The Convicts Page 8

  Then they sat again, and a moment passed. I heard a creak in die ship's wood, and felt the hull shift below my feet. I lurched sideways, dizzied by a movement that I could feel but not see.

  “Begin,” said the man.

  It was as though he had started a race. Spoons came up from the tables. Heads went forward, elbows out. Animals at a zoo couldn't have eaten more ferociously. Each boy guarded his bowl from the others, and the only sound was the clink of tin on tin, from hundreds of spoons in hundreds of bowls, a rattle that I would never forget if I lived a thousand years.

  I was pushed to a place at the foot of a bench, and Oten was pushed to the opposite one. A dozen boys sat shoveling food from bowl to mouth, and another only stared at us from the head of the table. He was just as pale as the rest, but not so gaunt or sickly-looking. His bowl was heaped while the others were half full, and I guessed that he was the leader, a sort of king in a little kingdom of wasted boys. It was impossible not to stare back. A scar ran clear across his face, from cheek to cheek, like a white rope buried in his skin. It split his nostrils and curled his lip, then ran in jagged bursts nearly to his ears. Above it, his eyes shone like a rat's, and I felt there was nothing behind them but the cunning of a rat—no sadness or joy, m thoughts for a single thing other than staying alive.

  “A pretty picture, am't I?” he said.

  I turned away, nearly bumping into a boy who stood at my elbow. He held a bucket—a wooden bucket full of breakfast—and a ladle that dripped the slop into my bowl, and into Oten's next. Nothing I had ever seen had looked so gray and awful. When I put my spoon into the blobs and curdles, a weevil came bubbling up.

  I had gone almost a full day without food, but I couldn't eat that. Even old Worms with his scavenged bones would have left it lying by the roadside. As I looked down in disgust, the hulk groaned around me. A lamp hanging from the timbers began to turn and sway. The slop shifted in my bowl, and the weevil tipped on its side.

  My stomach was a bubbling pudding, my brain a swirl of fog. The ship seemed to be moving. The shadows from the lamps slid up and down the timbers. At the end of the table the scarred boy said, “I remember you.”

  My mouth was dry as dust, my skin clammy. I didn't care about the boy or anything else. I wanted only for the motion to stop.

  “The Smasher, they called you.”

  So my dead twin had followed me to the hulk, but I scarcely cared about even that. “My name's Tom Tin,” I said. “I've never seen you before.”

  “You look like the Smasher.”

  I shrugged; there was nothing I could say.

  “And you sound like him.”

  That was a surprise. It shocked me, for a moment, right out of my sickness. So my twin hadn't come from London after all. If his accent had been the same as mine, he must have been born within miles of my home.

  “It was you what gave me this.” The boy touched his scar, and it twitched into a terrible grin. “Well, things is different here, ain't they? Who's got his mates around him now?”

  I felt utterly nriserable, woozy and hot. But even through my daze I was afraid of the boy with the scar. The others had been withered by the hulk, but he had been hardened, like a bit of steel in a fiery forge. If he thought I was someone else, how could I prove that I wasn't?

  “Lads,” he said. The eating stopped. Faces looked up. “This here's the Smasher, he calls himself He'll think he's a nob, but he ain't. He's worse He's a nosey, you hear.”

  I didn't know what he was talking about.

  “Pay up, nosey.” He tapped his spoon on the rim of his bowl ,lfeutoo, bumpkin boy. You both owe me a share.”

  I would have given mine gladly if I could. But it seemed too huge an effort to lift my bowl. I groaned to myself.

  “He's got the fever,” said a redheaded boy.

  “Ain't the fever, Carrots,” cried another. “He's seasick!”

  It was true. I, the son of a captain, the descendant of fishermen, was seasick in an anchored ship in a river.

  “He is! He's seasick.” A laugh spread up the table and across to the next. On the whole dark deck the boys leaned left and right and stared toward me, those skeletal boys with skulls for faces. They might not have smiled in months, but now they sat in their brown clothes, in their irons, and shook with mirth. “Seasick! Seasick!” they cried. Even the guards laughed, and I doubted if that horrible ship had ever heard the laughs of boys and guards together. But it didn't last long. The guards recovered first, then beat the laughter from the boys. Heads went down again, spoons to bowls again, and the ship seemed to shrink into misery and darkness.

  The scarred boy tapped his bowl again. “Pay up. Give us a share.”

  Oten Acres stared back with a wondering look. “Why? It's the little fellows here who need it. Like him.” He pointed at the boy beside me, so small that his feet didn't touch the floor. “It's you should share with him. Big lump like you.”

  That little boy gasped. He wasn't more than ten years old; he couldn't have been even that. His face was still like a baby's, his hands just tiny things. “Do what he says,” he whispered. “That's Walter Weedle. He's a nob.”

  Weedle's little rat's eyes fixed on Oten Acres. “It's share and share alike here, ain't it, lads?” he said. “You share and I like you. Don't, and you get a bruising.”

  “I don't want no trouble,” said the farm boy. “But you've got a lot, and I've got very little.”

  “You've got little sense” said Weedle. “Now pay up, noseys.”

  “Please give it to him,” whispered the boy beside me. “You give him yours, I'll give you some of mine.”

  “I don't want any of it,” I said. “He can have the whole lot.” I nudged the bowl away. It was picked up and passed from hand to hand, then came back the same way, lightened by a quarter. The little boy set it down in front of me.

  “There's the lad,” said Weedle. “Now you, bumpkin.”

  Oten Acres surprised me. After all his tears and pleading on the deck, I thought he would buckle under. But he sat up straight and glared at his bowl. “Take mine, too,” he said. “Pigs is all it's good for anyway.”

  “Pigs?” The boy's scar turned pure white. “We'll see who's pigs around here.” It was Oten who had stood up to him, but it was me who Weedle fixed with his rat's eyes. “Just you waif,” he said.

  The ship moved; my stomach boiled. I was half sick with dread, and the sight and smell of my food made it worse. I swept the bowl away. “Take it,” I told the little boy beside me.

  “Do youtoean it?” He gazed up, then wriggled with happiness. His hand, below the table, gave me a small touch of thanks, and I saw that I had gained a friend, as well as an enemy.

  I heard the ship's bell ring, and the boy who had brought my breakfast in a bucket now came and fetched the bowls. The tenches cleared as a frenzy of work began. Boys tipped up the benches, tipped up the tables, and stowed them along the wall. A brush was put into my hand, a bucket of water sluiced across the floor.

  The little fellow who had eaten my breakfast appeared now at my side. “Tom!” he said. “Ta, very much,” He worked Mis brash back and forth. “I'm Midgely,” he said. “It's Williani Midgely, but they never say William.” He looked around very quickly. “Mostly I'm Midge.”

  The water from my sponge streamed across the wood. In my muddled mind it seemed to run uphill.

  “Is it true?” His voice was a whisper. His eyes always moved, watching every corner. “Did you really do that to Weedle?” He drew the scar with his finger, across his face. “Did you, Tom?”

  “No,” I said.

  “If he thinks you did, he'll kill you. He will.” Midgely nodded. “Sure as spit, he will.”

  “But—”

  “Shhh!” Midgley turned himself about and went scrubbing toward the wall.

  For hours, it seemed, I was left by myself to wash the same bit of wood over and over. When the bell tolled eight strokes in quick pairs, it brought an end to our chores. We put away
our sponges and our mops, rags and brooms and buckets. Our bowls were brought back, now cleaned and damp, and Midgely appeared at my side. He showed me how to wrap the bowl in my handkerchief and where to stow it along the wall, then made sure I was with him as we marched to the deck above, to a vast workroom full of tables.

  We sat together at one, with Weedle and Carrots and Oten. The table was heaped with cloth, the same brown canvas that made our uniforms. A guard brought reels of thread, and for each of us a long needle as thick as a little spike.

  “Look, Tom,” said Midgely, touching my wrist. “Look here, I'll show you how it's done.”

  The cloth was in two shapes—the sleeves and the backs of shirts—and it was our task to stitch them together. Midgely stretched his arms apart to measure his thread. He broke it with his teeth and, squinting, poked it through the needle's eye. “Never tie a knot,” he said. “It only slows you down.” He talked as though his mouth were full of water, slurring all his sounds. “Only shlows you down,” he said. “Now look.” He took a sleeve from one pile and a back from another, and matched the edges. “Like this,” he said. “You see? Match ‘em right, and all'sh Bob, Tom. Now look” He sewed them together. That was all there was to it, but Midgely showed me every step and every stitch. “It's easy when you get the hang of it,” he said, “Now try it, Tom.”

  I threaded my needle and sewed my cloth together. Midgely smiled up at me with his baby cheeks. “That'sh good,” he said, in his watery voice. “Oh, that'sh grand, Tom.”

  There were small, square windows along the wall that let in shafts of light and cold breaths of air. But still the lamps were burning, and my sickness only grew worse. It came in bursts, with each shift of the light, or every time a reel of thread suddenly rolled itself along the table. I tried to put my mind on the work, but it was the most mindless business anyone could have dreamed of, and I soon saw that it would never end. When we got near the end of the piles, more cloth appeared.

  The bell tolled once.

  I recited Virgil to myself in Latin, and Pliny in Greek. I made myself dizzy with Euclidean elements, and I kept listening for the ring of the bell. When my pile of doubled pieces grew, Walter Weedle reached out and took a few to add to his own, so that it seemed he did twice the work of me. The guard, each ti&ie he passed, saw my little pile and bashed me on the shoulders. “Work harder;” he said. “Work faster”

  We were supposed to do it without talking, but a murmur of whispers hummed in the room, and bubbles of silence followed the guards. I was reminded of frogs in a pond. But Midgely knew when to whisper and when to be silent. He asked where I was bom, and why Iwas on the hulks. “Can you read?” he whispered. “Can you do numbers?” But I Mrefy answered, too ill to care. Hundreds and hundreds of times I pushed the needle through the cloth and pulled it out the other side. Soon my fihgertips were punctured, and drips of blood marked every second stitch.

  A boy fell asleep and was bashed awake. Two others were taken from their places and marched from the room.

  “They're going to punishment,” whispered Midgely. “Every morning there's punishment.”

  “Worse than thisT I asked, and he laughed.

  “You'll see.”

  They came back hunched and hobbling, their faces drawn. It seemed they had aged into old men with trembling hands.

  The bell took forever to count up to eight. But finally it did, and we put aside our cloth and thread. We trooped downstairs for our dinner—a bowl of the same gray gruel, and a little chunk of waxy cheese. We held it up and chanted a blessing, and Weedle demanded his share. But Oten Acres wouldn't give up a morsel. “Get stuffed,” he said, staring glumly at his food.

  I remembered my father telling me once about bullies. “They're only seventh-raters, dressed up like ships of the line,” he'd said when I'd come home in tears one day. “Run out your guns, Tom, and they'll strike their colors.”

  The only color Weedle struck was a deep and furious red. He muttered the most bloodcurdling oaths, then demanded a double share from me. I gave it up without a care, and passed the rest to Midgely. “Don't think I'm done with you,” said Weedle.

  Already I hated the bell. It rang once to start our meal, twice to end it, and we formed our lines and climbed through the ship. I followed a rut that irons had grooved in the planks, up past the workrooms and out to the open air.

  I thought then that I would see the sun going down, that my first day was over. But it was only noon, not evening, and I realized that the bells counted half hours. With seven years ahead of me, the difference was nothing. A blink, an instant, was all it was. But the disappointment was nearly enough to break me. I lowered my head and trudged in the line, round and round the deck. My heart felt as heavy as my irons.

  Seven years, I thought. I couldn't last that long. Why, I couldn't last the six months the Overseer had hinted at. If Weedle didn't kill me, I would die from sickness, or wither away from the sheer misery of the place. I dragged my feet until Midgely bumped up on my heels. I whispered back at him. “Do people escape? Has anyone ever got off?”

  His child's fist pushed me forward. “Don't talk to me, Tom.”

  “Tell me,” I said. “Yes or no.”

  A guard came running. He bashed me with his cane, then bashed Midgely, too. I cowered from him, ducking my head, and in the angle below his raised arm I saw the Overseer watching. I took a blow on my elbow, another on my wrist, but poor Midgely caught it worse. The cane whistled up and down, and a pathetic squeal came from Midgely's lips. But he didn't move to protect himself. He only winced and shook with each blow.

  We circled the deck once more, then filed through the hatches and down to the workroom. I took my place and started sewing again. Across fixe table sat Oten, weeping silently. I could see the tears coming from his eyes, his tongue licking them away as they trickled down. Beside me, Midgely sewed his bits of cloth and watched the guards go back and forth.

  Suddenly he leaned toward me. “People have done it,” he whispered.

  I didn't know what he was saying at first.

  “They Ve escaped,” he said.

  I thought Midgely was clear off his nut. I couldn't believe I'd heard him properly.

  “It's true,” he said. “That's how they escape.”

  “They tunnelT I asked.

  “Yes, Tom. Through the planks. Through the hull.”

  Midgely bent quickly to his work as a guard came by. He waited, then whispered again. “The ship's half rotten. The wood's like mud in places, Tom. Look where there'sh water.”

  It was some sly sort of clue, I thought. Where wasn ‘t there water, round a ship in a river? But a guard chose that moment to settle by our table, with his buttocks bulged against it, and we talked no more until the day was done.

  The guards took our needles and thread. We went down to a dinner of boiled ox cheeks, a most disgusting sight. I watched the strands of cheese-colored fat curl over themselves like wriggling worms, and pushed my bowl away. Weedle took his share, and more, and Midgely got the rest. Across the table, Oten Acres neither shared nor ate, but only sat staring glumly at his bowl.

  After dinner we trudged again around the deck, in the same weary silence. The air did me good, and I lifted my head to study the shore, thinking how I might get away. There were fishing boats in the river, and a fleet of scows and barges. In the navy yard to the south, a forest of masts grew from the wharfs and warehouses. The castle was in shadows, with the sun setting now behind it, but the marshes shone like a field of gold. There were acres and acres of grass, without a single building in sight. That was the way I would go; into the marshes and over the fields.

  I went back into the ship feeling not quite so hopeless. Even my sickness was easing, and I was rather proud to think that I was finding my sea legs. We settled for the night on the lowest deck, crowded like cattle in a pen. Oten Acres lay huddled by a tiny window, staring out at the river. I was sitting with Midgely when a line of boys went marching past.

 
“Where are they going?” I asked.

  “To chapel,” said he.

  “Shouldn't we go with them?” I asked.

  He sneered. “Only noseys go to chapel, Tom.”

  We leaned against the planks, free now to talk as we wanted. In the middle of the floor, a group of boys played pitch-button with knots of thread and cloth. “Knuckle down fair!” cried one, as he might have at any playground.

  “Tom?” said Midge. He touched my arm and surprised me with his question. “Do you think heaven's a hulk. Do you?”

  “A hulk?” I said.

  He nodded. “God's got ‘em, you know. I seen ‘em, Tom.”

  I told him I didn't know what he was talking about. So up he got and went off to the side of the ship, and came back with a book—with two—held in his arms, at his chest. He put them down, then spread one open on the floor. “I nicked these from the chaplain,” he said, turning backward through the pages, past pictures of Elijah's flaming chariot, Daniel in the lions’ den, Joseph and his coat of colors. He stopped at Noah's ark and said, “There! See?”

  The ark was tossed by a tempest. Round and dark, with a shack on its deck and a stump for its mast, it did look like a hulk. Faces of animals stared from round windows. The sons of Noah huddled by the cabin, fearful of the storm. But Noah himself stood up in the wind and the lightning with his long beard and white hair as wild as the spray on the water.

  “See?” Midgely pressed his finger on the page. “That's God there, ain't it, Tom?”

  I shook my head. “It's Noah.”

  “No a what?” he asked.

  I thought he was joking, but he wasn't He had never heard of Noah, or the flood that had drowned a wicked earth. He thought that the man in the picture had to be God just because he was so wild and so frightening. “There's other puzzles here,” he said. He showed me Moses in the rushes, Bartimeus being cured of his blindness. I had to explain them all, astonished that he'd never learned the Bible. Then he showed me one more picture. He said, “Look, Tom. It'sh me.”