Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) by Angela Hunt, Angela Elwell Hunt

else shared the decks equally. No one slept on the lower deck, where barrels of water and supplies served as ballast, and the bilge rats crowded themselves together among the passengers’ trunks and supplies on the first deck. The second deck was divided into two halves: men slept aft and the women bedded down on their straw mattresses at the fore. At night on the upper deck, the sailors of the Lion wrapped themselves in canvas and slept under the stars.
    At its best, life on the ship was miserable. After sunset, every man and woman went to their assigned deck, rolled up in a blanket, and tried to sleep as best they could on the damp and slimy floor. The straw mattresses used by the women were soaked by the first rain, and stench of the resulting mildew required the women to pitch the straw bundles overboard. ‘Twas better to sleep on a hardwood floor than to retch from yet another nauseating odor.
    The lower decks were hellishly cramped and the air unbreathable, particularly in the hottest part of the day, but Simon Fernandes and his crew never allowed more than one or two passengers at a time on the upper deck. If by chance more than a few managed to slip up for a breath of air, Fernandes bellowed “Clear the deck!,” sending all passengers and idle crew to the stifling lower levels. Jocelyn suspected that Fernandes considered the passengers no more than living cargo.
    The stores of oatmeal, cheese, and butter remained fresh for four weeks only. Twice a week, on Sundays and Wednesdays, passengers were served a hot meal. Food was cooked on a fire built on sand ballast in the forward section between decks while smoke permeated the ship and sent the passengers scurrying to the upper decks for a breath of fresh air. The rest of the week the passengers ate salt beef, pork, and fish with biscuit, a hardtack so dense it had to be broken with a mallet.
    One day Jocelyn saw Agnes hurrying Eleanor away from the food line. “What ’s wrong?” Jocelyn called, taking a step after her cousin.
    “The barrel leaks, the biscuit is wet,” Agnes answered, struggling to move Eleanor from the sights and smells of food. “How can they feed a lady such garbage?”
    “Wet? It is softer, then?” Jocelyn asked.
    “Aye,” Agnes answered. She tossed a sour smile over her shoulder. “ ‘Tis turnin’ blue with mildew before my eyes. ‘Tis squirming with maggots, too. Even the beer is full o’ life.”
    But crowded conditions and inedible food seemed like trivial concerns when the ships encountered bad weather. Eight days out to sea, a pillaring thunderhead in the west inexorably advanced toward their fleet. The sea rose up to snarl at them in the midst of gray-green gloom, and when flinty-eyed Fernandes bellowed “clear the decks” in the face of the storm, the passengers hurried toward the companionways like frightened rats. Jocelyn joined the huddled stream of passengers into the belly of the ship, and covered her ears as women shrieked, children cried, and men shouted at one another as fear unleashed their tempers.
    ‘Twas only noon, and yet the sky darkened and congealed around them. Through the small openings in the side of the ship came but little light, and Jocelyn could hear the pounding of seamen’s feet overhead as they rushed to take in the sails lest the ship be blown terribly off course by the approaching storm.
    Suddenly the hold darkened and the cries of her fellow passengers quieted into piteous weeping and soft prayers: “Lord, have mercy upon us.” From ninety throats the refrain echoed around her, and Jocelyn joined in, looking with dismay at the wooden timbers that stood as their only protection from a furious and fathomless ocean. For a dark moment she felt as if she were entombed in a large coffin, soon to be buried in the depths of the sea.
    Thunder roared overhead, cracking like a whip through the prayers around her. The ship shuddered as rain poured down on their heads through cracks in the wooden floor