GODS AND BEASTS BENEATH THE SEA
Johanna Craven
'There never happens an earthquake, but God speaks to men on Earth.'
Cotton Mather
Boston Puritan
1706
ONE
Fécamp, France
March 1692
She comes to the ship at the hands of two travelling farmers who shove her into the
cutter that lies hidden behind the pillars of the pier. Offers no word of thanks, for her throat is
dry and tight with fear.
She comes to the ship hiding beneath the boat cover. Sailors shove the cutter across
the pebbly shore and into the sea. She floats up to the ship on creaking davits; the cutter
swaying as it rises from the water. She cradles her knees. Shivers. Prays.
It is on this ship that her world will contract to the size of a single cabin and yet
become more expansive than the largest of oceans. And it is on this ship that she will come to
know of Port Royal: a place that once learned of can never be forgotten.
Tomorrow she will know much of this city that is at once both Heaven and Hell. A
city of shifting sands and a hungry sea. But today, she thinks only of the man who chases her
out of the cutter, down towards the ship’s hold.
Each ladder takes her further into darkness. Through a maze of doors and creaking
hatches, past men too busy hollering to notice her, into this pit of shadows that smells of
damp and decay. She clutches the rungs of the ladder. Clenches her jaw to keep her noisy,
ragged breath from giving her away.
“Who’s there?” The man has followed. His whisper is guttural, close. And- like the
voices of the other men in the cutter- English.
An English ship.
Catherine’s hands slip from the ladder and she lands heavily at the bottom. Pain
shoots through her knees and spine. Water soaks her skirts. She stands, shaky on the uneven
floor. There are no more hatches. No more ladders down. Beneath her feet: the sea. A pool of
light from the sailor’s lantern glows at the top of the ladder. Catherine’s shoulder crunches
against stacked wooden crates. She presses herself against the damp hull.
“Whoever you are, I know you’re here. Show yourself at once.”
She grips the strap of her duffle bag and clenches her teeth until pain explodes in her
temples. The man steps close. Gold light flickers across Catherine’s face. The sailor starts
and drops the lantern; glass shattering and the tiny flame petering out. Catherine tries to dart
away but the toe of her boot tears through her underskirt. She stumbles, hissing and cursing.
The man snatches her arm.
“Lâchez-moi!”
A hand is clamped over her mouth. She digs her teeth into his salty palm.
“Jesus!” He pulls away. “Shut your mouth! These men’ll go mad if they hear a
woman on board!”
“Did I draw blood?” Her English is neat and practiced beside his hissed, sharply cut
words.
“Good. You understand me then. You can’t stay down here. Come with me.” The
ladder creaks as he steps onto the rungs. He pushes the hatch and lets a sliver of light into the
hold. “Quickly. Move.”
She does not move.
“I’ve every right to throw stowaways back into the Channel. Now hurry. If you think
I’ve a mind to let you run around down here while your lot have their guns up our arse you’re
well mistaken.”
“Guns?”
“Yes. Guns. Bang bang…”
“I understand you,” Catherine says sharply. She wretches and swallows before he sees
she is afraid. He steps from the ladder and stands close. He is young and blond; wet hair
pulled into a messy queue and stubble across his angular jaw. Shadows fall over his cheeks,
deepening the hollows beneath his eyes. He looks hunted.
“We must go up through the gun deck. The crew’s quarters. Stay close to me.”
“You fight for your country?” Catherine’s heart thumps.
He chuckles tensely. “My country ain’t interested in the likes of us. We’re a merchant
ship. Nothing more.”
Catherine follows him up the ladder. “Merchants? You find business in France?”
They pass through a deserted deck, shadows crawling over piles of ropes and cables. And
then the more pressing question comes to her. “What need has a merchant ship for a gun
deck?”
“Keeps the privateers out. This is wartime. Your glory-hunting king hopes to pin his
name to all of Europe.”
“Indeed,” says Catherine. “I believe he is succeeding.”
The sailor glances over his shoulder and gives her a curious half smile. She follows up
another ladder, through another hatch and into the gun deck. She crouches at his side. The
wide deck is dotted with swinging lanterns. Cold wind tunnels through the gaping ports. Men
hunch over the guns, laying powder horns and ropes in rows along the floor. The rough-hewn
roof hangs low over their heads. Metal clatters, footsteps drum. Bodies move through the
shadow theatre light. The sailor grips Catherine’s forearm and tries to shield her from the
eyes of the crew.
“Run to the next ladder,” he hisses, his voice hot against her ear. “By the capstan.”
She crouches behind him, but these are men trained to charge at the flick of a skirt.
Heads turn and powder horns are thrown down. Clattering, yelling. The sailor pushes her
through callused hands and sweaty arms and words like ladybird and rum-dell.
“Back to your posts at once!” This from a tall sailor with a pointed chin and narrow
eyes. “Pathetic.” He glares at the men, but his glance passes over Catherine before he turns
away. She grabs the rungs, stomping and slipping on her torn skirts.
“What in God’s name is all this?” A gravelly voice at the top of the hatch.
“Here we go,” shouts one of the men. “Captain Archer pissing on the party as ever.”
The captain lowers his lamp into the gun deck and peers through the globe of light.
His eyes are obscured by woolly brows, dark hair marbled with grey. He snatches the coif on
Catherine’s head and yanks her up the ladder. She falls to her knees in the narrow passage.
The sailor hurries up behind her and slams the hatch.
“Mr Kirk?” says the captain. “Did you bring her aboard?”
“No, sir. She’s a stowaway. Came back from Fécamp with us. I found her is all.”
“Indeed?”
Catherine thinks: I know this voice. This deep, black tar voice. The captain had barked
out orders in the cutter. There had been fear in his words. He yanks the coif from her head
and her thick blonde braid spills out, along with a tangle of straw.
“On your feet.”
She stands dizzily, grappling at the polished wooden wall for something to cling to.
The sailor takes her elbow.
“Who are you?” The captain paces in front of her, his lips twitching beneath the
beginnings of a beard. His boots click clack. He is well dressed in a long crimson justacorp,
lace at his wrists and neck. A pistol peeks out of his sash. How he has perfected this black
glare. A look of both anger and bored indifference. Chin held high. Shoulders pulled back a
little too far. And aren’t you playing your role with precision?, Catherine thinks. The
threatening and fearless sea captain. Stepped from the pages of a roaring adventure tale. Take
a bow.
But I heard your panic in the cutter, fearless captain. Perhaps you fool your crew, but
you do not fool me.
He lifts the lantern close to her cheek, making her squint in the hot light.
“I said, who are you?” His voice is impossibly deep and gruff, his black eyes cold.
Catherine clenches her teeth, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear.
She is glad he cannot feel the sticky skin beneath her shift or the gooseflesh on her arms.
Glad he cannot taste the bitterness in her throat or hear the blood chugging in her ears.
Do you wish me to be frightened because you yourself are afraid? Scared of whatever
made you leave the harbour with oars flying and sweat on your brow?
Oh the irony of it. She cannot help herself.
She begins to laugh.
The captain steps close and suddenly Catherine sees quite less than a storybook hero
in his long lashes and sunken frown. “God’s blood girl, what’s the matter with you? Are you
quite well?”
She tries to swallow her laughter, but it is rolling up inside her and making tears sting
her eyes. And she blinks them away because she knows if this captain looks too closely he
will see they are tears of hysterical terror and that nothing at all is funny.
“Speak, girl. Why are you on my ship?”
“She’s French, sir,” says the sailor. “Perhaps she don’t understand you.”
The captain holds her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You working for that
lying whoreson in Fécamp? He send you then?” Catherine clamps her mouth shut, silencing
her laughter. She shakes her head stiffly.
“I think she’s telling the truth, sir,” says the sailor. “She don’t seem like a spy to me.”
The captain rubs his stubbly chin. “I’ve no mind to trust a Frenchwoman. And no
time for such games.” He looks to his sailor. “Throw her off.”
“No, please sir!” Catherine drops to her knees and clutches desperate fistfuls of his
coat. “I beg you, no! I will drown! I… I…”
“Ah, she speaks,” says the captain, as her English staggers into a pathetic mess. With
a self-satisfied smile, he lifts her from her knees. “And she laughs no longer I see. Lock her
in the orlop until we’re rid of the enemy, Mr Kirk. And search her for weapons.”
“Sir…” Kirk says uselessly. The captain hands him the lantern and disappears down
the passage.
Kirk swallows and pulls the hatch. “This way.” Catherine means to follow, but her
legs are suddenly weak. It is all she can do not to land on her knees again.
“I suggest you come of your own bidding,” Kirk says, his voice at once both gentle
and dark with threat. And Catherine knows that were her legs not to move they would next be
kicking fruitlessly on their way to the bottom of the Channel. And so, sucking in her breath
she trails him back through the ship.
Kirk leads her down two levels to the storage deck crammed with cables. He unlocks
a narrow door and gestures to her to enter. Hesitantly, she steps inside. The storeroom is tiny;
tarred ropes hung about the wall and wooden lockers stacked in the corners. There is barely
room for the two of them to stand. Catherine’s muscles tighten at Kirk’s sudden closeness.
He is a mess of wet blonde hair and stubble and a huge furry greatcoat that smells of the sea.
Catherine steps back, her spine pressing hard against the lockers. She glares fiercely with donot-think-of-searching-me-for-weapons eyes. Kirk begins to feel his way across her bodice.
Catherine’s cheeks flush with humiliation. She wishes very desperately that she did have a
pistol in her stays so she might put an end to this horrid situation.
“You will find nothing,” she says icily.
His hands work their way around her back. “Forgive me if I don’t fall over myself to
trust you.”
“How were I to know this was an English ship? You think I planned such? You have
no business trading in French waters!”
“You are right there.” He kneels at Catherine’s feet, his hands feeling their way
around her riding boots.
“You are being chased,” she says. “By who?”
“Privateers, no doubt. An English merchant with a load such as ours would make a
fine prize for a French ship to take back to their king.”
“A load such as yours? What are you carrying? And why did you think to trade in
France? Did you expect anything less than to be chased out of the harbour?”
Kirk doesn’t answer. His rough fingers graze her stockings and clutch at the garters
above her knees.
“You know well I have no weapons,” she hisses. “I think you do this for your own
sick pleasure.”
Kirk raises his eyebrows, without looking at her. “You think mighty well of yourself
for a girl covered in horse shit.”
“It seemed no concern to those panting hounds in the gun deck. Are you not as
starved for affection as they?”
He stands. “Give me your bag.”
Reluctantly, Catherine lifts the strap over her head and drops it at her feet. Kirk
unbuckles the clasp and fumbles through the tangle of skirts and shifts. His finger slides
across the blade of the carving knife. He lifts it from the bag and turns it over slowly in his
hand. Wordlessly, he pushes it back to the bottom of her bag. Catherine glances at him with
grateful eyes. He tosses the bag at her feet and, taking his lantern, walks towards the door.
“Where are you going?” Catherine panics as darkness begins to close in around her.
Kirk looks back.
“Leave the lantern.” She hates the desperation in her voice. He hesitates, then sets the
lamp down by the door. The lock turns, clicks.