In The Belly Of The Bloodhound (31 page)

I go down to the work site to check on things and am much encouraged. The round-the-clock schedule has really sped up things, and I know just by looking at the Rat Hole that I’ll be able to get through it. Before I go, though, I return to my seabag and change clothes. I reach in and pull out a small bundle and open it up.

“What is that?” whispers Rebecca, always fascinated with what I am up to.

“My burglar outfit,” I whisper back. “If I’m surprised over there, I’ll be better able to hide in this rig than I would in white drawers and undershirt.” It is the same outfit I used to haunt the not-so-very-Reverend Mather back at the school when I found out what he had done to that poor Janey Porter.

“Trust[_ you_] to have a thief’s costume,” says Constance Howell, whose turn it is at the Hole and who has overheard the whispered talk between Rebecca and me.

“Just tend to your duty, Connie, and leave me to mine I say in a low voice, a voice with a good deal of warning in it.

I whip off my drawers and hear a firm[_ tsk!_] from Connie, but who cares? I climb into my tight black britches—actually the same britches I stripped off Charlie Rooster’s body all those years ago and had later dyed black. Then it’s on with my serving-girl black stockings and off with my white chemise so I can pull on my tight jersey sweater and black leather gloves. My knit wool watch cap completes the outfit—and, when I pull the watch cap down over my face, there ain’t a white bit of me showin’ ‘cept for the whites of my eyes peering through the slits cut in the cap.

“Ooohh,” breathes Rebecca, “you look like a proper imp from down below, you do.”

Constance sniffs loudly but reserves judgement on the impishness of my character, which is lucky, ‘cause I’m just about ready to smack her a good one.

The candle is lit and I go through the Hole. I still scrape a bit at my hips, so I know it’ll be a while before Dolley could get through, but hey, chip by chip, we’ll get there.

Standing up on the other side and holding the candle, I look about me. I see a worktable, and there are kegs and boxes stacked about on shelves and on the deck. There’s some boards of various lengths, and…a coil of rope, and,[_ aha!_] there’s a spool of twine beside it. But first things first.

I go to the door to check it out. I can tell from the hinges that the door swings in and to starboard. I hold the candle to the latch, but I can’t tell anything about it from this side, and I don’t want to stick a blade through and jiggle it about in the daytime because someone might hear and wonder at the noise. I put my ear to the door crack and listen but hear nothing except faraway sounds. Course, it’s not likely I would, since I’m down in the bottom of the ship, just above the bilges, and the sleeping quarters and the galley would be up on higher decks.[_ Hmmm._] Thinking about the kitchen makes me wonder if that’s the smell of our millers roasting. Hope so. Maybe later tonight, when all are sleeping, I’ll give the latch a try with my shiv. But for now, it’s back to business.

I crouch down and choose eight more battens and slide them back through the Rat Hole. Waiting hands take them immediately. Katy’s going to make up some more bows and then we’ll see which of the girls turn out to be handy with them.

Then I go back and get the spool of cording and put it through, whispering, “Cut off about twenty yards of that and then pass it back.” I wait there, crouched, until its return. I know that some girl is measuring it out, nose to extended arm, nose to extended arm, repeated twenty times. A hand appears below me, holding the spool, and I take it and put it back where it was and then continue my exploration.

If the ship’s carpenter is in charge of this space, he sure ain’t a neat custodian—there’s piles of odd pieces of metal angles, and while some tools are hung on pegs on the bulkhead, others are just strewn about on the worktable top. There’s about five brace-and-augers, tools for drilling holes—that’s good, we might need those—and there’s mallets and files…[_ Good, good…And_] everything being a mess, nothing will be missed if we borrow some tools for a while. I take up a file and pass that through—Katy needs it to round off the arrows—and then I spy stacked buckets and…What’s in this box?[_ Glory!_] It’s cakes of laundry soap!

I take one big cake and one bucket and put them through the Hole, hoping that the girls on the other side don’t shout out loud over[_ that_] prize. They don’t, though I know that much linen will be scrubbed and hung out to dry under the Stage this day and…

Then I freeze. Oh,[_ my God! Someone’s coming!_] There’s a clatter of boot heels on the outside ladder and then footsteps outside the door. The latch rattles.

I snuff out the candle and suck the acrid smoke into my mouth so it won’t be smelled. No time to get back to the Hole. I leap back against the passageway bulkhead and flatten myself as the door swings open and covers me.

One man enters the room, muttering to himself, “Goddamn Chubbuck, whyn’t he get his own goddamn spikes, the sod…” The much put-upon man rummages about on the worktable, as far as I can figure out, me being out of sight behind the door. Then…[_ Horrors!...
] The ship has taken a more pronounced roll and the door starts to swing closed! If he turns, he’ll see me![
Quick._] I reach up and grab the top of the door and swing it back toward me. Then I hear, “There. This should serve, and the filthy bugger can go to hell if it don’t.” Then I hear his footsteps, and the door is pulled from my lightly restraining fingers and slammed shut. The sound of his boots gets fainter and fainter. Then silence.

I let out my breath and waste no time in feeling my way back to the Rat Hole and out.

Damn!
That was close.[_ Note to self: We can’t be surprised like that again._]
p. I praise the girls gathered about the Hole for not crying out and giving us away during that time of peril. They are certainly turning into a coolheaded bunch, by and large, and I rejoice in it.

“All right, light the candle again,” I say.

“But surely you’re not going back in there again!” whimpers one of the girls. “You were almost caught!”

“Only for a moment, Rose,” I say. “And you shall see that we will be the safer for it.”

The candle is lit and I slide through to the storeroom once more. I jump up, grab from the wall a brace-and-bit with a small drill I had spotted before, and am back down and through the Hole in an instant.

After all have calmed back down and are again at work on widening the Hole, I make yet another visit to my seabag. I reach in and pull out one of my door wedges, one of the ones I had used when I was touring Cape Cod, to keep unwanted visitors out of my rooms at various inns. As wondering eyes watch me, I squat down and clamp the wedge with my toes and put the bit to the thicker end and start drilling. In a matter of minutes, I finish, then I squirm through the Rat Hole once again and return the brace-and-bit to its place on the workbench. This time I do it by feel, without the candle, as I am becoming quite familiar with our dear storeroom.

Taking about fifteen feet of the twine, I slip the end through the newly drilled hole in the wedge and tie it down tight, whipping the end for neatness.

“See, the next time someone goes through, the first thing she does is put this wedge under the door. If someone surprises us and tries to open the door, he won’t be able to—he’ll rattle the door thinkin’ it’s stuck ‘cause of the dampness or something. Then the girl out there scampers back through here and yanks the cord, pulling the wedge back here, too. If the intruder hears it skitter across the floor, he’ll think it’s merely a rat. Got it?”

As I wriggle out of my burglar gear and back into my usual undershirt and drawers, I talk to Dolley and Clarissa, who both have come down to the work site. “We had a big scare there. It shows us we’ve got to cover our tracks better. There’s some planking and saws over there, and I say the next thing we must do is make a hatch cover for the Rat Hole in case we are ever really inspected. We[_ must_] do that, for if the Hole is discovered, we are lost.”

“Good. We will do it. But won’t they hear us sawing?” asks Dolley.

“We’ll wait till we have a good rockin’ blow, when the chains are really clashing against the sides, and then we’ll time our saw cuts to that.[_ Clang! Cut! Clang!_] Cut! We won’t be heard. Every sailor is busy during a blow, be it a King’s ship or a slaver. They won’t be thinking much of us, I can tell you.

“And nobody is to go through the Hole to the storeroom for the time being, unless we three say so. Is that clear?” I ask, reaching over and placing my stern finger on the nose of the ever more adventurous Rebecca. All around us nod, including her, but I know I shall have to watch our Rebecca. She crosses her eyes comically, looking down at my finger on her nose, then giggles, curls up in a ball, and rolls away.[_ Hmmm…_]

“Jacky,” comes the soft call from high above, “bag down.” Bag?...[_ Ha! It’s gotta be our millers!_]

I jump to my feet and fly out of the Pit and up to the port-side forward watch station. Ruth Alden sits there, on watch, with an oilskin bag at her feet. A line from the neck of the bag extends out through the bars and beyond.

I pull open the top of the bag and a wondrous smell hits m y nose. The spit pools in my mouth and threatens to spill out over my chin. I swallow hard and attend to business. I r each in and pull out a greasy parchment package. I open it a nd admire the gloriously roasted millers within. I wrap it b ack up, lay it aside, and say to Ruth, “Okay, now stuff those ot her millers in the bag!”

But she shrinks back, horrified at the thought of touch i ng the six dead rats piled in the corner.

“All right, I’ll do it,” I say, bending to the task. “But I’ll wager, Ruth Alden, that within the week you’ll be smacking you r lips over the arrival of these things!”

She shakes her head and looks greenish about the gills, but we’ll see…

I give two tugs on the line when all the millers are stuffed inside the bag, and it jerks up and out of sight. Then I make for under the Stage, the package warm in my hands.

“Pass the word. We’ve got roast miller. Everybody can have at least a bite.”

But it turns out that not everyone wants a bite. In fact, there are only four of us willing to try. The first one to plunk herself down next to me is Lissette. She sees the surprise on my face and says, “You English, you are always making fun of the French for the eating of the escargot and t he legs of the frog. Eh,[_ bien._] Make fun of me for this, too, but I will have some meat.”

We are joined by Rose, the farm girl, and by Katy, who crouches down on her haunches in the circle, while the rest of us sit cross-legged. I open the package and the two roasted millers lie glistening and brown in the dim light. There is a crowd of girls standing about us, looking down, fascinated.

“My shiv, please, for a moment.” And my knife is passed over from the work site. I take it and cut each miller into six pieces—the two large rear legs, the smaller front ones, the back, and the chest.

Lissette has brought one of her cloth strips with her as a napkin, and this she spreads over her knees. Class always tells, don’t it?

I hand a hind leg to Katy and say, “For the Huntress, herself, the first taste.”

She takes a bite. “Mmmm,” she says. “Yep, a lot like squirrel.” Then she polishes off the rest of the leg and tosses the bones down on the parchment.

I give a leg each to Rose and Lissette. I take one of the small legs for myself and waste no time in getting one into my mouth.

“Mmmmmmm…,”
I moan. I strip the meat off with my teeth, chew slowly so as to savor it, and then swallow. I crunch the end of the bone where it is soft and suck on it. It is wondrous good. I can tell that Cookie had soaked the millers in vinegar overnight to take out the gamey wild taste, and he even put some salt and pepper on them.[_ Good for you, Cookie._] I don’t forget kindnesses, no matter how small they are or who they come from.

“Like groundhog, too,” says Rose, running her tongue over her now-greasy lips.

“Nobody else?” I ask of the crowd. No one says anything. “Very well, maybe next time.”

There is a thump of knees and Clarissa is there next to me. She cuts a sharp look at Lissette, I guess for consorting with the likes of me. Lissette doesn’t seem to notice. “All right, give me a piece,” Clarissa orders. Count on her not to be left out of anything, no matter what. I give her the remaining back leg and she sniffs it, then puts it in her mouth. I watch her eyes and they almost cross in ecstasy.

I take up the knife again and cut the chest and back pieces into four small parts each, so we can better divide the remainder among us.

“Here, Lissette, try the ribs—ain’t much meat but they crunch up real good.”

“Ummm,”
she says in appreciation. In the near silence, we can hear her fine, wellborn teeth crushing the ribs.

“I could see this in some nice gravy,” says Katy, chewing on her own bones.

“Some gravy yes, Kay-tee, but maybe also a fine Bordeaux,[_ non?”_] says the French aristocrat to the raw frontier girl crouched next to her. I doubt Katy has ever tasted a fine wine like that, or any wine at all, for that matter, but she nods in reply. I think also that Lissette de Lise has never before eaten a rat, but, hey, I have tasted fine wines, as well as rats, and I, too, nod in agreement.

“We could call it[_ raton au vin,
] eh, Lissette?” I say, and she laughs, then notices Rebecca crawling into the circle on hands and knees, looking at the remaining pieces. “Here,[
ma petite,_] try this,” says Lissette, picking up a chunk of back and holding it under the girl’s nose. Rebecca inhales deeply and then opens her mouth.

Well, that’s six of us, at least, to divide up the three millers coming tomorrow.

Conversation ends and there is heard only the crunching of bones and smacking of lips and grunts of pleasure. Were it not for the fact that we do not growl and snap, we are like any pack of wild wolves around a kill.

Late that night, long after Storytime—wherein I told them some more about my wild roving in the[_ Emerald,
] which got me some hurrahs from my more adventurous sisters and a muttered[
“Not only a tramp but a thief as well,”_] from Constance Howell’s direction—yes, late that night I found myself back in the storeroom for the sole purpose of trying that damned latch again. I had left word to be awakened at one thirty in the morning, figuring all sailors not on watch would be dead asleep by then. I felt my way down to the Rat Hole and found Hyacinth and Frances carving away. We lit the candle and in I went, my shiv in my hand. I stood and put the candle on the workbench and shielded the flame with a box between it and the door. Wouldn’t want someone outside the door seeing a glow of candlelight around the edges.