by Eli Brown
I learned later that we had barely survived Laroche’s assault by reaching the black coral channels, as Mabbot had hoped. These channels can be navigated only by toothless Pete, the cryptic ancient who sits at the bow. La Colette’s hull was compromised by the shallows, and we limped to this island river, deep in the convoluted bays of Selat Nasik, where we’ve hidden to make repairs.
In my fever, I was also visited by gentler phantoms: A plump hare ran through a dark forest pursued by something malignant. I ran to protect it, or at times became it, feeling the evil at my heels. I quite exhausted myself trying to keep up as it ducked behind giant trees and turned down narrow paths. And when I spotted its white tail disappearing into the muzzle of a cannon, I lunged in after it, shouting. The cannon was much longer on the inside, and I crawled for some considerable time before emerging out of an oven, unscathed, in the small kitchen of my journeyman days. My beloved Elizabeth was there, alive and young and real in every detail, from the loose sweep of her hair to the lavender hue of her apron. I wept to see her and kept at it until she offered me some of the soup she had been preparing and soothed my back with her soft hand. She was encouraging me to swallow the thick dumplings floating in the soup, saying, “If you don’t chew them, you’ll choke.”
This was my old life, before pirates, before even Ramsey. My first position was working at the inn for the widow Hamilton, who always had something to say about my “French airs” but who paid me well. This was the season, perhaps even the very day Elizabeth finally conceived, that downhill slope that would take them both from me. But here she was, well and vibrant. In my anxiety that fall would come and snatch her away, I looked up from my soup and saw, through a window, the hare caught in the jaws of a large reptile. I watched as it was swallowed, passed as a grotesque lump through the serpent, and emerged on the other side slick and black as bitumen.
At this I woke.
I heard the surgeon say, “It must be done.”
Mabbot replied, “Then, steady and clean, do it.”
My leg, when I was conscious to it, was swollen and lay heavy as a slaughtered pig upon the wooden cot, for now I was no longer on the down bed and must have dreamed that too. The pain was ungodly, and I was grateful when they filled me again with rum until darkness asserted itself.
When I next woke, the surgeon was gone and one of the twins was spooning a foul ocher tonic into my mouth. There was, beside me, a crate of Spanish moss or cobwebs or the like, and this they were applying to my wounds. The sharp pain had been replaced by a crushing weight, as if my foot had been clamped within a carpenter’s vise.
I heard one of the twins say, “No more rum. He must feel this to heal.”
The pain worsened and I wept. I cried out and groaned until I slept, for I was sorely exhausted. Without the rum’s kind parasol, I was exposed to a torrent of pain. The twins forced gruel and their foul potions between my clenched teeth. I begged them to release my foot from the vise.
Then it was morning, which morning I could not say, and I was truly awake for the first time since the attack. I was again on down; in fact, I was in Mabbot’s cabin, in her bed, with nothing but a sheet wrapped around my loins. The twins were nearby. Mabbot was reading in her chair next to the bed and, I realized, holding my hand gently. When I snatched my hand away, she looked up from her book and smiled.
“You certainly curse like a pirate,” she said.
“Lie still,” Bai said. “The needles.”
I looked upon my body and with mounting anxiety saw that my belly, knees, and forearms had been perforated with needles like the map of a conqueror. On my chest sat small mounds of smoldering incense.
“What witchcraft—?” I coughed.
“This witchcraft,” said Mabbot, “bore you through a fine fever; your foot was full green before the surgeon did his part.”
My foot was hidden somehow, sunk into the down mattress. I lifted it and saw that there was nothing there but a stump, bound thickly. Just below the knee my foot and calf were gone.
“What have you done to me?” I cried.
“You didn’t want that old thing,” Mabbot said. “It smelled so bad even the sharks won’t eat it. What a bother. Your escape attempts aren’t so good for your health; let’s skip them altogether from now on.”
“Fiends! Devils!” I tried to rise, but Feng placed his palm on my forehead and pinned me where I was. I swept my hand across my body to remove the needles and incense.
“These good men have performed a miracle,” said Mabbot.
“Took my foot!”
“The surgeon took your foot and promised me you’d be dead in a day. You are not dead. You owe that to the twins and their medicine.”
“Return my foot!”
“Well,” Mabbot said. “Our guest is unsatisfied with our hospitality. Get him out of here.”
After plucking their machinations from my skin, the twins lifted me toward the door.
“Wedge,” Mabbot called, stopping us. “Don’t imagine that you’re excused from your contract. Now more than ever we must stick to our tasks. I’ll give you a week to collect yourself; the following Sunday I shall dine as usual.” I saw then that her cheeks were blistered and her arm was bandaged from the battle.
“I’ll pitch myself into the sea before feeding you again!” I spat.
“Of course, that is your choice. Oh, and the men will gossip about your time here. If you encourage any untoward rumors, I’ll rip your equipment off to verify your story.”
Leaning upon Joshua once again, I saw, on my way from Mabbot’s cabin, that we were anchored in a river surrounded by lush jungle. The ship was in pieces, the bowsprit cut entirely away, its lines loose in the wind, and a great log on the main deck was being lathed to replace her. Men sat in circles repairing the sails, which were beginning to look like a child’s first quilt.
I was locked in my cell, dim and cramped after Mabbot’s luxurious cabin. Over the course of the next few days, I mostly slept. My fever returned in fits. Joshua appeared to wet my forehead with rags, to empty my chamber pot, and to feed me gruel and more of the bitter sauce that the twins concocted.
I confess here, as I have no proper confessor, that in my delirium I demanded that God restore my body whole. My petition, if not ignored, was at least denied.
When the twins appeared to check my progress two days later, I grabbed Feng by the wrist and howled, “If it is no longer there, why does my foot ache so?”
“Do you want the medicine? You act like a child.”
“Can’t you make it stop hurting? I still feel the foot.”
“It will take time.”
15
DEAD MAN’S STOVE
In which we lick our wounds and Joshua tells his story
I can tell you that the soul of man is neither a vapor nor a prick of light but a body of limbs in the image of our maker. I know this because, though my foot is washed up on some beach without me, yet the spirit of my foot remains, attached and itching. This is why the Lord has ordained that we shall rise whole upon our judgment, for to be separated from one’s own flesh with no way to scratch an itch is hell.
The twins, then, are not only Mabbot’s bodyguards but her personal physicians as well. I can’t blame her for preferring their arcane methods over the surgeon’s. They massaged the stump, which I tolerated only by biting upon a belt. They also massaged my knee and thigh and hip, which proved quite welcome. The smoking herb—mugwort, they told me—was pinched from a small teak box and rolled between their fingers into cones. These they lit with great diligence upon my chest and thighs. They managed to remove these piles of ash just before the fire reached my skin. They also let blood from my back and shoulders with cups.
It was clear they were attending to me only through a direct order from Mabbot. In my mind I renamed them “Stoic” and “Silent.” As my strength slowly returned, though, so did my curiosity.
“Is it true that Mabbot cut you from the gallows with her own knife?”
Feng left rather than engage me in conversation, but Bai said, “She saved us as she saved you.”
“She did not save me,” I said. “She kidnapped me.”
“The rope was around my neck. Yours is around your mind. Just hope she can cut fast enough.”
In this way I was, day by day, mended, though not in the way I wanted. Rather than being relieved, I felt my spirit moving with each session into and through the pain until I wore it thinly, as a mantle. My foot I could still feel, especially in the mornings, but its crushing ache had softened to a throbbing.
I found myself growing an entirely new body. I’ve thinned and resorted to tying my pants with a cord of rope, as the others do. What is left of me hobbles around on the crutches that the surgeon gave me.
Thursday, October 7
This week has passed so quickly, though I have done nothing but sleep and eat. I manage to snore even through the noise of Kitzu and his crew of hammermen pounding day and night to restore the planks and bulwarks.
Today, with effort, I made my way above deck to find the ship greatly improved. The mosaic of fresh planks was being sealed with pitch boiled from the trees. Moreover, sailors came back from the deep jungle bearing baskets laden with fruit—bananas and pineapple—and two frighteningly long-tusked animals, dead and swaying from poles. They looked like demonic pigs to me, but the men called them “babirusa” and claim they do taste like boar.
When she passed on her rounds, I waylaid Mabbot and asked to be excused from my duties.
“I should think not,” she huffed.
“I cannot stand without these crutches,” I said.
“A heron stands on one leg.”
“A heron does not cook!” I shouted.
She considered for a moment, then said, “Joshua will be your hands. Even a dog may learn.” Mabbot laughed and went upon her way, leaving me waving a crutch impotently in the air.
From the mirror in the berths stares a gaunt, bearded stranger. Like the story of the man who fell asleep in the fairy ring, I’ve woken to find the world I know in ruins. I still ache for freedom, but Mabbot’s curse has come true; I can no longer imagine what I’d be escaping to.
My yeast batter had suffered from my neglect: under a dried crust, mottled with mold, the dough was now very sour. I salvaged it by cutting out the core and mixing it with fresh water and flour. What a thing can endure and live through astounds me.
Reading in my hammock, I saw the adulterations almost immediately. The Bible Mabbot had given me was written in a small expert hand with Jesus’s words in crimson ink. Thinking that the Sermon on the Mount might soothe my nerves, I had gotten to the end of Matthew’s account when this passage stopped me:
And Jesus followed the dry bed north until he came to the burned mill and turned directly east and walked to the third cache marked by the cairn. He saw there fifteen carronades and twoscore French carbines. These are owed to Xiao Wei who promises one-sixteenth-ton black powder delivered to the tunnels …
My confusion was quickly replaced by outrage. I had opened a Bible for God’s word, but what I slammed closed was a thieves’ catalogue. Similar blasphemies punctuated the entire book, describing hoards of ammunition and silver, and exactly how to find them. In the passage that should have related Jesus curing the blind, it said:
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, if this man could, what would he see in the Southern Cache?” Said Jesus, “Thirty hogsheads of black powder, thirteen hogsheads of saltpeter, and a dozen carronade sans ammunition.”
I clutched the book to my chest and considered my situation. Then I went through it with a pencil; it was easy enough to spot the false passages. I rose and crutched my way to Mabbot’s cabin. When the captain herself opened the door, I thrust the book into her hands, saying, “I’ve come to accept that I have little hope of returning home until you’ve finished your business with the Brass Fox. I’m giving you this in the hopes that it will speed us along. I expect it will.” I tapped the book in her hand. “Lists, directions, names,” I said. “Your son—”
“Lower your voice!” Mabbot hissed.
“The Fox,” I continued, “evidently coerced a scribe to disguise his logs. The parts that will interest you tend to lie near the end of each chapter. I’ve marked them. The parable of the vineyard is little more than a list of officials and the amounts they’ve been bribed.”
“Mr. Wedgwood, you’re a genius; I’m not paying you enough.”
“You are not paying me at all. Let me make it clear that if I thought that this information would put an innocent in danger, or that it would keep you from justice for even a moment, I would have kept this to myself. But if a petty vendetta with another rogue is all that keeps us out here, then make your pact, or whatever it is you intend to do. The Brass Fox is just another name I wish I had never heard. When you are done, I should very much like to be taken home.”
By the curious glint in her eye, this was the first time she had even considered freeing me. “When I get my Fox,” she said slowly, “we can renegotiate your employment.”
It was something. For all of her villainy, Mabbot’s word is not inconsequential. Every day we get closer to Macau, to the tavern called the Serpent’s Tail, where, I am sure, only calamity and mischief waits, and yet, for once, I am eager to get there. If I am to return to a familiar light, it seems I must first plumb the darkest tents of this carnival world.
Now that I am moving about, Joshua has come by for his lesson. I have remembered, for the most part, the signs he taught me, and he has conveyed in his own language how he came to sail upon the Flying Rose. It was a halting story, for I had to stop him every few seconds to help me with a particular sign, but through his patience, the following emerged.
He was born into a family of which not a one could hear, if I understand correctly, on an island near Cape Cod in the former colonies. The island is populated by the deaf, a heritable trait, one assumes, or perhaps a result of bad waters. Joshua learned his hand language there, and, he assured me, upon the island even those blessed with hearing use the signs rather than the tongue.
Joshua’s father worked his hands to burls by hauling nets for other men. His mother washed clothes for half the town and, Joshua swears, never slept but labored to save each penny. Though she baked pies every Sunday, Joshua never tasted a single one, for they were all sold and the money stashed in clay jugs. Finally the day came when his father could buy his own boat.
“We had the boat for only half a season,” Joshua explained. “My father and brother went out every day while my mother and I sold the fish at the market. I hated gutting and scaling all day. Then my father invited me to come out on the boat, but my mother said I was too young, that I would be bad luck. So the next morning I snuck out of the house and hid under the nets. My father knew I was there, but he didn’t say anything.” As his hands shaped the story for me, tears welled in the boy’s eyes at the recollection. His fingers now churned a vicious storm before my face. His cupped hands, signifying the boat, rolled and shuddered under the force of the gale. “Father told me to hold the brace line, but I couldn’t. I lost it, and the boom knocked them into the water. The sea took them because I was weak.”
This, at least, was the basic story, though my pen can’t paint the scene as cruelly as his hands and features did. The hurricane pushed his broken boat deep into the Gulf Stream, and strong westerlies took him the rest of the way to the edge of Mabbot’s hunting grounds, where she found him half-dead on the deck. He has been with Mabbot for three years since. He has sworn not to return home until he can buy his mother a proper house to replace the drafty shack he grew up in.
“I didn’t know anything,” the boy said. “When I’m old enough to captain my own ship, when I’m rich, I’ll go back.” After a solemn moment, Joshua seemed to be ready to continue with our writing lesson, but I was too horrified by the thought of his mother, widowed and alone, thinking the boy was dead.
“When my wife died,” I tried to tell him by means of drawings and rudimentary signs, “I thought it was my fault, for not keeping the windows sealed against the cold, for not having money enough for a better doctor. There is no end to that kind of”—I struggled to find the right sign—“heart-wringing. If your mother is still alive, she cares not about ropes or storms. Go home. She will weep with happiness. She will thank God. At least let us try to send her a letter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Apples could not have held that rope. You were just a child—”
“No, what do you mean, ‘if she’s still alive’?”
Here my patchwork communication failed me. “I meant nothing. Only that people die on land as well. The grief of losing everyone at once, that can make a mother ill.”
Despite trying to fight them back, the tears spilled down his cheeks as his hands shredded the air with their speed, far surpassing my comprehension. When I begged him to slow down, he laid this out for me: “It’s my fault. Everything is gone. I have nothing to give her. Better she thinks I’m dead. If I can bring something good back for her, I will. If not, I will stay dead.”
It is hard to know how much the boy understood of my fumbling. When he left, he was deeply agitated. I would like to blame the gestures, but it was a sobering conversation in any language. I suppose that, in his grief, he had never considered that he might lose her too. She was a fixture, as constant as the lighthouse on the sandy bluff he had drawn for me. Like countless young men before him, he is on a journey to find the cures for the toil and poverty he’d left behind. The Rose was the place to prove himself strong and brave, and, with the wraiths dispelled, he would arrive home with stories to tell, as the son in a fairy tale comes home with a golden duck. Clumsy as I may have been, I hope I’ve cured him of such notions. The good things of the world are around the hearth. We’d all be better off at home.