“Well, then,” she said softly, menacingly. “Give me one good reason—one—not to kill you. Here and now.”
I don’t take prisoners, she was saying, I don’t collect ransoms. The living are too much trouble.
There were heavy splashes from astern, as the captain—the former captain—and his officers went overboard. No trouble at all.
I said, “There’s only one ocean. One. All the waters of the world, all intermingled, all talking to each other; and they’re under us right here, right now. Listening to you. Weighing you, weighing me. Is that good enough? Big enough?”
“It should be,” she said. High sun glinted off the pocked blade of her cutlass. Another splash came from aft. I didn’t look around. Down below, someone screamed: thin and hoarse, I thought it was a man. Or had been.
Her eyes didn’t flicker, her blade didn’t twitch. I was counting on that. She was solid: sure of herself, sure of her crew. Nothing to prove.
“It really should be,” she said again. “Enough. But—you don’t buccaneer. No one ever called you Pirate Martin. Did they?”
“No,” I said. “No, they never did.”
“No. And I don’t carry passengers. So…”
The blade was like liquid sunshine in her hand, hot and ready. She’d do this herself if she had to; God knew, she must have had practice enough. She really didn’t want to, but she thought she’d do it anyway. She’d be famous, maybe: the one who put Sailor Martin down, the one who sent him to the bottom at last.
That’s why she didn’t want to. It’s not the kind of fame a person looks to carry, even on land. Out here, on the attentive waters—well. If she was hesitating, that was why.
Unhurriedly, I said, “I can cook, though.”
Now I’d surprised her. She blinked, took her time, said, “You can?”
“Yes, actually. I can cook for you.” Not buccaneer, but feed her and her crew: that, yes. Nothing in that to sear my conscience or darken my long story more than it was dark already. I wouldn’t be feeding prisoners, conniving at their capture. What my new shipmates did to those they took—a swift blade and a splash astern—would be on their souls, not mine. I was comfortable with that.
I’d be hanged regardless, if we were taken.
I was tolerably comfortable with that, too.
“Good, then.” Her cutlass slammed back into its sheath, and she turned towards the poop. “Help my people get this mess cleared away, I want to round Dog Point before sunset. You’re ship’s cook, but I carry no idlers; you’re starboard watch, and you’ll scrub and stow and haul like any of them.”
“Aye aye,” I said, “cap’n.”
For once in my life I was aboard a naval frigate, rather than a merchantman; for once in my life, I was on the passengers’ manifest, rather than the crew’s roster. I’d come aboard at Port Herivel, seabag on my shoulder and my name like a whisper rolling up the gangplank and across the deck before me: Sailor Martin, that’s Sailor Martin; he’ll be luck for us, good luck in tricky waters…
The captain welcomed me to his poop deck and his table, would perhaps have given me his cabin too if I hadn’t insisted on bunking in the gunroom with his junior officers.
“Those pipsqueaks? Unbreeched boys, I warn you, they’ll keep you up half the night demanding stories.”
“That’s my intention,” I said cheerfully. “Perhaps I can teach them something. Youngsters listen to me.”
He grunted and didn’t argue, for whatever brief good that did him. Not half an hour later, I was followed up the gangplank by a woman in black veils and her two servants, one a dusky matron and the other a boy.
I stood by the taffrail and watched while the captain and his first lieutenant went to greet her. After a minute, the captain called for his steward and there went his cabin after all, gifted necessarily to the lady. He took her through to view her accommodations; her servants followed with the baggage; the first lieutenant came thoughtfully up from the afterdeck to join me.
“Who is she, Number One?”
“Florence, Lady Hope. Says she’s sister-in-law to Sir Terence Digby, king’s man at Port St Meriot. That’s barely out of our way, and we’re only running cargo anyway; the old man said we’d take her. Between you and me, I don’t believe he likes the idea, but…” A shrug said the rest of it: that even the Royal Navy bowed to politics, and a wise captain did nothing to aggravate the civilian power.
For a little time, I thought of reclaiming my seabag and treading spry down to the quay again, seeking another ship. I knew Sir Terence, by more than reputation; I knew why the king had sent him to Port St Meriot, and why he’d gone. I knew he had no family, in or out of law.
But I was ever curious, it’s my besetting sin and why I can never quit the sea. I held my tongue and settled into the gunroom, amused the lads and tried not to interfere too badly with ship’s discipline while I kept a weather-eye on the lady and her people.
She herself kept her cabin, didn’t join us for dinner, rarely showed abovedecks and never without her veil. She was in strict mourning, seemingly. Gunroom gossip said it was for her husband, or else her lover: either way, the man who had brought her from England and then had the discourtesy to die of yellow fever, leaving her with no alternative but to fling herself on the charity of an unfortunate but obliging relative.
Her boy had little enough to do, and was apparently glad—at first—to have the freedom of the ship. I found him everywhere, from the lower hold to the higher rigging, gambling with the idlers or racing the midshipmen from deck to masthead and down the shrouds again.
After our second day at sea, though, I saw him mostly in the company of the boatswain. Who was a bully, as are so many of his calling; and the boy looked less than happy now, red of eye and bruised of spirit, bruised of body I suspected as he slunk about, obedient at the big man’s heels.
Well. No doubt that would be a lesson learned. No doubt he’d find it useful. Myself, I spent my time in pursuit of the abigail as she laundered smallclothes in a barrel of fresh water, stood over the cook in his galley, sat to her needlework high on the foredeck in the late of the day.
Her name, she said, was Delia. Tall and broad-shouldered as her mistress was—convenient, she said, for fitting dresses—she was good-natured and open with it. Firm of purpose, knowing her own mind, finding her own course in life and cleaving to it. Free to do that, serving her mistress because she chose to: “I was never slave. I wouldn’t have stood that. A person should be free. If she ain’t born to it, she should take it.”
As she spoke, her eyes roved the ship, the crew, the set of the sails, the horizon. I didn’t need to keep watch myself; I could depend on her to do it for me.
No surprise, then, when the look-out hailed the deck: “A ship! Hull-up, two points off the starboard bow!”
Really he should have seen her sooner. I rather thought Delia had, though from the foredeck we could make out only the scratch of her masts on the skyline. She was adrift under bare poles, so the man had some excuse, but even so I thought he’d probably face a whipping come Sunday, when his officers would have leisure to attend to it. A warship with a skeleton crew such as ours, reduced by disease and desertion, too few to work the ship and man the guns at once: she needed fair warning above all, to close with friends and keep her distance from any threat.
I should probably have said something to the captain, that first day. Too late now. Captain and first lieutenant both were halfway up the shrouds, telescopes in hand, to see for themselves.
Before their polished boots hit the deck again, I could see the first smoke rising from the other ship, a greasy smudge against the sky.
“She looks to be a whaler,” the first lieutenant confided, while his captain paced the windward side of the poop alone, considering. “A derelict, in trouble. We’ll go to help. It’s our duty.”
Duty could bring a rich reward, salvage-fees on a vessel full of sperm-oil and ambergris. I held my tongue. Nothing about this captain impressed me, from his own indecision to the quality of his officers to the manners of his crew. I wouldn’t interfere now. I distrusted even his ability to run away.
Even the wind was a conspirator, lying handsome off our aft quarter; in less than an hour we were drawing alongside. Even in his cupidity, the captain wasn’t entirely stupid. He’d had the guns loaded and run out, so that we had at least the appearance of a wary warlike vessel in His Majesty’s vigilant navy. Every officer bore a loaded pistol, every man went armed.
Even so, that was just routine. The ship was really not expecting trouble.
Even so, I was still exploiting my privilege, lingering on the poop with the officers of the watch, just to see what happened.
What happened first was that Delia swung up the companionway to join us. There was no sign of her mistress, nor their boy.
Delia might be free but she was a woman, a passenger, a servant. The captain merely stared; the first lieutenant moved to evict her as swiftly as he might, as rudely as need be.
“Madam, by all that’s holy, you may not—!”
She forestalled him, with a swift nod of her turban’d head towards the other ship. Where a plain red flag had broken out astern, and a boil of men erupted from below.
“My God, sir, they’re pirates! Hard aport! All hands, bring us about!”
Delia said, “I’m afraid you’ll find that my man has cut your steering chains.” Her man, she said, not her boy. I pictured her supposed mistress, as tall and broad of shoulder as she was herself, veiled in solitude. And wondered, a little, what the boy was up to.
The man at the wheel cursed, as it spun freely in his hands.
“Belay that order! All hands to the guns! Fire as they bear!”
“Unfortunately,” Delia said, “I don’t believe your guns will fire. I’m afraid my boy has been fooling about in your magazine since we boarded, mixing powdered glass into all your gunpowder. He’s a skittish lad, so you may be lucky; but if he’s done his work properly…”
The first lieutenant tested that, jerking the pistol from his belt and levelling it straight at her face at no more than two yards’ distance. She simply stood there, waiting.
He pulled the trigger. There was a flash in the pan, a sullen smoke, no more.
He flung the pistol furiously at her head. She ducked, and when she straightened she had a cutlass in her hand, drawn through some cunning slit in her skirts.
She was just in time to meet his blade with her own. She was a big woman, but even so: a hanger with a man’s weight behind it should have been enough to finish her quickly. Somehow, it was not. They fought from leeward to windward, and when they came bloodily apart at last it was she who stepped back and he who slumped boneless to the deck.
That the captain and his other officers had only stood and watched, transfixed—that said all that was necessary about the ship’s command. By the time they saw their brother officer fall dead, it was too late to recover. A man in skirts came bulling up from the afterdeck, with his veils thrown back and pistols in each hand; grapnels were already flying across the rail to drag the doomed frigate closer, while the pirate crew came swinging aboard on ropes.
There was fighting down on the quarterdeck, but none up here now. Everyone waited for the captain; what they saw at last was his sword-belt hitting the deck as he let all slip.
And that was the battle, more or less: how His Majesty’s frigate Milford fell to a pirate queen, with never a shot fired in anger.
And how I found myself eye to eye with her, shortly afterwards; and, “Will you spare the boys?” I asked.
“Perhaps. If they swear to follow me, and if I believe them. Boys can be taught. Don’t waste your time pleading for the men. You might be better served by pleading for yourself.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t plead. Ever. You know my value, you know what I am. You choose to keep me, or you don’t.”
“Well, then…”
And so I found myself ship’s cook and standing a watch, everything next worst to a pirate true. I saw the boys I’d slept with herded over onto the bait-ship, where no doubt they’d be tested and tested. I watched, and wished them luck, and hoped that some at least might survive, for a while at least.
One boy remained, as Delia took possession of her new flagship: the lad she’d brought aboard. I saw him come up from below, scrupulously cleaning his knife. A little later, I saw men carry up the bloodied ruin of what had been the boatswain.
Well, small blame to the boy for that. I remembered the screaming, and still blamed him not at all; I had a fair view of what he’d done, as the men swung the body overboard, and still not. I never did like bullies.
The boy came up and glanced at me, and seemed surprised; turned to his captain with a questioning glance, “Why’s he—?” and won the only proper response, a quick cuff to the ear.
“He’s our new cook. And you’re his galley slave, till I say otherwise. Get below, the pair of you, and see to the crew’s dinner.”
His name was Sebastian, he said. That was the most of what he said for a while, caught in a fit of the sullens as we scrubbed and chopped. He held our captain too much in awe to disobey even my commands let alone hers, but he was bitterly resentful. He really didn’t understand why I was still alive, let alone why he should be set under me.
Matters eased between us when I contrived to let him think that he was really there to watch me, to stand by with that good knife of his in case I tried to poison his captain or set the whole cursed ship aflame.
After that, it was easy enough to get him talking. He was barely twenty yet and mightily pleased with himself and the wild tangle of his life, bubbling over with it, spilling stories. He’d been a stable boy in Jamaica and then tiger on his lady’s curricle, until he was snatched in a tavern and pressed into service on a buccaneer. Twelve years old, stolen for his pretty face and given the same choice that faced those boys on the bait-ship today: swear fealty to a pirate and knuckle under, or else die.
Sebastian had sworn, smart boy, and survived. Longer already than most pirates did; and somewhere in that lucky life, he’d fallen in love with it. Like any boy he could be vicious and fearful, passionate and sentimental by turns, hungry for adventure and hungry to sleep in the sun. Playing cabin boy to a pirate crew had fed each of those urges and more; serving Delia had brought him to the point of worship, her total devotee. I could have found no simpler way to win his heart myself, than to let him talk about her.
I hadn’t planned to win his heart at all, I hadn’t planned to stay—one cruise, one port, I’d be away—but even after so long at sea, the sea can still surprise me.
So can a boy. Even after so long, so many boys.
I had him stir the porridge for loblolly, not to let him ruin his precious knife hacking at the navy’s salt beef, harder than the barrels it was kept in. In the end I fetched a mallet and a sharpened caulking-iron. Between my pounding and his giggling, we agreed that it was wondrous condescension on her part, that she would eat this with her men; and that let me ask, “How does she come to lead a crew of men, white men, in any case?” There had been women freebooters, there had been black freebooters; probably there had been black women; but not as captain. I was sure of that.
“We elected her, of course. It’s the tradition.” Then he pulled a rueful face and went on, “I think it was a joke. Our last captain was no use, he lost us too many prizes and sailed us into trouble, time and again. We were hiding out, hungry and afraid, with the navy at our heels and hunting. Delia had been the captain’s doxy, that’s why she was aboard. She was sensible, someone to listen to. Even so, it was a joke. We wanted rid of the captain before he got us all hanged, but you never call for a vote unless you know who’s going to win it, and there were too many men who wanted to. That’s dangerous. Nobody dared stick his neck out until Double Johnny got drunk enough. He called the vote, the captain asked who stood against him—and Johnny named Delia. Because he thought it was funny, or because it was a measure of how much we despised the captain, or because he was so drunk and the rum so bad hers was the only name he could remember, hers the only face he could make out. I don’t know. I think it was a joke.
“But he named her, and when the captain had quit laughing, he asked if she would stand. And she said she would. He already had his hand on his cutlass, he knew just how this would go: of course he’d win the vote, and then he’d kill her, and then Johnny, and that would be that.
“Only he lost the vote. We all hated him that much, and we all loved Delia. So we voted her in. And then he tried to kill her anyway, but she was ready for him. She had a loaded pistol in her skirts, and she blew his head away.
“I think we thought she’d stand down after, and let us have a proper election for a real captain. Only she didn’t do that. She took it on herself to be a real captain. She found us safe harbour and led us to a prize; and then we wouldn’t have let her stand down if she’d wanted to. She’s hard on us, but she’s kept us alive all this time. And now we have a warship,” unthinkable bounty. And he might want to give all credit to his captain, but he still did keep a little for himself, how clever he’d been, playing servant all those days while he quietly sabotaged the gunpowder and never gave himself or his companions away.
He wanted my applause, so I gave it him; then I traded stories. Soon enough his eyes were bugging out, as he finally understood just who I was. Or thought he did. He’d have known it sooner if he’d listened to the crew of the Milford, but he was a boy: full of himself and his own daring, listening at first to nothing and nobody but his captain. And then to nothing and nobody but his own sorrows, once the boatswain had him. I had apparently entirely passed him by. I might have been wounded, if I didn’t understand him all too well.
Still, he made up now for that neglect. I was famous, all around his limited little ocean. He’d heard the common stories about Sailor Martin and wanted to test them, to hear them again from the source. Did you really…? Is it true that…?
He was a boy, he could readily be squashed at need. For now I talked more than I ordinarily do, I told him more than I was entirely comfortable with. I wanted an ally, perhaps a spy, certainly a bunkmate. He was still pretty; he’d do.
Pretty and willing and trained, as it turned out. Better than willing, awed and grateful. I had worried that the boatswain might have killed his pleasure in the act, but one night’s careful negotiation took us past that. Gentleness was a revelation to him; so was anything that didn’t directly marry my cock with his arse. Soon enough he was melting-hot under my hand, far past caring how roughly I handled him. He was rough himself, with the unexplored strength of the young; making me grunt was a triumph, apparently. Even if it cost him extra chores in the morning.
I took cheerful advantage of his body, day and night, this way and that: any excuse to fuck him at any opportunity, any excuse to heap work onto his wiry shoulders. The more I left to Sebastian, the more I could sprawl at my ease on the foc’sle on a bed of coiled rope in the sun. The captain didn’t mind, so long as she and the crew ate three times a day; and she’d been light on crew even before she had to divide it between two ships. Really, feeding those she’d kept on the Milford was no burden. Not to me, at least. Sebastian grumbled, but even he didn’t seem too outraged.
Our consort, the Nymph Ann, showed herself to be a true old whaler by her lines, when she wasn’t pretending. She’d probably never been much of a pirate, but she’d made a good bait-ship. Now she offered a good shakedown to new crew, those navy boys. From my rope throne I could watch them being put through their paces, up in the rigging and around the deck, swabbing and holystoning and hauling sail. I saw one of them flogged on a grating, two dozen strokes of the cat; next day I saw a rope slung from the yard-arm and thought I was about to see one hanged.
And so I did, nearly—except that they hung the boy up by his heels and just let him dangle, for punishment or amusement or I know not what. For a while he writhed and begged shrilly, loud enough to carry across the water, while the old hands laughed at him. Soon enough he fell quiet and only hung there, and they grew bored and left him.
They might have left him too long, he might have died, if a boy can die of a blood-flood to his brain; but he saved himself at last, pointing and squealing, trying to cry out as a good boy should.
Someone looked, and called a proper warning to the ship’s master at the wheel. He responded with a bellow that sent hands swarming up aloft; I suppose one of them must have taken the time to cut the boy down, if only because he was in the way of the fore course’s falling.
The Nymph Ann veered close on our starboard, within hailing distance.
“Whale, cap’n! The boy saw her blow!”
“Where away?”
“North and two points east. If he could see her, the boats can reach her.”
The captain hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she nodded, yelled her approval, started yelling orders to our own crew.
A simple cruise makes a decent shakedown—but hard sudden work, the chance of danger and the chance of profit makes a better. Pirates and whalers are close kin, half of them have been the other thing at some time; we had enough experience between the two vessels, maybe enough boats too.
What boats there were went overboard, and collected crews to row them. Harpoons came from the Nymph Ann, cables from our own locker, courtesy of His Majesty.
“Sailor Martin: do you whale, if you won’t buccaneer?”
“I’ve served,” I said, “on a whaler.”
“Take a seat in the gig, then. Pull an oar, if you can’t throw a harpoon.”
I could, but not as well—I was sure—as the lean tattooed creature crouching in the bows of the gig as we pulled away. The whale must have shown again, because voices called down to us: directions, exhortations, blessings on the day. Nothing excites a crew like first sight of a blow.
Nothing is harder than to catch sight of your whale from a little boat on the swell. We rowed to where we thought she had been seen; our ships were no help, having to work up against the wind, soon left behind.
We rowed and craned our necks around, seeking and seeking. We were a fleet of three, the ocean is desert-vast, and whales can swim far and far underwater; I thought we were safe to lose her. I thought we had lost her already. It was almost a relief. Our crews were learning their work, whaling or pirating or both together; and Sebastian was in Milford’s other boat, and if we found no whale then he was at no risk. That sat more easily in my mind and on my stomach. I hadn’t expected to worry for him, but—
“There! There she is! She’s logging!”
She was; and she was a cruel unlucky fish, that we should find her adrift, asleep in the water, almost impossible to spot from a boat unless you come right on her, as we had.
Once spotted, a logging whale is easy to spear. We coordinated by voice and eye, gathered all three boats together, hit her with three harpoons at once.
She dived straight down, our cables whipping out hard and hot, fit to take a man’s arm if he tried to grip one. But she couldn’t stay down long, she couldn’t go deep, she’d had no chance to breathe; soon enough the cables slacked as she rose and breached.
Rose and breached and dived again, and now she was dragging us, and what could three cockleshell boats, two dozen men do against such a monster? This was the perilous time, when a boat can swamp or turn turtle, when a whale can turn against a crew, a fluke can splinter planking, men can die.
We hauled on the oars, legs braced: backing water until the shafts bent and our shoulders popped, until we had to yield or something broke. Then we let her pull us, until we’d recovered enough to strain again.
We worked her and worked her, each boat in turn or all together; she hauled us hard, worse when she stopped diving and only swam because she needed the air. Our little boats sheared through the swell, flew off the peaks and slammed down into the troughs, again and again. I never thought they’d survive. I never thought we would. It’s always a surprise after a Nantucket sleigh ride, to find yourself and your mates intact.
If you do.
I watched Sebastian’s dory when I could, when spray wasn’t cutting at my face like knives, when the gig wasn’t flying or smashing into the whale’s wake or tossing so hard we could do nothing but hold on. We lost oars, we lost sight of anything outside that eggshell, we lost hope; we never lost the whale though I thought we must at any moment, the rope would break or the boat would break or the harpoon’s barbs would tear free of her blubber and strand us in mid-ocean.
None of that. She slowed, the world lost its madness, the sea settled back beneath us; we recovered what oars we could and backed water one more time.
You can brace and look about you, both at once. Heaving, I turned my head and looked and looked. There was a dory, there were men in it, braced as we were, bending their oars against the whale’s pull. Salt spray blinded me and I had no hand free to wipe my eyes; sun was setting, and I had no good light; I had no breath to bellow his name. Nothing to do but haul and wait, haul and wait until that fish at last stopped fighting.
Then, when she lay floating, as still as we had found her, wheezing in great bubbling salt-stink gasps; then we could call from boat to boat. I held my tongue, having nothing useful to say, but youth is loud. I heard Sebastian exult at finding himself alive yet, nothing worse than wet and sore.
I heard him call my name across the water. I heard him hushed peremptorily, hoarsely: “Quiet, lad, no chatter now. You’ll start her again. Who has a lance?”
From beyond the dory, no answer. I wasn’t sure if there was still a boat.
Our own harpooner fumbled in the shadow of the bow, found a lanyard, pulled it in. Blessedly, it hadn’t snapped in the fury of the whale’s wake or any of the impacts of boat on water. At the end of that rope rose a long iron shaft, cruelly bladed. Once that had been in the gig with us; I hadn’t seen it go, being too busy keeping myself aboard. Lucky it hadn’t taken one of us with it, or at least an arm or so. A whaler’s lance is wicked sharp; it needs to be.
The dory had apparently lost its own. Poor whale. The harpooner stood in the bows as we rowed slowly in beside the floating monster. She was aware, I think, that we were coming; her fins stirred, but feebly. No danger of Sebastian’s voice starting her now. I thought she was utterly overdone, we’d exhausted her beyond recovery. Even so, she had maybe sent one boat, eight or nine men to the bottom, if they weren’t just lost on the water; and all whales are female, like ships, but this one truly was. A bull would have been half as long again, maybe twice the weight. More spermaceti in its head, more ambergris in its belly, more oil in its blubber—and twice the power too, many times the temper. Never mind boats, full-grown bulls had sunk ships in their time, in their fury. I doubt we would have survived a bull, any of us.
The dory pulled up beside us at the whale’s flank. Sebastian didn’t risk his voice again, so recently scolded, this close to the monster’s shadow. He didn’t risk standing, either, let alone the leap I was half dreading: from one boat to the other, his to mine. I saw an arm wave wildly, that was all, and knew him in the murk—and, God save me, I did wave back.
And then very suddenly needed both hands for holding on again, because the harpooner plunged that vicious lance in through the hide of the whale, deep in, probing for lungs or heart or anything that mattered. The great beast spasmed, though she lacked the strength to surge beneath the water. Perhaps she only shrugged in pain; perhaps she meant to swamp us. One small eye caught the last of the sun, gleaming in the vast dark bulk of her head, making her seem more intelligent than she was. Perhaps.
That little movement raised a wave that forced us from her side. Our harpooner left his lance jutting from her flank, preferring to let go than dangle, ridiculous and at risk. By the time we’d baled and caught the oars and pulled ourselves back in, the dory had our place and a man there had the lance.
A man? No—a boy. Sebastian, of course: on his feet and taking a man’s task, wanting to impress me. Pulling the lance free of her flesh’s suck with one swift draw, that sweet unsuspected strength resolved into grace in shadow; letting the dory’s drift carry him a yard down her flank before he drove it in again, power and spring and determination, knowing himself under my eye, coiled at the heart of my anxiety.
Again she flung herself about in the water as that savage needle struck deep into her innards. Again, her wash forced the boats away. Sebastian was too slow to let go, too young to understand the need or else too focused on twisting the blade, probing for her heart, wanting to be the one who slew her cleanly. He found his platform suddenly gone altogether from beneath him; I saw him hang by both arms from the dipping lance’s shaft, and then I saw her roll him underwater.
And then me, me too, as though her one movement had carried us both down. I swear, I never chose to dive. There I was, though, swimming through the dark in quest of him. Something on her hide glowed phosphorescent, like moonlight trapped in water; weed or living creature, I couldn’t tell, but by that faint illumination I found his shadow as he sank.
Of course he couldn’t swim, what sailor can? Apart from me, of course. Rumour says that I could log like a whale and drift like a derelict and never need to shift a finger in effort, that the sea would bear me up.
Rumour is an ass. In this and many things. I swim because I learned to swim, the way I learned to handle boats: with work and time and practice.
I swim for the same reason that I sail, because I love the sea, not it loves me. Because it is dark, because it is salt, because it is deadly. Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.
Dark, but not obsidian; deadly, but not mortal. Not necessarily mortal.
Bitter, but not unbearable. I saw Sebastian, by the grace-light of the whale’s hide. I struck down and reached him, found him still clinging to the shaft of the lance where it jutted from her body. Desperation or good sense, whichever, I had cause to bless it now. If he’d let go, he’d have sunk; if he’d sunk far from that gentle light, I never would have found him.
He wasn’t about to let go now, even though I’d found him. I wasn’t about to allow him. If he ceased to clutch at the lance, he would clutch at me instead; then we’d both sink. I have seen men drowned by their friends, and I didn’t mean to join them.
The whale meant for both of us to join them, but I too can be dark and salt and deadly. The beast had rolled deliberately, I thought, to hold Sebastian under the water. His eyes were screwed tight shut, so he was no trouble to me, if no help. If he’d been looking, if he’d seen me, he’d have lunged, I think. I didn’t even touch him. I only laid my own hands beside his, and twisted that lance as sharply as I might.
Poor thing, she’d been trying to shake the boy loose and shed the pain. Now here it was again, worse than before; what could she do but roll up to the air again, and breathe, and suffer?
Sebastian’s death-grip was tight enough to fetch him out, no chance of shaking loose. I hung on by grim purpose, through the wrenching tug of that roll; and there we were, breaking back into the world, gasping and coughing and holding on, still holding on as we dangled and kicked above the surface of the ocean.
And there was the dory, seeing us, pulling back to the whale’s side: giving us something to drop into, if Sebastian would only let go.
At least his eyes were open now. He stared at me, wild, frantic—and then twined his legs around my waist, a death-grip too late to do harm, and swung us both back and forth.
Working that lance-head in the whale’s innards, back and forth…
Finding something, I know not what. Something that mattered. Slicing into it. Bringing one last brutal spasm from the beast, and then a groaning stillness.
The dory came back for us again, and this time I let go, this time it was my turn to practise my death-grip on the boy, wrapping my arms around his shoulders so that all my weight hung from his determined hands.
He laughed in my face, and held on that one last second, long enough to kiss me. Then he let go, and we fell.
Bruisingly, into the crowded boat: oars and benches and other men contributed each their share of bruises, but mostly mine came from Sebastian. He seemed all elbows in my grip, and all deliberate, and all delight. Wet lithe muscled boy, once again exultant and alive; I had to cuff him hard to make him let go, and then again just to calm him. He spat blood and grinned dizzily up at me, settled between my legs there on the boat’s boards in the awkward cramping space between the rowing benches and other men’s feet, and said, “What now?”
Said it to me as though I were captain, as though the decisions were mine. It ought not to have been true—but the dory fell silent, as though all the men there were waiting on my answer. Across the water I could hear the silence in the gig too, matching.
Into that delicate moment, dying or dead, the whale let rip an abrupt and tremendous fart. Which shattered the tension nicely, throwing us all into gales of laughter; and in the subsiding cheerful chatter that followed, I took an easy charge.
Got a rope around the whale’s tail, not to lose her in the encompassing night; joined both boats together with another, for the same reason; said, “We’ll just sit out the darkness, lads, and wait for the captain to find us in the morning. She’ll come. She’ll have to: can’t hardly handle one ship without us, let alone two.”
“How’s she going to come, then, if she can’t—ow!”
I suppressed my boy handily, amid another ripple of laughter, and asked who had rum or hard tack in their pockets, tobacco still dry in a pouch, anything to share around to see us through the waiting.
Later, we sang. Later still we slept, those who could, sparing only those on watch. Sebastian could most likely sleep through a hurricane; I hoped to have the chance to prove it, another day, another voyage. For now I cradled the slumped weight of him, felt the slow seize of stiffness in my joints, learned that it is possible for a man’s parts to be both numb and excruciatingly painful, both at once.
When he woke, he was youthfully, outrageously limber. Also he was youthfully and outrageously heedless, teasing me and disturbing everyone, knocking men out of their slumbers as he mocked and stretched, making the whole boat rock as he scrambled to his feet to peer into the dawnlight for his beloved captain.
In the end I pitched him overboard, left him to squawk and splash for a minute before I let a man thrust out an oar for him to snatch at.
As we hauled him in dripping over the gunwale, he was still squawking, but not in protest now. He’d swallowed too much water to be coherent, or else he was just too angry—but he was a good boy, he kept pointing and making noise until we turned, until we looked, until we understood.
The sky was pearling to the east, the other way, the way I’d pushed him. Westward was still dark, but it was too dark. Not sky-dark, not even storm-dark: a rising arc of shadow split the night, cut away the stars. Now, in the hush of experience, I could even hear the sounds of surf breaking against solidity.
I had not thought we were that close to land, but the whale had hauled us far and far, out of all reckoning.
“Good, then,” I cried, pounding Sebastian between the shoulder-blades as though it were his achievement, as though I didn’t just enjoy pounding the lad. “Landfall will make our wait more comfortable. There’ll be water, sure, and green timber to raise smoke, to tell the captain where we are. Out oars, lads, and haul away. We’ll haul our catch to dry land, and be dry ourselves…”
Sometimes I am wrong and wrong. Even now, even still: wrong and wrong and wrong. We came ashore in the false dawn, with our false hopes high; and found ourselves cast on a hard rock, hard and bare and empty. No trees, no habitation and no water. One of the hands talked of an island he’d seen rise overnight, a seething volcano building itself in fury from below; but that had been far to the east, half a world away. There were no such stories here, save the ones he told. In the end I sent him to the high bleak rounded peak of this rock, to keep watch for the captain. He’d have no way to signal her, but she should come in any case, as soon as she sighted land.
If she were anywhere on our trail, anywhere near, she’d come. Even if she knew what little comfort this place offered, she’d still come. Any sailor would. We love the sea, and turn to land like a needle to the north. She’d know to find us here, sure as storm.
Meantime—well. There was no fresh water, and no timber for a fire except what we’d brought with us, and no sailor would ever burn a boat. Even so, more than one hand sat on the ridge-rock shore and dangled bare hook-and-line into the tugging sea. Hope springs eternal, and you can always eat fish raw; and it was always possible that the captain wouldn’t come.
That was a possibility we didn’t talk about. Every man held it private, in the back of his own skull, with all that that implied.
To one boy, it didn’t occur at all. Sebastian was full of excitement, empty of doubts. As full as he needed of rum, perhaps, that too: I thought the men had been topping him up, for his reward for being first to cry land or just for their amusement.
He was a happy drunk, happy and confident and trusting, almost impossibly pleased with himself. He couldn’t keep still, but he didn’t want to walk. The rock felt rocky under sea-legs, and his triumph floated large and alluring just off shore; he wanted to row around the whale’s corpse and relive the whole adventure, show me the jutting lance and tell me how clever he’d been, how kind I’d been to come after him, how wonderfully we’d worked together.
I didn’t mind, so long as he did the rowing. One lean lad shifting a heavy gig: the work of it would burn the rum out of his bones and maybe even still his restless tongue. Also, we’d find a privacy on the water that I hoped to celebrate, in the whale’s shadow and down between the benches, doubly out of sight from shore. The men would speculate wildly and mock cruelly when we came back to them, I hoped with every justification in the world…
Sitting in the stern, manning the tiller, I got to watch his face as he pulled: all strain and anxiety until he had her moving, until his confidence came back. Then concentration, the determination to do the thing well, not to catch a crab, above all not to splash me more than he could help; then awe at the simple size of the thing, his achievement, the tales he could tell as we came into the windshadow of the whale. A more simple smile, when he looked at me.
An unreadable expression, when he looked over my shoulder at the island at my back. He had no breath spare, but his eyes were speaking for him. I twisted around and saw a sea-cave rising broad and high, just a little way along the coast from where we’d come to land.
“That,” I said, turning back to the boy, “looks big enough to shelter the Milford and the Nymph Ann too. You may have found our new hideaway, lad.”
“Oh, I didn’t…”
The protest was breathless and instinctive and utterly meaningless; he thought he did, I could read that all through him. The mighty adventurer, slaying beasts and leading us to treasures.
“You were the first to see it,” I said, feeding his imagination along with his self-content. “We’ll call it Sebastian’s Cave—”
“—Sebby’s Cave, they’ll call it, only you call me Sebastian. You and the cap’n—”
“—All right, Sebby’s Cave, but we still won’t go in there till we have torches. It’s dark, and anything could be hiding out already.”
“I want to go now.” A dead whale, a tale told had lost all its attraction suddenly, in the face of an adventure not yet lived. It would be the same with me, I thought. Right now I was all the world he lived in, as the captain had been before me; sooner or later, I would be a tale told.
It was a boy’s life, that was all. Sooner or later, perhaps he’d be a man.
I felt unutterably old, and played that hand as I had to. “I know you do, but we’ll still wait. You don’t want them calling it Seb’s Folly, because it’s where you went to die. It looks like a mouth, half-open, ready. Just pretend you can see teeth hanging down, and wait till we have lights. Now row me round to the other side of this fish.”
He pulled a face, but then he pulled the oars. Still a good boy.
Still a boy: he sulked, and complained about the stench of it. I laughed, and said, “You should be used to that, sleeping down below. You should get used to it. Wait till we flense this fish, before you worry about smells.” Then wait till we fry it, but I didn’t say that. One step at a time. Little by little, let him learn. “Now ship those oars, and come here.”
Time and tide, the movement of small vessels on great waters. Sex in the scuppers. It’s all one.
While I had his clothes off, I gave him his first swimming lesson. Unless the whale had done that, and all I had to do was reinforce it. All I wanted him to learn was not to panic—which made it really a lesson in trust, which started as it had to, with trusting me. “Let go of the gunnel, Sebastian. Just let go. It’s perfectly safe. I’m here, and I won’t let you sink.”
Eventually I had him with his arms hooked over a floating oar, kicking furiously for shore. Soon enough, I thought he’d trust himself; sometime after that, he’d learn to trust the water. And probably start calling himself Sailor Sebastian, thinking himself immortal, the sea will hold me up.
At the moment he was all effort, more splash than surge, and that good oar was all that held him up. I paced him in the gig, one slow stroke and then another, easy work. I was ready to pluck him out if he exhausted himself entirely, but I thought the whole crew ought to thank me if I brought him back weary to the bone. He could sit in the sun with his good knife and make himself useful as well as decorative, pick limpets from the rocks, give us all something to chew on while we waited for the captain.
We couldn’t make smoke to guide her, but oh, she was good. Not four bells in the afternoon watch, there was a bellow from the peak, a wildly waving figure, our watchman running and slipping and sliding down the long slope, risking bones and softer parts to bring us news.
“I’d have sent the boy up to you,” I murmured, once we had him safely gathered in, “if you’d only waited.”
Sebastian just looked at me, and went on sharpening his knife. I grinned. “Go on, then. What did you see?”
“She’s coming, she’s there, she’ll be with us by sundown…”
“No. What did you see?” There were other ships in these waters, and few of them were friends to us.
He saw the point, nodded, stuck to his guns despite: “Two ships, mast-high. One warship and one whaler, I rate ’em—and don’t tell me I don’t know the Nymph Ann, for I do.”
“She might have been gathered in by a king’s ship. Which might have sunk the Milford, if the captain made a fight of it. If she could. Or the king’s men might have taken both, hanged everyone, might be coming now to hang the rest of us.”
If they were, there was little enough that we could do about it. Still, we all trooped to the peak to watch the ships’ approach. Of course they were the Milford and the Nymph Ann, that was clear soon enough; we had to wait to see the scarlet shock of the captain’s flag, to be as certain of her.
We had her gig; we had to row out to fetch her. Sebastian insisted on pulling an oar, only so that he could lay claim both to the whale and his cave, before any other hand got the jump on him.
Cap’n Delia could manage him, better than any of us. Better than me. She gave him everything he deserved, in due order: praise and encouragement; mockery; a stinging slap to the head when he wouldn’t subside.
Finally, after she’d seen all that we had to show her, after we’d brought her to land, she said, “Well, then. There’s work to do. Food and grog for all you marooned lads and the lads who came to save you; Martin, see to that. Use the galley on the Milford; people will be busy on the Nymph. She still has all her try-works from her whaling days, but they’re down in the ballast, largely. Someone wriggly needs to haul them out. Sebastian, that’s you, and those boys we took from the navy. You’ll be in charge down there, but that’s not an excuse to slack. I want everything out and set up tonight; you don’t get your grog until it is. Don’t drink the bilge-water meantime. Sorry, Martin, but we need to boil down that fish before it starts going bad. You’ll be on your own today.”
That was nonsense, of course, and she knew it. You’re never alone in a ship’s galley. Even with half the crew on another ship and half the remainder ashore, with the watch reduced to a bare skeleton few, there’s always someone with time on their hands and oil on their tongue, hoping to wheedle a jot of rum, or else a handful of soft tack and a dip of it in the slush.
I had company, then, and I could put them to work, but I did still miss my boy. Which was unexpected and curious, interesting to watch in myself, not easy to understand. Not easy to shrug off. Boys are like deep-ocean swell; they come, they go, there’s always another on the way.
This one—well. Apparently I wanted to ride the wave awhile.
I could do that. I could afford the time. That’s something I’ve never been short of.
A hasty dinner for all, then, as each mess of men was relieved in turn. No time for the salt meat to soften, so I gave them hasty pudding. When every mess had been fed, I watered rum for the grog and took that up on deck to serve it out. Last in line, as ordered, came the boys: sodden and stinking, exhausted, elated. Arms around one another’s shoulders, leaning into each other even before the rum hit them.
Last of all was Sebastian, proud of his command and proud of their work, determined to show me. I’d seen it all before, but still: for his contentment, I let him row me ashore one more time, a lamp in the gig and fires on the shore to guide us. Not till after I’d dunked him in the sea one more time, though, in the tropical sunset glow. I called it a swimming lesson, and forbore to fetch the scrubbing-brushes.
The men had roamed all over this rock-bubble island while I was busy, and found no beach. Some way down the coast from Sebby’s Cave, though, the rock shelved out almost level, like a lip. Here they’d hauled the whale ashore already, secured her carcass with rocks and ropes, drained the spermaceti out of her skull and begun to flense her carcass. Come morning, they’d open her belly for the ambergris; in the meantime, no reason not to start rendering the oil out of her blubber.
The Nymph Ann was too old to have try-works built into her deck, all bricked about for safety, as the modern whalers did. The great iron pots had been set up ashore on tripods, with empty barrels stacked behind and slow fires already lit below them. Those would burn night and day now, until we ran out of either blubber or barrels, depending.
“See, these are the blanket pieces, these long strips we cut straight off the fish. I did one myself, this one I think,” nice boy, honestly laying claim to the least of the stacked strips, the shortest and most ragged, “till Twice Tom took the flensing-knife off me. Then we cut ’em into blocks, the horse pieces, I don’t know why they’re called that; and then they’re sliced down for the pot. Bible leaves, Tom says these sheets are called. He won’t let me cut those, he says I’ll take my hand off…”
He was likely right. I was grateful to Twice Tom, and impatient to quiet my boy, to stop him bubbling over with what I already knew. I knew too well what the bubbling pots would smell like, all too soon; I’d sooner be back aboard before then, or at least on the other side of this island. The reek of rendered whale-oil clings to clothes and hair even worse than the smoke of a smudgefire, and I’d only just washed him.
I kissed Sebastian, then, to silence him, and guided him away uphill. He was too tired for the long haul back to the ship, it’d only make him quarrelsome if I tried to take him far from his triumphs; too tired to sleep, he could yet be charming company if I only flattered him a little and taught him a little. The island offered no softness, but we’d contrive.
“Sailor Martin.”
Hers was the one voice I couldn’t ignore. She was sitting alone in a blaze of starlight, halfway up the slope. I swallowed my sigh, settled on a rock below—the perfect courtier, attentive and obedient and not threatening her status—and tugged Sebastian down at my feet, let him settle against my legs, played with the damp straggles of his hair while I waited to hear what was on her mind.
“I had a look inside that cave,” she said, “after the men’s dinner, before my own.” I knew it; her lamps had been lit from my galley fire. “It’s not as deep as I’ve seen them, but it’s even higher inside than it is at the mouth. It’ll take both ships with ease, even at the height of the tide, and not a sign to see outside. I wouldn’t want to be caught in there in a storm, mind, but if we need to duck a king’s ship, that’s the place. Hell, I don’t think this rock is even on their maps; it’s not on mine.” And hers, of course, had been the king’s before. She’d have nothing more recent or more reliable than the Milford’s charts.
“That’s good news,” I said, which was true, but irrelevant: good news for her, of little interest to me, not what she meant to tell me.
“Yes. Somewhere to run to. All we need now is a reason to run.” Here it came. “The Nymph Ann doubles very nicely as a whaler, and now we have an honest cargo to prove it. We don’t need to take it to Port Royal and let those thieves bilk us for a tenth its value; we can head for Port St Meriot and deal openly for once. Only, not with me on the quarterdeck.”
Well, no. News of a black woman pirate captain might have spread through the islands already; even if it hadn’t, news of a black woman whaler captain would still raise too many questions. It wouldn’t be believed.
“The master can stand in for you,” I said.
“He can—but so can you. Everybody knows you, everybody trusts you—and you know Sir Terence Digby. I thought we might pay a call. Word on the water is he’s giving a ball.”
Likely he was. Everything in its season, and this was dancing weather. Light muslins damped with sweat, candlelight on gold brocade, military boots and dainty slippers, scents of jacaranda and musk in the fevered air.
I understood her perfectly. I said, “I still don’t buccaneer.”
“You don’t need to. You only need to be there, in port, visible. Master of a whaler with her holds full to bursting. Of course he’ll invite you to his dance. Of course you’ll ask to bring your chosen men: your mate and the surgeon, the specktioneer and the skeeman. A couple of likely boys you think the navy might like to look over. That’s your part, all I’m asking. We’ll do the rest.”
I could imagine the rest. She’d be in the kitchens, with a few more men: fresh fish from the harbour, perhaps, or vegetables from market, rum and sugar syrup from the hills, something. And all Sir Terence’s guests in all their glitter, the finest jewels for a thousand miles—and no prisoners, no hostages. She wouldn’t change her customs on dry land. The cream of the navy would be at that ball, all the senior officers and most of the young hopefuls; why would she ever leave them living behind her, knowing her face now and hot for revenge? They’d scour the ocean till they ran her to ground. Better to hew a hundred heads at a stroke, leave the navy and its government rudderless and adrift, leave no one to come after her.
“That’s not what I signed up for,” I said mildly. “I’m the cook.”
“You are. And, for the moment, a man of mine.” If that was a warning, it was pleasingly oblique: no threat, simply an observation of what was owed and owing. “Think about it. We’ll be days here, salting that fish down.”
She rose and left. I’d have stood to see her off, but Sebastian had fallen asleep with his head in my lap. For a long time once she’d gone I only sat there thinking, watching the stars wheel slowly around the sky while the moon dallied with the horizon.
Whalemeat for breakfast—of course!—with biscuit-crumbs fried in the grease. The crew gorged, men and boys together; the only one not groaning as he rose was Sebastian, and only because I’d rationed him.
“Oh, why?”
“Swimming lesson later, and I don’t want you seizing up with cramps. You’ve eaten enough. The cap’n wants to move the Nymph Ann into your sea-cave first, then the Milford after, see if they both fit. Go climb the mainmast, try if you can touch the roof as she ducks under.”
He went off happily enough, knowing that if he went up aloft on either vessel he’d be raising sails rather than fooling with the cave roof. The master was a disciplinarian with a ready rod, and the captain was probably worse; and half the men were ashore wrestling with the whale, so it’d be a lean crew managing some tricky sailwork. In honesty I thought it’d be easier to put the men in boats and tow the ships in, but there was pride at stake all around.
Pride has never been my problem. I cleaned up in the galley and then went on deck to watch the Nymph Ann through the cavemouth. Looked for my boy but couldn’t spot him: not high in the cross-trees, he was probably hauling ropes down below. No matter. Even a vigorous swell couldn’t lift the whaler anywhere near the roof; the master kept her on a perfect line and she headed slowly into ship-swallowing darkness.
The Milford would be next, but not me. I’ve headed often enough into damp uncertain nights, I didn’t need another. The little boats were all busy, ferrying the working crew from the Nymph Ann back to the Milford; I gave Sebastian—and everyone else, but I did hope that Sebastian at least was looking—an object lesson in the confident swimmer’s entry to the water. One neat dive, down and down into the measureless ocean; I could almost see the island from its underside before the water threw me up again, up and out like a breasting dolphin, vigorous and free.
I swam ashore and dried off in the sun, walking over rocks. First to the try-works, just to see how the men there were coming along: to stand upwind of the seething pots and counsel care with the ladle there, count the barrels filled and sealed, count the exposed ribs of the flatulent giant carcass.
And then away, up the rising curve of the hill that was the rock that was the island; and soon enough down again, to a high cliff-edge that I sat on with my feet hanging over. And leaned down to look and no, not a cliff after all, the mouth of another great sea-cave. And I thought about that, and the stars in their slow shift last night, and the way the moon had seemed to drift on the horizon; and I was almost expecting Sebastian’s hail when it came, in that way that lovers do anticipate each other. I was almost commanding it, indeed, that way that lovers can reach out in extremis.
I said, “The captain let you go, then?”
He sat contentedly at my side, swinging his bare heels above nothing: utterly trusting, utterly vulnerable, soon to be utterly betrayed. “She said the men at the try-works don’t want me and nor does she, and there’s no point leaving more than a watchman on an empty ship, so she sent me to find you.”
“Uh-huh.” He was, I guessed, my bribe or my persuader, a little of both. She held him in her gift, and offered him to me. He was ignorant but willing, sweet and savage and desirable. I was something close to desperate, even this close to the sea. Normally, properly, that’s all that matters; but nothing was quite normal now.
“Go back,” I said, holding my voice steady with an effort that I could only hope he was too young to hear. “Go to the captain and say I sent you, tell her this: that Sailor Martin says there’s a storm in the offing and a king’s ship nearby. Tell her to bring back all the men she can, and stand by. She may need to move both our vessels out to open water, but she shouldn’t do it yet. Just be ready. Tell her that. You take an oar and help to ferry, get everyone aboard if you can. Tell her that we’ll watch the try-works, keep the fires going, feed the pots. Just the two of us, we can manage that between us. Leave the gig with the Milford once you’ve got them all aboard, and come back with the bumboat. Then we can get to the cave when we need to, to bring word of the storm or the king’s men. Tell her that.”
He stood, straight and slender at my side; he stared around the long horizon; he said, “I don’t see a storm. Or a ship.”
I said, “Sebastian. Which of us is a green brat, and which of us has been at sea for ever?”
He grinned. I waited, and soon enough I saw that smile slip as the weight of what I’d said, the reality of it sunk into his head.
I nodded. “Tell her nothing is immediate, but it’ll blow up fast when it comes. She needs to be ready now. She should fetch the look-out down, if she doesn’t want to maroon him. I’ll keep watch. Go.”
This time he went, urgent and easy, trusting me as he trusted the rock beneath his feet, as he trusted his captain too.
There was a look-out high on the mound of the hill, watching all the wide ocean. He too would have seen nothing, neither storm nor ship. That didn’t worry me. He didn’t have my name. The captain might flog him just on my word, that something was coming. It wouldn’t be just, but no pirate looks for justice.
Besides, I didn’t think he stood in too much danger of her whip.
I sat brooding on the brow above that sea-cave, waiting for something to show. Too long, I thought I’d waited, before at last the sea seethed and surged below me to speak Her coming. She was late, She was slow on her own behalf. I guess it takes time, all night and half the day, for the heat of slow fires to scorch through a shell as thick as rock, as hard.
Her head was as massive as a ship itself, thrusting forward like the ram of some unimaginable galley before it rose clear of the water on a neck too long, too monstrous. Her eye might have stood for the rose window of a cathedral, if those were ever glassed in black, a single untraced lens.
She looked right at me; I could see myself reflected in that glossy horror, just as a diver sees his own self rising in the stillness of a pool before he breaks it.
I thought She didn’t even need to eat me. Her eye would swallow me down.
She’d need to be faster than this. I was already running, while She deliberated. Over the rise of Her unthinkable shell and then down, down to where smoke smudged the air, where the bumboat rocked in the water, where nobody yet knew anything.
Where a figure stood waiting—and a second, rising to stand beside him. Two men, two: and neither one slim as a willow, neither one rushing to meet me.
I was coldly, painfully breathless; it took time even to gasp, “Where’s Sebastian?”
“Cap’n took him. She said he’s your boy, and you’re cook; it’s his duty to polish the ship’s bell, she said, and he could do that while we all waited for you. Is it coming, then, that storm o’ yourn?”
She knew, then. Not the facts or she’d have one ship out by now and be working for the other; but she knew something, not to trust me, something. She was changing her habits after all, using long-established custom to hold one boy hostage. For now, for this little time I had.
Not long enough to take the boat and row that little way, to find any useful truth to tell her. Not long enough to do anything but get there, whichever way I had.
I turned my back on the bewildered men, left them to their smoky fires and seething pots—not long!—and ran again.
Along that flange at the water’s edge and up the shoulder of Her shell, to the high edge above what we had taken for a sea-cave: where our two ships lay in companionable stillness, where their crews had gathered in secrecy and darkness. Where I had sent them, to a cold destruction. Where the captain held Sebastian, but would not hold him long. One way or the other.
Straight to that high edge, and straight over.
I have dived into water so still I could see myself come at me. I have dived into the steady swell of the deep ocean, where nothing but myself disturbed the water for a thousand miles all around.
This was…not like that. Even as I went, I could see how the sea’s surface bent and stretched below me like a mill-race at a sluice, as great things shifted out of sight.
Down and down I went, purposeful as a hurled knife. As I plunged through the broken surface, I felt the water’s familiar grip, tight as a sleeve closing about me; but I could feel the first slow tug of dreadful currents too.
Too fast to be seized, I went down and down, as far below as I had been above; and further yet, far enough that I really could see Her underside this time, the plastron of Her shell. Clad in barnacles and weed but unmistakably floating, more like a vessel than an island; and here came Her flippers, ponderously unfolding to pull Her down below the surface, to cool that fierce hot spot on Her back.
Unfolding from behind those great arches we had taken for cave-mouths, that I’d only understood late and slow, and too late now. What must it be like within the shell there, on board ship and still not understanding, knowing only that the great cliff of the cave-wall was moving, lurching forward, crushing one ship against the other and both against the inside of Her shell, heedless as a man crushing snail-shells underfoot?
What must it be like in the captain’s head, thinking He knew; Sailor Martin saw something, knew something, sent us all into the ships exactly for this, because he knew…?
Never mind the captain; I was looking for my boy.
Either one of the ships might have been lucky, might have been popped out like a bottle from a cork—but I’d have seen the shadow of her overhead if she was, parting company from the vastness of the turtle, bobbing away. I did look, up into the brightness of the sea-sky.
No ships, no. The great broad blade of Her flipper, undelayed by whatever ruin She had wreaked on its way—and here came the first fringes of that ruin, splintered timbers and twisted ironworks, heading for the bottom.
Timbers and ironwork and a boy, floundering, frantic. Sebastian, with the ship’s bell on a rope around his neck, a terrible brass weight to drag him down, sounding his knell for him as he went.
She hadn’t even bound his hands or feet: just belled him and thrown him overboard, as soon as she felt the trap close about her. Let him struggle as he would, the bell would bear him all the way, irresistible. That was a cruel touch, one last vengeful fling at me, though I ought never to have known it.
Except that I was here, and down he came towards me; and she had taken his good knife, of course, but I had mine. I caught the bell first, and severed that rope with a slashing cut; then I caught my boy.
And shook him hard, and held him until he remembered his lessons, not to panic, not to flail about; and then held him and kicked for us both, kicked for the surface.
We were too deep, too short of air. Even I don’t have gills, to breathe salt water; and I couldn’t breathe for him. His mouth was closed yet, but his eyes were bulging. He couldn’t last. And there were men in the water all around us, not all of them broken or dying yet, dead yet; and those jagged plunging timbers, those were a danger too, though the men were worse; and—
Men in the water and a woman too. Of course she’d never learned to swim, the captain. Of course she had weights of her own beneath her skirts, weaponry and harness and whatever else she chose to carry against ill-chance, gold and more. Here she came, easy to know in the chaotic waters with her skirts puffed out around her like a jellyfish, like a ship’s bell…
Like a bell, yes. Yes.
Easy to know, easy to reach. Poor Sebastian was dragged by his neck again, though this time it was my arm curled about him; and I dragged him below the margin of his captain’s skirts and thrust him upward, past her kicking legs to where the billowing fabric still trapped a bubble of air.
Just a bubble, but enough: enough for him, for now. I held him by the body, and felt it as he gasped, as he breathed and breathed.
Then pulled him free of those entangling skirts, and didn’t let him see her as she fell below us: faster now, with that last buoyancy stolen from her, dwindling into the dark. He didn’t need that face in his memory, those mute curses on his mind. He barely knew what I had done there, only that I’d found him air from somewhere.
Air for him. None for me, and I can’t breathe water—but I can hold my breath longer than most, and think while I do it.
And look around, and see the vast bulk of the turtle sliding by, and act against all obvious good sense.
Tow my boy towards that surging shadow, not away.
Perhaps he thought that I was mad at last, mad for lack of air perhaps. He tried to kick against me, to pull me back.
He had no chance of that. I took a tougher grip and towed him on, into the currents of Her passage.
Turtles use their front flippers to drive them forward. Their back feet do quieter work, acting as vanes against the water. I wouldn’t have risked this if She was coming at us, but that lethal front flipper was past already.
Besides, we were committed now, caught in the turbulent suck of the water She threw back. Rolled over and tossed about, I clung and kicked and maybe prayed a little; and saw what I was looking for, a break in a mighty wall, a gateway not quite blocked by the massive limb protruding through it.
You can trap air in a skirt, until it leaks out in a thousand streams of bubbles. You can trap air in a bell, and it won’t leak; make a bell big enough, you can lower a man to the sea-bed and have him breathing all the way.
How much air can you trap in a cave, if your island takes a dive?
Enough, there’ll be enough.
I hauled Sebastian in, and the water flung us up, and there was air; and even a hint of light, that same phosphorescence that had clung to the whale. Enough to show that we floated in a chamber where half the wall was rigid shell and half was shifting leather, the obscene leg of the thing. It looked like seamed rock, but no rock ever moved with such purpose, this way and that like the rudder of a ship under steerage-weigh.
Everything about Her was slow and mighty; She had no reason to heed us little things. I helped Sebastian pull himself out of the water, up onto a ledge of Her leg, and found just strength enough to follow.
Then we lay against each other and only breathed awhile, painfully, gratefully.
When he spoke at last, his voice sounded strange in that strange space, distant and muffled and hollow all three. He said, “We, we’re inside it. Aren’t we?”
“Her,” I said. All ships, all whales. All giant turtles, seemingly. It felt right. “I suppose we are.”
“Like Jonah.”
“Something like Jonah. Not swallowed, though.”
He thought about that, then said, “What happens now?”
I didn’t know, but lying’s easy in the dark. I said, “She won’t stay down long. When She rises, we’ll go out and see where we are, who’s about. There’ll be someone to signal, or land we can reach. We’ll be famous, shipwrecked mariners who survived Leviathan, like St Brendan survived Jasconius.”
His head was on my thigh, wet and warm and welcome. He sounded sleepy, like a child. He said, “You’re famous already.”
“I am, I suppose. Not for anything particularly praiseworthy. Just for surviving, mostly; and here I am again. Doing that. And here you are, doing it right alongside me.”
“I’ll be a part of your story.” No self-deception there. The fact of it, the act of it, the being with me: that could only ever be temporary, in the nature of the thing. He knew. But the story of it, that goes on for ever.
“You will,” I said, toying fondly with his ear. “And you’ll tell it yourself, to Sir Terence Digby yet. He’ll invite us to his ball, and we’ll dress up fine and dance all night,” and take no prisoners and do no harm and perhaps Sir Terence could find a berth for him, some other life that he could love, not buccaneering. And perhaps I’d be there with him for a while, be a part of his story, however briefly told. “It’ll be a masked ball, naturally. You can go as a pirate boy, you’ll like that. Yo ho,” I said, “Sebastian.”