The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
“A difficult voyage, my dear?” he asked at last. “You were dismasted.”
“There was a terrible storm, Papa,” I said, appealing to him with my eyes. “Even Fisk … the sailors called it one of the worst they’d ever experienced. We lost the captain. And the first mate.”
“God in his mercy …” I heard Mama whisper.
“Well, yes, I’m sure,” my father offered. “But one must be careful about the words we choose, Charlotte. It’s well-known that sailors have an unhealthy tendency toward exaggeration. I look forward to reading a more sober account in your journal. You did keep it as you were bidden, did you not?”
“Yes, Papa.” My heart sank. I had completely forgotten he would want to see what I’d written.
“I’m greatly desirous of reading it.” He wagged a finger at me playfully. “But mind, I shall be on the lookout for spelling mistakes!”
Then, thank heavens, Albert and Evelina insisted upon telling me about our fine house on Benevolent Street.
It was bigger than I remembered. Great columns graced the doorway. Huge draped windows—like owl eyes—faced the street. Its full two stories put me in mind of an English fortress.
Then we were safely inside, standing in the large foyer before the grand stairway. It seemed immense to me. And dark. Cut off—after so many days—from sun and air.
With my father looking on, Mama gently removed my bonnet. When she saw my mangled hair, she gasped.
“Charlotte,” she whispered. “What happened?”
“Lice,” I heard myself saying. One of the few explanations I’d rehearsed.
She gasped again and before I could restrain her, took up my hands in pity. “Poor girl,” she whispered. “Such awfulness.” Even as she stood there, holding my hands, a strange look passed across her face. Slowly she turned my hands over, gazed at the palms, then touched them with her fingertips. “And your hands?” she asked in horror. “They are so … hard.”
“I … I had to do my own washing, Mama.”
“Dear Charlotte, I am so frightfully sorry.”
“Mother,” Papa suddenly said, “perhaps we should move on to our breakfast together.” He offered me his arm. I took it gratefully.
We walked into the dining room. The table was laid with white cloth, fine china-plate and silver. Breaking from my father I started to sit.
“Let your mother sit first, my dear,” I heard him murmur.
As we began to eat, my father said, “Am I to understand, Charlotte, as the shipping agent informed me, that those other families, the ones who had promised to be with you during the voyage, never fulfilled their pledge.”
“No, Papa,” I answered. “They never came to the ship.”
“How dreadfully lonely for you,” my mother said, shaking her head sadly.
“Two months with no one to talk to!” Evelina exclaimed.
“Of course I talked, silly.”
“But—to whom?” Albert asked in puzzlement.
“The men. The sailors.”
“The men, Charlotte?” my mother said with a frown.
“Well, you see …”
“You mean the captain, do you not, Charlotte?” my father suggested.
“Oh, no, not just him, Papa. You see, a ship is so small …”
Suddenly my father interjected, “We seem to be lacking butter.”
“I’ll get it!” I said, pushing back my chair.
“Charlotte, sit!” my father barked. He turned to the maid who was waiting near by. “Mary, butter.”
The maid curtsied and went out.
When I turned back around I found my sister staring at me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I just thought of what you look like!” Evelina said.
“What?”
She wrinkled her nose. “An Indian!”
Albert laughed.
“Children!” my father cried. With much effort Albert and Evelina sat still.
“Charlotte,” I heard my mother ask, “how did you pass your time?”
“Mama, you have no idea how much work there is on …”
My father abruptly took out his watch. “It’s much later than I thought,” he said. “Evelina and Albert have their lesson in the nursery. Miss Van Rogoff, their tutor, will be waiting. Children.”
Now struggling to suppress their giggles, Albert and Evelina rose from their seats.
“You may go now,” my father said to them.
Once they had gone, the room became very quiet. My mother was looking at me as if I were a stranger. My father’s gaze was his most severe.
“The sailors were very kind to me,” I offered. “I could hardly be expected …”
“You must be fatigued,” he cut in. “I think some rest would do you some good.”
“I’m very awake, Papa. I mean, I’ve grown used to very little sleep, and …”
“Charlotte,” he insisted, “you are tired and wish to go to your room.”
“But—”
“Charlotte, you mustn’t contradict your father,” my mother whispered.
I rose from my seat. “I don’t know where my room is,” I said.
“Mary,” my father called. “Ask Bridget to come in.”
Mary appeared in a moment with another maid, a girl not very much older than I.
“Bridget,” my father said, “take Miss Charlotte to her room. Help her with her bathing and change of clothes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bridget led the way. My room was on the right side of the house on the second floor. Its windows faced the rear garden where a trellis of roses were in radiant bloom. I stood at the windows, gazing down on the earth and flowers and told myself again and again, “This is home. This is home.”
I heard a sound behind me. A man—yet another servant, I assumed—brought in my trunk and opened it. Then he left.
I went back to staring out the window.
“If you please, miss,” I heard Bridget say, “your father said I was to bathe and dress you.”
“Bridget, my name is not miss. It’s Charlotte.”
“I’ll not be wanting to take the liberty, miss.”
I turned to face her. “Even if I want you to?”
“I don’t think the master would approve, miss.”
“But if I asked you …”
“Not wishing to be impertinent, miss,” Bridget said in a barely audible voice, “but it’s master who pays my wages.”
I looked into her eyes. Bridget looked down. I felt a pain gather about my heart. There was a soft knock on the door.
“Shall I answer it, miss?” Bridget whispered.
“Yes, please,” I said with great weariness.
Bridget opened the door to the other maid, Mary.
Mary entered and curtsied. “Miss,” she said to me, “master asks that Bridget take and destroy all your old clothing, miss. He also requests that I bring your journal down to him, miss.”
I looked at the two of them, the timidity of their postures, the unwillingness to engage me with their eyes.
“Mary,” I said. “That is your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Would you call me Charlotte if I asked you to? Be my friend?”
Mary stole a nervous glance at Bridget.
“Would you?”
“I shouldn’t think so, miss.”
“But … why?” I pleaded.
“Master wouldn’t have it, miss. I should be dismissed.”
I could not reply.
Then, after a moment Mary said, “I’ll be happy to take the journal down now, miss.”
“Shall I fetch it, miss?” Bridget asked me.
I went to the trunk, found the book, and gave it to Mary. She curtsied and without another word—and still avoiding my look—stepped soundlessly from the room, shutting the door behind her. I went back to the window.
“Shall I assume that all the clothes in the trunk, miss, are old?” Bridget asked finally.
“Give them to the poor, I should think, miss. Mistress is very kind that way.”
“There is one thing I must preserve,” I had the wits to tell her. Hurriedly I removed my sailor’s clothing.
“Are those to be kept, miss?” Bridget asked in puzzlement.
“I wish to show them to my parents,” I lied.
“Very good, miss.”
My trunk was unpacked. I bathed. How strange that was! The filth fairly floated off. I dressed, helped—or rather interfered with despite my protestations—by Bridget. But instead of going downstairs I dismissed her, then sat on my bed, marveling at its softness.
In truth, I was trying to compose myself. I was afraid to go downstairs. A call, I knew, would come soon enough. But, as I sat there a memory came of my first moments upon the Seahawk. How alone I felt then. How alone I was now! “Oh, Zachariah,” I whispered to myself. “Where are you? Why don’t you come for me!”
It was my father’s call that came—but not before two hours had passed. Mary returned with a request that I go directly to the parlor. With a madly beating heart I started down the broad, carpeted stairs, my hand caressing the highly polished balustrade. Before the massive doors to the room I paused and drew breath. Then I knocked.
“Come in,” I heard my father say. I entered.
My mother was seated in a chair; my father was by her side, standing with his legs slightly apart, as if bracing himself. A hand gripped one of his jacket lapels. The other hand rested protectively on Mama’s shoulder. She stared down at the carpet.
“Charlotte,” my father said, “please shut the door behind you.”
I did so.
“Now come stand before us.”
“Yes, Papa.” I advanced to the place indicated by my father’s pointed finger. Only then did I notice that the room—even for an August midday—was uncommonly warm. I glanced toward the fireplace and was startled to see a blaze there. It took me another moment to realize that my journal was being consumed by flames.
I made a move toward it.
“Stop!” my father cried. “Let it burn.”
“But …”
“To ash!”
I turned to them in disbelief.
“Charlotte,” my father began, “I have read your journal carefully. I have read some of it—not all—to your mother. I could say any number of things, but in fact will say only a few. When I have done we shall not speak of any of this again. Is that understood?”
“But …”
“Is it understood, Charlotte!”
“Yes, Papa.”
“When I sent you to the Barrington School for Better Girls, I had been, I believed, reliably informed that it would provide you with an education consistent with your station in life, to say nothing of your expectations and ours for you. I was deceived. Somehow your teachers there filled your mind with the unfortunate capacity to invent the most outlandish, not to say unnatural tales.”
“Papa!” I tried to cut in.
“Silence!” he roared.
I closed my mouth.
“What you have written is rubbish of the worst taste. Stuff for penny dreadfuls! Beneath contempt. Justice, Charlotte, is poorly served when you speak ill of your betters such as poor Captain Jaggery. More to the point, Charlotte, your spelling is an absolute disgrace. Never have I seen such abominations. And the grammar … It is beyond belief!
“An American tutor, miss, shall instill a little order in your mind. But the spelling, Charlotte, the spelling …”
“Papa …”
“That is all we have to say on the subject, Charlotte. All we shall ever say! You may return to your room and you will wait there until you are summoned again.”
I turned to go.
“Charlotte!”
I stopped but did not turn.
“You are forbidden—forbidden—to talk about your voyage to your brother and sister.”
My wait to be called was a long one. The simple truth is I was not allowed to leave my room. All meals were brought by Mary on a tray. I was permitted no callers, not even Albert or Evelina. “She’s seriously ill,” people were told. And no matter how much I tried, Bridget, the one person I saw with any regularity, would not yield to my efforts of friendship.
From my mother I received little comfort but many tears. From my father, a vast quantity of books that he deemed suitable for my reclamation. Not a word, not a question, to console me.
But I did not read. Instead I used the books, the blank pages, the margins, even the mostly empty titlepages, to set down secretly what had happened during the voyage. It was my way of fixing all the details in my mind forever.
One week had passed in this fashion when I thought to ask Bridget for a newspaper.
“I’ll have to request it of master,” she replied.
“Bridget,” I told her, “for every day you bring a newspaper without informing my father I shall give you a gift.”
Bridget gazed at me.
After a momentary search of my vanity table I selected a pearl-headed hairpin and held it up. “Like this,” I said.
She complied with my request. Within a week I found what I was searching for under the listing of “Departures for Europe.”
Brig Seahawk, to sail on September the ninth, by the morning’s tide. Captain Roderick Fisk, master.
For the next few days I made such a show of concentrating hard on my books that I was finally permitted to have my evening meals with the family downstairs.
On September the eighth—surely one of the longest days I can remember—I informed everyone at table that I wished to be excused to continue the reading that was so occupying me.
“What are you studying, my dear?” my mother asked nervously.
“Dr. Dillard’s essay on patience, Mama.”
“How very gratifying,” she said.
Later that evening I was informed that my father wished me to come to his study. I went down and knocked on his door.
“Enter!” he called.
He was sitting in his reading chair, an open book before him. He looked up, closed his book, and drew me forward with a gentle gesture of his hand.
“You are making progress, Charlotte,” he said. “I wish to commend you. I do.”
“Thank you, Papa.”
“You are young, Charlotte,” he told me. “The young are capable of absorbing many shocks and still maintaining an …” He searched for the proper words.
“An orderly life?” I offered.
He smiled the first smile I had seen in a long while. “Yes, exactly, Charlotte. Orderly. You give me much hope. You and I now understand each other perfectly. Good night, my dear girl. Good night.” He took up his book again.
“Good night, Papa.”
I bathed. I let Bridget supervise my going to bed.
By two o’clock in the morning all was perfectly still. I slipped out of bed and from the bottom drawer of my bureau took from beneath my paper-layered frocks the sailor’s clothes that Zachariah had made me. I changed into them.
I opened the window to my room. It was child’s play for me to climb down the trellis. I almost laughed! Within half an hour I was on the India docks, standing before the Seahawk, dark except for a lantern fore and aft. A new mainmast had been stepped.
As I watched from the shadow of some bales of goods, I saw someone on watch, pacing the quarterdeck. At one point he proceeded to the bell and rang out the time, four bells. Each clang sent shivers up and down my spine.
Boldly now, I walked up the gangplank.
“Who is that?” came a challenge.
I said nothing.
“Who is that?” came the demand again. Now I was certain of the voice.
“Zachariah?” I called, my voice choked.
“Charlotte!”
“I’ve decided to come home.”
BY MORNING’S TIDE—and a southwest wind—the Seahawk sailed away. As it did I was clinging to the top-gal
ON SAILING SHIPS CREWS WERE DIVIDED INTO TEAMS SO AS TO share all work. These teams were called watches. On the Seahawk, Mr. Hollybrass had the command of one watch, Mr. Keetch—then Mr. Johnson, as second mate—took charge of the second.
The day was broken up into time periods—also called watches—as follows:
Midwatch ran from midnight to 4:00 AM;
morning watch ran from 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM;
forenoon watch ran from 8:00 AM to 12:00 noon;
afternoon watch ran from 12:00 noon to 4:00 PM;
first dog watch ran from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM;
second dog watch ran from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM;
night watch ran from 8:00 PM to midnight.
A typical day would have a sailor working alternate watches, a system called “watch and watch,” in this fashion:
Off during midwatch: midnight to 4:00 AM;
work morning watch: 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM;
off forenoon watch: 8:00 AM to 12:00 noon;
work afternoon watch: 12:00 noon to 4:00 PM;
off first dog watch: 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM;
work second dog watch: 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM;
off night watch: from 8:00 PM to midnight.
This meant that on the following day the sailor’s schedule would be:
Work during midwatch: midnight to 4:00 AM;
off morning watch: 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM;
work forenoon watch: 8:00 AM to 12:00 noon;
off afternoon watch: 12:00 noon to 4:00 PM;
work first dog watch: 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM;
off second dog watch: 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM;
work night watch: 8:00 PM to midnight.
And so on …
This pattern of watch and watch meant that no sailor ever had more than four hours sleep at a time. Of course if there was need, such as a general resetting or overhaul of the sails—or a storm—all hands could be called, and they would report even if it was not their watch.
To keep track of time, the mates rang the ship’s bell every half hour. They did it this way: