The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor Read Online Free Page A

oakum and salt. During these proceedings, young Tommy emerges to report ten boxes of candles.
    “Ten?” Watkins frowns. “What’s become o’ the others?”
    “I ain’t counted them yet, sir.”
    “Why not, boy?” Watkins stabs at his spectacles.
    “I ain’t got but ten fingers, sir.”
    The crew roars with delight.
    “Count all those boxes, Yates, or you’ll have a finger less!”
    Tommy scampers down the hatch.
    “It’s not candles we want,” Charlotte whispers to Pad. “It’s water. Why did they not store it securely?”
    When the job is finished, every man and the one woman on board have to give an accounting of their own health and injuries. There isn’t one among them without scrapes and bruises from the beating they had taken during the storm. Life below decks has exacted a physical and spiritual toll they are all paying. Charlotte wants to tell Watkins that the fact they present themselves as reasonably healthy this day is a testament to their toughness or perhaps desperation, not to any care offered by the crew of this ship. But she remains silent.
    By now Charlotte has bits and pieces of the backgrounds of the passengers. Most of these men, she came to realize, were running away from something, some from the police or debt and others, she assumes from their grumbling at meals and cries in the night, from any manner of misfortune. Several bought their passage by agreeing to sling the ship’s cargo at one end or the other. Some were being delivered as workers to the islands. “Is that what ‘indentured’ means?” she asks Pad. She bets they have stories to tell, stories that for their own good are better kept secret. Like skeletons dangling on their backs, the unrevealed dramas sail along with the human cargo.
    The voyage is finally starting to sap Charlotte’s enthusiasm.
    On July 5, she writes in her diary:
    Will this voyage never end? The only excitement is when someone calls out “Portside” or “Starboard” and we get to see
some huge fish swimming by the ship. At least there’s something out there other than the soggy people on this boring boat. When fair winds blow, everyone cheers our progress, but when the sails slacken and the ship is becalmed, we sit, sometimes for days at a time. That’s when the arguments begin. Every perceived slight threatens physical violence
.
    The only pleasure I have is talking to Tommy. He has an odd way of talking, as though he’s trying to imitate a grand gentleman, when he greets me on the deck with a slight bow and says, “A fine day to yerself, Miss Charlotte.” I’m going to ask Pad if we can take him with us when we get off this boat. As for Pad, I’m beginning to wonder about the family ties he says he has in Jamaica. He feels I’m criticizing him when I ask questions about who it is we will meet once we land. But I can’t imagine walking onto the shore and asking for Willisams, just like that, which is I think what he has planned
.
     
    T HE SEA IS SPREAD around her, the horizon as wide and featureless as it has remained for seven weeks. Tommy is scraping pots by the gunwale.
    “Are you well this morning, Tom?” He looks up. “Yes, madam. Well enough at least.” Later in the day she finds him feeding the livestock. Such a runt of a child, she thinks. Run ragged with chores from dawn to dusk.
    “Did you get your share of water to drink?” she asks. “Not ’til I’m done entirely.”
    Water is divvied up in portions so precise the passengers have begun to hoard what they can. But the boy seems to be every sailor’s scapegoat. His grimy face is flushed, but she for-bearsto touch his brow for fear he is contagious. Even from six paces, she can sense fever.
    “I’ll fetch you some of mine,” she says and goes back to the bunks where Pad lies asleep. She fills a small cup from the vessel they keep beneath their bedding. On the way forward, she sees Captain Skinner and the bo’s’n emerge from a storeroom. She is surprised to