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NEW ROLES

T HE SHIP CRESTED THE WAVE, her bow rising as if she would ascend into the tortured sky itself.

Sa knew, the rain was near heavy enough to float a ship.

For a long hanging instant, Althea could see nothing but sky.

In the next instant, they were rushing headlong down a long slope of water into a deep trough.

It seemed as if they must plunge into the rising wall of water, and plunge they did, green water covering the deck.

The impact jarred the mast, and with it the yard that Althea clung to.

Her numbed fingers slipped on the wet cold canvas.

She curled her feet about the footrope she had braced them on and made her grip more firm.

Then with a shudder, the ship was shaking it off, rising through the water and rushing up the next mountain.

‘Ath! Move it!’ The voice came from below her. On the ratlines, Reller was glaring at her, eyes squinted against the wind and rain. ‘You in trouble, boy?’

‘No. I’m coming,’ she called back. She was cold and wet and incredibly tired.

The other hands had finished their tasks and fled down the rigging.

Althea had paused a moment to cling where she was and gather some strength for the climb down.

At the beginning of her watch, at first sight of storm, the captain had ordered the sails hauled down and clewed up.

The rain hit them first, followed by wind that seemed bent on picking them out of the rigging.

They had no sooner finished and regained the deck than the cry came to double reef the topsails and furl everything else.

In seeming response to their efforts, the storm grew worse.

Her watch had clambered about the rigging like ants on floating debris, clewing down, close reefing and furling in response to order after order, until she had stopped thinking at all, only moving to obey the bellowed commands.

She had not forgotten why she was there; of their own accord, her hands had packed the wet canvas and secured it.

Amazing, what the body could do even when the mind was numbed by weariness and fear.

Her hands and feet were like cleverly-trained animals now that contrived to keep her alive despite her own ambivalence.

She made her slow way down, the last to be clear of the rigging as always.

The others had passed her on the way down and were most likely already below.

That Reller had even bothered to ask her if she was in trouble marked him as far more considerate than the rest. She had no idea why the man seemed to keep an eye on her, but she felt at once grateful and humiliated by it.

When she had first joined the ship’s crew, she had been burning to distinguish herself.

She had driven herself to do more, faster and better.

It had seemed wonderful to be back on a deck again.

Repetitious food, badly stored; crowded and smelly living conditions; even the crudity of those she was forced to call shipmates had all seemed tolerable in her first days aboard.

She was back at sea, she was doing something, and at the end of the voyage she’d have a ship’s ticket to rub in Kyle’s face.

She’d show him. She’d regain her ship, she promised herself, and resolutely set out to learn this new ship as swiftly as she could.

But despite her best efforts, her inexperience on such a vessel was multiplied by the lesser size of her body.

This was a slaughter-ship, not a merchant-trader.

The captain’s objective was not to get swiftly from one place to another to deliver goods, but to cruise a zig-zag path looking for prey.

The ship carried a far larger crew than would a merchant-ship of the same size, for in addition to sailing, there must be enough hands to hunt, slaughter, render and stow the harvested meat and oil below.

Hence the ship was more crowded and less clean.

She had held fast to her resolution to learn fast and well, but determination alone could not make her the best sailor on this stinking carrion ship.

She knew, in some dim back part of her mind, that she had vastly improved her skills and stamina since signing on to the Reaper.

She also knew that what she had achieved was still not enough to make her what her father would have called ‘a smart lad’.

Her purposefulness had wallowed down into despair.

Then she had lost even that. Now she survived from day-to-day, and thought of little more than that.

She was one of three ‘boys’ aboard the slaughter-ship.

The other two, young relatives of the captain, drew the gentler chores.

They waited table for both the captain and mate, with a fair chance at getting the leavings from decent meals.

They often helped the cook, too, with the lesser chores of preparing food for the main crew.

She envied them that the most, she thought to herself, for it often meant they were inside, not only out of the storm’s reach but close to the heat of the cook stove.

To Althea, the odd boy, fell the cruder tasks of a ship’s boy.

The messy clean-ups, the hauling of buckets of slush and tar, and the make up work of any task that merited an extra man.

She had never worked so hard in her life.

She held tight to the mast for a moment longer, just out of reach of yet another wave that swamped the deck.

From there to the shelter of the forepeak, she moved in a series of dashes and gasping moments of clinging tight to lines and rails to stay with the vessel as she ploughed through wave after wave.

They’d had three solid days of bad weather now.

Before the current storm began, Althea had naively believed it would not get much worse.

The experienced hands seemed to accept it as part of a normal season on the Outside.

They cursed it and demanded of Sa that he end it, but always wound up telling one another tales of worse storms they had endured upon less seaworthy vessels.

‘Ath! Boy! Best get a move on if you want your share of the mess tonight, let alone to eat it while it’s got a breath of warmth in it!’

Reller’s words had more than a bit of threat to them, but despite that tone the old hand stayed on deck, watching her until she gained his side.

Together they went below, sliding the hatch tight shut behind them.

Althea paused on the step behind Reller to dash the water from her face and arms and then wring out the thick queue of her hair.

Then she followed him down into the belly of the ship.

A few months ago, she would have said it was a cold, wet, smelly place.

Now it was haven if not home, a place where the wind could not drive the rain into you so fiercely.

The yellow light of a lantern was almost welcoming.

She could hear food being served out, a wooden ladle clacking against the inside of a kettle, and hastened to be sure of getting her rightful share.

On board the Reaper, there were no crew quarters.

Each man found himself a sleeping spot and claimed it.

The more desirable ones had to be periodically defended with fists and oaths.

There was a small area in the midst of the cargo hold that the men had claimed as a sort of den.

Here the kettle of food was brought by one of the ship’s boys and rationed out in dollops as soon as they came off watch.

There was no table, no benches to sit on, save your sea-chest if you had one.

For the rest, there was only the deck and the odd keg of oil to lean against. The plates were wooden trenchers, cleaned only with a wiping of fingers or bread, when they had bread.

Ship’s biscuit was the rule, and in a storm like this, there was small chance that Cook had tried to bake anything.

Althea made her way through a jungle of dangling garments.

Wet clothing hung everywhere from pegs and hooks in a pretence of drying.

Althea shrugged out of her oilskin, won last week gambling with Oyo, and hung it on the peg she had claimed as her own.

Reller’s threat had not been idle. He was serving himself as Althea approached, and like every man on the ship, he took what he wanted with no regard for who came after.

Althea snatched up an empty trencher and waited eagerly for him to be out of the way.

She sensed he was taking his time about it, trying to bait her into complaint, but she had learned the hard way to be wiser than that.

Anyone could cuff a ship’s boy, and they did not need the excuse of his whining to do it.

Better to keep silent and get half a ladle of soup than to complain and get only a cuff for her supper.

Reller crouched over the kettle and ladled up scoop after scoop from the shallow puddle of what was left. Althea swallowed and waited her turn.

When Reller saw she would not be baited, he almost smiled. Instead he told her, ‘There, lad. I’ve left you a few lumps in the bottom. Clean up the kettle, and then run it back to Cook.’

Althea knew this was a kindness, in a way. He could have taken all and left her naught but scrapings and no one would have even considered speaking against him. She was happy to take the kettle and all and retire to her claimed spot to devour it.