The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor Read Online Free PDF Page A

turns and strides to the hatch.
    “Though a pipe may often give as much pleasure!” Captain Skinner calls after her and the men roar.
    The moment her feet touch the passengers’ deck, she feels a surge of anger. She pushes past two men lounging in the dim passageway and hurries to the bunk she shares with Pad. He’s on his back, staring at the ceiling.
    “You’ve not told me the truth, Pad! You’ve lied to me.”
    He sits upright, looks puzzled.
    “How do you mean?”
    “You’ve deceived me and taken me for a fool.”
    “I’ve done
no
such thing. What do you mean, Charlotte?”
    Old Hutchins, who bunks across from them, looks over with mild curiosity, but drops his eyes when Charlotte gives him a look.
    “You’ve told me you were taking me to a paradise, where we’d live and be free. But as far as the captain says, it seems to be a paradise only for men. Women there are nothing more than goods to be bought and sold in the market, like the poor Africans.”
    “It’s not so, Charlotte.”
    “Is it not? The captain’s been there a few times more often than you have, Pad Willisams!”
    “We won’t be anybody’s slaves, Charlotte, I know that much.”
    “You mean
you
won’t!”
    “No, I won’t. The slaves are Africans. The native blacks they call the coloureds. We’re regarded altogether different.”
    “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
    “What is it then?”
    Charlotte takes a long breath.
    “Pad,” she says, “will we be living with the English and the other whites? Tell me the truth.”
    “I … I don’t know, Charlotte. Not with perfect certainty. But I do know we’ll have nothing to fear from slave masters.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “Friends.”
    “Friends who?”
    “Friends I have—I
had
—in service.”
    “And what did they know?”
    “They
knew.”
    “Pad, did they know that Jamaica is a godless place where women are concubines? That marriage has no meaning?”
    “The captain must be a liar, Charlotte.”
    “A white woman has nothing to fear,” a raspy voice says. Charlotte turns to see Hutchins propped on one elbow. “They respect a white person, never mind man or woman.”
    “What do you know?” Charlotte demands.
    “Lived there fourteen years,” Hutchins says. He fades back onto his mattress, as though he’d spoken his last words.
    Charlotte makes a short sound, not quite a laugh.
    “Did you? And did you have a wife there too?”
    “Three,” Hutchins says without opening his eyes. Charlotte rolls hers. “But none of ’em was white,” the old man adds.
    Charlotte looks back to see Pad’s reaction, but his eyes are closed, shutting her out.
    O N THE MORNING of July 7, she comes on deck to find the sails full and the spirits of every person on board lifted. She can’t find young Tommy. Her affection for the boy has grown so much, she worries about him constantly. The kittens are having their way all over the ship with the captain’s grudging approval. Lucifer is back on the prowl, hardly noticing the brood she’d birthed on board. The stalls are bare, the animals consumed. But Tommy is nowhere to be found. She knows his ailment is getting worse. He seems to be even smaller and his cough sounds like glass breaking in his lungs. When she finds him at last, he is lying on a heap of straw at the bottom of the ladder down to the storage hold, shaking with fever and talking gibberish. “Tommy, it’s me, Charlotte.” The boy moans, slurring words rapidly one into the other. She can’t make out his meaning, but it seems he is being chased. As hard as he runs with his words, his lungs cannot catch up. His breathing is ragged, noisy, his chest caving in with every heaving breath. She’s certain now that he is contagious, that touching him could bring about her own demise, but the pathetic sight of this blameless child overwhelms her. She gathers his puny frame into her arms, wraps her skirts and shawl around him and strokes his brow while