Joris tutted as the candle stub crackled, guttering in a pool of its own wax. He was hunched over a small patch of light, peering down at the coarse looped wool of his conical cap, a darning needle in hand.

 

All around him was noise and stench: stale sweat and damp, the raucous laughter of his crewmates, the clattering of dice, the creaking of the ship like an old man’s bones. Joris tried not to notice these things, nor the cold, nor the wind in the rigging above, keening like a wailing widow. In his many years at sea, he’d learned there was a lot to be said for slow, simple tasks. They focused the mind. Kept the hands busy. Kept the fear at bay.

 

So he focused on his stitching, and the woollen hat laid across his lap. The cap looked older than it was, much like Joris himself. A life at sea had not been kind to it, its woollen loops worn and frayed, edges ragged where they’d caught on splintered beams. It wouldn’t win him any prizes for fashion, but it was warm, and that was what counted here, off the blasted coast of Orkney, where all was frost and fierce, slicing winds.

 

Joris squinted at the needle in his calloused fingers, a cord of yarn looping through the eye, and pulled it neatly through the felted wool, securing loops and tufts. With each stitch the furrow in his brow faded a little, and something like a smile played at the corners of chapped lips. Each tug of the twine was a memory of his mother’s hands, gnarled but deft, stitching by the fireside back in Rotterdam.

 

“You’ll want to keep your head warm, our lad,” she’d said, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the hearth. “The sea’s a cruel mother, and no mistaking.”

 

The ship gave a sudden lurch, and the men around Joris cursed as dice scattered across the planks. He glanced up from his work, his seamans’s senses gauging the change in the pitch and roll of the waves below. The wind’s howl sharpened to a shriek, and a hoarse bellow came through the hatch.

 

“All hands! All hands on deck!”

 

So much for ignoring the storm.

 

Joris shoved the needle through a knot of wool and pulled the cap over his head. The salt-stiff wool scratched against his scalp, and the feeling was something like comfort. Then he rose with a grumble and followed the others up the ladder, into the storm.

 

Outside the wind howled like a pack of wolves, and the rain lashed down in sheets, needle-sharp and stinging. Waves rose like cathedral walls and crashed down over the deck, and the ship bucked and groaned beneath Joris’s feet.

​

“Get those sails down!” the mate roared, voice barely cutting through the gale.

​

 

Joris stumbled forward, slipping across the rain-slicked planks as his eyes adjusted to darkness. The sails snapped and thrashed like wild beasts, and he threw his weight against the lines, hauling until his arms screamed with effort.

​

 

Next to him a young deckhand was fumbling with a knot, teeth chattering, fingers clumsy and blue with cold. Even amongst this chaos, Joris couldn’t help but feel for the lad. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and by the look of the wide, panicked eyes beneath his sodden mop of dark hair, it was the first big storm he’d sailed in.

​

 

“Hey,” Joris called to him, but his words were lost at once on the wind. “Hey,” he shouted again, pulling himself hand-over-hand along the rain-slick rail.

​

 

At this the boy looked up at him, his body racked with shivers, his face tight with misery.

​

 

“Here,” Joris said. Before he could think better of it, he pulled the thrum cap from his head and yanked it down over the boy’s. The wool slumped over the deck hand’s ears, nearly covering his wide, frightened eyes.

​

 

“You’ll want to keep your head warm,” Joris shouted over the wind. “Now haul!”

​

 

The boy nodded, his jaw clenched, and together they wrestled the rope down, binding it to the cleat. Another wave crashed over them, and the ship heaved beneath them. Joris staggered, salt stinging his eyes, hair plastered to his scalp, the wind knifing through him like a blade.

​

 

As he steadied himself against the mast he felt a pang of regret for the cap. For its battered practicality in wet and wasting weather. For its warm memories of home by the canal, the fire dancing in the grate, his mother’s work-worn hands and warnings. But as he watched the deck hand work the knots, young face set and determined beneath loops of sodden wool, regret gave way to satisfaction.

​

 

The sea’s a cruel mother, Joris thought, gritting his teeth against the wind. But her sons could take care of each other.