, including Charity, she was heartbroken that no one had objected, not even her father. Then after a few years, even Mary's occasional visits to Buckingham Palace became too much for Catherine, and a new plan was conceived. Catherine knew her ex-husband's brother, Arthur Annesley, was looking for a wife. The plan was born, and Mary's immediate dislike for everything about Arthur was of no relevance. They were married and she was shipped to Ireland with the drunkard, with his fists and virulent mouth. Duchess Catherine had calculated correctly—Mary was no better treated by the Sixth Earl of Anglesea than Catherine had been treated by the Fifth.

Now, journeying back to England, Mary had nothing to show for the years of misery and torment. She was returning with less property, less pride, and less worth than she had when she first left, over fourteen years earlier. And she had no home to go to in London. She doubted the country house would even be available. She would have to survive on the mercies of her stepmother Catherine and her aging father whom she barely knew. And most damning to her—she was returning without her son.

An hour later, in the between-deck of the
Courtmain
, Jemmy awoke to the fetid smell of bilge water commingling with his own vomit. His entire body ached with an abhorrent pain greater than any he had ever known. He had once heard that being burned was the worst pain a man could endure, and now he felt as though he had been burned from head to foot. As he tried to lift his head, the palpitations seared his skull. He was sweating and clammy. He lowered his head against the hard, wet, putrid floor. Managing one eye open and finally the other, he saw light and sounds enveloping him. Feet were moving on all sides of him, men's voices yelling over the scratching, bumping sounds of crates and trunks being dragged across the floor. After a while he tried to sit up again but the misery in his neck and head reminded him that he had been knocked unconscious twice in the last two days. He pulled against the stiffness, disregarding the pain, forcing himself upright, then leaned against the rough post around which his bruised wrists were still shackled. A short crewman came to him with a bilge mop, and Jemmy noticed the sailor was young, not much older than himself. He watched as the boy began dabbing at the vomit with the old broken mop, swishing it around, not absorbing much. The only thing he seemed to accomplish was to splash the muck against Jemmy's legs and stir the stench farther into the stale air. The young crewman, grunting in disgust, finally gave up and left. Looking around, Jemmy saw that most of the crates and trunks were gone, along with the wretched old man. Then he realized the ship was not under sail, only swaying lightly against its mooring. The soft lap of the waves caused a burbling echo throughout the hold. Where were they? Where had they been going? He tried to remember, tried to center his murky thoughts. Bristol, he realized. They must be in Bristol, in England. He brought a knee up to scratch his nose. Suddenly he understood—Bristol! His mind screamed, his matted eyes popped wide. Bristol! He turned to the right, examining the hold, searching desperately, frantically, scanning the few remaining trunks. He strained against the agonizing pain, peering at and past everything, hoping he had missed it somehow, hoping he was wrong, hoping his muddled head had forgotten something, something important, something that would explain the absence, some reason he was not seeing it. He stretched one way, then the other, then finally he slowed, slackening against the shackles, finally letting himself believe what seconds before he would have sworn could never be, could never have happened. But it was obvious. Quite simply the bleakness, the narrow hollow realm under that sagging ceiling, the dense nasty air, all of the nothingness, the worthless pain, the vast hopelessness of what surely was to come had all united into one singular agonizing truth. It had confirmed James Annesley's deepest fear—the large blue humpbacked trunk was already gone.