"All right, Miss. I think I know your intent and I am glad of it."
It's two hours into the noon watch and I'm sitting up in the maintop, scanning the horizon for something interesting and finding nothing save a few seabirds floating high overhead. Should save myself the trouble, I think, the lookout high above me would see anything before I did. I lean back against the rail and look up at my sails all white and tight up there, as they should be, and I relax in the sun.
Spread across my lap is a length of black cloth, about four feet square, for I am making yet another flag and I am almost finished. On it I have stitched a cutout piece of white cloth, shaped in the form of a grinning skull, very much like the Death Angel heads I saw in the churchyard next to the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls back in Boston, and under this I have put two white, crossed bones. I would not think of using this flag for ordinary prize taking—the people on the ships we take are scared enough already and I find my reputation is going in a way I don't really like—but suppose, just suppose we run into a French or Spanish privateer or any kind of pirate for that matter, who might want to bag us? If we crack out this flag at the mainmast when he comes close, well, maybe he might just think twice and slack off, as he would then know that we are not helpless prey, and he would most surely get his nose bloodied if he attempted to take us.
Putting the last stitches in around the teeth of the skull, I reflect that Mistress Pimm, she who tried to teach me embroidery, among other things, might be proud of my effort here. Maybe.
I put up my needle and look out over the water again. We've had a good breeze and the Emerald is fairly tearing along. We'll be down in Da—down in Spanish territory before too long and perhaps we'll find something choice, maybe we'll ... what?
There is a commotion down below and I throw the flag aside to go see what is the matter. When my feet hit the deck, I see Sheehan, one of the older hands in the Port Watch Section, coming out of the forward hatch, dragging someone by the neck.
"Here!" I cry, and hop down on the main deck, "I'll have no fighting on my ship, Jack Sheehan!"
Sheehan, a big man, grins from ear to ear and says, "No fightin', Miss! I just caught me a big rat! A stowaway!"
What? Who would...
The rat in question has its head down 'cause of the way its neck is being held by Sheehan's mighty paw. Looks like it might be a boy—barefoot with white trousers and shirt and a large floppy cap.
"Bring him here!" I order and Sheehan pushes the stowaway forward and stands him up in front of me and I look into green eyes and ... Oh. My...
"What's going on here, then?" says Liam, coming up next to me. The stowaway's large floppy hat chooses this time to fall off her head and the red curls tumble out. The entire crew is up on deck now and there is a common gasp.
Liam cannot say anything for a moment—he can only stand and stare, openmouthed and goggle-eyed, then...
"Mairead!" he roars, loud enough to wake up half of Spain, if not China, too.
I've seen Liam Delaney truly, truly crazy mad only twice—once when that Sloat come at me with wicked intent back on the Dolphin, and right now, when he glares into the green and defiant eyes of his eldest girl.
Sheehan, who has just realized he is holding his Captain's daughter by the throat, jerks his hand away as if he suddenly found he was holding a snake. Mairead falls to the deck, gasping for breath—that Sheehan does have hands like a vise.
"I'll not go back! I'll not marry that awful Loomis Malloy! If you send me back, I will run away again!" she cries, tears running down her face as she gets to her feet. Liam starts rolling up his sleeves. "I don't care!" she blubbers. "Beat me to death if you want, but I won't go back! I'll run away again and again!"
"You are going to get the thrashing of your life, you are..."
I go and put myself between Liam and Mairead, and I see Ian McConnaughey coming forward, too. No, Ian, not now...
"Please, Liam, do not beat her," I say, putting her behind me. "Let's go down in my cabin and talk this over." I feel Mairead's hands on my waist, keeping me between her and her completely maddened father.
"Who put you up to this? Was it a man? A member of my crew?" he shouts at her, ignoring me. "McBride! Get up here!"
Arthur McBride, who I've got to agree would be the one most likely to hatch such a prank, steps forward, a barely suppressed grin on his foolish face. "Sir?" he says, plainly getting in a good look at Mairead in her less than modest outfit.
"Did you have anything to do with this?" asks Liam through his bared and clenched teeth.
"Nay," says Arthur McBride, who never, it seems, knows when to keep his lip buttoned. "She's Ian's piece, anyway."
"Ian's piece, is she," growls Liam. "McConnaughey!" I hope Arthur realizes just how close he came to being thrown overboard and drowned. Probably the fool doesn't, 'cause he merely stands there grinning.
Ian presents himself, a bit shakily. He looks over at Mairead with big moonstruck calf eyes and she back at him in the same sort of way.
"Did you know of this?" again comes the question from Liam.
"No, but I wish I did," says Ian, who must be taking lessons in foolishness from his boon companion, Arthur McBride. "But, no, I did not know and would not have allowed her to do it if I did." Well, there's some sense being spoken here at last.
The lad crosses himself when he says this, whether as proof of the truth of what he's saying, or in anticipation of his coming death, I can't tell, but Liam sure ain't convinced. "You and your friends've been sniffin' around her like dogs in rut and don't think I don't know it, you miserable sneaking little cur!"
Ian's face goes white with anger. He's scared of Liam, true, but he's Irish, too, and he won't take that from anyone, and he spits out, "'Tis true I love Mairead with all my heart and soul, and I respect you as her father and as my Captain, but call me a dog again, man, and I will..."
"Take her down and put her in the leg irons. Clamp her to the bulkhead in the foulest part of the bilge. Do it NOW!" roars Liam.
I stay in front of Mairead. "She'll slip out of the leg iron, she will. It's too big for her ankle and too small for her neck, and we don't have a brig for a cell. Please, Liam, let her stay with me. For company, like. It gets a bit lonely for me sometimes when we're under way and I would welcome her company. We'll look for one more prize, then take her and everybody else back to Waterford for the winter. It'll be fine, you'll see. She'll get this seafarin' stuff out of her system and settle down—not with Loomis, maybe, but with some good man—you'll see ... now calmness, Liam. Please, Father, do this."
I make hand signals behind Liam's back for Arthur and Ian to make themselves scarce. Arthur makes sure he gets in a last look at Mairead's rump in her trousers and then goes down the hatch. But Ian doesn't, he just stands there looking at Mairead.
"Please, Liam, down in my cabin, now. Please, Father, down in my cabin, now please, both of you!"
Chapter 35
Peace has been restored twixt the warring Delaneys. Somewhat restored. Mairead is allowed to stay with me in my cabin, but on deck she is forbidden to go forward of the aftermast and all of the men, save Reilly, Liam, and Higgins, are not to go aft of that same mast, else they will face the wrath of Liam Delaney.
I fit her out with one of my skirts, as Liam will not allow her to be seen on deck in the trousers she wore when she snuck aboard in the middle of the night and dived down into the hatch, where she had stashed a bag I had seen her bringing aboard on that day, a bag I stupidly thought was laundry for Padraic. That bag had held food and a blanket and other things for her to get by on till she was ready to show herself. I found out later that she had gotten on board that night by tossing a can full of pebbles on the fo'c'sle, and when it rattled around up there, the man on watch went forward to investigate. While he was checking for the source of the noise, she scampered up the gangway and down the hatch to hide. I took down that watchman's name to make sure he would never again be on watch in a tight situation.
Liam fully intends to lock her up and throw away the key when he gets her home. For her part, Mairead remains stubborn and holds to her promise to run away again first chance she gets, but we'll see. I'll work on Liam a bit, maybe point up Ian McConnaughey's more admirable qualities.
Both Liam's plans for her and her own ideas as to her future depend, of course, on Moira not murdering her outright on our return. Funny thing to remember now, but on the morning we left Waterford, I was on the fantail and happened to look back at the dock we had just left. There stood a figure that I knew to be that of a woman, frantically waving a handkerchief over her head. I couldn't make out who it was but figured it was just some tearful sweetheart waving a last good-bye to her brave sailor boy, out to make his fortune. But it wasn't, I know now—it was Moira, trying desperately to signal that her daughter had fled the coop and was, without doubt, on board with us.
The weather turns warm as we make our way south, and Mairead and I loll about in the maintop and talk and sing and dance and play our whistles, and I'm really glad she came along, if only for this one trip. It ain't very military, the way we act, but what the hell, I am the owner of this bark, and with that comes some privileges.
The maintop is a small platform that goes all the way around the mainmast, the mast that Mairead is supposed to stay behind, about thirty feet up. I have her go up the ratlines and through the lubber's hole—no sense teaching her the real sailor way since it involves being upside down for a moment, and she being with a skirt on, it would present quite a show to any who might be looking on, and many are looking on, make no mistake about it.
At times, when we have been up in the top, I have seen her wave off to someone up forward and it is not too hard for me to figure out that Ian McConnaughey is up in the foretop waving back at her—out of Liam's sight, of course. Actually, she does just that, right now, smiling and dimpling up and dancing on her tiptoes. I forgive her, for I know that one does not hear a proclamation of love from a proud young man delivered in front of his friends and all, like Ian did on that day, without it having some effect on a young girl's heart.
"Jacky," she says, still looking off at the foretop, while I, like any cat or kitten, lie down below warmed by a patch of sun. "If that part of this maintop is in front of the mast, then would not Ian be allowed to stand right there?" She points at the decking in front of her.
"Maybe," I say, shading my eyes and turning my head to watch her, "by the very letter of the agreement, but I wouldn't push it if I were you. Let your father get used to things as they are. After all, it's only been three days since you were found out. If he catches you and Ian spooning up here, there'll be hell to pay, count on it."
She takes a deep breath and puffs out her chest, puts on a pout, and shakes her hair, all wavy and red so that it flows out and floats on the wind. Poor Ian, I think to myself, you are one done-for lad.
"...and besides," I say, a little stuffily, as owner of the Emerald, "Ian has work to do and playing 'Chase the Colleen Through the Rigging' ain't part of it."