IT HAD BEEN GETTING COLDER AS THEY ENTERED THE “horse latitudes,” that tropical vortex off the coast of Zulu-land. Hot air sank toward the ocean’s surface in these latitudes, Tomaj had explained to Dagny, and caused the doldrums that becalmed them for several days. Now the breeze freshened as they headed toward the “roaring forties” where they hoped to round Cape Agulhas, Agulhas being the actual southernmost cape, and not the Cape of Storms.
Dagny drew her pelerine closer about her shoulders as she approached the quarterdeck. “Ah!”
She cried aloud, jumped back a step, and put a hand to her breast when a shadowy figure leaped out from behind a ladder.
Then away bullies, away, away for Rio!
Sing fare-ye-well, me Liverpool girl,
And we’re bound for the Rio Grande.
Dagny was quite accustomed to Zaleski’s ways by now, so she breathed relief and said conversationally, “Errol, why exactly do they call it the ‘roaring forties’?”
An iridescent halo ringed the moon. Someone had told her this predicted high wind. In the nearly full moonlight that flickered over his face with the shivering of a sail, Zaleski appeared to give this much thought. “Loud, nasty prevailing winds occurring most horrifically in the southern Indian Ocean where there ain’t no land to prevent them. This current we’ve been cracking down the coast on? Right around Cape Agulhas it meets with the icy Pacific and gets pushed back, creating powerful eddies that suck up vessels if you don’t look alive and get your sails set just so. You’ve got to take in the spritsail, lower down the trysail, bear up another point at least, and—”
“I see,” Dagny said, fearing another nautical harangue coming upon the first mate. “But it’s not so very fearsome, is it? Have you seen the captain?”
Zaleski shrugged, “—take in the topsail, if you’re smart… Upon the quarterdeck, I imagine.”
As Dagny took her leave, Zaleski called out, “It’s why we’ve built up the bulwarks and rail, Miss Ravenhurst! Have no fear! We’ll keep as much sail as we can bear.”
Dagny gained the quarterdeck under an odd press of emotions. The past few days she’d felt quite nerveless and dependent upon Tomaj to brace her up. It had seemed to start a few days out from the Mauritius, after giving up her aye-aye to the director at Pamplemousses. Perhaps this was how women felt when losing a child, for now she clung even more stridently to poor Hector. Without the unfortunate Slushy, Hector had suddenly sprung into a youth “as long as a spare topmast, strong enough to knock down an ox, and hearty enough to eat him,” and he didn’t want to be seen too much under a woman’s wing, although he still came to her for formal lessons in natural science.
She knew it wasn’t becoming or manly for a captain to have a woman at his heels, so she tried to give Tomaj as wide a berth as possible. Dagny was surprised to see many of the Barataria men including Zaleski, Broadhecker, and Smit had brought their Malagasy wives, but they rarely consorted on deck, and basically ignored the women. Some half-caste children ran underfoot, but Dagny hadn’t sorted out yet whose they were.
Tomaj was never cruel to Dagny regardless of her interruptions and now, as six bells were struck, she hoped he’d be alone.
Tomaj leaned over the larboard rail. Springing up jauntily, he didn’t see her, and strode forward toward the bow. Perhaps she uttered a squeak or some feminine sound, for he stopped striding abruptly and turned, like a marionette. He smiled when he came to her.
“Going below?” she asked.
He took her arm and steered her back to the rail. “No, no, just taking a last turn on deck, malala. Getting a lunar observation.”
“Everything is all right?” Looking down the gunwale, she saw Frost, Sansing, and Planét all leaning over the rail gazing forward.
“Everything’s on a split yarn—everything’s fine. We’re just looking at a few grampuses.”
He was a handsome devil in his velvet gentleman’s coat. She had not cut his hair in two months and now saw the purpose in that. With the long, thick skein of a silken pigtail tossed forward over his shoulder, it served as a warm cravat, stuffed between the lapels of the coat. “Grampus? That’s awfully scientific for you fellows, especially Planét.” She didn’t want to appear a “buttock and tongue,” so she snuggled her torso against his, gratified when he visibly melted and bent to touch his mouth to her face.
“Ah, but it’s the influence of the bewitching American naturalist that has everyone so entranced.”
Although she doubted that, the tiny bite he laid against the side of her throat gave her shivers. “Ah,” she whispered. “Come below. Let’s crack a Montrachet, and I shall bathe you.”
He nuzzled her neck—she’d need to shave him, as well, she thought with a purr and a smile. “Dagny Edvarda. You have a way of tearing a man away from such vast orgies of pleasure as can often be found on …” Standing erect, he turned and looked forward now, too, and sighed wistfully. “… on deck late at night with a bunch of smelly, foul hands.”
They stopped by the wheel to share a few cryptic words with Youx, who was relighting the binnacle lamp.
“The thermometer has fallen several degrees,” Youx reported without glancing at the captain.
“Aye,” Tomaj agreed. “They’re in the tops keeping a bright lookout. Keep one man on each bow, one in the bunt of the foreyard, and keep Bellingham standing by the wheel.”
Dagny shared a glance with Hector. How she wanted to reach out and muss his white hair, but she restrained herself. At his foot, Stormalong kept a mellow watch, lying as Dagny had seen lions do in engravings, with both forepaws straight out and her fluffy chest proudly panting. Dagny bent and mussed the fur on the dog’s head instead, so it stood straight up as though infused by lightning.
Youx grunted. “The lookouts are set and every man’s at his station.”
As Dagny went below, Tomaj murmured, “One moment, malala,” and returned to Youx. She stuck her head up the hatchway like a meerkat, just her eyes peering out.
Tomaj told Youx, “Have a lifeline set up on each side of the deck.”
“Aye aye,” Youx said. “Scuppers are clear and pumps are ready.”
At the door of the great cabin, Dagny paused and told the sentry, “Pass the word for the cook to boil water for the captain’s bath,” but the captain stayed her hand.
“Not tonight.”
Inside the cabin, she removed her pelerine and draped it over the chair by the dining table where her elephant bird egg remained propped between large celestine crystals. She liked to keep it there, like a grand Christmas centerpiece for the table.
“Tomaj. Is Ramonja so useless that he can’t even boil water for your bath?”
Tomaj slung his gentleman’s coat over a wooden peg. “He’s taking a caulk. The sea makes him ill. The cook doesn’t have to stand watches.”
“Yes, I know. But you need a new steward. You need someone to care for you at all hours of the day.”
Chuckling, Tomaj took her shoulders in his hands. “Why do you think I have you?”
She shoved him away in jest. “Bah! I’m a scientist! I don’t have time to boil water.” She went to stand before the stern window, knowing Tomaj would follow. The moon must have been directly over the mainmast, for it cast nearly blinding highlights upon the churning of their wake. She noted they were making about nine knots, pleased to realize she was learning something of Tomaj’s life.
He stood behind her, proffering a glass of Montrachet so red it resembled Siberian rhodozite, all else in the cabin muted in shades of gray and brown. “I know that, my love. I don’t want you boiling water for me, or bathing me, for that matter. You have more important things to do.” He touched his glass to hers, and they sipped. “Your aye-aye paper is winging its way to the Zoological Society in London, and you will discover many more plants and animals in the Brazil. Your fame will spread wider than mine, and—”
“Oh, shall people write musical plays about me?” Dagny teased. Her free hand tossed the heavy silk of his pigtail over his shoulder, and moved to unbutton his shirt.
Tomaj threw his head back and laughed. How beautiful his throat was! “Ah, malala. Is it not good enough that you’ve written such music upon a hardened, cold soul like mine?” Turning somber, he looked down at her and shook his head with bitter wonder. “I was a nasty hard case until you fell into my lagoon. I only wanted to save you because I thought you were Peg, taking a dive off a cliff after I rejected her. No. It’s nothing short of a miracle that I’m standing here today …”
Tomaj frightened her by whisking the glass from her hand and heedlessly plunking both glasses onto the dining table, the wine sloshing.
Fixing her with a wild look, he dropped to his knees before her, taking her hands in his and bending his head to her lap. As if she were a queen!
Dagny’s eyes darted from bulkhead to bulkhead in the cabin, not knowing where to look. He wrenched her hands most eloquently and breathed upon her knuckles, until she wanted to beg him to stand. What was he doing? His earnestness made her nervous. Was this another one of his Hungarian sexual rituals? She relaxed at that thought.
“I am Count Pellegrin Tomaj Balásházy, Captain of Hussars, Captain in the American navy.”
She’d never seen his eyes so wide with feeling, brimming over with terrifying sentiment and love. What was he driving at? This must be a strange pirate tradition, she assured herself as she felt behind for a chair in which to sit.
On his knees still, he clenched her hands in his, his shimmering peridot irises reflecting the stern waves. He had an entire ocean in his eyes, the “roaring forties” of the tropical latitudes. Dagny smiled, regardless of what antics he was up to. I’ve never loved a man before. This is the first man I’ve ever loved.
“Bos of Barataria, Captain of Stormalong, King of the Betsimisaraka.” Squeezing his eyes to shut out the stern waves, he seemed to want to blot something. Dagny tried to twist one hand from his and stroke his hair, but he wouldn’t permit it.
Inhaling deeply, he opened his eyes again and beseeched her. When he swallowed with labor, his throat was marvelous. “Now I am king of nothing, only these vessels, and a future land in the Brazil. Dagny Edvarda. Be thou my wife according to the Law of Moses and Israel.”
It was probably some minutes before Dagny could breathe again. When she did, she later recalled an image of the swaying lamp at the deckhead, and the egg rocking in its cradle of celestine.
“Dagny, Dagny.”
Tomaj yelled for the sentry. He’d carried her to the bedstead he’d laid out in the sleeping quarters, a tiny berth large enough for their bodies where they were cocooned by chestnut bulkheads. A cool cloth smeared over her forehead. Sounds of clamoring men came from the dining cabin.
“Malala, wake up. It’s me. Tomaj.”
Dagny opened her eyes again. “Tomaj.” He tried to pin her down, so she struggled to sit, and pushed his hands away. “I’m fine.” She brushed hair from her face. “What happened?”
“You swooned!” His voice was panicked.
She tried to remember. “Oh, yes. I had a dream. You were on your knees, proclaiming—”
“It was no dream.”
She placed her palm against his face. His face was warm. “It was no dream,” she agreed.
Scooting closer, he gathered her in his arms and kissed her mouth.
Ah, this is no dream. This is real.
Relaxing into the strength of his arms, she just wanted those men to go away. But they clamored even louder, and one voice in particular pushed its way through.
“Tomaj! Tomaj!” Sal panted with urgency. “I have to talk to you!”
Bolting upright to a sitting position, Tomaj cried, “Sal! Can’t you see we need to be alone?”
Dagny saw Ramonja weaving unsteadily, balancing a chafing dish of something he was unused to cooking. He looked like he’d pitch forward onto his face once someone removed the platter from his hands.
Sal lunged, grasping Tomaj’s shoulder in his claw. “Tomaj, Tomaj! I need you right now!”
Tomaj picked the hand off his shoulder as though it were a turd. “Sal. Dagny’s fine, but I need to be with her.”
She smoothed her face against Tomaj’s. “It’s all right. Go with Sal. He wouldn’t be saying this if he didn’t truly need you.”
Tomaj touched the tip of his nose to hers. “Dagny, this is real. Will you be my wife?”
“Of course, my love. Now, go with Sal.”
Once the men were gone, Dagny fell into a, deep, tumultuous slumber. I love ships, she thought. And I love Tomaj.
Sal dragged Tomaj to his surgeon’s cabin. He tossed Tomaj onto the cot, and wouldn’t let go of Tomaj’s hands, not even to brush away a curtain of mother-of-pearl hair that fell before one eye.
“What is it, Sal? I really must get back to Dagny.”
“Tomaj,” he panted, “I had another asgina dream, just now. It involved you. It was so clear I can still see it in my mind, as though it were imprinted on the insides of my eyelids.”
Tomaj nodded with patience. He wrenched a hand away to tuck the curtain of hair behind Sal’s ear. “Tell me.” He had to believe in Sal’s asgina dreams, after the one he’d related to Tomaj in the bath-house.
Closing his eyes, Sal shuddered, drawing his robe together before his chest with horror. “I’d fallen. Fallen off the edge of a cliff, a strange black cliff into a void of churning fluffy blue and white clouds. Only I wasn’t falling, I was being blown sideways by this great wind. Then you followed me. I don’t know whether you fell or were pushed, but suddenly you were there too, trying to grab my hand.”
Tomaj stroked the side of Sal’s face with reassurance. “A cliff? My dove, we’re not even landing a party until we meet Stormalong and the Italians in False Bay. Where we’re rounding at Cape Hangklip, there are certainly some precipitous cliffs that fall steeply into the bay, but I can assure you I have no intention of walking them. And perhaps neither should you, even if there are said to be great—what do you call them? Adamantine spars?”
Sal scooted nearly into Tomaj’s lap and embraced him tightly. “No, no, no,” he cried wretchedly. “How can I prevent the asgina dream from coming true? Perhaps it’s in the Brazil, it doesn’t matter—it will happen.”
Gripping Sal by the wrists, Tomaj held him. “But the asgina dream about the monkey in the trees—that told of something happening at the exact moment you dreamed it. What was I doing while you dreamed this what, an hour ago? Why, I was gazing over the rail trying to gauge the overfall. Perhaps that’s what you saw.”
“No, when I ran into your cabin, that’s the very moment after I dreamed it. What were you doing in the cabin? Wait, don’t tell me.”
Tomaj laughed, and leaned back against the bulkhead with hands behind his head. “Dear Sal. I was asking for your sister’s hand in marriage.”
This shock must have removed the asgina dream from Sal’s brain, as Tomaj hoped it would. In fact, Sal’s reaction was akin to Dagny’s. His jaw dropped, his eyes nearly popped from his head, but he didn’t swoon—he flung himself into the cradle of Tomaj’s arm and kissed his face over and over, declaring, “Marriage! Ah, now you truly will be my family! Oh, Tomaj, I couldn’t ask for a better brother-in-law, and a count!” he teased. “Does that make her a countess?”
Tomaj rocked Dagny’s brother in his arms. “But how do you know what her answer was? You saw how ill the concept of marriage to me made her.”
Sal slung a leg over Tomaj’s lap and ran his mouth over Tomaj’s face, ear, hair. “Because. If she loves you even half as much as I do, her answer was yes. And I know she loves you at least that much.”
“At least!” Tomaj joked.
Sal collapsed backward, breathing heavily, and cried, “Adamastor!”
Haughtily, Tomaj drew himself up. “Adamastor? What does that poetic nonsense have to do with anything?”
“Zaleski told me! Adamastor appeared to Vasco de Gama as he was rounding the Cape of Storms, and he told de Gama that anyone attempting the voyage to India would meet with disaster.”
“Oh, gammon and spinnage!” Tomaj cried with disgust. “Sal! That’s some lyrical fudge that blasted Portagee poet Camões invented. I wish Zaleski would stop scaring people half to death with these stories. Besides, even if it were true—the warning was only for seamen attempting to get to the East Indies, not those who’ve already spent ten years there.”
Perhaps feeling ashamed at believing in such smoke, Sal perched on the edge of the cot, deflated. “No doubt you’re right, Tomaj. And I’m sure the asgina dream only meant to warn us to stay away from the cliffs at the Cape of Storms.”
Penitent, Tomaj gathered Sal in his arms and pulled him back onto the cot. They lay propped on some meager pillows, Tomaj suddenly so drowsy that he yawned, petting the top of Sal’s head as he lay against his chest. “No worries, Sal. We’ll stay away from cliffs.”
Sal murmured, “You must get back to Dagny. She’ll wonder where her bridegroom is.”
“Yes,” Tomaj said, drifting into an insensate realm.
“Where will you marry? When?”
“I don’t know,” Tomaj muttered. “Rio de Janeiro perhaps … or … tomorrow.”
The last thing he heard was eight bells being struck, pealing clear and colder than seven bells had sounded.
Tomaj was jerked from blissful slumber—damn. He’d taken a caulk for only two hours before a Harmony Row hand came barreling down the passageway shouting ostensibly at the sentry, “Captain’s needed above! We’re in for dirty weather.”
Sal, not being of a mind to concern himself with these matters, slumbered on as heavy as a kedge anchor on Tomaj’s chest. Tomaj, too, felt muddled. Had someone been flogging the glass? Since he’d taken a caulk, the sea was running remarkably higher, dashing spray against the deadlight.
As Broadhecker summoned the hands aloft to reduce sail, Tomaj gently slid Sal from his chest. The vessel veered toward larboard. Feet pounded on deck above as hands dashed to brace yards and steady her course. The Harmony Row fellow, name of Little Man, burst into the surgeon’s cabin.
“Cap’n!” He touched his knuckles to his cap. “It’s a white squall, and the quartermaster said to pass the word for you.”
Tomaj stood. “When did the blow come on?”
“One bell!”
“From the north?”
“North by east.”
A momentary flash of lightning lit the surgeon’s cabin. “All right, tell Youx to have the trysail off her, and get jackasses for the hawse holes.” A rumble of thunder sounded then, so Tomaj could gauge the storm’s distance.
“Aye, Cap’n.” Little Man stepped back into the passageway. “There’s white water over her bows already, over the chess trees.”
Dagny stood in the hallway gripping the great cabin’s doorjamb, as she had not yet gotten her sea legs, and this was the worst storm of the journey. She looked as though she had a sick headache, and Tomaj wanted to reassure her. He proclaimed loudly to Little Man, “Yes, but remember when we stood on for the Cape ten years ago? All hands just hauled down and clew up. A similar blow, and we were never once pooped. I’ll be right up, I must see first to my fiancée. You may have heard she had quite a scare tonight.”
Visibly cheered, whether by the thought that Dagny was the captain’s fiancée, or the scare she’d received, Little Man went above. Tomaj steered Dagny by the shoulders back into the great cabin, where he feigned indifference to the weather.
“Tomaj. Does this mean we’re nearing Cape Agulhas, where powerful eddies suck us back into the Indian Ocean?”
He uttered a thoroughly false laugh as he slid into his oilskin. “That Zaleski and his ghost stories!” He went to embrace Dagny where she stood clutching a chair—perhaps her last dry embrace for the next twenty-four hours or so. “No one gets sucked anywhere, malala, but I want you to promise me you’ll stay below. Sal had a nightmare and needs your company. You stay below with Sal and Zeke, and mind Madame Rabelais, she’s prone to seasickness.”
“But I want to see what happens,” Dagny protested. “And I left some plants on deck in Ravenhurst cases.”
“I’ll have someone put your plants in the orlop with the rest.” Tomaj kissed her mouth, so warm and pliant, and for a moment he wished he’d never again have to suffer a gale at sea.
Broadhecker burst in, shouting that waves were breaking amidships, so Tomaj had to leave Dagny.