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The Mermaid's Treasure -7-
🕑 Added 2018-06-07 20:23:38 +0000 UTCI stood there, just out of the bath, nude in front of the slender young man who had entered. Being naked was not comfortable, I was acutely conscious of my curviness and felt terribly exposed. Even assuming this guy was gay didn’t really help. I reached for one of the two towels I had laid out to cover myself up. “Are you the chaplain?” I asked.
“They call me that because I’m a good listener,” he said, showing a set of dimples. “Let me help. Oh, such a magnificent head of hair you have!” He came closer.
Hair? Well, I did have a lot of hair hanging in long, wet coils to my waist. It looked inky black in the light from the windows in the end of the Captain’s cabin.
I thought he would remark on my breasts first, or at least look at them. Any other man on the ship would probably have done so. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I mean, they were certainly out there and obvious.
But no, he crossed the room quickly, took one of the towels and had my nearly yard-long hair wrapped and confined to a turban-like structure on top of my head, almost before one could describe what he was doing. “We’ll just let the towel soak up some of the water before we comb you out,” he said.
I managed not to flinch when he got close. He wasn’t as much taller than me as the captain or David but he had more than half a foot added height. I didn’t feel threatened by him, though, the way I had sensed the surgeon might be dangerous.
He took the other towel and began patting me dry, keeping eye contact nearly all the while and with a stream of words consisting of mostly effusive flattery and outrageous asides. “I’m Johnny Mercolis, just call me Johnny,” he said. “I love your figure! So generous and kind!”
Kind? I wondered. Was that another odd usage? I didn’t ask.
He had shaggy black hair around a clean-shaven narrow face. His eyes were dark with long black lashes and his hands were strongly made with heavy calluses and some scars. A missing tooth on one side gave him a lopsided smile. He had a cloth tape several feet long hanging around his neck and a pair of scissors sticking out of a canvas apron.
“That weaselly Babbitt says you’re a mermaid because no human woman could have survived that wreck. The men all half-believe it. I don’t because I’ve seen you and you don’t have the legs for a mermaid because you do have legs. Two of them!”
He snickered and a giggle escaped me. He mimed ogling my thighs, said, “Oh, la!“ and, “That’s not tunny,” which made me laugh out loud because it made no sense at all. Tunny? Did he mean they were fat? I realized I was becoming sensitive about my thighs.
He finished patting me, flipped the towel into a dress hanging off my breasts like in the movies with a knot under my armpit. Then he rattled on. “The dear Captain says I am to give you all assistance necessary so let’s have fun. I’m the ship sailmaker, by the bye, which means I’m also the undertaker, the tailor, the upholsterer and now I can be your seamstress!”
“Undertaker?” I asked, not meaning to interrupt.
“I sew the dead men into their sailcloth shrouds with a cannonball to stand on. It’s tres gauche but I make sure they have a last kiss before they go down into the briny.” He snickered again. “Don’t tell anyone that,” he added.
I nodded, remembering vaguely that being homosexual was a crime back in history. But from what else he said, everyone on ship knew his preferences. It was a puzzle.
I went back to something he’d said. “Do people die on board the ship?” I asked.
He nodded, a bit grimly. “It is a warship, even though a private one.”
I wanted to ask more about that, like were we likely to get into any battles, but he quickly distracted us by switching his attention to what lay on the bed. “What glamorous cloth our lovely Gammon has found for you! Is it yours? The captain said it was recovered from the wreck.”
I shook my head, not wanting to claim the heap of girliness. I may have blushed and through a supreme effort, I suppressed a nervous giggle.
“You sure? It looks like it all might fit. I daresay it will fit better yet with my ministrations. l’m so looking forward to sewing them onto you.”
“Ouch?” I said which produced gales of laughter from Johnny which in turn did cause me to giggle. I wasn’t giggling, instead of laughing, on purpose, it just kept coming out that way. Pretty annoying because I was convinced that I sounded like a demented eight-year-old.
Once we quit laughing, he picked up an odd-looking garment that he identified as stays. “This might be a little snug for you, still you do need your stays,” he said. He made motions indicating my bust size. So he had noticed.
“But first I want to measure you for future alterations.” He pulled the tape-like ribbon from around his neck and had me drop the towel and stand there nude while he took several measurements and wrote them down with a stubby pencil on a scrap of paper. “You’re fifty eight and one-half inches tall,” he said.
I boggled. I didn’t think I was that short. Not even five feet tall? People were shorter in the eighteenth century but I must still be well under average, even for a girl.
In my old life, I’d been almost six inches taller, taller than most of my class in January, months before my birthday. I would have tuned thirteen in June and now, not only was I definitely female, I was an adult and would likely not be growing up any more. Or out, I hoped, glancing down at my chest. Rats.
He gave me the numbers for the rest of my measurements (35–22.5–37, if you have to know), and I couldn’t believe them, either. I sounded like a pocket-size porn star. It was depressing to be so female. “So it’s true,” I said, “my butt really is more than a yard wide.”
Johnny laughed, almost choked, and laughed some more. “That’s more than a yard around, not width.” He said when he got his breath back. I had not giggled along with him this time. The size of my caboose was not funny to me. Despite the “kindness” of my top half, the “generosity” of my bottom seemed excessive.
He tried to cheer me up. “Women wearing hoop skirts all look like they’re a yard wide back there, so no one will notice your… achievements.”
Achievements? I rolled my eyes. “That does not help. I don’t want to wear skirts, at all!”
He rolled his eyes in response. “Nudity is out of fashion this century, darling. Though I have to admit, you do it well.” He ogled me theatrically.
I sighed, amused by his mugging despite myself.
He grinned. “We’ll just use the farthingale hoops, not the full ones, so you can turn sideways to get through narrow hatches on ship.” He mimed a little shuffle, wriggling his own skinny butt.
I hoped he was kidding.
He leaned sideways to look at my ass again. “That should work,” he added with a mischievous glance back at my face.
I tried the pout I had seen in the mirror on him and he just laughed. Oh, yeah, he was as gay as a poodle.
“Let’s get you dry and start putting on your clothes so Chips can come in and rearrange the walls.” He started working on my hair with the comb. “When we get all this sorted, I can put it up in braids for you. For now, we’ll just keep it out of your face.”
Having someone comb your hair is surprisingly nice. “Who is Chips?” I asked while he pulled and stroked out tangles. He put a hair clip thingie in behind my ear after showing it to me, all silver and brown horn-like stuff.
“Mr. Solange, the ship’s carpenter. He is Chips, just as Mr. Delay is Bones, and I am Sails, and Wilson is Cookie, and the Captain is Skipper. Everyone on ship has at least two nicknames, one based on what he does aboard and the other on some salient aspect of his appearance or character.” He showed his dimples. “So I am also The Chaplain because I listen and you, my dear, are known belowdecks as Bounce the Mermaid. Which most of them would like to do, of course.”
“I…you…that?” I sputtered, my face turning hot.
He laughed, putting another clip behind the other ear. He urged me to hold the towel on my chest in place while standing then he led me to the bed. “You’re dry enough to get dressed. And your stays will do something about the bouncing.”
A knock came at the door before I could respond. “Go away, Chips,” Johnny called out.
“Cap’n sez I gots to remake the walls in there. ‘E wants it done afore nightfall,” came a reply. He sounded like the old bald character in Up but with a British accent of some sort.
“Come back in half an hour so I can tell you to come back in half an hour,” said Johnny, loudly.
Chips left, grumbling.
“Nice enough fellow,” said Johnny, “but always so serious. Claims that shipworm is going to sink us before the Spanish even have a chance. Carpenters are a gloomy lot because all ships leak and fixing leaks is their trade , so their work is never done and everything else is just an interruption.”
He added philosophically, “At least, this ship has a surgeon so Mr. Solange doesn’t have to double as a sawbones and get all his tools bloody.”
Yikes. There was that reminder that this was a warship and a war was going on. The British versus the Spanish? Somehow, I had thought they had been fighting the French around this time.
“What, uh, what is shipworm?” I asked, trying not to spend more time thinking about war.
“It’s a blighty worm that eats ships,” he said. “Fortunately, it takes small bites and not one large one.” He grinned again. “Every ship has them, they are almost impossible to kill so you just have to keep replacing the parts that get chewed up.”
I looked suspiciously at the walls of the room, not sure if I were being teased.
“Let’s get you dressed,” he said and before I realized what he was about to do, he pulled the towel off my upper body and left it spread on the bed under my butt.
I wanted to put my arms across my chest and at least pull the end of the towel into my lap. Defensively crossing my arms under my, uh, bust, I think I made a noise, something like, “Yawp?”
He stood there, looking at me as if calculating. “Almost too generous for Paris,” he said, “and definitely too kind for London.”
I still wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘kind’ but now I knew I was being teased.
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Comments
Erin Halfelven at BigCloset
Shipworm wasn't defeated until ships were made of steel and fiberglass, but Johnny is a hoot to write. I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to this, I actually know where it is going but doing the research to write it takes a lot of time.
Teri Ann
Well, at least one crew member who isn't a threat to Frances, that should help. Johnny is a bright gem, wonder if he has anyone special in the crew? I recall reading about shipworms years ago in a Reader's Digest; there's a Teredo Street in London as well as elsewhere. A perennial pest in any timber ship.
