Widow's Welcome

by D. K. Fields

  ‘Sangas must be a common sight at a bar like this,’ I said to the boy.

  He nodded at a set of poorly constructed steps, besides which was a modest shrine to the Amateur, but wouldn’t be moved himself. When I asked why, he simply said, ‘Captain’s orders.’

  There was sense in that; I wouldn’t have wanted the boy to enter such a place. I didn’t want to myself. He settled against a wall of one of the dark homes, like a bird settling to a familiar perch. I took a firmer hold on my bag, as if that would be an aid against a person foolish, or desperate, enough to rob a sanga, and started my ascent. It wasn’t until halfway up the steps that I noticed the silence.

  The doors and windows of the Barge of Good Hope were all open, its lamps still lit, and yet not a sound came from within. My step faltered when I reached the top. The large doorway in front of me gave onto polished floors and high stools at high tables. I was surprised to see they were all of a quality, and in a state of good repair.

  ‘Hello?’ I called, pleased by the steadiness of my voice.

  I stepped inside and saw a long bar, behind which a balding man was taking regular slugs from a wooden tankard while keeping it filled from one of the taps. He had blood on his knuckles.

  A woman appeared in an archway in the far wall, took one look at me and then turned back the way she’d come. With little other choice I followed her. She led me past a series of small, empty nooks, before stopping at one with a bench running the length of three sides. A man lay on it; heavy-set, like every bargeman I’d ever met, with black ink running up both exposed arms.

  ‘Are you the boatswain?’ I asked the woman. She clearly was – I just needed to fill the silence as I put my bag down.

  ‘Was me that sent the boy,’ she said. ‘They say you’re mongrel.’

  I paused, hand half in my bag. ‘What would that matter?’ I said.

  She gestured to the bargeman. ‘This ain’t from around here.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Eliza.’ She was edging back into the hallway, rubbing at something beneath her shirt.

  As I began to examine the bargeman, I could see why Eliza thought whatever ailed him was not from Bordair.

  He was bone dry.

  I gently ran a finger along his arm, just to make sure it wasn’t a trick of the ink or the smoky lamps that at once felt very close in the room. I pressed beneath his jaw, under his arms, the bottom of his feet: all dry. And not only dry, but they seemed to suck at my own slick sweat; my fingertips came away as if they’d just been powdered.

  ‘What happened here?’ I said, half expecting to be reminded that I was the sanga. But the ’swain understood my meaning.

  ‘Dahey just dropped. Didn’t see it myself, but that’s the way others told it.’

  ‘What others?’ I said.

  Dahey’s pulse was weak, but regular.

  ‘Some of the crew. When he wouldn’t wake, I sent them out. Redmond back there, he cleared the rest of the bar.’

  That might have explained the blood, both on his knuckles and in the street.

  ‘Why clear the bar? Why not just put Dahey here out?’

  Eliza pulled a necklace from beneath her shirt, a small representation of the Tear in silver and some kind of black stone, and clutched at it. I rolled my eyes at such simple superstitions.

  ‘Was obvious he weren’t right,’ she said.

  ‘Obvious how?’

  Eliza’s eyes were wide and almost all white.

  I took her by the shoulders and said once more, calm and slow, ‘Obvious how?’

  ‘He was bleeding. From his eyes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I cleaned him up,’ she said. ‘Didn’t do the crew no good to see him like that.’

  I turned back to the prone bargeman. ‘Bleeding from his eyes,’ I muttered.

  ‘And his mouth,’ she added.

  I wasted a moment trying to imagine what that might have been like for her to witness; as a sanga, I had seen plenty of men and women bleed from orifices, but it was enough to shake most people. A man is stabbed, and onlookers are prepared for the blood. They know it’s coming and that, in some ways, lessens the shock. To watch Dahey smiling, drinking, talking, then bleeding from that very same apparatus…

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I told Eliza, which was both insufficient and all I could give her. To Dahey I might be of more use.

  Taking some care, I opened Dahey’s mouth and was met by three black teeth and a fat, swollen tongue. I winced at the rancid bouquet of decay, strong liquor, and partially dried blood. The ’swain had done her best with the exterior blood, though some staining was on the cheeks and she had, quite rightly, avoided inside Dahey’s mouth. Some blood clung to his only molar, but came away easily. In fact, rubbing it between finger and thumb, the blood was curiously thin. I did my best to ensure Dahey wouldn’t choke on his own tongue, and then inspected his eyes. There was some inflammation, but little else I could make out.

  ‘His ankles,’ Eliza said.

  They were both black. My mouth was half-open, a question half-formed, when I realised the blackness wasn’t ink. I lightly pressed the skin, thinking it might be swollen, but found it surprisingly hard and rigid. Both of Dahey’s ankles were ringed black in such a manner.

  I knew what I was looking at. I had experience treating the wounded – most often bargemen like Dahey – and so could conclude this was dead flesh.

  But Dahey had no wound.

  To be sure, I closely examined each ankle but could find no puncture made by man nor beast. From my kneeling position, I looked up along the body, the landscape, of this man and felt a tightening in me.

  ‘How well do you know Dahey?’ I said, trying and failing to make the question sound casual.

  ‘Why? What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Is he the kind of man who would want to live, regardless of the cost?’

  ‘Silence have you, what does that mean?’ she said.

  I went to my bag and found the bone saw. I withdrew it as calmly and steadily as I could – it was not a time for Audience-worthy flourishes. Still, the clean shine of the saw’s teeth was enough to make her start back.

  ‘The decay will spread from his ankles,’ I said. ‘He’s beyond walking but we might save him.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I’ll need help.’

  Her steps were tentative, but she approached her crew mate. I lay a sheet from his knees up to his chin and told her not to touch anything but its whiteness.

  ‘Hold him here,’ I said, gesturing to one of Dahey’s thighs. ‘Firm.’

  She gripped the man like it was her own life that depended on it. Her breaths were long and deep – she was doing what she could to keep herself calm, and I gave her a nod of encouragement. I took a deep breath myself and aligned the saw an inch above the blackness. I tensed in readiness. Then the convulsions began.

  A fan of blood spewed from Dahey’s mouth. His arms and legs flailed, though Eliza did what she could to hold him. I dropped the saw and rushed to pin his shoulders against the bench. The spasms were fierce and it was all we could do to keep him from falling. His eyes had rolled back and were as white as my sheet. The choking sounds he made were enough to thin my own blood there and then, and wake me for nights to come. I wrestled with his tongue, while his gummy gnashing matched the convulsions.

  It may have lasted mere seconds, a minute perhaps, but when it was over all three of us slumped where we were: Dahey on the bench, Eliza and I on the floor. The bargeman’s death rattle was as clear and mournful as any of the Poet’s bells.

  *

  Once outside the Barge of Good Hope, I was relieved to find the boy gone. It was later than I realised and the sky had a lightness to it. I remembered the last sunrise I had seen, which had not been so long ago; I was aiding the labour of a young woman. How different that joyous early light had been. Now, I stumbled my way through the higher streets of Bordair, not knowing exactly where I was going
but with the understanding that, just as all roads in life lead to death, all streets in Bordair lead to water.

  Eliza had said their captain would take care of Dahey’s affairs, little as they were: a sister, Eliza thought. No children, no wife, of that she’d been sure.

  I kept to the smaller streets and ’walks. Once I reached the water I was able to orientate myself and hurry back to my hut. My stew was cold and had a thick layer of skin. I didn’t care. I ate without tasting a single mouthful. I fell, fully clothed, onto my mattress and slept.

  *

  I woke in the dark to someone shaking me by the shoulder.

  ‘Sanga,’ they said, soft but insistent.

  I rubbed my eyes, still heavy with sleep, and squinted at the figure standing over me. Slowly a small face fringed by greasy blond hair resolved itself out of the shadows.

  ‘Captain wants to see you,’ the boy said.

  ‘What?’ I struggled to sit, relieved that I was dressed.

  ‘She said not to wake you until it was dark. And then not to leave until you followed.’

  I managed to light my last candle and, though it was little more than a stub, I could see the boy was alone. Something in the way he sat at my desk suggested that my checking the hut for missing items was unnecessary.

  ‘Your leethes and tars need more water,’ he said, bringing me up short. This youngster, whose skin had yet to turn to pock or pimple, knew the old names of plants. And perhaps their old uses too.

  ‘Would you?’ I said, motioning to a small can.

  The plants took up a good portion of my hut’s back wall. The boy was careful not to overwater them, watching intently as their soil sucked the water down and then wanted no more. As he was so occupied, I set to righting myself. I changed my shirt, cleared my mouth with crushed fennel, and drank more water than all my plants combined. In the outhouse, my urine was heavy and dark and I chided myself for affording far less care to my own body than to those of others. When I returned, the boy was back at the desk.

  ‘Did your captain say why she wanted to see me?’

  ‘No,’ the boy said.

  I cast around for my boots, before realising they were still on my feet. I covered my error by looking for my bag, which was inexplicably underneath one of my pillows.

  ‘You won’t need that.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s not like Dahey. She wants to talk to you, is all. And the payment.’

  ‘I see. Was she angry? About Dahey?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Plenty more bargemen in Bordair, I suppose?’

  The boy’s expression hardened, and I felt a stab of shame at my foolish words. I was making assumptions about a woman I had never met, and a captain who I had never seen among her crew. He waited patiently as I fussed over the state of my hut and of my person, neither of which really required attention, but I was unwilling to answer this summons on anyone’s terms but my own. I brought my bag, against the boy’s advice, in case the captain wanted to see what measures I had taken – or tried to take – for Dahey. I hoped the boatswain, Eliza, would also be present. For the second time I followed the boy out among the boardwalks, but was surprised when he entered a Commission building. So surprised, I checked the crest on the front in case I’d mistaken the Spoked Wheel above the shuttered windows for a barge pilot’s wheel.

  The double doors were large enough for a carriage, but we entered through a small door cut out of its bigger brethren. Once inside, the air took on an officious quiet. High ceilings gave the entrance hall the illusion of a more northern chill, but I was still sweating plenty from our brisk walk.

  I stalled in the face of the long tapestries that lined the walls and the unfamiliar feeling of carpet beneath my boots. But the boy walked confidently on, as if he belonged there as much as the old Fenestiran dozing at the door. When the Fenestiran stirred, I hurried after the boy.

  We climbed a wide, strangely shallow set of stairs that sloped upwards for at least fifty yards, possibly more. I noticed the steps themselves didn’t extend as far as the walls and, looking back, it dawned on me that these stairs, like the doors, were designed for a carriage. I stopped, dumbfounded by this obviously Fenestiran design. I could count on one hand the number of boardwalks by the shore that were big enough for a carriage. And besides issues of practicality, what did it say of a person who demanded their carriage take them not only inside a building, but up to its second floor? Was it vanity, or simple laziness? I looked up to see the boy waiting at the top.

  We walked down a carpeted corridor lined by portraits of men and women with uniformly dark backgrounds. I found myself greatly affected by their sombre atmosphere. I had never considered Bordair and its inhabitants frivolous – extravagant, certainly – but that is how I felt in that corridor: as if I’d been transported to a distant place, with foreign customs and peoples that made me look at my own in a new way. I felt all this, even knowing that to simply look out of a window would reveal Bordair’s fractured, quilt-like clash of hut rooftops and the water beyond.

  ‘I don’t know what your captain knows, or think she knows about me,’ I said, remembering Eliza’s crude assessment of my parentage, ‘but I’m not Fenestiran.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘She’s the captain.’

  For him, that seemed to encompass a great many unknowns.

  We proceeded down another corridor until at last the boy stopped at a small door and motioned for me to open it. If this was some kind of rite of passage, its significance was lost on me; I merely walked into the well-appointed study. A woman looked up from where she was leaning over a large, polished writing desk.

  ‘Sanga Jeffereys. I’m glad we can finally meet in person.’

  Her smile suggested she was genuinely pleased, rather than being polite, and its warmth went some way to dispelling the coolness that had settled over me in the corridor of portraits. We shook hands.

  ‘I can see you were expecting something else,’ she said. ‘A busy bar perhaps?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, smiling once more. ‘I appreciate the fact I rarely bump into other Casker captains here. Though if you did want a drink, Perse here would do his best.’

  ‘Thank you, I’m fine, Captain…’

  ‘Cope,’ she said, pausing, perhaps allowing a moment for my recognition or acknowledgement of her reputation. I gave none, because I had no idea who Captain Cope was beyond the short-haired, middle-aged woman in front of me. She recovered smoothly with no sign of disappointment. ‘I thank you for what you did for Dahey.’

  ‘I did very little.’

  ‘You tried when others had refused. Relied on experience and knowledge when others were led by superstition and fear.’

  I glanced at the boy Perse, wondering how many other sangas the boy had really visited before my hut, before he peddled his white lie. But I was not above a little flattery, not the day before and not there in the presence of Captain Cope.

  ‘In the end, the Audience was all for Dahey,’ I said.

  ‘He has plenty of stories to share. Tell me your own story, Sanga Jeffereys, of that night and of Dahey’s passing.’

  The captain gestured to two comfortably padded seats in front of the desk. I sat stiffly. I’ll admit I was a little intimidated by the shelves of scrolls and papers – even though I had little idea of what they contained. There was money and power there, in that building with its ramps for carriages and a myriad of closed doors and hushed corridors. I considered myself an educated man, who had seen a little of the world and its pains and wonders, and educated enough to know when I was out of my depth.

  The captain was waiting, indulging my hesitation but clearly watching it. With a distinct lack of eloquence I recounted that evening, choosing my entering the Barge of Good Hope as a suitable beginning. The captain was not surprised to hear of the empty bar, or her boatswain’s predilection for the sign of the Tear. She was, however, intensely interested in my ass
essment of Dahey as I found him, and how he progressed from that state to his death. At various details she nodded affirmatively and, though I couldn’t see the significance those details held for her, I had the impression she missed little. She didn’t ask questions or interrupt. Perhaps because of this, I made the utmost effort not to omit a single piece of information, regardless of how small or pedantic.

  By the end of my tale, I was quite unsure of my audience and her opinion. Her face, lined by age, experience, hard work, or all of these, was impassive. The slight upturn of her lips could mean anything. She allowed the silence to grow, and I was glad that I had left nothing out of my retelling as I felt a strong compulsion to fill that silence. Eventually, she motioned Perse forward and whispered into the boy’s ear. He gave no reaction but quickly left the room. The captain continued to smile ever so slightly, but now was looking just above me and to one side. I fidgeted.

  On what errand had she sent the boy? Was he, at this very moment, escorting a crew of barge thugs down those plush corridors? Did they each carry a bone saw, ready to implement my suggested but failed remedy on my own ankles? Or was Perse leading a Fenestiran constable to the room, cuffs at the ready? I looked between the captain and the door, finding both unmoved, and then to each wall in turn hoping for another site of egress. There were two windows that might prove large enough for me. I tried to calculate just how high that carriage ramp had brought me. I tensed, ready to run headlong at a window and take my chances.

  When the door opened, I jumped half out of my chair. Perse entered alone, holding a tray with a pot of coffee and a plate of small biscuits. My cheeks burned as he settled the tray on the desk, and I noticed a not-too-small stack of coins beside the pot.

  ‘Compensation for your time and inconvenience,’ the captain said. ‘And for your discretion.’

  It was more than I made in a season. I nodded, resisting the urge to pick up one of the Fenestiran marks and bite it. I rarely frequented places that would accept such a weighty currency, but I knew of one or two finer merchants on the west shore who might accommodate these marks. The captain sipped her coffee despite the curls of steam still rising from it.