Learning to Write

“I can’t … I won’t.”

Ruby shoved the skin parchment away from her as though it was infected with the plague. Her neck and back ached from sitting for long hours hunched over the table, immobile on the stool. Her fingers cramped and numb – unused to holding the quill much less attempting to make it flow with the same ease and grace with which Matthew seemed to weild when he wrote. She rubbed the pain at the inner point of her eyebrows, smoothing then outwards with the thumb and forefinger of what she referred to now as her ‘good hand.’ The missing fingers on the left hand ached in sympathy.

“Yes you can … and you will.” Matthew smiled, empathy deep in his eyes as he pushed the skin back. “I have faith in your ability bella.”

“It is unnatural.”

“Because you are a woman and the Church forbids.”

Ruby turned her head and mimicked a spit – Juan would order a flogging if she actually defiled the oak floors of this cabin with her spite.

“I couldn’t care less what the Church says I can and can’t do. It is unnatural to have things put down like this. Some things are not meant to be – made permanent like this. Besides – when am I ever going to need to read or write. I have everything up here here. I have my intuition and it has done me well to this point.”

“Hurrah to your intuition for landing you in on a pirate ship becalmed in the middle of no where, an prison of choice below decks.”

Ruby pulled the skin back to her, setting her jaw against his words.

“I will write badly and then at the end of the day when I can barely move from pain in my entire body – you lend me your knife and I will scrape the words off ready to begin tomorrow. There is no point to this endless exercise other than to keep me occupied below deck where I will cause no harm.”

Reconsidering the skin she shoved it and the quill back across the table.

“I am stifling in here Matthew. This is killing me. I need to get out in the fresh air, to stretch my legs, to lie in the pasture and watch the clouds race over head. Lilith help me – to make daisy chains and pretend I am Queen. Anything but this.”

She got up from the stool and lent to stretch the tightness out of her back.

“The Captain will be back shortly bella to take you up on deck.”

“Tokenism. That is what it is. Put me through my paces with the rapier up on the poop deck and pretend he’s actually doing something for me. Like this writing.”

“The Captain is doing more for you than any other man on this planet would willing do for you.” Ruby thought she detected the slightest hint of jealousy in Matthew’s expression when he said it, though his tone remained even.

“I don’t want to be taught to write – like a man. I don’t want to be pandered to with empty promises in sword play. I want my freedom.”

“Have you ever considered the freedom which lies within books. What learning would do for you bella. You could escape to lands unimaginable, meet people you would never have dreamed of. Know things you have never thought possible. Reading will set you free. I would happily lend you any of my books. You have a fine mind Ruby.”

“I do not wish to know how to read your books Matthew. I have you do I not? I have you to tell me what is in the books.”

“But to be able to read for yourself. To know first hand and to be able to form your own ideas and opinions of them – from them. Do you no want to know first hand from the source – or rely on gossip.”

“I trust you Matthew to tell me the truth.”

“I am not to be trusted.”

Ruby watched his expression harden and a tiny nerve in the side of his eye twitch.

“But I trust you.” She reached out to touch his hand with the three fingers of her mutilated hand. “I trust you.”

“I’m sorry!” The voice came from behind and Ruby snatched her hand away from Matthew's and straightened her carriage. Running her hand down the front of the simple dress she had sewn from some hand soften canvass Calvin had procured for her.

“I wish I could get you beautiful threads and ribbons to decorate your dress like in Lisbon,” Calvin had said. And she had smiled into his eager grin. Unlike Matthew or Juan, he was easy to please. A moment of her time, a few words here and there.

Ruby pulled herself from her reverie. “I did not realise it was time.”