1807
Doubtless I thought I knew what I was getting myself into at the beginning of that trip. Escaping the past if things took a turn for the worse would be quick and easy. I had done it before. As for other precautions, I have the ultimate historical advantage of being fully vaccinated; I knew the ship’s planned route across the ocean; and I knew its historical fate: safe arrival in the port of Boston, just before Thomas Jefferson’s ill-fated embargo on British trade was to take effect. Travelling to the nineteenth century, though, and signing on as ship’s cook for the voyage from Newfoundland to Boston, was a different thing altogether.
I love the ocean, but I tend towards seasickness whenever I visit it. This time was no different. Jokes at my expense abounded aboard the ship. I didn’t get much respect from the crew until I alerted them to a French ship prowling the Canadian waters, which might have attacked us otherwise. Callahan, an Irish deckhand on the same watch as me, was particularly impressed by that. He asked how I’d seen the French ship so far out, on a dark and foggy night. I brushed him off, chalked it up to luck and sharp eyesight, but Callahan seemed to have made up his mind about me. He seemed to have decided that we were friends.
Late one night, a few weeks after the French ship, when Callahan and I were below decks trying and failing to get some sleep, I decided to start knitting again. I hadn’t had time, in the past weeks, and I missed it. My first idea was to make a pair of socks, but I couldn’t find double-pointed needles in my workbag.
“What?” I said aloud, surprised and horrified. I dug through the bag, through skeins of undyed yarn, but I only found one pair of regular needles, six millimeters wide. I must have forgotten to pack the other set, before I left. I couldn’t believe it.
“Seasick again?” Callahan said, from the hammock next to mine.
“No,” I said. I wasn’t, but I would have denied it either way. I didn’t want constantly seasick to become my reputation aboard the ship. “I wanted to make a pair of socks, but I don’t have the right needles.” I held up my pathetic single-pointed needles in demonstration.
“Pity.”
Quilting had never before appealed to me. To knit a quilt is a time-consuming project, and it can be hard to keep your gauge consistent throughout. Laying in the hold, though, with nothing to keep me occupied but a pair of outsized needles and plenty of yarn, making a quilt started to look tempting.
“I’ll make a quilt, then,” I said, mostly to myself, but Callahan heard and responded.
“Quilts are good,” he said. “Tara—my sister—she made this for me.” He sat up in his hammock and held up a corner of his grey blanket. In the dim lantern light I saw a complex cable pattern around its perimeter. In a time before machine knitting, someone had made that blanket with a lot of care.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Your sister is very skilled.”
“You would like her,” Callahan said. “Or—she would like you, I think.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that. A jolt of alarm ran up my spine. Callahan had been decent to me so far; he had been friendly and never threatening, which was more than I could say for most of the crew. But to be a time traveller is to live with a current of paranoia under your skin, no matter where or when you go. At that moment, I didn’t know if Callahan had found me out, and I didn’t know what I would do if he had.
“She sounds like a nice girl,” I said. I gave Callahan my best attempt at a smile. “I’m sure I’d like her. If she’s anything like you.”
Callahan didn’t smile back. Something about his gaze unnerved me. I looked down at my work bag and reached for a skein of pale wool yarn to cast on. When I looked back, Callahan had turned his head to stare up at the ceiling of the hold.
“She would like you,” he said, his voice soft and guarded. He turned to look at me again, and he smiled. “She’d never let you alone about your knitting, you know.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.”
“She’d say—” Callahan nodded at the yarn and wooden needles in my hands. “You’ve got a loose cast-on, there. Be careful you don’t drop a stitch.”
“Oh, she would?” I laughed. “Do you knit, Mr. Callahan?”
He looked away. “No,” he said. His voice dropped again. “Tara wanted to teach me, but I never learned.”
I could teach you. I thought of it, but I didn’t offer. I have never been good at teaching. We wouldn’t have time. In a few weeks, a few months, we would go our separate ways. I had plenty of secrets to keep in the meantime. I looked at Callahan, and wondered what he had to hide.
We parted ways in Boston. I was ready to go back home. I missed centralized heating, and gender equality, and my double-pointed knitting needles. Callahan, having come down with his own case of homesickness, signed on to another ship, one headed to Barbados and then back to Ireland. He told me the name of the ship, Xanthippe, and where she was berthed in the harbor. Maybe he found the name odd, or maybe he hoped I would join him. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about it. But I hadn’t planned for that, and I knew better than to jump straight into another journey with no research or preparation. I ended my historical adventure in Boston and returned to my native time; but when I got home, I gave in to curiosity, and looked up the history of the Xanthippe.
I found a collection of records, sorted and published in 1932, meant to keep track of merchant shipping during the Napoleonic Wars. I learned that the Xanthippe ran aground on a reef and sank, just off the coast of Barbados, in December of 1807.
The crew is believed to have gone down with the ship. No survivors were found. I read the words with a quilt that still smelled of saltwater wrapped around my shoulders.
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AURELIA GONZALEZ is a junior pursuing a Baccalaureate degree in English. Aurelia is a writer of short-fiction, long-fiction, and screenplays. When she isn’t writing, attending school, or spending time with her family, she also enjoys reading, knitting, and playing in the snow.