Free Sea Witch by Helen Hollick Page B

be made. The revenue from selling Mother’s jewellery would not last forever, nor when Captain Rogers had finally decided to make sail for England, had his generous patronage been of further use. He had been content to pay for their board and lodging in lieu of Jenna’s medicinal skills – Tiola’s in reality, but she had thought a man such as Rogers would not contemplate receiving treatment from a girl. Easier for all parties if Tiola assisted Jenna and made pretence it was the older woman who possessed the skill.
    With only a few days left before the money ran out, and a roof over their heads consequently about to be denied them, the solution was solved by chance coincidence – or ordained providence?
    Jenna, not as adventurous as the younger Tiola, tended to use the wider and safer main streets or the East India Company market for food and provisions. Tiola found the maze of alleyways more fascinating to explore, although knowing Jenna disapproved, rarely told of where she had been. Here, the scum of Cape Town scrabbled a living by plying their trades; here, the beggars and whores, the thieves and charlatans eked a meagre existence of day to day drudged survival. Elsewhere, near the grandeur of the fort and the V.O.C. gardens were the well-to-do houses, the estates of the rich merchants and traders, ship owners, slavers. The wealthy. Tiola preferred the honesty of the poor.
    Most of them were thieves and scoundrels out for all they could get for free, ready to rob as soon as look at you, but they had honour among their own and judged people for what they were, not for what they alluded to be. Those fat profiteers in their mansions, with their acres of estates, their bulging purses and their conceit? Tiola wanted nothing to do with them, although she realised Jenna would be doing all she could to encourage such acquaintances. Tiola was a gentleman’s daughter and would, in Jenna’s dutiful opinion, soon be needing a gentleman as a husband. Father? A gentleman? A respected clergyman, a man with an outer veneer of honest decency? More like a man diseased by mouldering rot!
    Early morning found Tiola scrambling over a pile of mildewed cabbage leaves attempting to catch an injured cat. She had been stalking the mangy creature for several days, anxious that the bloodied maggoty ear needed attention. Jenna had scoffed, saying it would be best to leave the animal to die, one less of the caterwauling little pests would be a blessing. Tiola, as usual, ignored her.
    She lunged, caught the cat’s tail. He turned yowling his fury and scratched her hand, but she held tight, bundling him quickly into the scrap of sacking she had brought for the purpose. Wrapping it around his body she inspected the ear. Most of it was missing.
    “Been fighting have you Tom? You need to move quicker on your paws lad, if you are going to survive that game.” Tucking him into a secure grip she turned for home, the single room they would soon be having to vacate on the top floor at the rear of the Golden Hind tavern.
    In places the alleys were no more than corridors between buildings, most of them piled with accumulated debris blown there by the persistent wind. Rats scurried, the smell of rot and sewage nauseating. She turned left then right, aware this was the favoured area for the prostitutes, set near the taverns and the harbour. Sailors were not interested in walking far before they found their eager-awaited entertainment.
    She had been accosted on several occasions in these back streets, grappled by men assuming she was a working girl looking for custom. One, this morning, had been blind drunk, easy to push to the ground and leave lying in the garbage, legs and arms waving helplessly as if he were a beetle on its back.
    For another she had used her skill of Voice. “ I am not for you. Be on your way .” And he had shambled off looking puzzled, half remembering something that for some reason now eluded him.
    The cat was wriggling; Tiola was