Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Three: In Which Jessie Tours the Ship

Next I turned my eyes to the sailors. 

Some were appallingly young, hauling buckets of offal to dump over the side, wrestling with mops too big for their narrow builds, coiling rope into neat piles, sewing up tears in the sails; some were grizzled, grey hair frizzy, shadows or full beards on their faces, unwashed and uncaring, scarred and hard. In between were men in striped shirts of every age, but all them the same weathered brown of a world with no fear of melanoma  driving them into wearing broad brimmed hats. 

No faint pinkish sunburns here. No anachronistic glasses or contact lenses, as far as I could tell. No hearing aids. No conspicuously modern tattoos or the bulge of a cellular phone in a pocket, or a plastic earring. No outfit that seemed like it could have been reconstituted from a thrift shop sale, or build then worn down in a costume shop.

They were each and every one of them impeccably in character. They reeked of salt and sweat and men.

Damnation.

I wanted, needed, my theory to be right.

Below decks, I thought. Haven't been there yet. There has to be modern amenities – showers, toilets, a real kitchen. Cameras. Cameras need batteries, lights, constant mechanical attention. Repair gear. A green room, a director's chair, a playback screen.

I watched a cabin boy go below and followed a few steps behind. He startled to see me descending the ladder after him.

"Miss?" he said, more a question than an address. His face said 'WTF?' but his lips remained in a stubbornly courteous smile.

"I wanted to see... the chickens," I said, pointing suddenly to a cage against the curving wall of the hull. 

But no, the chickens were not what I wanted either, especially not when they looked like this. There were only a few, and their pen looked fresh, if not thoroughly swept. I crossed the floor, not waiting for the boy's response, eyes on the joints for power cables taped against the boards, but saw nothing.

He followed behind, hovering behind my shoulder. I could practically feel his anxiety. "Miss, it's not fit down here, miss. For a woman like yourself, I mean."

"Like myself?" I asked, turning my gaze away from the straggly beasts. They would make poor eating at best, I thought, and couldn't possibly be healthy enough to be laying edible eggs, if any at all. Perhaps they had started their journey plumper, in the raucous company of their fellows.

They knew it too. I saw it in their eyes.

The haunting feeling of being the last one left.

The cabin boy cleared his throat politely and said, quietly, "Soft hands, nice teeth, expertly sewn, ah, breeches... you're a gentlewoman, yes, Miss?"

I looked down at those hands. One was balled up in white bandages and splints, the other was just balled up. I jammed that hand into my pocket, hiding the injured one behind my back.

He was waiting for my answer, polite but anxious that I should be out of here. That we both should.

I turned away, repeated my careful step by step circling of the vessel, eyes roving, good hand skimming the wall. "No," I said, stopping to bite my lip, to look here, to peer there, to take deep calming breaths. No digital screen glow, no led light flashing in the shadows. It had to be somewhere. "Or, maybe yes. My father owns land. I don't know. Does that count? That's what 'gentleman' really meant, right? Landowner?"

I heard the cabin boy move away, clamber back up the steep ladder, no doubt to tattle to the Captain. I had to move quick now, through a door in a wall that separated the coop from what appeared to be the storage for cooking implements and ingredients. Great big barrels labelled "water" and "brandy" and "salt" and "tack." Nothing here, nothing hidden behind the barrels, nothing in the triangle of empty space in the corner, nothing modern in the cauldron that sat cold and congealing. Through the next door, around the stacks of cannonballs, behind the gunpowder, the careful and regimental rows of muskets and bayonets.