The passengers
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FaithfulChapter 2: Some New Passengers free porn video
"Oh Meg, not stays, surely."
"And why not? I always do at home?"
"But who in the world's going to see us here?" asked Anne Conroy, with a broad gesture she had seen and admired in the garish limelights of a London stage. "We're exiles, dear sister, cast adrift, abandoned." She bowed her head dramatically, a hand to her breast and then steadied herself against the gentle roll of the ship.
"You might not care," replied her older sister, ignoring the theatrics, lacing herself up, taking a deep breath, tying a bow beneath her small breasts and smoothing down her shift. "But I do. The captain will see us, that's who. And he knows father." She buckled small, pocket hoops to her narrow waist and wiggled from side to side as she did.
"He's such a fussy old man. And so hairy. I'm just going to wear this old dress with an apron and a kerchief, perhaps a cap." Anne was fourteen, green-eyed and rather tall and gangly for her age. Her long mop of auburn hair was her best feature, and she was well aware of it. She brushed her hair at least a hundred strokes each night and enjoyed hearing it crackle.
Priscilla, called Meg inside the family, tied her garters and, with her sister's help, pulled a blue petticoat over her fair head and flounced it past her exaggerated hips. "You'll look like my maid," she said with a laugh as she straightened her patterned skirt. "They'll think you should be sleeping below with those dreadful men, those poor creatures. Would you, my girl, like to dine with them perhaps?"
"Did you happen to spy 'em this morning, lined up for bread and cheese. Oh, I never saw the like. Reminded me of that beggars' row at Bath."
Meg smiled remembering the happy afternoons at the spa where there were always boys flirting and joshing.
"But there were some pretty young men out there, who'd look very presentable in well-cut clothes," Anne gushed. "Some good legs."
"And not a wig among 'em, was there, and their breeches all unbuckled; shirts ahoo, stockings a disgrace."
"Ah, you did look, didn' you?" Anne giggled, raking at her thick hair with a heavy comb.
"Of course I looked. Like the mob at a fair, all kinds but mostly smelly. I expected jugglers at any moment and a fire eater or a dancing bear." Priscilla hooked her blue-green sacque dress over her stays and tilted up her thin nose. "There, now I'm ready for the world." She tied a pale fichu about her neck and tucked it into the front of her stiff dress. "And for the captain."
"You look very fine, m'lady." Anne dropped her an exaggerated curtsey, arms spread wide, head bowed, hem lifted.
"And you look like an escapee from the scullery. Comb your hair, at least. And please don't wear that dreadful curl on your shoulder. You know Aunt Margery would never allow it."
"Yes, sister, dear," said Anne, sticking out her tongue behind Meg's back as she worked to free a knot in her tresses. "Who's goin' to take care of that smelly chamber pot?"
"Not I, sister dear. One of the sailors, I suppose."
"Why'd Daddy have to send for us anyways? Uncle Tony's place was so nice, and I was jus' learning to ride really well. I think they'd've let me go on the next hunt."
"Ho, do you, and break your skinny neck. Wouldn't that have made our father happy?"
"But Annapolis, gad. Who ever heard of Annapolis 'cept for the races or the plays, or this Governor Eden for that matter? Who is he, I mean, really? Why'd father have to accept the dratted 'pointment?"
"Watch your tongue, girl. I met a pleasant army officer at the last rout who spoke very well of our new governor. Evidently knew him from Louisbourg or some such battle in the wilderness," Priscilla licked a finger and smoothed her eyebrows. "Said his name was Robert, the governor's name, that he was a colonel. His wife is evidently someone, too, but I've forgotten, perhaps a Calvert but surely not a Catholic." He flounced her petticoat again and stretched her neck in lifting her chin. She pinched her cheeks several times.
"Well, mother would never've allowed it, leavin' the Shore. Poo! And who's this woman father's married? What's her name, Mac-something. Sounds like a faithless Scot or some sort of Papist."
"Don't be crude, Anne. I'm sure father has married well. She was a West shore widow. Forty-or-so I think he wrote, certainly younger than he is, with a sizable inheritance from her first husband, and I think she has four children. He said she had more than six hundred acres under cultivation, imagine."
"Won't we lord it over 'em. Were they all boys?"
"No, mostly girls, married women really, one's named named Virginia Philamena as I recall, another's plain Margaret, same as her mother. Didn't you read the letter? She married a widower, Margaret did, a rich one from St. Mary's. The boy is older than you are, Andrew he's called. He's sixteen and, father wrote, has learned some Latin and fences quite well."
"Do tell, goodness! Likely a strong wrist and a weak mind, you certainly know the type. You've flirted with enough of 'em."
"Don't be catty, Anne Amelia, and do stand up straight."
"Yes, mistress," sighed Anne as they both looked in the small, cracked mirror on the back of the door and then left their tiny cabin to dine with the be-whiskered captain and his one-armed mate in the master's narrow cabin.
The "Lune," as both passengers and crew called their well-found ship, plowed through the broad entrance to the English Channel in friendly breezes. The sun warmed her deck, but the air was cool, the quartering wind freshening from the cloud-banked north and bearing hints of Scandinavian snows. The schooner with her tall main mast was starting to acquire a rocking or pitching motion, bucking fore and aft, as she approached the Channel, and more men now lined the leeward rail heaving their meager breakfast to the fishes and ignoring the call to dinner. Both Clemence and Benjamin were among those who had found it impossible to keep food down. Matthew and Elizabeth stood together near the mizzen, holding on to a thick line, pressing their shoulders together and discussing the problem.
"They say it don't las' long," said Matthew, wearing a worried look on his broad face.
"'Ope they're right. My poor man wasn' very well when w'got t'London. Been coughin' a week now; like the croup it is." Elizabeth watched her husband wipe his mouth on his sleeve.
"Benjy's strong as a 'orse, an' he can eat most anything. Once 'e gets used to the motion, well, I'm sure they'll both be 'appier. I think it's still the drink that's doing it. Ben took in a barrel of it; tried 'bout everything when we got to London."
Clemence staggered toward them, gasping for breath and coughing. He was very pale. "You're sweating," said his wife, wiping at his face with her kerchief. "'Ave you a fever then?"
"Nay," he said. "Tis jus' the damn'd ship. Never still, is it, first one way and then t'other. Now it's up and down, like hobby 'orsing it is like a blamed walkin' beam?"
Matthew went to the oaken rail to stand beside his distraught brother who had sunk to his knees, moaning and praying for forgiveness, making fervent promises to repent. Elizabeth led her husband to the end of the line for their second and last meal of the day.
"I don' think I c'n eat, lass." Clemence shook his head. "Really, I d'not."
"Y'must try. Smells like stew f'us. Come, take a bowl 'ere and foller me."
The dark-skinned cook ladled some brown gravy, small carrots with their limp greens still attached and bits of potato, turnip and dark meat into each bowl and said, "Take two biscuits; take two biscuits," over and over. Elizabeth and her bent husband made their way forward and sat on the deck in the slanting sunlight. The woman crossed her lean legs and tucked her wool skirt under them.
They used the large, dry biscuits as spoons and pushed the hot stew into their mouths. It was salty, and the carrots were only half cooked. Clemence chewed on a piece of biscuit and held his bowl in both hands while his wife quickly finished hers and mopped it clean with a bent forefinger. Her gray eyes missed none of her man's actions or hesitations.
"There now," he said, stifling a cough and trading his almost full bowl for her empty one, "eat this, please darlin'; t'would pleasure me."
"No, ye must try." Elizabeth held his rheumy eyes and noted the tight-stretched skin over his jutting cheekbones.
Clemence staggered to his feet and just made the rail to heave again and again and then spit into the sea. He returned to his wife, whiter than ever, tasting bile, blue eyes shining, belly quivering.
"I'll eat t'morrow, promise, love," he said, snorting for breath. "Please, you eat that."
"'Ere," she said, "just a bit a'carrot."
Clemence took it from her fingers and put it in his mouth. He sucked it a while and then chewed and swallowed. He sat waiting as did Elizabeth, looking at his thin face and holding his damaged hand, wondering again if they had done the right thing. About a hundred men stood by the rail or sat in knots nearby, eating their meal and chattering together.
"Now try another," she offered.
"No, wait," he said gagging. "Wait." He swallowed and then coughed, shudderng.
Once in the Channel, the narrow ship rolled as well as pitched and shipped green water aboard when its long bowsprit poked into a rolling white cap or deep-bellied wave. The straw on the hold's deck became a gummy mess, and water sloshed in the bilges beneath the passengers' sleeping space. Rats scurried around in the dark, looking for scraps of food and, on occasion, crawling across the sleeping men. Sudden screams and flailing arms dumped passengers to the deck when they thought the scavengers were attacking them.
The quartermaster organized working teams, dividing the young men by hammock numbers and whether they slept high or low, and manned the chain pumps steadily. A five-man crew changed at both bow and stern with each turning of the half-hour glass. There was, in fact, no need for constant pumping, but the captain knew the exercise would keep his valuable freighters healthier so they might bring a better price. He also believed that tired young men had fewer fights.
Now a few more of the bond servants-to-be found it difficult to keep their food down and existed on hard biscuits, cask water and shrinking stomachs. Now the two girls in their bright dresses who had been a pleasant sight on the captain's quarterdeck back in those soft breezes at the mouth of the Thames cloistered themselves in their stuffy cabin, both suffering queasy stomachs and greenish complexions.
Now one contracted passenger had disappeared, evidently washed overboard at night while he vomited at the lee rail which was occasionally awash in the rougher waters of the English Channel. Many sought one last look at England, and Elizabeth was among those disappointed at not being able to catch a glimpse of the Cornish coast since they passed it in the star-speckled dark.
By the time the ship reached the harbor at Cork and put in to top off its water casks and adjust its trim, Clemence was one of the few who still had not acquired what the passengers learned to call "sea-legs." His constant cough sounded deep and rasping. He often spat dark phlegm, and he retched after both meals and sometimes during the night, shuddering in his hammock.
His haggard wife begged clear broth from the cook and made do with gruel and watered gravy most days. She nursed her lean husband almost constantly, coddling him as though he were her child. He seemed to have a fever in the evenings, and his yellowish skin felt dry and parchment like. The purser, seeing her on deck carrying two bowls to the shuffling galley line, gave her one of his old serge coats to wear over her almost bare shoulders. The men, noting Matthew and his muscular brother as her protectors, now accepted and ignored her presence, slipping into the coarse speaking style of the tavern and the barnyard rather than using the mannered ways most could adopt in front of their mothers and other gentle folk.
Elizabeth was deaf to the oaths and casual crudities but appreciated that she now seldom drew leering or appraising looks with the dark blue jacket buttoned over her slender torso. She tied her long hair back as the men did and avoided the gaze of hungry eyes. She also tried to push away daydreams or reminiscences, the colorful fantasies which everyone had told her since she was a child would some day be her downfall. Somehow that knight on the huge warhorse had followed her to sea and his needs were sexual.
Benjamin and Matthew both continued to be helpful with Clemence. Matthew, exercising his pleasant ways and ready wit, had become something of a leader in the emerging below-decks society that imposed discipline and kept order. With Benjamin's bulging muscles at his disposal, he had broken up a nasty group that was buggering a young apprentice against his will. The boy now slept beside Benjamin while two of their fellow passengers wore black eyes and one a crooked and swollen nose.
The men willing to relieve each other's sexual cravings had found spaces in both the forecastle and storage areas aft of the sleeping hold where they could meet in smelly darkness and moan together amidst coils of rope or still-damp sails. Many bondsmen continued to masturbate regularly and openly, but Elizabeth's level stare had persuaded most of them to at least cover themselves in the early morning hours when she arose to use the heads with a modicum of pre-dawn privacy.
While the watering continued at the Irish pier, three young men came aboard seeking to sign bonds and go to America. All wore long waistcoats, clean white shirts with loose sleeves and had their hair neatly tied back with wide ribbons. Their coats were stylishly flared and their breeches and stockings appeared almost new. Two, saying they were brothers, although they looked little alike, claimed to be silversmiths, while the other, obviously their friend, said he had finished his apprenticeship in pewter and tin work. They told the purser, sometimes all speaking at once, that they could find no employment in Ireland and sought passage to the colonies, to Philadelphia in particular. They also told him that they had almost no money.
The purser, looking very patient, explained to them that Annapolis was the ship's destination but that it was only a "hop, skip and a jump" from there to the Quaker capital, the largest city on the Atlantic coast of British America. He said that, on occasion, indentured men were hired by Philadelphia merchants who came to Maryland seeking skilled tradesmen. He had invented that on the spot. The purser only knew that he had room and provisions for three more and that skilled men brought a good price. He put out of his mind the Irish reputation for "haughtiness" and the reports of Irish riots in the Barbados. Everyone had heard tavern stories of Irish bond servants who had run off with their masters' wives or nubile daughters, but, he decided, these men were artisans and that would make the difference.
"Are you a Papist?" he asked the oldest, who called himself Sean O'Malley.
"Indeed, I'm not. It's true and loyal to the King, I am." Sean stood up to his full height, almost six feet and puffed out his substantial chest. Standing above him and watching this small drama, Priscilla and Anne Conroy cast sidelong glances at the newcomers, hiding behind half-folded fans. The Irishmen had noticed the girls and admired their striped stockings, budding breasts and narrow waists.
"Sign here then." said the purser. "This is a four-year bond, but it should pay for your passage if you're truly a silversmith."
"That I am, and my brother too, though he's never 'ad a chance to be on his own yet and practice 'is trade. Come Robert and sign the bond."
The brother, wordlessly, bent his dark head and signed where he was told. The third young man, the red-headed pewter worker, was not asked about his religion and was glad of it since he would have hated to have denied being baptised Romish. He had even considered the priesthood at one time until he discovered that girls were much more interesting and easier to come by than a long cassock, church Latin and a dog collar.
"Have you mastered your mystery, then?" asked the purser, looking dubiously over his small spectacles.
"Indeed, sir, I 'ave," Michael Quinn answered, pulling his gaze away from the slim legs and fluttering lace of the two girls just above his head.
"Now, gentlemen," said the purser as the red head signed his bond with a flourish, "ye all understand that you've agreed not to marry during your indenture. D'y'ken that?"
The men nodded, having no intention of serving their time as anyone's servant, bonded or otherwise. After having lost most of their savings gambling and whoring, they had learned at a sailors' tavern just off the docks that America could be reached by simply signing a paper and that it was very easy to get lost in that big country. The savages were no longer a danger, they had been assured, and the girls are ripe for plucking.
"Oh plucking, is it?" Sean had roared, wiping foam from his lips. "Well, we'll pluck a few, eh brothers."
"I think we'd better have a pluck ere we sign aboard that lean barky. Tis a long way t'Americur," said Robert with his arm around the barmaid's hips.
"You'll not pluck me," she cried, wiggling away as the young men laughed.
Now signed aboard the Janet Lune and assigned hammocks from the first mate's list and told of the routines of the pumping teams, the three Irishmen made their way down the ladder to the narrow, crowded hold.
Once their eyes grew accustomed, Sean found his assigned space.
"Here's 98," he said, tossing his small bag into the hammock. "Why dinna you two take those on either side. They look empty t'me."
His brother and the red-head grinned and put their leather valises in the two upper-level hammocks.
"'Ere, what're you doin'?" someone cried. "Thas' my bleedin' space there."
Sean reached to his ankle and a gleaming, four-inch blade appeared in his hand as if by legerdemain. The small barrel-maker who had slept in hammock 97 for the last week slid to a stop.
"What're you about?" he asked meekly, never taking his eyes from the knife.
"Movin' in," said Sean quietly. "now why don't you go to number four. That's the one they gave you, ain't it Bobby?"
His brother nodded, smiled, and the man scurried away, looking for his new bed, far forward of the hatch. Robert clapped his brother on the back as he returned his dirk to his boot.
While most of the passengers were on deck, enjoying the Irish sunlight as well as the relatively motionless ship, Clemence lay in his long, canvas sack and watched the Irishmen enter the hold and take possession of their hammocks on the far side of the ship.
The next morning, as the "Lune" caught the ebbing tide and began pointing her nose toward distant America and getting a foaming bone in her teeth, Priscilla and Anne Conroy breakfasted in their small cabin on strong tea and toasted cheese.
"It's really quite good," Anne admitted, "even without any milk."
"You eat like a sow," said her thin, pale sister, "and the tea's just awful, almost black."
"Did you see those Irish boys lookin' at us yesterday?"
"Who?" Priscilla dabbed at her mouth with a huge napkin.
"Oh, you know. You saw 'em. The red-headed one was very pretty, wasn't he, quite handsome in fact?"
"I didn't notice. Just three more mangy animals, I suppose."
"Oh, they aren't, Meg. They really weren't," said Anne. "They looked very clean and quite proper. The older one even had on a decent weskit, embroidered and a fine peruke."
"Did he now? And do you intend to invite them to sup?"
"Well, I jus' may," said Anne trying not to smile and watching her sister's cheeks redden, her thin nose twitch.
"You'll do no such thing, my girl. They're Irish, probably Papists. Your father would, I don't know, drown you if you even spoke to them," Priscilla said, pushing away her tea cup. "They're worse than the filthy Scots."
"Are you goin' to eat that?" her sister asked, scooping up the last of the hardened cheese with its lacy edge.
Clemence sat in his usual spot, with his bony back to the mizzen mast and his feet braced against a huge ring bolt. He sipped a cup of citrus while his worried wife waited with a bowl of gruel. She had finished her morning meal and now tended her obviously weakened husband. Clemence had to be helped up the ladder and usually crawled to the side of the ship to vomit. His skin now had a pale yellow appearance and his veins were easily visble on his arms and bony legs. He seldom defecated.
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