Terese Svoboda - Pirate Talk or Mermalade

Eat your soup. And the bones too. I sold yesterday’s rope for those bones. And wipe your nose on my skirt. Your father, a pirate — what will you be thinking next? I’m on the lookout for a better man than that, boy, even Peters only takes boats that broke.

Makes a person want to go to sea, your soup.

You’d be your brother then, and curses to you. Hark — here’s the catch ‘o the day, the pirates walking.

Brother is not so much at sea now.

Brother had better be, and making coin for us too. Such black hair on that pirate — sure to use indigo as anything, in disguise.

Ma.

Stop your sneezing. Were you out standing in the sea this morning? Stay out of the water, you’re supposed to pull up the ropes, not go in after them.

The ropes were caught.

Water will kill you, one way or another. Is that the priest waving now?

I could tell but for fat Morgan Little.

He’s got to both say the condemnation and the Praise Lord. The magistrate broke his leg this morning climbing a stile and no one else will do it.

Let me go off, Ma.

You don’t want that food, it’s rotten, only good for throwing. Sit down and eat your soup.

But Ma.

Hush, they’re singing now — the pirates are singing. I heard these were merry folk, that they boarded ships singing songs with their knives out full and not between their teeth. That was their mistake, not having their hands free to grip the boat.

They wanted a good cutlass.

Singing makes you brave. Hear how many verses they have? The baker hiding in his hood can’t stand still for all this singing.

The baker will dance with his bread.

Look, he’s using an old rope today, Master Mason’s, the one he dipped his sheep with and can’t get out the smell.

You know all the ropes.

I have taught you well enough. Not so much the writing of letters or the sum gathering, but all of ropes and their histories.

Plenty of rope here.

They’ve soaked his beard in gum. You can hardly see the faces for the smoke.

I wonder how many more are not caught, like mice in hay.

The baker’s banged the heads together, jigging them up so close.

I feel it.

The mortal dance ought not to be done without someone watching. Look, look, I say. Fierce they are, and fierce be their Nancies. A sour look or two at choking.

They dance in my soup.

We ought to sell seats here. People like to sit and watch.

People like to press close and not sit, they like to hear everything clear.

It’s a shame, having to cut the bit that holds them up, with the price of rope as it is. But there’s a nice length left and I’m sure to get it.

You can never catch your breath after. It’s a kind of pleasure for you.

Hold your tongue. I see your friend is picking pockets again, collecting the coppers while they watch it to the end. He’ll take his turn.

The far pirate’s still shaking.

Where’s his family to pull on his leg and break his neck? The baker’s cut his rope too soon.

I told you they all don’t hang. He must’ve swallowed a pipe.

Or sung the right song. People do stop their gossip for a miracle.

It’s worth living to see a miracle, isn’t it, Ma?

Miracles only bring trouble. I’ve had my own, and worse. Be off with your friend now, and look into the pockets of those who are gaping the most. And don’t forget the Cap’n’s kit. He’ll have something in it for me, if he’s not drunk it away already.

All he’s come in with is a wreck, and a whale washed up.

Then he’s blessed enough and won’t hit me so hard. Be off with you.

Don’t leave that bench, Ma. I don’t want you getting low while I’m gone, and trying the rope.

You’re not to worry. All the rope I had was in the soup, knowing I’d get fresh.

Go ahead, finish it. Your brother’s caught the death of a cold anyhow and didn’t take but two spoons of it, only a drink from the bitters.

A real sailor in him, like me, with a taste for bitters.

Real bitters.

The soup’s a pip, Ma. You’ve been stewing the heel of a boot at least, if it’s not the cursed albacore straight from the shell.

Eat the soup and tell me what you are doing ashore and not hauling the fish or the fur. Your boat’s not due to port for another three months and what coin will I use if you don’t sail in with it?

I need a woman for cooking and boiling and such and I’ve come ashore to marry her, Ma. I will marry a woman who will keep you from making over such soups as this.

The sea has made you bold. But a wife will be another mouth to feed before others in bottom rags come crying with their mouths stretched wide like the robin birds. Only fools marry sailors.

You’ve married them yourself, I believe.

Marrying a man of the sea is like marrying a boat. They never come home. Or they take to pirating and they had better not.

No pirating for me. I’m set to learn to whittle the whalebone. There’s plenty of money in it — I hope to do “The Shepherd’s Lad Standing against the Wolf” and “Samson Pulling down the Temple.”

Aye, there are many who like it, especially those who are not the seafaring kind, who think sailors go out to look after a pool of fish with birds’ feathers and lures and bobbers and spend so little time troubling them that they learn to carve the bone.

Brother can mind the shop, fetch me the customers and light the lamp.

He isn’t a boy to mind even his mother, always running about and complaining to me about myself. But how shall we eat while you are whittling thus? Have you drawn a purse from a dead woman’s girdle?

I’ve gained the means. I’ll tell you—

Shshsh — not so loud on your luck. Someone comes along the passage now, your brother, I hope, and no one else, with whatever Cap’n has hauled in for me.

To judge from the sound of his dragging, that kit of Cap’n Peters’ is ever bit as big as he is.

So I do hope. That’s a sneeze! Like a dry drunk with the snuff, that boy.

You’ll be killing him with his cold, having to haul such heaviness.

Is that what they say to sailors in a good blow? Is that what they said to my Jimmy?

Father is Jimmy now, is he? The one who died of a sailor’s pleurisy? Does this Cap’n Peters prefer to hear of Jimmy over all the others, the snot-drowned sailor of the seven seas?

Where’d you hear of my Cap’n Peters — a’sailing?

It was on land I heard.

Ah, Peters is a brisk fellow, keeps a fine reputation on the docks. Why, many a boat would have him if he weren’t about in his own, many a farthing is wagered that he can outsail even the cutthroated pirate. He knows when a boat’s going down before she knows it herself, especially out by the neck.

Brother! You’ve eaten my lot.

She said to.

She would eat it herself anyway during my labors. Which is why you sent me out just then, isn’t it, Ma?

This bit of a heel and rope is not worth calling me a glutton, a thief, and a tyrant. A Caligula he thinks me, and that I’ll poison myself and him together.

After these many months gone, at least she’s the same in her bludgeoning talk. No more height on you, then?

Not unless I stand on a whale.

Ha — you’ve got your wits about you at least. Ma, take his bowl and fill it with the last boilings — I know you have it somewhere for yourself.

I keep a pot of seaweed worth nothing.

That’s the one.

See what the window looks onto now? Where we used to play? The rain tries to hide it.

There’s a lot of sawed wood in that.

It’s mostly them cleaning the holds of the Spaniards and pirates — two today. We’re always hearing the Dies Irae.

Speaking of the Christian teachings, your brother’s come to have the banns said.