Chapter One
It was Sean who brought me back to myself. Sean and his death.
When I opened my eyes that first morning on the ship, I wasn’t truly awake. I was there but not there. It was strange how I could move about, nod to the sailors and learn their names in their funny language, cook them a stew on the deck with the wizened vegetables they offered me, and yet not be present. I suppose I was a bit mad. But they didn’t seem afraid. Mostly they were kind to me, especially Owen and Red-Beard.
Red-Beard was Owen’s father, I figured out, and the master of the ship. The Saint Nicholas. It was wonderful that he could speak my language. Owen took me to his cabin, and he showed me a drawing of the lands around the ship and the waters it passed through. He pointed out my land and his own. I couldn’t see, at first, how a shape like a long nose could be my home. There were no trees in the picture, no houses or stables, no churches. But the water was colored blue and the land green, and finally I understood that the map showed only an idea of where things were, not the things themselves.
Time passed, the ship sliding past wooded coastline, where sometimes fishermen would stare, or wave, or duck behind leafless trees to hide from us. I woke up a little more each day. The air was fresh, the sun bright, the first yellow-greens of spring showing on the shore. But the nights were terrible. The memories that hid when I was awake waited for me and overwhelmed me when I slept. Two, three times a night, I would wake trembling or damp with sweat, and have to get up and pace the deck, letting the chill night wind brush away the horror.
In the daytime I learned English from Owen and the other sailors. Hamnet and Jacob especially seemed to like teaching me new words. Sean showed me hand signals that helped when I couldn’t find or remember the right words—signs for hungry, for sleepy, for get out of the way. He used that one a lot. Red-Beard explained that, at home, Sean had a brother who couldn’t hear, and they spoke to each other with their hands. Will the tillerman showed me how he steered the ship, the veins standing out on his forehead as he strained to keep on course. I learned the ropes and their purposes quickly and made myself as useful as I could. In the evenings, the sailors who were not on night duty gathered on deck and drank hard cider and sang songs. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t understand the words; the looks on the sailors’ faces and the sound of their laughter made their meanings clear.
One night, the nightmare that woke me gasping and sweating stayed in my mind. It was a horrific scene, twisted figures spiraling down into the ruddy light of hellfire with looks of terror on their faces. Below were strange fishlike shapes armed with swords and pitchforks, waiting to tear the fallen to pieces before throwing them into bubbling pits. As fearsome as the image was, though, there was something familiar about it, and I lay back and let myself remember for a moment. Yes, it was a mural painted on the wooden wall of the church at home, a vision of the Last Judgment. I tried to see it in my mind’s eye, the part of the painting that wasn’t gruesome. The upper section, where the souls of the saved rose up to join the angels in Heaven. The beautiful shaft of light that pierced the pink-tinged clouds, God calling the blessed home.
The mural was near the front of the tall, narrow church. It had a bell tower, and on Sundays and feast days the bells would ring out to call us all to mass. The bells rang, too, for weddings, and for funerals. Those last days, they rang almost ceaselessly, until their silence let those of us still living know that the bell ringer—little Ole—was dead as well.
It was the first real memory I had on the ship, and it was agonizing. I couldn’t bear it. I banished it, locked it back where it belonged. When my heartbeat slowed to normal, I pulled my blanket close and climbed the steps to the deck, longing for the cool air. The stars blazed both above and below, in the sky and reflected in the calm water. The few sailors on the night watch went about their duties, but I saw one figure huddled on the starboard side, near the dinghy. I went closer. It was Sean. He too had a blanket drawn around him, but beneath it he shuddered with chills.
“Sean?” I whispered. He turned toward me, and I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. His skin was grayish white in the moonlight, his eyes sunk deep in their sockets. I could see drops of sweat standing on his brow.
“Sick,” he managed. His teeth chattered together so hard it seemed they might knock themselves loose.
It was suddenly hard to breathe. I knew the look in his eyes, dull with illness, hazy with fear. It was part of my memories. I longed to flee—but where could I go? As Sean reached out for me, I backed away.
“Please,” he whispered. His hands were rough and calloused. They were like my father’s hands.
“I get master,” I said, and ran.
When Red-Beard opened his cabin door, wiping the sleep from his eyes, I spoke in my own language. “Sean is ailing,” I told him.
Fear flashed across the shipmaster’s face. “Ailing? Sean sick?”
“The Sickness,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “He has the Sickness.” Red-Beard made the sign of the cross when I mentioned the Sickness, and I did as well, though I knew it would do no good. The shipmaster seemed unable to move.
“We must keep him warm,” I told Red-Beard. “Give him fresh water.”
“We bleed him?” Red-Beard asked.
“No. That would be useless.”
Red-Beard called the other men on duty to him, and together they carried Sean to the hold. The sailors sleeping below woke, and when the shipmaster spoke to them, they turned away in dread and hurried up the stairs to sleep above deck. Owen wanted to stay, but I shooed him away.
“I help Sean,” I said to him. “You sleep. Come later.” Owen nodded and followed the others up the stairs. I knew there would be little rest for any of them. Fear of the Sickness chased away sleep.
The sailors brought the brazier with its hot coals down to the hold and then fled, and alone in the smoky dimness I tried to nurse Sean. He vomited bloody bile, and I cleaned it up. He thrashed and moaned in delirium, calling out in English.
Days passed in this way. I left the hold only a few times each day, and each time the men gathered around me to hear how it went below. Owen brought me food and water and helped me find the words I needed.
“Will he live?” Will asked, tears in his eyes. Sean and he had signed on as sailors together, were from the same village somewhere beyond the sea, or so I gathered. I didn’t want to lie, so I shrugged. But I didn’t have to answer. Will knew. Everyone knew what the Sickness did.
Small black marks appeared on Sean’s cheeks and then his arms and legs, and as the light of dawn came down the stairwell one morning, I saw the black boils starting in his armpits. I tried to keep him covered and warm, but he screamed in pain when the blanket touched his swellings. I tried to get him to drink, but his flailing arm knocked the cup from my hand. I did these things without thinking; my body knew what to do. It had done the same many times before.
Finally, as Owen joined me in the hold, I gave up and simply sat near Sean, bearing witness. Eventually he quieted and lay insensible, his breathing labored. To cover the terrible rasping noise he made as he tried to get air, and to try to comfort him, I began to hum, then to sing softly. The song came from the same place as the knowledge of how to nurse the sick, from the buried place in my mind.
I sang as the shipmaster came down, gazed on his man, and went away again, and as Owen brought food that I refused. I couldn’t have eaten. I sang as the light in the stairwell grew strong and then weak once more, and at last faded away. I sang as Sean’s breaths came slower and slower, with longer and longer pauses between inhale and exhale, and at last ended altogether. And I could not stop singing.
“Rype,” Owen said. “Stop now.” He put a hand on my arm. I was in a kind of trance, and he startled me back to awareness.
“Stop,” he said again. “Sean is dead.”
“Dead,” I repeated. Another new English word.
“I’ll tell Papa,” Owen said. I wrapped my arms around myself. Tears burned in my eyes. I thought of Sean’s brother who could not hear. What hand signal would tell him Your brother is dead?
“You helped him, Rype,” Owen said gently. “What were you singing?” He hummed the tune to be sure I understood.
“Song for baby sleep.”
“A lullaby? For a baby?”
“Lullaby,” I echoed. “Yes.” I reached over and pulled Sean’s blanket up over his face.
The seafoam is frozen in strange whorls along the shore. I think about swimming out into the icy water. The cold would take my breath before I could really feel it. There would be no pain. But it is a sin, I know this. It would keep me from Heaven. And I long to see my mother again, and Per.
There is a ship far out in the water, but it is coming closer. I chew on my knuckles till they bleed, and the blood freezes before it can drip onto the sand. I know that the sailors will come to shore looking for food and fresh water. They will find me. They will hurt me. I cannot bear any more pain. So I run.
There is no place to run to. I know I am too weak from cold and hunger to live much longer. All I want is warmth and quiet. All I want is my family. On the hill above the beach, there is a tree, beaten and bent by the winds. Like me, it is nearly dead. Like me, it is hollow inside. I crawl into it. I am cold at first, but after a while I don’t feel the cold anymore. I don’t feel anything anymore.
Chapter Two
The sailors washed Sean’s body with salt water and wrapped him in his blanket. It was all he had for a shroud. Owen nailed two small pieces of wood together as a makeshift cross. I had blood on my kirtle, so Red-Beard gave me a sailor’s outfit to wear. It was too big, but it was clean and warm. Then the shipmaster ordered the ship anchored so everyone could stand together as he and Barnaby placed Sean’s body on a plank. They and two of the others raised the plank and tilted it over the side of the ship, and the shrouded corpse slid off and plunged down into the dark water.
Owen threw the wooden cross overboard, and it bobbed on the waves above the spot where Sean’s body had disappeared. Red-Beard said some words that I had heard before. They were Latin. I knew their meaning: “O Lord, grant him eternal rest, and let everlasting light shine upon him.”
When I looked up from the prayer, I saw Barnaby glaring at me, and I remembered what the sailors had said: Bad luck.
Maybe they were right.
I needed to get away, needed sleep. I pushed through the crowd of sailors, but one didn’t move out of my way—the tillerman, Will. Sean’s friend. He stood, swaying slightly, in front of me, and I gasped when I met his eyes. They weren’t the bright blue they’d been earlier in the day but had somehow darkened and sunk into the flesh of his pallid face. His forehead dripped sweat, and his cheeks, as Sean’s had been, were dotted with black. I squeezed my own eyes closed. I didn’t want to see. Behind my eyelids flashed the images of my mother’s face, and my sister’s, almost real enough to touch. And when I opened my eyes again, Will had crumpled to the deck.
After that, the men fell one after another, quickly. Will, then Hamnet, then Andrew. At first I tended them in the hold, but in the close space, the smell soon grew so foul that Red-Beard had them carried up to the deck. The healthy sailors rigged up a wall of blankets to try to keep the sick ones warm, and the weather obliged by turning springlike. But nothing helped.
Some of them lasted longer than Sean had. Hamnet held on for over a week, and it was worse for him. His boils grew enormous, as big as apples, on his neck and thighs and in his armpits, and then they split open, and pus and blood poured out. He couldn’t bear the pain of the sunlight in his eyes, moaning and sobbing until Owen draped a blanket between two ropes to make a rooflike covering over him. His suffering was terrifying to watch, and when he died, we were all glad, glad to see him out of his misery and gone to God.
Eben, Peter, Jacob. When Jacob took sick, Barnaby turned on me. They were good friends, Jacob and Barnaby, and usually worked side by side. So when Jacob wobbled on his feet and his knees buckled, Barnaby pointed to me and said something in a harsh voice. Over and over he repeated the words: “She is a witch. She is a witch!”
I put down the cloth I was using to wipe the sweat and vomit from Eben’s face. I thought I knew what the word meant, but I looked at Owen for clarification.
“Devil. Satan. Kill people,” he said. I nodded.
“No,” I said fiercely to Barnaby. “No witch. No witch!” I knew what happened to girls accused of being witches.
But Barnaby wasn’t satisfied with my denial. He advanced on me, his meaty hands clenched in fists. “Women on board ship are bad luck,” he said. He pointed at me again. “You are bad luck. Cursed. A witch.” He turned to the others. “She will kill us all. We’ll die, just like Hamnet.”
Owen ran to get the shipmaster, and Red-Beard came quickly, pushing Barnaby aside. I was glad for his strong, stocky bulk beside me.
“Leave her be,” he commanded Barnaby. “She is helping, not hurting. Can’t you see that?”
“Why doesn’t she get sick, if she’s not a witch?” Barnaby demanded, and Red-Beard sighed and translated the question for me, though I’d understood it. But I didn’t want to answer it. It would have made no difference. Barnaby believed what he believed.
“I have to get back to Eben,” I said to Red-Beard.
“Leave her be,” Red-Beard repeated. He was shipmaster, so Barnaby did as he said.
Then I turned and crouched over Eben, whose agonized writhing had quieted into the hush that signaled death was near.
* * *
Seven men were gone now. Seven funerals at sea, with no resting place for the sailors but the dark water, no markers except for Owen’s handmade crosses bobbing on the waves. But no one new was sick. With nobody to nurse, I gulped down sleep as if it were spring water. I was too exhausted to dream. Red-Beard ordered the anchor drawn up, and the Saint Nicholas moved again, close to the coast. The forested shore slipped past day by day, leaves showing green on the branches.
I had been on board for over three weeks. I wore my wool kirtle again, the blood washed from it, though the outline of the stain remained to remind me of the lost men. I could grasp some of what the sailors said to me now, and though they laughed at me when I spoke their language, they could make out my awkward words. As I’d tended the sick men, they had talked to me, as the dying do—sometimes hours of feverish nonsense, but more often tales about their homes and their families. I listened hard and learned what I could about them, though soon enough they were dead and the knowledge did no good. I understood enough to picture the lives they had lived in their faraway land. As they spoke I imagined their mothers and wives and children, their houses and animals and neighbors, trying to use their stories to crowd out my own stories, coaxed by the men’s suffering from the space in my mind where they lurked.
Except for Barnaby, the sailors seemed grateful for the way I’d taken care of their mates. I was a witness to their anguish. But now that my memories had started to return, I began to feel my own anguish. When I cooked the salted fish, I thought of my beloved grandmother who had cooked most of our meals, and how she had muffled her cries of pain as the disease consumed her body and she tried so hard not to frighten the little ones. Stitching up the sails, I could remember the tiny clothes I’d sewn for baby Per, and how he died clutching my hand and whimpering, too weak to call out. When Red-Beard ruffled Owen’s hair in passing, I could almost feel my own father’s rough hand as I stroked it, cold and lifeless. The ache in my heart was raw, relentless.
The nightmares began again, but I was too tired not to sleep. Owen brought his bedroll nearby, so that when I cried out he was there to comfort me. He told me stories of the voyage, his first time away from home, to distract me.
“We had to sail up a river for days to get to Novgorod,” he said. “It’s a wild place. The men are like bears, huge, dressed in furs. The snow is deeper than the height of two men, and the cold! I thought my nose and fingers would drop off, they were so frozen.”
I knew snow, but not like that. “Tell more,” I begged.
“They ride in sleighs, pulled across the snow by giant horses. But in the city, the streets are made of wood, and the people keep them clear of snow. Their churches have golden spires on top that reach all the way to Heaven. They are full of gilded paintings of saints I’d never heard of—the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
“We traded for furs and salt. They needed our wool. There are not many sheep in Novgorod. So now the ship is filled with furs and salt to take back to England.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding. I’d wondered what the barrels and boxes in the hold contained.
Copyright © 2023 by Diane Zahler
Copyright © 2023 by Karyn Lee
