· 5 June 1939 ·
AT THE GREYBEARD INN
A brilliant parade of lightning strokes flashed across the rocky headland, marking the old inn in the near distance and the Greybeard Light in the far. Nick longed for the comforts of hearth and home, but his sister was chilled to the bone and shivering badly. An enormous thunderclap rumbled through the low black clouds and across the plain.
He could just make out the warm glow of oil lamps in the upstairs windows of the inn and, placing his arm round his sister’s shoulders, they hurried up the last rise. The inn wasn’t home, but it was hearth.
Nick pushed open the heavy wooden door and, sure enough, saw a room lit only by fire. A real corker, too, blazing away in the massive open hearth of the old inn’s public room, the flames licking every corner of the ancient space. Rain beat steadily against the windowpanes and jagged flashes of lightning lit the panes from without.
Nick saw two strange figures before the fire. One of them, a tall fellow wearing a dark cloak, stood with one boot up on the hearth regarding the new arrivals in brooding silence. He was smoking a long bony pipe and held a rum bottle in one hand. His companion sat hunched in the shadows, a brooding presence just beyond the firelight’s reach. Strangers, on Greybeard Island? It was a day for strange occurrences, Nick thought, there was no getting around it.
“Master Nicholas!” Gunner exclaimed, coming out from behind the bar to embrace Kate, then Nick, then Jip. “God love you, children! Why you’re soaked to the skin, for all love! Which you surely should not be out on such a night as this! Nor in this bar full of alcoholic spirits, either! Into the sitting room with you, now, afore I lose me livelihood! Blankets!” he exclaimed, and rushed up the narrow wooden stairwell, assuredly in search of blankets, because Nick could hear him shouting the word from the upstairs hall, as if he could call a woolen blanket to come running like a woolly dog.
“Children!” he now shouted from the top of the stairs. “Could you come up and help an old blind man locate the warm and cozies?”
“Coming right up!” Nick shouted back. He took Kate’s hand and started up the staircase, a puzzled frown on his face. Surely Gunner knew where the blankets were, the same place they always were, stowed on the top shelf of the linen closet at the end of the hallway. Or on the beds in one of the guest rooms.
When they gained the top step, Nick saw Gunner standing in the darkened hallway, a lantern in one hand. He had his index finger pressed to his lips, signaling them to be quiet.
“Shh,” he said, “I’ll have a private word with you, Master Nick.”
“What is it, Gunner? What’s going on?”
Gunner ignored his question and said, “Katie, dear lass, would you be a wee angel and hurry down there to the Blue Room? I think I’ve left me spare blankets in there.”
Nick looked carefully at his old friend. This secretive behavior was not like him at all. He watched his sister skip down the hall and enter the last room on the right, the Blue Room.
“Something’s wrong, Gunner,” he said. “Tell me.”
Gunner, the proprietor of the inn, was easily the most beloved figure in Nick’s life beyond his own family. Gunner had much to recommend himself to Nick, but foremost was his brisk manner of speech when excited, which Nick found quite jolly, and his general appearance and demeanor, which always put Nick in mind of a Father Christmas who’d spent a lifetime on shipboard. His face was worn and leathered by the years at sea, but his bright blue eyes still held a sparkling clarity, as if the wind and sea had never been quite able to get to them.
Gunner wore a full, snow-white beard that framed his often rosy cheeks, and little gold wire spectacles that were always sliding down to the tip of his nose. To look at him, you’d never guess he’d spent most of his life behind a twelve-inch naval gun. Or that he’d sent not a few German submarines to the bottom with that gun during the Great War. To Nick, who loved the sea, Gunner’s stirring tales of naval adventure were only icing on an already favorite pudding.
Now Gunner bent from his waist and put his lips near Nick’s ear.
“Be wary of them two down there, lad, and keep your wits about ye.”
Billy Blood and Snake Eye
“Who are they? What are they doing here?” Nick asked.
“Very strange visitors indeed. I don’t want to alarm your sister. But I’ll tell you they’ve come looking for something on this island. Something they say rightfully belongs to them. Here to reclaim missing property, that’s all I know, lad. Just be wary, that’s all. And, one more thing. They—”
At that moment Kate returned, dragging two woolen blankets behind her.
“Some tea would be nice,” she said, smiling up at Gunner and bouncing down the steps, trailing blankets in her wake.
“Don’t be a-feared, Nick, we’ll sort these two devils out in short order,” Gunner said, following Nick down the steps.
Gunner wrapped them up like two wee Indians and sat them side-by-side on the bench nearest the hearth. “Oh. Blood,” he said, tucking in their blankets and nodding to the dark-cloaked man. “Beg pardon, Blood, ha-ha!”
“Blood?” asked Nick, who was accustomed to Gunner’s vocal peculiarities. Still he found this mention of “blood” incomprehensible, and found himself looking down at his blanket to see if he’d cut himself. “What blood, Gunner?” He saw a spot of red on the floor and reached down for it, but it was only a singularly large feather.
A red feather.
“Here’s yer Blood, boy,” came a chilling voice from inside the cloak.
The stranger grinned a toothsome smile at Nick. His appearance was strange indeed, almost like an apparition one could say, especially here in the warm familiar glow of the old inn. Clenched between his yellowed bony teeth was a long thin yellowish white pipe carved out of some kind of bone. He wore his full black cloak over a scarlet blouse and odd-looking black pantaloons stuffed into beautiful Hessian boots. Nick supposed that many might consider the fellow handsome, with his finely chiseled features, his long dark red hair tied at the back with a black satin bow—but to Nick he didn’t look handsome. To Nick he looked—and he had to search for the word—wrong.
“Yes, yes, here’s yer old Blood,” said the stranger in that musical voice. It would have been bone-chilling were it not so hauntingly melodious. “And, here be my companion Snake Eye. Leave him be, if I was you,” Blood said, with a warning glance at Kate.
But Katie couldn’t take her eyes off this other brooding figure. Occasionally, when flames would lick up in the fireplace, she could see his strange face before he turned it away. She shuddered at the sight of him, deciding he’d either been horribly scarred or that his face was covered with the most hideous tattoos.
Blood pulled his chair forward in Nick’s direction. He half rose up out of it, locking his jet black eyes on Nick’s so strongly that Nick sensed he could almost feel their pull, like moon on tide. There was, too, a strange tinkling noise as the man rose from his chair, and Nick was astounded to see that his full red beard was plaited with braids, and that each long plait was secured with a tiny silver skull! Hollow silver skulls that clinked together musically whenever the stranger moved his head or shook his beard!
“William Blood be my name,” the man said, with a tinkling of bells. “But suchlike as you may call me Billy.” He drew his thin lips back in something like a smile and regarded Nick and Kate with heavily lidded black eyes. “Won’t you join our little party?” He sucked on his bone and blew a foul yellow cloud of smoke in Nick’s direction. Then the stranger hooked his boot under the bench where the children sat and drew it near to him. A shiver went through Nick’s body as he looked closely at the man’s pipe. It was a bone all right, and looked like one he’d seen in one of his mother’s anatomy books.
Human anatomy!
“You look chilled, swabbies. A little rum, perhaps? An ancient old grog, mateys, over two hundred years old.”
Blood’s voice was indeed oddly musical, but it was not a pretty song, Nick thought. Perhaps his voice was the opposite of music. He held out his open bottle of rum to Nick, black eyes glittering.
Eyes that narrowed instantly to slits when Nick put his hand over the mouth of his offered bottle.
“Kind of you, sir,” Nick said, looking evenly at the stranger. “Truly. But our friend Gunner has a pot of hot tea brewing for us. Besides, ‘swabbies’ like my sister and I are not allowed to drink spirits. But we do thank you kindly for the offer.”
Feeling distinctly uneasy in the man’s presence, Nick turned to Gunner who was busily toweling Jip’s coat dry before the fire. “Gunner, may we borrow some oilskins for the trip home to the lighthouse? I’m sure our parents are worried. We really should be getting home, shouldn’t we, Katie?”
“Lighthouse?” Blood smiled, his voice dripping with mock kindness.
“We live in the lighthouse, Mr. Blood,” Kate said. “It’s two thousand years old!”
“Lovely, a ruin no doubt,” Blood oozed. “My friend Snake Eye here is a connoisseur of antiquity, he is, seein’ as how he’s over two hundred year old himself. The two of us must pay you a visit someday, my child,” he said, and Kate’s eyes went even wider.
“My parents are probably quite worried, Gunner,” Nick interjected quickly. “Late again for supper and this time I’ve got wee Kate with me in the bargain,” Nick said, looking at Kate nervously. But his sister paid no heed.
“Can I tell Mr. Blood about the sea chest we found, Nicky?” Kate said. “Down by Gravestone Rock?”
Nick tried to hold the words back for her, even as they came tumbling out. He threw his sister a stern look but wasn’t sure she had interpreted it correctly. She was incredibly clever, but she was only six and a half years old. She was still learning about “looks” and how they stood for words unsaid.
“Found a sea chest, did you, dear girl?” grinned Billy Blood. “Fancy that! Me old parrot Bones was tellin’ me such a tale, just afore you swabbies arrived. He seen a chest, too! Would it be the same one as yours, I wonder?”
He was leaning right into Kate’s face, his lips pulled back into what was meant to be a smile and his black eyes locked on hers. A thin stream of smoke escaped his thin lips, and Katie saw that his yellowed teeth were very large. She drew back instinctively. She had never in her life met a bad man. There simply were none on Greybeard and she had never left the island.
But she had heard her mother describe bad men in stories and this Mr. Blood here and his scary friend certainly fit the description. Even the air around them felt wrong, even the light. Wrong. Bad.
“Just what kind of chest might it be, dear?” said Billy Blood.
“Oh, my, it—” started Kate, and stopped, realizing what she’d done. She looked at Nick for help.
“Did she say sea chest?” Nick said quickly. “My sister has a keen imagination, I’m afraid. Wasn’t a chest, sir. No, not a chest, just a pile of driftwood and a rusty old lock.” He gave Blood his very best Sunday smile and saw the black eyes go cold.
“By the way, you mentioned your parrot, sir?” Nick asked, eyeing the large red feather in his hand and desperate to get off the subject of his chest. “A red parrot? If so, sir, I’d ask you to keep that nasty bird away from my little sister because—”
“Quiet!” Blood roared. “You dare speak to the likes of me in suchlike ways! Why, I’ll have your damned eyes for supper! And Snake Eye your tongue. He likes tongues.”
Blood suddenly sat back and regarded the boy in silence, peering intently at Nick through narrowed eyes. And Nick could see him trying to decide whether or not this wisp of a lad could be easily frightened. Nick returned Blood’s cold stare, though in truth the man was terribly frightening and Nick’s heart was pounding in his chest. Sheer menace seemed to pour off the man in waves, and he said not a word.
The silence remained, hanging heavy over their heads. Katie, Nick noticed, was content to stare at her shoes, while Jip was regarding the Snake Eye fellow with a low growl.
Well, if Blood did mean to frighten them, it wouldn’t do to let him succeed, thought Nick; for although this was the first truly suspicious character that he had personally encountered, he’d met their like many times over in the pages of the books that filled the lighthouse library. So this is what they’re like in real life, he thought, the bad men, the bogeymen who haunted his dreams.
“Not a chest at all,” said Blood at last, in a wicked mimicry of Nick’s twelve-year-old speaking voice. “Not a chest at all, you say?” He leaned his face into Nick’s just the way he had done to Kate and Nick could smell the scent of sour rum or tobacco or worse on his breath. “If not a chest then what, my dear boy? Do tell, laddie, as you’ll warrant Billy Blood’s little tolerable of secrets indeed. And old Bones never lies. Never.”
“Tea!” exclaimed Gunner, bustling in and placing the tray on the hearth. Nick was much comforted by both the warmth of the liquid and the reappearance of his friend. Gunner was immensely strong, having spent many years mastering the strange game of flinging huge logs—trees, really—end-over-end in the Scottish manner. He was completely devoted to Nick and his sister, and Nick knew he would die himself before he ever let them be harmed or even ill-used by a stranger.
“I believe, sir,” said Nick, eyeing the stranger evenly over the rim of his teacup, “that it might have been a chest at one time, but all we found were a few rough boards of the frame.” Nick did his best to smile. “Bit of sea trash is all we found. Nothing more, sir.”
At that moment, a long, low hissing noise issued from the lips of the one called Snake Eye, but he said no more. In Nick’s view, it was clearly time to go. He stood up and took Kate’s hand.
“Our parents are probably worried about us, Mr. Blood, so I guess we’ll be making our way home. Storm has let up some, too, hasn’t it? That’s Greybeard weather for you! So, I guess we’ll be off now and, Gunner, if we could have those oilskins we won’t bother you kind gentlemen any longer, will we, Kate?”
Nick had lifted Kate by the arm and given Jip a rousing nudge with his boot. “And we’ll wish you gentlemen a very pleasant evening, too, I’m sure.” They made their way to the door, Nick encouraging the growling Jip along with the toe of his boot.
Billy Blood turned in his chair and regarded them coldly. “To the lighthouse, are ye then?”
Gunner helped them into the oilskins. “See you home, Master Nick?” he whispered, with a glance over his shoulder at Billy Blood. “A strange pair, ain’t they?”
“Who are they?” Nick whispered, looking beyond Gunner to Billy Blood. “Where’d they come from?”
“They come from out of thin air, is where they come from!” Gunner said in a sharp whisper. “I stepped out into the kitchen for less than two shakes of a goat’s tail, and when I steps back, there them two demons are, cozy by the fire! Didn’t hear the door, nor the wind, nor nothing at all. They just ‘popped’ in, guv’nor, right out of thin air! Never seen the likes of it. I think I should see you home, Nick, really, I do.”
“We’ll be all right, Gunner,” Nick said, reducing his voice to an even lower whisper. “But perhaps we could meet tomorrow? We found something on the coast. Something I need your help with as quickly as possible.”
He turned to bid farewell to the stranger but Blood had turned his back to them and was once again staring into the fire, puffing on his long bony pipe, the wreaths of wispy smoke hanging about his head like sickly yellow clouds. It was somehow more disturbing than if Nick could have seen his face.
“Aye, tomorrow, lad. And, with these two about, I’ll sleep with the heavy artillery tonight. Might even put Old Thunder under me pillow!” Gunner added, whispering in his ear.
“Old Thunder?” Nick thought he heard Billy Blood ask as he pulled the heavy door shut behind them. The boy felt a chill shoot straight to the marrow. There was no earthly way the man could have heard what Gunner had whispered. No earthly way. Nick paused at the rain-streaked window, stood on tiptoes, and peered back inside. Blood and his silent companion were gone. The chairs by the fire were empty, the strangers vanished like smoke up the chimney!
“Do you believe in pirates, Nicky?” Kate asked, putting her small hand into her brother’s much larger one as they turned into the road. “Because I do.”
“Pirates? No, course I don’t. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as pirates anymore, Katie,” Nick said, patting her wee head. He was glad his sister couldn’t see his face, for his eyes surely lacked the conviction of his lips.
“No such thing at all.”
So the two children made their way homeward, the Greybeard Light sending great stabs of light into the now lifting fog and Jip running up ahead, leading the way, and all of them anxious to be home and abed.
