by Eli Brown
Cackling men baked adobe bricks in the sun while, nearby, a bearded ancient offered songbirds and crickets in tiny wooden cages. A water buffalo ate lazily from a pile of filth in the middle of the street despite the whipping the boy on its back was giving it. A stooped Oriental sold skewers of blackened meat from a cart to passing ruffians.
I considered buying a basket of red melons from a street hawker when it struck me how easily one might get lost in such an environment. Here, among these thieves and rascals, was my opportunity, at last, to take my leave of Mabbot. I decided that I must approach the situation with the utmost care.
We watched an elephant, every bit as monstrous as they say, carrying a load of bricks, herded by a man with nothing but a bamboo switch. I marveled that such a powerful frame could be thus humbled. In a story, I would have leaped upon its back, and we would have bounded to our freedom together.
We passed a vacant lot where penned sheep were nosing in the dust for whiskers of dry grass. Seeing this, Mr. Apples gave a start and shouted, “Sheep! Cap’m, may I? Cap’m, with your permission?”
Mabbot sighed and said, “With speed, and mark our direction. We’ll not wait.” At this Mr. Apples set off looking for the shepherd.
Joshua saw my grimace and asked with his hands, “Where is Mr. Apples going?”
I tried to explain, with my limited signs, that a man, particularly a vulgar pirate, had appetites of the flesh and that, in the absence of a rightful marriage, those appetites could turn toward his fellow man or, worse, beasts. I then explained hell as best I could, though in all our lessons I hadn’t learned the appropriate signs for such things. And so I made do with invented gestures and the little vocabulary I had. I was at it for some time. For all of my effort, my morality lesson emerged thus: “All men body hunger bad. God becomes sad. Hot place bad, long time very hot…” and etcetera. Joshua gave me a look that told that he seriously doubted my sanity. Then he signed, “You need more practice.”
I couldn’t argue. In any case, the time to act had come. With Mabbot preoccupied and Mr. Apples having his fun, I had my first real opportunity for flight. Remembering my vow to free myself, I seized on the moment and asked Mabbot for a silver piece to buy melons. She didn’t even look at me. “Take Joshua and be back with Mr. Apples or we’ll leave you here.” Obviously more concerned with finding the Fox than with any of my doings, she carelessly dropped three silver pieces into my palm. I pocketed them with a pounding heart. They would go a long way toward passage back to England on some merchant ship.
Feng gave me a suspicious look as I walked away but did not move to intercept me. I gave her my foulest moue and she just shook her head in disgust.
Only a minute later we had rounded a warehouse and were out of sight. My chest grew tight at the thought of liberation, and for a moment my fear was gone. I clapped Joshua over the shoulder and hurried down the alley. We found our way to the ruin of a burned cathedral. Ducking behind its only remaining wall, we finally slowed and Joshua asked, “Where are we going?”
Glorious freedom. I was shaking like an aspic and felt a rush of pleasure at being on my own for the first time in months.
“We’ll just wait here for a moment,” I signed.
I wandered a bit farther through a narrow passage of stone and saw what looked to be a civilized portion of San Lazaro. The sun shone on several brick houses and not a few fruit trees. In the distance a woman was hanging laundry from a line, and this simple vision of domesticity was enough to bring tears to my eyes. By the time Mabbot became suspicious, I would be hidden in a small but clean room, paying some family handsomely for my keep. Eventually the Rose would have to leave port, and then I would be free to find work on a civilian ship and begin my journey home.
This was it. My heart had already begun down the happy lane, but I turned to say goodbye first to Joshua. I gave him a manly slap on the back and issued a stern command: “Wait here for five minutes, then go join Mabbot.” I didn’t have time to explain, and I couldn’t have the boy following me, so when he started to ask questions, I gave his shoulders a stiff squeeze and let him see the stern resolution in my eye. “Five minutes,” I signed. “Then go find Mabbot.”
My opinion of the auspicious street went sour almost as soon as I began to clump down it. The glares I got from the men on their stoops told me it would be folly to ask for shelter. The woman I had seen hanging clothes had ducked inside and slammed the door. Two thick-armed men had come out of their homes to follow me. As soon as I could, I turned back toward the main thoroughfare. I’d thought that any city would be preferable to life aboard a ship, but now I began to miss the company of our muscled crew. I went at a quick pace, looking for signs of an inn or boardinghouse where I might hide until the Flying Rose had left the harbor.
I found myself in a labyrinth of stinking alleys and cul-de-sacs, which forced me to move like a rat through filthy puddles and narrow overhangs. Wanting only to put distance between myself and Mabbot, I lost my orientation and rounded a corner to find I had made a circle and was looking down an alley I had already traversed. This time, though, a child in rags, even younger than Joshua, stood in the middle, as if to bar my way. In his right hand he held a bone—from the looks of it, a thighbone. He raised it to his face, sighted over the pocked gnarl at the end, and pretended to shoot me. I hurried on, coming close enough to confirm that the bone was probably human. Even as I passed him, he filled me with imaginary shot, pausing only to reload with invisible powder. The child did not smile or even seem to be enjoying the game.
That was when I heard Joshua wail. A most distinctive noise. The boy never used his voice except to laugh, and I knew at once that he must be very scared. The sound brought me full about and now, finally, the bone-bearing child smiled.
Joshua would, no doubt, find his way back to Mabbot; his mind was excellent and full of resource. I turned and resumed my winding hunt for shelter. My knee and hip were already burning with friction and fatigue from the uneven ground, but I ignored them, half galloping, my free arm swinging as a counterbalance to every stride.
Seconds later I heard Joshua again. This time it was a long howl. Maybe he was only looking for me, but he sounded truly scared or in pain. Poor Joshua needed me. Escape would have to wait. I reversed my course and began to run, if my clumping lope could be called a run, toward his voice.
Trying to plot the straightest course back to Joshua, I was obliged to cut through the alley with the odd child again. As I passed, the urchin caught my peg with the crook of the bone, and I went sprawling into a puddle bubbling with algae. I rose, snatched the bone from the child, and might have given him a good thrashing with it if I had not heard the wailing again. I kept the bone and made for Joshua.
Reaching the ruin, finally, I saw two men had cornered Joshua and were stripping him of his clothes, despite his struggling and screaming. His nose had been bloodied, but Joshua fought them with undiminished fury. They seemed to be enjoying the challenge of picking him slowly naked, taking their time and making sport of his terror. The brutes had not seen me, and I crept behind the largest one and raised the femur to take a crack at his head. Before I could swing, though, the odd child leaped onto my back and clawed my face. Blood and grime blinded my right eye as the ruffians turned on me. In the scuffle I managed to get my back to the wall and pull Joshua protectively under my arm. The men facing me had, each of them, been branded between the eyes. By the dimensions of the scars on their brows, I’d guess that the tool was a red-hot coin. What manner of fraternity meted out this kind of initiation, I did not care to know.
The scarred men, silent in their duty, began to wallop me, each in turn, about the face, belly, and groin.
Falling upon my back, I covered Joshua with my body and tried to kick the men with my peg, but I was quickly reduced to simply rolling away, as best I could, from the worst blows. The men said not a word, and with the clarity that comes of fearing for one’s life, I saw when they laughed that their tongues had been
cut out. These were escaped convicts.
A kick to my head clapped my teeth closed on my own tongue, and as blood filled my mouth, I fought to stay conscious.
Then the beating stopped, and, peering between my fingers, I saw Mr. Apples breaking the men apart with the thighbone. Not a word was spoken, and the sounds of that grim weapon powdering their jaws and necks was worse even than the pain of the beating. Joshua tried to kick me off but, wanting to spare him this sight, I kept his head beneath me until the men had fallen and Mr. Apples, hardly even sweating, reached down to pull us to our feet.
“Having a good time?” He coughed as he shook the gore from the bone. “Do ye want this for your stewpot?”
I spat a stream of blood and reassured myself that my tongue was still attached at the root. Joshua was weeping and I held his wet cheek with one hand and with the other signed, “Sorry, sorry!” The blood on my hand left a crimson circle on my chest.
Mr. Apples considered the bone for a moment, then handed it back to the odd child, who immediately aimed it at him.
“Captain will be waiting,” Mr. Apples said.
He picked up his backpack, which was stuffed so taut with wool that it looked like a giant tick. This he slung over his shoulder and headed off whistling as if on a Sunday picnic. After helping Joshua with his shirt and sandals—to my great relief, the boy had no serious injuries—we made after Mr. Apples as quickly as we could. My body still tingled with the acrid liquor of fear, and I knew when that subsided, I would feel the bruises I had received. Worse, though, was the guilt. My stubborn thoughts of home had almost gotten Joshua killed.
In my gratitude for his intercession, I tried to make conversation with Mr. Apples.
“That is,” I huffed, “some fine wool, Mr. Apples … You’ll do beautiful things with it.”
“I’ll have to wash and comb it first. Wish I could get my hands on some proper dye.”
“I could give you some turmeric, perhaps. It makes a fine color, and a pinch goes a long way. Or we’ll find you some lichen. The monks used to dye their robes a handsome ocher with nothing but boiled lichen and urine … I must ask you, why didn’t you use your gun on those men? No complaints from me; I’m grateful just the same.”
“I like to use broad strokes. A gun jams, a gun misses, and often as not, even if it hits, the thing will just keep coming. My hands don’t jam nor miss—”
Joshua interrupted us to sign, “See? He only wanted wool. He didn’t want to fuck sheep—”
“You’re right!” I signed with my one free hand.
Joshua considered me for a moment before signing, “Your brain is cracked.”
I couldn’t argue.
We caught up with Mabbot at a great banyan tree whose trunk had been decorated in patches with hammered lead and crude figurines. When she saw Mr. Apples, she yelled, “Where have you been? I’ll not be kept waiting on account of your fondness for— What in bloody heaven happened to them?”
“They were making friends,” Mr. Apples said.
“Enough! The tavern is just there,” said Mabbot, pointing to a brooding windowless building with a small red door. Above the door hung a flag that featured a writhing serpent eating its own tail.
Braga said, “If the Fox is here, it is because he wants to be found.”
“And I want to find him,” said Mabbot.
“I don’t trust it.”
“Then stay here with them.” Mabbot chose ten men to stay with Braga. The rest of us followed her into the tavern.
22
THE BRASS FOX FOUND
In which Mabbot’s hunt ends
The Serpent’s Tail was long and narrow. There were several thick oaken tables along one side of the tavern—in craftsmanship and dimension, they were little more than stumps—and a tin-plated bar on the other. Above the tables, a narrow set of stairs led to a loft, which was hidden by heavy tapestries. There were armed men, fifteen or more, near the back wall, where a single open door cast a dusty light upon the sawdust floor. By their surly silence, I assumed they were the Fox’s men, and that they had been expecting us.
I was standing behind Feng, who was shifting her weight on the floor with her head cocked. Then, as if deciding that the sawdust there was not good enough, she guided Mabbot away from the bar toward the tables. A sweep of my boot revealed wooden planks beneath the sawdust; those that were directly beneath me seemed to shift independently of the others—I was standing on a trapdoor. This was one of those bars where one may take a single sip of beer and wake chained to a galley oar and bound for the gold mines. I followed Feng’s example and moved closer to the others.
Like armies staging for a battle, our factions glowered at each other across a no-man’s-land of empty tables and reeking piss buckets. Sheets of leather, emblazoned with tattoos of sinking ships and mermaids, hung like pennants from the rafters. The blows to my gut had left me decidedly nauseated and I gagged when I realized what the pennants were: the tattooed backs and bellies of dead men, preserved for posterity—a grisly museum of former patrons.
Mr. Apples announced, “Hannah Mabbot is here for the Brass Fox. Where will we find him?”
The men at the other end of the building neither answered nor moved. Mr. Apples took two steps toward them and roared, “Speak!”
The Fox finally parted the loft curtains and showed himself; his hair, oiled to a deep bronze, nearly brushed the top of his high starched collar and cravat. His polished boots clacked as he came down the stairs. The horribly scarred Gristle carried his pistol and bandolier. “Do show a little patience, man! You’ve only just arrived,” said the Fox, as he strolled to a table in the center of the room and sat down.
We all turned to Mabbot; she was frozen, her eyes locked on her child. For a moment, it seemed she would stare at him forever, then she regained her composure and joined him at the table. “But we have been waiting for much longer than that,” said Mabbot, “to see you.”
“Well, you see me now.”
“I do,” said Mabbot softly.
“Wine!” shouted the Fox. Gristle ran to fetch a pewter tankard and quickly poured two glasses. Mabbot waited for the Fox to drink first, then emptied hers in one gulp.
Mr. Apples pointed to a series of wooden kegs lashed to the rafters. “That’s not wine.”
“Those keep things from getting out of hand,” said the Fox. “The barkeep puts enough powder and shot in them to ruin anyone’s day. It encourages civility.”
“They could be full of sand,” muttered Mr. Apples.
“Care to take aim and find out?” the Fox taunted.
Mr. Apples rolled his shoulder and stared at the cask above him, clearly considering whether to try to jump and grab it, but Mabbot tsked. “We’re not here to quarrel. Let’s talk somewhere quiet.”
“We’ll talk here,” said the Fox.
Mr. Apples huffed, the veins on his neck rising. “Captain, I don’t like this—”
Mabbot shut him up with a glance. Like a chastened dog, Mr. Apples grumbled and retreated. “Give us some room,” she said, and we all backed toward the front wall to give her the semblance of privacy at the table.
Gristle refilled their wine. Mabbot did not take her eyes off the Fox’s face. “More and more the handsome man,” she said.
“I credit the buttermilk baths you gave me every night before singing me to sleep!”
They laughed together, and it echoed off the rafters. The Fox’s men shifted, looking as disconcerted as I felt. Of all the strange things I had seen thus far, the bared fangs and blue underbellies of the misbegotten globe, this was most unexpected. Surrounded by the bristling ruffians, in a city of cutthroats, in a world turned by the forks of avarice, here at the center they were laughing. It was all too brief, though, for now the Fox was draining his glass again, fortifying himself for what was to come.
It was then that Kittur padded slowly down the staircase from the loft. Her eyes were bright behind the spectacles, and I saw fear there. For some re
ason this upset me more than the shoddy grenades dangling above us or the posturing brutes. She knew what was about to happen, and it was not good.
“And who is this? Won’t you introduce me?” said Mabbot.
But the Fox only winked at Kittur, who pushed past the assembled gang and made her way out the back door. I decided then that we would be safer waiting outside with Braga and the others. My hand went to Joshua’s shoulder to guide him toward the front, when two of the Fox’s ursine men came in and stood barring our escape. One held a medieval iron club with a knobbed head; by the blackened lacquer in its grooves, it had not been cleaned since its last use.
An expectant hush fell upon the tavern. Only the soft scuffing of boots in sawdust and the clink of weapons against buckles could be heard as Mabbot and her strange son looked at each other.
“You know the next part, Mother Goose. You must have guessed.” A lock of hair fell into his face, and Mabbot pushed it behind his ear. He let her.
“Tell me,” said Mabbot.
“I do wish there was another way.” The young man lifted his glass again but seemed to lose his thirst all of a sudden—staring into the wine as if seeing an insect there.
“How good can this plan be if you can’t even speak it aloud?” Mabbot prodded.
“Are you so eager for the noose?” The glass came down hard and shattered in his hand. The explosion seemed to calm him. He pulled a shard from the meat of his thumb without so much as a grimace and watched the blood trickle. “Your sacrifice isn’t unappreciated.” He sighed as he stood. On cue, his men drew their sabers and guns.
“Are you still having nightmares?” Mabbot asked casually.
“Oh, they never stop, do they?” purred the Fox. “They only merge one into the other.”
Mr. Apples and the twins had taken up fighting postures, ready to meet the mob as they came, but Mabbot remained stubbornly, insultingly seated. She said, “You have just this one moment to explain yourself before things get impolite.”
“Impolite? Will courtesy bring the couriers to my door with my inheritance in a saddlebag? If I powder my hair, will Pendleton recognize me for Ramsey’s heir? No. I must make my case in earnest, or they will not hear me.”