by Eli Brown
One English ship had been trapped between its tangled comrades and the crack of the Chinese cannon. Like the story of the man who lost his nose to a hungry crow, the bowsprit of the warship disappeared in the first volley, leaving a ghastly hole rimmed with guttering lines.
As the Rose raced past the furious navy ships, Mr. Apples, who had been waiting until he could send our shot through them lengthwise, finally gave the order to fire. Our guns roared, and, though it was horrible, I was compelled to watch as the navy decks were raked by the entire might of our close-quarter assault.
From Mabbot’s perch came the call: “Bai is giving them hell!” Indeed, I could see a crowd of marines on the deck of the gunship converging toward his solitary figure. From a distance, his final fight on that canted deck looked like the culminating movements of a ballet. As I watched, the herd of marines closed around him, and he disappeared in the smoke that unfurled from their muskets.
“Heave to for Bai!” Mabbot screamed.
But Mr. Apples wouldn’t allow it. “Cannot save him! Bai died with Feng; that is his ghost giving us a gift. We must take it, Captain!”
We were now receiving fire from La Colette, which was maneuvering to intercept us just as we slipped past the navy ships.
Mr. Apples himself rushed to help reload the guns with chain shot.
As the caprice of the wind forced Laroche to come at us prow-first, it seemed that we would be spared the full brunt of his broadside guns. But as he swept in, we saw a battery of strange bundles fixed to the foredeck. I watched with horror as the sinuous tails of a dozen rockets snaked toward the Rose to deliver a cascade of bone-rattling concussions. Despite the hail of destruction that punched through our sails, despite the bodies that slid about the deck with every lurch, Mr. Apples did not respond. He was waiting for just the right angle.
I saw Laroche on the bow of his ship, his braid like a pennant in the wind. His cutlass was raised, and his mouth was open wide with commands I couldn’t hear.
Just when Laroche’s marines had reloaded the rockets, Mr. Apples finally gave the call and the chain shot was launched. This, then, was the perfect timing he had been training his men for: pairs of cannonballs linked by ten yards of heavy chain swung though the heavens. The first volley merely ruined the rigging of the mizzen. But the second cut the foremast of La Colette clean through. It plummeted like a tree, and Laroche dove for safety as the sails shrouded his forward batteries.
On we raced, giving La Colette every shot of our starboard guns as we passed. Only seconds later I heard the Twa Corbies growl and hoped they had delivered a deathblow.
My heart leaped up as I saw a clear path to a stormy but open sea. By the noise, the shells had cracked the firmament itself and brought it crashing down behind us. Through the rain, though, I could no longer tell which ship was which. The ghastly fulminations continued to light the gloom, but, it seemed, no more balls were making it to our ship.
The Rose rolled terribly as we sped on, and her sails looked like a beggar’s rags, but the storm drove us away from the savage arena.
I am alive. The thought pealed like a carillon in my skull. Even as I leaped from the foredeck to find survivors, it echoed throughout my being: Alive.
Many of the merely wounded had crawled down the companionway to avoid the bursts of shot. The dead slid on the gore and made a grim pile against the port bulwark. With most of the remaining crew busy trying to keep the sails from tearing from their stays, I was alone in trying to find the source of the moaning that came from that heap.
I told myself that the jumbled limbs were nothing but cuts of pork as I tried to sort through them. Then the ship rolled and the corpses moved as one, sweeping me off my feet. For a moment I was swimming among them, trying to keep my head above the wet tumble of bodies. Was it seawater or blood that had smeared itself across my lips? I wanted to scream but was afraid to open my mouth.
A scarlet hand came to life and tugged at my shirt. I found myself looking into Asher’s eyes. His left arm and shoulder were simply gone, as if bitten off. He was trying to speak and fumbling at his belt with his remaining hand. There I found Feng’s little book of sonnets tucked behind his hip. I put it on his chest and wrapped his hand around it, but he was already gone.
Behind me, Mabbot leaped to the deck and handed Mr. Apples the telescope. She pointed aft, to where the man-made thunder still rumbled. “What do you see?”
It took him a moment, then he said, “It’s La Colette. She’s making distance from the fight, but she’s smoking like a cigar.”
“It’s only a matter of time before he rigs a new mast. Put a sea between us, Mr. Apples.”
26
THE LAST SUPPER
In which I fight for Mabbot
Monday, December 6
Am I now free? Is this the liberation I so ardently prayed for? We are through the Sunda Strait, and if the southeast trade winds remain faithful, we are mere weeks from the New World. There I may walk away from this damned ship forever. But I shall set down the facts as they occurred in the hopes of bringing some order to my torn spirit.
Only three days ago, but it feels so long ago already, I was cooking for the radiant Hannah Mabbot.
As Kitzu was not only occupied with the Herculean task of repairing the riddled Rose but had also suffered injuries from the rockets, I could not hope to have him fishing for me. Instead I turned to the men who clambered over the hull of the ship, lashed to monkey ropes, sealing, patching, and painting. I begged them to bring me anything remotely edible from below the waterline and ended up with a bucket of Oriental whelks.
The eating of terrestrial snails was the one French habit that I had never acquired. It had always seemed to me that the trouble it took to clean the slimy creatures wasn’t worth it; the best thing about the chewy little nubs was the butter they were sautéed in. Sea snails, though, were a different matter, as they held up as well as clams or oysters in any sauce.
I saw that the men, having drained one of the massive Madeira wine casks to make their panch, were about to wash and repurpose it to stow rope. I stopped them just in time and scraped from the dregs a good quantity of wine lees, dark and heady. I could not help but think of Leighton’s body, curled like a fetus in his wine casket in the bilge.
Those who had died during the battle had been solemnly sewn into sailcloth, the last stitch piercing their noses. The sound of the sail hook crunching through the septum made clear to me the reason behind the custom: it confirmed the dead, as any man who had yet a single ember of life in him would rise howling at that final offense. They sank into the water as a seaman played a mournful dirge on a viola. But Mabbot had decided that Leighton would be buried in soil. She intended to plant her pomelo tree over his head.
The men repairing the hull scraped the old planks down for repurposing, and I followed them, the gleaner in the field, gathering sea snails. The whelks were poached in the wine lees just long enough to curl their outer lips. As the lees lent a melancholy aubergine to the snails, I sprinkled them with pepper, glad for the simplicity. Brine being their element, they had no need of salt.
The rabbit, as tender as aging would make it, was cut into small chunks and browned with flour and lard. Having mastered the technique for our tart a few weeks earlier, Joshua and I chilled the crust shortening in the cold depths of the sea.
The filling for this savory pie consisted of a roux, caramelized onions, browned rabbit, diced apricots in brandy, roasted bone stock, and the last of the bay leaves.
For dessert I toasted walnuts in a skillet, adding cinnamon, black pepper, ginger, honey, rosemary, and a pinch of salt until they began to clump. Then I removed and separated them to cool.
That evening, cozy as ducklings, Hannah and I dined on whelks in wine lees and brandied rabbit pie with apricots. We finished the meal with spiced candied walnuts.
What can be said about that pie? Some foods are so comforting, so nourishing of body and soul, that to eat them is to be home aga
in after a long journey. To eat such a meal is to remember that, though the world is full of knives and storms, the body is built for kindness. The angels, who know no hunger, have never been as satisfied.
Mabbot wept a little as she ate the pie. Seeing her, I too fought the urge to cry as the taste began to assuage the anguish of the recent days.
Mabbot’s cabin had been properly reorganized and cleaned after the mess the storm had made of it. We had finished our meal, and though Bai was not there to play for us, we held each other and danced a slow waltz, my peg tapping a hollow beat.
Though I tried, I couldn’t suppress my anxiety. “If Laroche repairs his masts—”
“We are running as fast as we can, Wedge. But time is on our side. His men must know by now that Ramsey is dead. They’ve received their last pensions, and who knows how long their provisions will last. I need only wait him out.” Then she whispered, “But if you stay here tonight, we may find ways to pass the time.”
“Aye, you could lock me in my cell and I would still find a way to you, Captain,” I said.
“What, free yourself with a flattened spoon?” she asked. I stopped dancing. “Close your mouth,” she said, “you’ll catch flies. Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t get in a huff. On this boat a rat does not piss but I know it. You described your escapes so well in your little diary.”
“How long have you been reading … but I hide it!”
“Right. Who might have found it?”
“Joshua.”
“Don’t be angry at the boy, Wedge, I made him. He hated doing it. But you have taught him to read fairly well!”
I was chuckling a little, thinking of how all of my attempts to desert had been so artfully frustrated.
“Can you blame me, Wedge, for wanting you near?” Hannah leaned in, lifted my chin, and kissed me.
This was the moment when the world came apart; a burst of wood, glass, and sea mist hit me hard.
The cannonball shattered the windows and lodged itself in a rafter.
We were unscathed and had a fraction of a second to stare at the thing: an ordinary cannonball save for a surface riddled with peculiar holes. I had time enough to remember the smell of pig shit on grass.
Laroche had taken his time aiming the shot, using our candlelight to send the missile home. It sat embedded in the wood above Mabbot’s mirror as if it had always been there. It was the slimmest slice of time, two heartbeats at most, for the sound of the cannon had not reached us, and yet I had time enough to feel the chill from the sudden hole in the wall, to see flashes of light out there, to smell Hannah’s skin, an aroma almost like bread, the yeast tang of her shorn scalp, the white tea of her cheeks, the caramel of her breath, time enough to regret that those perfumes were being overpowered by the sulfur coming from the cannonball. Wisps of white smoke issued from its pocked surface.
Mabbot shot from her seat, intending, I presume, to pry the missile from the wood and heave it out the window. It was then that the thing exploded, sending from its bores smaller shot throughout the room.
Mabbot’s chest was sopped with blood and she fell back into my arms. She had, intentionally or not, shielded me. The wound was grave, and Mabbot, looking into my eyes, said with a smile, “A terrible misunderstanding, but I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Mr. Apples burst into the cabin, saying, “Captain—!” He stopped short, seeing Mabbot in my lap.
“It’s bad in here, Apples,” Mabbot wheezed.
“Very bad out there, Captain.” Mr. Apples had to bend down to hear her whispers.
“Surrender. Have the boys put the lockpicks under their tongues. Chew your way out if you have to.”
“Laroche won’t take you alive.”
“Let me handle that.”
The sound of cannon fire, rent timber, and the desperate coughs of pistols sent Mr. Apples rushing out, and we were alone again.
I cannot say how long I held her in my arms and pushed upon the wound to stanch the flow.
She whispered, “You must tell them you’re my captive, Wedge. Promise me. Or they’ll kill you. I would not have you die.”
Then she went limp, and despite my shaking and calling her name, the color drained from her face.
After some time I became aware again of the screams and gunfire. Outside, Laroche was conducting a massacre. He lobbed sticky masses of sulfur and phosphorus, which lit our deck with a stark glare and from which fire spread in all directions. Peering from Mabbot’s cabin door, I saw that his ship was operating in complete darkness and was invisible in the moonless night except for the brief glimpses afforded when the weapons were launched.
Further, he seemed to have a deck gun capable of firing many bullets in quick succession, and with this he mowed down our crew as they emerged into the unearthly light.
Like an animal I went back and forth from Mabbot’s body to the door, watching the calamity unfold in bursts.
Only when Mr. Apples threw his gun to the deck, tearing his shirt off to wave in surrender and ordering the others to do the same, did Laroche relent.
Within half an hour, the Rose was boarded and our crew bound in shackles and led to the bowels of La Colette.
I had locked myself into Mabbot’s cabin.
When Laroche knocked the door down, accompanied by a Norwegian giant, I missed the twins acutely.
Even in my grief I noticed that Laroche seemed much older than the few years should have made him: his eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets, and tufts of hair hung loose from his queue. As he entered and saw Mabbot’s body, he gasped with animal pleasure and his hand went to the locket around his neck.
I was seized by the goliath and would have joined the others in chains if I hadn’t said it: “You know me, Laroche! I am Lord Ramsey’s chef, taken captive.”
Looking at the table and candles, Laroche asked, “You dine with her?”
“Je n’ai pas le choix,” I said, finding it easier to lie in his language. “She forces me.”
The foulest lie ever uttered. No matter that Mabbot had begged me to say it with her last breath. Laroche seemed not to notice my cheeks blooming with shame and rage.
“Very well, consider yourself rescued,” he said. His brass buttons glittered in the candlelight against the black cotton. His uniform was unnaturally clean and still bore the faint symmetrical lines of a clothes brush; he had dressed for this moment. “Take her aboard La Colette.” His thug obeyed as Laroche muttered, “Il m’a fallu deux semaines pour tuer les scorpions.” Just outside the door, though, in the bright light of his unnatural flares, he stopped his man, wanting to gloat over his prize. “Let me see her face.”
The pale giant yanked back the sheet he had lifted her body in, and Laroche leaned down to have a closer look.
The blast made all of us jump. Laroche stumbled back, a great arc of blood leaping from the hole in his heart.
Mabbot, weakly holding the gun she had slipped from his belt, whispered, “You and I will have to agree to disagree, Laroche.”
She dropped the gun and went limp before the giant, like a frightened child, flung her body into the sea. He immediately drew his chambered pistol and fired six rounds into the churning darkness where she had disappeared.
With a wail, I scrambled over the railing to leap after her, only to be caught at the last moment by the behemoth, who lifted me and flung me to the deck. I hurled myself against the man and loosed my hurt upon him, slamming my forehead into his nose and flaying my knuckles against his face until he fell back, ghastly and still.
Though I leaned far over the railing, I could see no trace of Mabbot—only foam and a stray barrel that the waves crushed against the hull.
Nearby, Laroche lay grey-skinned and gasping. He had torn the locket from his neck and held it out to me. It opened to reveal the silhouette of a young maiden.
“Dites leur,” he groaned. “You must tell them how close I came. I have given all.”
I watched the locket drop from his shaking hand and said not
hing. A dreadful stillness came over me as he breathed his last.
I readied myself for death, expecting to be shot by Laroche’s soldiers, but when I looked up from the sea, I was surprised to see them firing upon La Colette instead.
The ships were side by side now, with both decks lit by the fires. Mr. Apples and the others, having picked their locks, had taken Laroche’s ship from the inside and overwhelmed the guards. They had few weapons, though, and were pinned in their position behind the mainmast. In the torchlight, I perceived that the reloading rifle was mounted upon the bow of La Colette and had been turned against Mr. Apples’s uprising. They hid behind the masts and crouched in the lee of the mizzen deck but could not move because of the crossfire they were receiving from the soldiers who had boarded the Rose.
Navigating the deck, which was black with blood, I made my way to the quarterdeck gun, the largest loose cannon on the Rose.
Leaning all of my weight into its locks, I freed it and watched as it rumbled across the deck, accelerating like a charging bull. I ran after it as it crushed Laroche’s men. One leaped to safety, only to be knocked senseless by a jab from my peg. I became aware that I was bellowing. Another marine, to avoid being crushed, flung himself into the ocean.
I thus cleared the deck of enemies. Rather than burst through the railing as I expected, though, the cannon slowed as the sea shifted and reversed its direction. It chased me for fifteen feet before falling through a damaged hatch to the lower deck.
Seeing this from their shelter on La Colette, my comrades sent up a cheer. They were still pinned, however, by the reloading rifle, which operated by crank and was fed by a seemingly endless belt of bullets.
Joshua was with the rest and, reading Mr. Apples’s lips, signed the message to me. The ship was pitching, and in the unnatural light I had to peer hard to see his fingers tracing the wisp of a fuse and the swift arc of his fist: “Fire the forecastle cannon.”
I had to go below to get to that gun and, my mind blunted by catastrophe, did not plan my course well. I leaped with speed down the starboard companionway before I remembered the loose cannon pacing there on the shifting deck. The phosphorus above had burned to a sputter and filled the air with a spectral smoke. I was inching carefully toward the door when I heard the cannon charging through the haze.