Steel

Startled, she nearly fell over when a hand touched her shoulder. Gasping, Jill saw Captain Cooper standing over her. The pirate’s hand rested on her shoulder, then pulled away.

“It’s all right, lass. Leave it,” she said, and walked away.

Slouching, Jill dropped the stone and watched her go.

Another two days passed.

Jill learned to sail. She learned that the Diana was a schooner, and while it might have seemed impressive, it was a speck next to a Spanish treasure galleon or an English ship of the line, or so the sailors told her. She learned about foremasts and mainmasts, yardarms and rigging, the bowsprit, larboard and starboard, fore and aft. She learned to tie knots and trim sails. At sea, ropes were called lines. She learned the commands that Cooper and Jenks shouted that made the crew scramble like they were a colony of ants, swarming to this sail or that rope—line—and making the changes that caused the ship to speed up, slow down, heave one way or another, plowing the waves in a different direction. Depending on whether the sails were furled or unfurled, and how, the ship behaved one way and not another. Even if Jill stayed on the ship for years, watching, she wouldn’t understand all the details. Many of the crew had, in fact, worked on ships since they were children.

She divided the crew into two camps: the ones who hassled her and the ones who didn’t. In the former camp were some of the men from that first day, the ones who harassed her as soon as she came on board—Jenks, John, Martin, and a hulking man the others called Mule, who did much of the heavy lifting. Some of the crew in the second camp ran interference for her: putting themselves between her and the others, butting in before teasing got serious with jokes and laughter of their own. Jill had started to trust some of them—Henry and Abe, and Bessie and Jane, two of the other women on board.

Shrouds were the lines that anchored the masts to the ship. Part of the constant sound of creaking and straining were the tall masts pulling and flexing against the lines. The masts were like the tall trees they’d been made from, always groaning and moving, however slightly, in the constant wind.

The ship had eight cannons on the main deck, locked down and silent for now. Slots in the side of the ship would open and the cannon would be shoved forward if the ship went into battle. Jill wasn’t sure she wanted to see a real battle—as opposed to the one-sided raid on the slave ship—but she was curious. She imagined seeing the whole rank of cannons firing would be exciting—as long as she was someplace far away, watching safely through a telescope.

“Have you been in many battles?” she asked Henry at supper, the usual stew of dried meat and potatoes, along with the usual serving of rum. She’d learned to drink it slowly, with plenty of water.

“Of course I have.”

“I mean real ones,” she said. “Not ones where you run up the black flag and scream and the other ship surrenders without firing a shot. I mean have you ever been shot at.”

“Oh, real battles,” he said, chuckling. “I suppose next you’ll be wanting us to fight with honor, all lined up like redcoats.”

“I just wondered what it was like,” she said.

“It’s a lot of fire and a lot of smoke. It’s nothing,” he said. His smile was bright as ever, but he looked away, hiding a troubled gaze.

They didn’t have any battles over the next few days, and they avoided any other encounters. Once or twice the crew on watch shouted out, identifying another ship within view. Usually the other ship was far distant, hard to see, little more than an incongruous shape against the waves. Captain Cooper or Abe would look through the spyglass and call out colors, the patterns of the flags—English or Dutch, sometimes Spanish or French. The captain would order them to sail on, turning to avoid the ship if need be. They sailed fast to their destination.

Jill learned to climb the tall mainmast, hauling herself up on the jungle of lines, and to keep a lookout, tying herself in so she wouldn’t fall, eyes squinting against the wind and sun, and to recognize the smudges on the horizon that meant land. They passed islands, small, uncharted, nameless. Captain Cooper seemed to know which ones they were without consulting any maps, which ones had food and water, which provided good harbor, and which were off-limits because other pirates—or worse, some nation’s navy—anchored there.

One day, catching sight of the rapier slung on Captain Cooper’s belt, Jill realized she hadn’t thought about that qualifying tournament, her last bout, and the lost half second in days. She was too busy working, and too tired at night to do anything but sleep in her swaying hammock. She had stopped planning, stopped worrying about what happened next.

It had been far too easy to fall into this life—she was becoming one of them. Someone looking at her from the outside wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

She wondered when she’d finally wake up.

On her second watch, Jill spotted a shape far distant on the water. She thought her eyes were playing tricks, that the light on the water was making her see things. The object seemed to be moving along with the waves, flashing in the sun—light reflecting off sails?

She didn’t want to call a warning and be wrong about it—what sort of nickname would that earn her? They didn’t think much about learning curves around here; they expected her to just know things she couldn’t possibly know. But she watched that spot in the distance for five minutes, rested her eyes by looking around to the horizon and the open water surrounding them, and when she came back to it, the object was still there. It had to be a ship.

“Ahoy!” she called down, as those on watch had done when they saw something. Far below, the captain, Jenks, and others looked up at her—they probably didn’t think she knew what she was talking about. “Ship to larboard!” she called, and pointed.

Captain Cooper, identifiable by her coat and fall of auburn hair around her shoulders, went to the port side of the Diana and looked through her spyglass. Jill expected her to look a moment, then shout up the mast that she was crazy and seeing things. But Cooper kept staring through the glass.

She put it away with a sense of urgency.

“It’s Royal Navy,” Cooper said. “Let’s get out of their way before they can follow us.”

Jill was right, and felt oddly satisfied by it.

Cooper shouted commands for sails to be trimmed, and the ship turned and their speed increased. The movements were subtle. The ship Jill had been watching had come close enough that she could discern the wide hull, three masts, sails, and colored pennants flying from the top of one mast. It might have seen them and started to follow, but the Diana skipped away and sped out of view, and the other ship must have decided it was too much trouble to give chase.

When Jill’s shift at watch was over and she climbed down the mast, Captain Cooper was waiting for her on deck.

“Good eyes, Tadpole,” she said. “The navy patrols are common this close to Port Royal, and it’s best we stay out of their way.”

Jill didn’t want to feel pride, didn’t want to feel like she’d just won a touch against a difficult opponent. She wanted to be angry at Cooper for keeping secrets about the rapier shard—and for showing absolutely no interest in getting Jill home. She definitely didn’t want to get used to being here. But she did feel pride, and she was getting used to it.