Chapter One
The Shipwrecked Heart
I don’t know which came first, the bone-jarring shiver or the stomach-curdling crunch; I think they were simultaneous. When you’re deep down in the dark cargo hold of a bucking ship, you never know what’s going on. But all of us sensed sudden danger. By ‘all of us,’ I mean a variety of animals ranging from two horses to a crate of chickens, also two pigs and a cow, all of whom I had come to know intimately. We could hear the cries and shouts from above deck, too, telling us that the sailors also were alerted, and that they were as frightened as we were.
Then came the water. I don’t like water, especially water that is larger than I am. I could give it some depiction like cold, grey, salty, but actually what it mainly was, was water. The very presence of water in the hold of a ship at sea is enough, without adjectives. It meant, GET OUT OF HERE. Which I did. The rest couldn’t, of course, the poor animals. But I wasn’t caged, and although weak and sick from nine weeks in this wretched confinement, I did summon the strength to haul myself up a rickety ladder. Then, along with other escaping bodies, I scrabbled up the companionway where to my terror I found the entire deck roiling and foaming. The sound of men yelling is such a familiar sound to me, and I don’t like it. As a little girl, I’d taught myself to put it at a distance; that was simply what men did in any kind of emergency, just as women always screamed. I’m proud to say I did neither. Mainly I needed to grab onto something solid, before the next surge of waves swept me over the taffrail. The solid thing I saw right away was a good wooden hatch cover. Alas for me, though, the hatch cover was not attached to its hatch. No sooner had my hands gripped the edges of it than a dreadful swell loomed over me, smashed down, and receded, sucking me and my hatch cover with it into the battering sea.
Now, this is virtually all I can tell you about the shipwreck. To read grisly details of the calamity, just find any July 1705 newspaper from Norfolk, Roanoke, Georgeston, or Williamsburg. For my own self, I can only say that I rapidly lost both consciousness and memory. I became an empty person—not a corpse, since I wasn’t quite dead, but hardlya human; more a string of kelp, pummeled and swirled in every direction. I’m sure I cried, but in the presence of so much salt water, who could recognize mere human tears? This appeared to be the end.
The end of what, you ask? The end of me, Surrender Burnet, a titled sixteen-year-old of great resourcefulness and spirit, first daughter of the legendary Lord Thomas Burnet. The end of my impulsive plan to run away from my native Ireland, which for my entire life had been struggling under a new wave of British domination. It seemed such a poor war-torn, blood-soaked, suspicion-filled land that even as a noble I could see no future for me there. Worse, if there were one, it was a marriage my father had been unbelievably arranging for me, to one Baron Darmud FitzWilliam, on the grounds that this droopy-nosed man with eyes too close together had some flimsy claim to an ancient heritage. People who know nothing of nobility imagine that it is brim-full of advantages. Perhaps for some it is, but not for bedraggled noble families with no remaining wealth or social importance. Therefore I had conceived this brilliant plan to start an independent life in the Virginia Colony of the New World.
But now I saw that a noble could simply perish—just like sailors, pigs, and chickens.
It had been a hideous voyage from the outset, on that vessel of nightmare with its (excuse me, her) piles of stinking wet canvas, delicious green bilgewater, and wormy biscuits. To say I didn’t like it would be to draw attention to the fact that I’ve already said I disliked at least three things. At any rate, it wasn’t actually a huge surprise that I would end up overboard, clinging to a hatch cover. I couldn’t steer that slab of wood even if I knew which direction to steer it in. I was a victim. (I also don’t like the word victim, because I have no intention of being one and neither should anyone else.) Then after a long time of floundering, I became a senseless victim, one that couldn’t do anything except gasp for breath whenever there was a break in the beating, crashing brine. I almost gave up.
I should mention right now, though, that ‘Surrender’ is an extraordinarily inappropriate name for me, since surrendering is one of the many things I don’t do. I’m not sure what would have been a better fit; maybe Stubborn. Our parents choose our names, but what do they know about the person one is born to be? At any rate, my family shortened Surrender to ‘Surrie,’ which is at least acceptable. And my father, Lord Burnet, calls me ‘Rendy,’ which I adore. I adore it because when he calls me that, it is usually because I’ve crept up against his chest in sorrow or rage, and he’ll be brushing back the fine hairs ofmy temples with his fingertips to comfort me, “’Tis well, little Rendy…”
Ah, but wait, I should have put all that in past tense, because those moments weren’t going to happen anymore. Whether I lived or died, the real shipwreck, my personal shipwreck, had already happened in my mind, in my heart, when I belatedly realized what I’d done—left father, family, and home in a wreck of their own, without a word of farewell.
Kajsa Ohman, born in 1939 in Greenwich Village, has spent most of her life playing guitar, singing folksongs and then writing her own. She has performed for terrifyingly large audiences, opened concerts for some of the greats of the ’70s, played roadhouses with her own band, raised kids in a log cabin in the mountains, and is currently working on a new solo album. So when did she get time to write 4 novels and a bunch of short stories? We honestly don’t know, because whenever we look at her, she’s just lounging around reading Proust. Weird.