The Deserter (8 page)

Thomas climbed the scaffolding of rough boards, and turned to face the smooth, bevelled planks of the ship’s hull rising above. About eighty feet long, it rested on its sturdy cradle and ways. The master caulker, a good-natured Brit with rough hands and a florid face, stepped over to him.

“Well, me son, here’s yer iron and yer caulking mallet, always double-headed. Head is wood, see, with steel hoops on it, different sizes depending on what you’re doing. This one here is right for what we’re doing on these lower planks, see?”

Thomas hefted the hammer and took hold of the caulking iron. He’d already looped oakum strings over his shoulder and was about ready to start. His first day on the job. Kind of thrilling, he had to admit.

“Working on the deck is a whole lot nicer, because you’re on your hands and knees. That’d be at the end of the summer.” He eyed him. “You work outside in. Always.”

Any position at all was fine, Thomas thought. He had changed into the common dress of the French settlers here that M. Huard had allotted him in trade for further work, so that now with his full-grown beard, he almost blended in. A compelling disguise, too, should another naval vessel turn up. He could see from the Lieutenant’s uncanny prediction of a deserter being here that Jonas Wickett had been contacting other Navy ships as they passed.

The caulker went on. “The first thing you always do is get rid of the rainwater off the deck. It’s the one thing you really care about. Causes rot. It’s gotta get flushed out with saltwater or it’ll finish your whole ship. Anything that is wet with saltwater, it might have other things happen to it, but it won’t rot. Rainwater is poison!” He turned. “Now this here oakum — just pieces of old tarry rope spun with tar.”

“Sir, I know it well.”

“Ya do?”

“Oh yes sir, I once spent days in a little stinking room on a rollicking Navy ship, twisting it. Punishment.”

Thomas remembered being assigned the dirty task of picking oakum. He would open the bale that contained the floor sweepings from the factories where they made the rope in the first place: pieces of natural fibre that weren’t good enough to go into rope. Hemp was grown in India, that much he knew. When making rope, you want the best fibres to spin. Many fibres were too short. Like with cotton for clothes, one needed the long and staple fibres for rope. So in the end, a bunch of seeds and dirt were part of the sweepings from the hemp factory, all of which found their way into the bales sold cheaply to His Majesty’s ships. The Captain or bosun would send his poor miscreant landlubbers, after some easily made mistake, down into the bowels of the ship where they’d pick out the stones and the seeds and take these short little fibres and roll them bit by bit into cords of oakum for use in caulking leaks.

“You get used to it. M’self, I love it,” said the caulker. He stood back and watched. “All right young fella, ya kinda poke the loops of this thing with them fingers right into this here seam. Now ya gotta choose the right amount for the opening. Then ya come along with yer caulking iron and yer mallet, and you tap it in.” “I think I can manage that,” Thomas said.

The caulker eyed him. Was he giving him lip? “So what you’re doing is tapping in cord. You gotta be really cute” — sharp-witted, Thomas knew — “about it. Any fool can haul off and bang the stuff in hard. Won’t do to fix it like ’at!” Without further ado, Thomas started stuffing, trying his best to follow directions. “See, the wood has a little bit of give to it. You want to get one row of oakum in there, just the right amount of compression in yer oakum and the right amount in yer wood. It’s sort o’ hard to describe, but you can tell — if you pay attention, once you’re starting to catch on — you can feel how much resistance it’s offering, just tap tap tap, it’s not like a wall, and the sound changes.”

Thomas began tapping. Different from the small oakum room on the
Billy Ruffian
, he thought, out here on the sandbank with a light breeze blowing in from off the bay, and white clouds piling high above the horizon as usual along the coast. Also very different from England where the sky was either uniformly grey or raining. “They talk about the chirping of the mallet. The sounds change and then it feels right. Easy to know when you got that bit set, and then you move on to another piece.” “Aye aye, sir.”

“Now on this here ship, because o’ the width of the seam, we gotta put in another row of oakum after this first one. You try your hand on this first, and I’ll do the second, but ya see, maybe you’ll pick it up faster than the froggies here.”

What’s beautiful about it, Thomas reflected later, is that it really is an art.

“Yerss, I’m crazy about it. That’s why I came t’be a master caulker. Them two Frenchies over there been at it already two year, and they only just got the hang. You look like you might do a whole lot better. I had t’watch ’em and curse ’em up and down to make sure they didn’t mess up.”

The master caulker stood looking up at his men, but directing his words at Thomas. “Very distinctive, this here sound of our caulking mallets. You can hear us a long way off.”

Most of the men had the strands of oakum close to hand, some in turns over their arm and another couple of turns round their neck.

“This here oakum’s the basic staple anywhere, around the maritime industry.” With that, the master caulker went off to survey the working party at different levels on this skeleton of the barque.

***

Thomas worked on the ship all summer long, enjoying his job and the camaraderie which had sprung up with his fellow French workers. But now, in August, the approach of autumn began to weigh heavily. Simple calculations showed that at his present rate he could never earn enough to buy the draft animals needed to clear land. And never mind that, what about this coming winter with those heavy snows they all talked about so much? He’d have to take some firm action soon.

He’d gotten enough powder and shot to bring down a moose or two, were he lucky enough to get within range.

And should he find a pond or lake where beavers made their domed houses, he might get one to eat. But living alone, a long way from any habitation or neighbours, he absolutely needed enough supplies to tide him through.

And find suitable heavy clothes. How to achieve that?

His few coins, even if all spent (not a pleasant thought) on supplies, would not suffice to see him through six or eight months.

What about calling it a day and going home for the winter? Gazing out over the apparently limitless bay, images of the castle began to flow: first, his mother sprang to mind. And his promise of a letter. With so many new and exciting goingson, he had not given it a thought. He could put it off no longer. Then in a flash, he also remembered the golden guinea she had sewn into his shirt. In his rush to escape the Port Daniel trader, he had exchanged clothes with Burn’s friend. He must get that guinea back.

Once this job was done, he’d surely make the trip back down to the Micmac band. And meanwhile, he must fulfill his most important obligation, which had been nagging at him relentlessly: write to his mother and his mentor.

The powerful, and painful, scene of his departure rose in all its force in his mind. How well he saw his mother still with the clearest skin, though her hands were now rough and red. Recently, she seemed to be putting on weight and her fair hair was turning grey. She usually worked apart from him in the kitchen while he had his chores outside and in the stables. But his most clear image of her came from his childhood: the lovely willowy woman whom every male visitor eyed with distinct attraction.

Tuesday night after the shooting party for the Marquis, Thomas had confessed his plans and made peace with Goodman, the butler, head of the household staff, and through him with his master, the Earl. The former had already heard of his hopes of the New World, but had cautioned that this might be forever out of his grasp.

The master, in a fit of unusual generosity, had given Goodman a golden guinea for Thomas, with firm instructions that his mother sew it into his shirt where no one would find it. Thomas had also been a great favourite with the staff and at the impromptu farewell gathering, they’d taken round the hat for him — even the scullery maids had thrown in a coin or two. So that when his mother came up to him as he was taking his leave, she held out for him a leather purse filled with money.

He took it respectfully. He could see she was trying to be brave, but not succeeding too well. He was her only child after all. Thomas had never had a father, nor a sibling, so he was all she had. “Now there’s always time to say no,” she told him. “I’ve asked Goodman, and he said that you can have your place back at any time. He even told me the master seemed disturbed at the first news of your leaving; but now he wishes you well.”

That was news to Thomas: none of the noble family seemed ever to give him a second thought, as was the custom in those days. His mother went on, “Even at the boat, you can turn back if you change your mind.”

“I know, Mother.” Beginning to get choked up, he found he was already missing the room over the stable where he slept with the other three lads. All his wants, though simple, had been filled. Would it be like that in the Royal Navy?

A long walk down to the main road from this castle lay ahead, and then about four more miles to the nearest post house. The night coach usually came through at two in the morning. Within five days he’d be far to the south in Portsmouth. He had waited a week after the Marquis’ unexpected intervention to allow fair notice for his employer, through Goodman of course.

“Now you’ve brought your warm woollies and your scarf?” she admonished.

“Yes mother, and even my mittens.” He forced a smile at his own teasing. “But I am sure, after we have beaten the French, we’ll sail to the New World and I shall have no need of them.”

“Hush child, of course you will! The winters are very severe over there, have you not heard?”

“I know mother, but by then I will perhaps have gotten a good job, and will be able to buy warm winter clothes.” He felt his courage deserting him as he spoke. “They say there is work for every man,” he reassured her and himself, “and when you work there, you are free to come and go as you like.”

He had been indentured ever since a baby. His mother had often recounted how Goodman had been only too pleased to welcome her and her son. Though how she’d managed to arrange such a fine position as undercook in the Lord’s castle, no one ever found out.

“One day, when Martha retires, you’ll be cook yourself,” Thomas said, though he didn’t know why he said it.

“Oh no,” she said, teasing him a little, “I thought you were going to send for me.”

“Oh yes, Mother, of course I’ll send for you. But it may take me a little time to get established.”

He could see in her eyes that she knew a little time likely meant several long years.

At this they both found tears leaping into their eyes, and fell about each other, hugging hard. Clasped to his mother’s bosom, Thomas felt like a little boy again, no longer in his teens.

“Well you’d better go,” she said, trying to clear her throat. “It’s a long walk to the post house.” He knew she was right, but the moon was out and he should have no trouble. At this time of night no one would be about, none of the usual villains. He clutched the coach fare securely in his bottom pocket.

With the golden guinea sewn in his shirt, the purse from his mother full of change and the few shillings he’d managed to save out of his almost non-existent wages, he felt richer than ever before. His courage rose. He stood taller than his mother now, and looked down into her clouded blue eyes. What concern he saw! Both of them had left unspoken the untold dangers he would face, and the harsh life on one of His Majesty’s ships. Had he been a gambling type, like many of the lords and ladies who visited the manor, he would not have given a farthing for his odds of making it across into the actual wilderness of the New World.

“God speed and God be with’ee,” his mother said. Resolutely, she turned him around and gave him a gentle push.

He started down the drive. After a few steps, he looked back over his shoulder and waved, and then he turned and looked no more.

***

And so early one Sunday morning in Paspébiac, Thomas found himself seated at the long table in the cookhouse where the workers ate their meals provided by Robin (for a price). Most of the men were away at a Catholic service held in the temporary church building. Thomas remembered those services in the stone chapel by the castle. Built three hundred years ago in the reign of the Tudors, its heavy stone pillars framed a lovely stained-glass window that had escaped smashing by Oliver Cromwell’s idiot followers. He loved the design: a knight with a circle of blue glass around the simple face and an upturned sword resting on a stone engraved upon the rock:
SE IPSI FIDELIS — True to himself.
When the castle had been built a hundred years later, the Lord had chosen that motto for his emblem. Thomas rather liked it, and thought he’d use it himself one day.

He dipped his quill pen in the ink borrowed from M. Huard, and by the light of a cobwebbed window, began his letter to the Marquis, his sometime mentor.

My Lord, In remembering your great kindness to me, I have borrowed paper and a pen from the good people here—

He stopped. He was about to write:
in a settlement called Paspébiac on the shores of Chaleur bay.
But then, he thought, don’t locate yourself! Suppose the noble lord is contacted by Captain Hawker on his next return to the Old Country. Would he not be forced by his sense of British Justice to betray Thomas’s whereabouts? He did doubt that, but in order not to put him in a difficult position, he went on: