Читать книгу The Little Jane Silver 2-Book Bundle - Adira Rotstein - Страница 5

The Comment

On the surface of it, “The Comment” was really a simple thing, but like a single pebble ripples an entire pool of still water, sometimes a comment made thoughtlessly in passing can have the most astonishing effect on a person’s perception of the world, altering it much more than the speaker ever meant it to.

The rainy season blew fiercely through Smuggler’s Bay that year, wild and torrential. Little Jane strutted about the docks on errands for her parents, pleased with herself and the mighty ship she belonged to.

At home in the Spyglass, all was warm and cozy. She lent Jonesy a hand when she could, waiting tables or cleaning up. There were many trinkets and pieces of bric-a-brac in the inn’s tavern room in need of dusting — souvenirs from distant lands, trophies of notorious provenance, and odd, elaborate crafts fashioned from bits of ship’s equipment by bored sailors during long months at sea. Each one had its own story and there was always something new to amuse her and attract her eye.

It was a rare rainless day in Smuggler’s Bay, the first market day of the season, when Jonesy took Little Jane to the village to restock their supplies. With the Piece’s crew entirely occupied with shipboard repairs, Little Jane was the only one who could make the trip.

The weekly market in Smuggler’s Bay was a colourful thing. Within an hour of sunrise, the sandy village square would be nearly full to bursting with craftspeople, musicians, and foreigners. Many of the stalls belonged to villagers Little Jane knew. They traded their fish, livestock, crops, spirits, and handicrafts to visiting sailors. Some foreign merchants were regulars to the market, too, and Little Jane recalled their wares from years before. There were always a few new stalls at the market for Little Jane to look forward to, some featuring peddlers of exotic goods from places so distant they were unfamiliar even to a well-travelled young salt like her.

As Little Jane bounced along in Jonesy’s rickety cart, she held the two copper coins her mother had given her tightly in her hand, dreaming of purchases yet to be made. Before long the smell of food was drawing the donkeys by the nose and Little Jane knew they had arrived.

Little Jane left Jonesy absorbed in some tedious haggling over a cask of wine and scampered off on her own to see what she could buy with her two precious coppers.

She strolled by a man selling keepsake boxes made from shells and past a group of girls peddling fish-bladder perfume. She chatted with the old parrot woman, danced with the drummers, had her palm read by the wizened tarot card master, and sampled some barbequed squid tentacles before discovering a new stall filled with bright fabrics, fluttering restlessly in the breeze. Little Jane wandered among the curtains of blowing cloth. Woven through the most expensive samples of the material were threads of silver and gold that gleamed like rays of pure sunshine. She held the shimmering material up against her cheek, entranced.

Suddenly, a large hand clamped onto her wrist and yanked her forward.

“Hey-yah! Watcher’ doing there?” growled its owner.

“Just looking at your wares,” said Little Jane, extricating herself from the man’s hard grasp. “I … I didn’t know you ain’t supposed to touch ’em.”

The fabric seller scoffed, showing just what he thought of that claim. “Well, you just skedaddle, girl! Likes of you kin’t afford ’em, anyhows. Can’t have no urchins about driving off legitimate business! Now, scat!”

“I beg your pardon?” Little Jane paused, confused, wondering if she’d heard correctly.

“I said, get outta here, ’fore I call the magistrate on ya for stealin’,” sneered the man.

Her honour inflamed now, Little Jane drew herself up to her full height. When she spoke, it was in imitation of how she had once heard her mother talk to a truculent American naval captain.

“Do you know to whom you speak, sir?” she demanded, blasting the impudent gentleman with such a show of contempt she wondered that he didn’t shrink into the very folds of the fabrics he sold.

The merchant remained unfazed. “A girl in pants,” he said, smirking. “And dirty, patched pants at that.”

“I,” said Little Jane, “am a crewmember of the Pieces of Eight. The most frightsome ship to sail the seven seas! The buccaneer scourge of the Royal Navy! The piratical colossus of the ocean tides! The Minotaur in the maze of the naval brigade! The jewel in the belly of the titan of—”

An odd sound made Little Jane stop in the middle of her speech. She listened, with growing confusion. She opened her mouth to speak again, but the sound continued.

Now, Little Jane had heard many unpleasant sounds in her life, but neither the crack of a beam of wood as it connected with the head of a hapless ship’s carpenter, nor the shriek of a purser’s mate when a parcel of gunpowder exploded in his hand, had so much power over her as the sound she now heard.

Can you guess, gentle reader, what the sound was?

It was laughter. The fabric seller was laughing and he was he was laughing at her.

In the face of his ridicule, Little Jane’s proud words crumbled into dust.

“You, a pirate?” the peddler sputtered, tears of mirth streaming down his face. “You’re nought but a child … and a girl-child at that!”

Little Jane faltered for a reply until she remembered what her mother had once told her: Always meet a cruel word with politeness. It is sure to bewilder people.

So she smiled with a composure she did not feel and said, “I assure you, sir, I am a crewmember of good standing.”

“Oh, yeah? Then what’s yer station?”

She was about to speak when she realized, to her shock, that she did not know the answer. Did she even have a station?

“Good God, you must be the cabin boy’s cabin boy!” The peddler laughed heartily. His assistant and the other peddlers at an adjacent table joined in.

“Why, if they hire any more like you, the Admiralty’s sure to pack up and go home!”

“That’s a good ’un, by gum, a good ’un!” commented a horse-seller’s apprentice, barely bigger than Jane.

Little Jane looked around at the laughing merchants incredulously. No one had ever said anything of the sort to her before. She felt tears prick the insides of her eyelids and with a further wave of humiliation realized she was going to cry.

Cry! Had she not seen her mother pull an enormous splinter of wood out of her own thigh with barely a grimace? Or her father sail a prizeship to port in a storm with but a company of two men? And did either one of them cry?

No! Of course not!

But the tears were coming on and the utter shame and dishonour of the situation only made them fall faster, marking flaming tracks down her sunburnt cheeks.

Her bitter thoughts of self-reproach were quickly broken by the friendly voice of Jonesy, red-faced from running in the heat, “Oi, Lil’ Jane, been looking all over for you! I got all me things and—”

The peddlers were instantly quiet, shrinking back under the canopies of their stalls. The rude fabric seller looked down at an unfolded bolt of pink silk that was suddenly in need of immediate attention, and Little Jane felt her old confidence returning as the other merchants bowed subserviently to Jonesy.

“G’morning, sir,” said one, touching his forelock respectfully.

“Fancy a sample, mahn?” asked another meekly.

“No thanks, mate,” said Jonesy with a grin, and touched Little Jane on the shoulder. The peddlers retreated into the inner recesses of their stalls like frightened turtles. Little Jane suspected they had seen the large blue convict’s tattoo sprawled across the meaty flesh between Jonesy’s thumb and forefinger and were afraid.

“C’mon, love,” he said, “I expect your Mum and Da be waitin’ for us by now.”

Little Jane took his hand and they headed back to the cart.

On the bumpy trip back to the Spyglass she sat amid the day’s purchases. There were casks of rum, salted meat, sacks of flour, and boxes of tangerines and other savouries, all headed for the tavern kitchen.

Ordinarily, Little Jane loved the return trip home from the market. She usually helped herself to Jonesy’s purchases while her cousin was busy driving the donkeys, but today she just sat listlessly on top of the tangerine boxes while Jonesy prattled on about all the fresh local gossip. Tongues were wagging about the new new magistrate, last seen running around the island with a butterfly net, of all things.

Little Jane’s mind turned things over, happiness leaking from her like water from a punctured barrel. It wasn’t that the peddlers had finally recognized her as the tough pirate she was and then become all deferential. No — it was that her cousin Jonesy had come along and they were afraid of him. And he wasn’t even a pirate! He was just a seaport barkeep with a prison record, hands like two slabs of mutton, and a wealth of inked flesh. Yes, perhaps she could see how someone unfamiliar with her cousin might fear him and mistake him for a buccaneer. But that didn’t explain the fact that they’d mistaken her for a street urchin.

Such a thing had never happened to her before. She wondered if she had worn something different today, acted in some unaccustomed way as to give them the wrong impression about her importance or piratical affiliation, but she couldn’t think of anything. So why had such a comment never been uttered before in her presence?

The realization hit Little Jane like a load of grapeshot. It was simply this: everyone on the Pieces of Eight knew who her parents were. No hand would question the captains’ decision to raise their daughter onboard. And then, in Smuggler’s Bay — well, everyone at the Spyglass knew of her parentage. When she went to market, she never went alone — always with her mother, father, cousin, or one of the crew. But by herself, without a real buccaneer by her side, they all thought she was just an ordinary child. Of course, she reflected, people were known to make mistakes based on appearances. She knew the story of how her mother’s father, Old Captain Bright, once returned to port after a shipwreck so violent it tore half the clothes from his body, making his own best mate confuse him for a beggar.

Ah, but Old Captain Bright really was a pirate captain, countered her brain, with three ships’ of ruthless buccaneers at his command. You say you’re a pirate, but what do you actually do aboard the Pieces of Eight?

I help Ishiro peel potatoes sometimes, she thought meekly.

Ooooh, impressive, responded her traitorous mind.

I also help Rufus, the cabin boy, swab the deck, feed the ship’s chickens, stack cannonballs, and—

So what? scoffed her cynical psyche. Do you go out on the boarding parties? Trim the sails? Or just sit and watch everyone else do it?

And then, the most horrific thought of all struck her square in the face like a sailboat’s boom — I’m not a pirate at all! I’m … I’m … a passenger!

No wonder the man at the market didn’t respect her. No wonder, if she never did anything of any real use whatsoever around the ship! But that will not stand, she resolved. Was she not Jane Irene Amelia Silver, the daughter of Bonnie Mary Bright and Long John Silver?

From this day forward I will show that dog of a fabric seller! Soon the name of Little Jane Silver — No, Jane Silver — will command respect from every corner of the globe!

Aye, she would be feared! Feared, known and honoured above every other infamous rogue who styled himself a pirate-sailor! Oh, and how they would all tremble and quake in their boots and hold their tongues, lest they speak saucily and she chop them off! Let them dare call her Little Jane then!

So, having at last resolved to bend all efforts to the extension of her impending infamy, Little Jane began her villainous career by eating an over-ripe tangerine from Jonesy’s pile and promptly fell asleep.