“I don’t know,” the Grey Man replied. “I don’t know what sort of possibilities the future might hold. When I was a living child, I was surrounded by adults, who provided maps of what might befall me as I grew up, and what I might endeavor to achieve, but now that I’m a child of sorts again, I have no such guidance. The Lazarus you’ve mentioned might be the one true Adam of the new race, but there’s a sense in which we’re all Adams: John, Mortdieu, me…none of us knows how long we might endure, or of what our new bodies might be capable, under the guidance of our new minds. The zombies made by the zambo in the past were as poor as the worst of Patou’s disasters, and we have no way of knowing, as yet, whether what is rumored in regard to vampires is anything more than mere folklore. Who knows what our being might amount to, if ever we find the freedom to be? Who knows what it might be possible to desire, and what it might require to satisfy the kinds of desire we might entertain? I don’t. Mortdieu has his obsession, and John is trying to recover his poetry, but I’m just an old stager, who spent his entire life playing parts before going to the gallows. Thus far, in my new life, I’ve been at the beck and call of circumstance, hoping to get by from one day to the next and little more.”
“We can all say that,” Ned murmured, “but I see what you mean. I, at least, have some notion of the potential scope of human desire, and its available rewards. I have some notion, too, of historical ambition, although I never stated it clearly until I felt forced to justify myself to Mortdieu. I am working toward a goal, no matter how trivial a contribution I can make to its fulfillment: a world in which Frankenstein’s discovery has been perfected, in which every second life is as fruitful of intelligence as yours, and in which even common men like me might have an acknowledged right to live again. Do you think that’s possible, Sawney? Do you think that a world like that might be a better one than ours? Do you think that the resurrected dead might put the further accumulation of their wisdom and experience to good use, in making a society at peace, where the Rights of Man hold sway?”
“How can I tell?” Sawney replied. “From what I’ve experienced so far, though, I doubt that any such Utopia can come about smoothly. If individuals of my strange kind are not summarily exterminated, as our tentative kin have been throughout history, we shall likely have to fight for any freedom we can win—and not only against the savage likes of aristocrats, Churchmen and mestizos. If I have any vision of the future at all, it’s one in which zombie armies clash incessantly, as human armies always have, in the dark night of ignorance and fear. That’s my nightmare, Ned—that resurrection will, in the end, turn out to be nothing more than a renewal of the ceaseless war of all against all, with nothing but the heavy hand of despotic states to hold it temporarily in check. My hope, to be sure, is that it might be otherwise—that people of my kind, if they’re allowed to survive and thrive, might think and act differently, with the aid of a new sanity…but that has yet to be proven, and that proof will likely be an exacting trial by ordeal.”
Ned would have replied to that, but a zambo canoe glided into the jetty at that moment, and the paddlers gripped the pillars supporting the platform, in order to hold it steady, while their leader stood up and addressed Ned. Ned recognized him as the former first mate of the Outremort.
“Monsieur Knob,” Jeannot said, “General Mortdieu sends greetings. He has a message for Mademoiselle Laveau.”
Ned was not about to admit that he was not in Mademoiselle Laveau’s confidence at present, and was glad of the apparent opportunity to get back into it. “Thank you kindly,” he said. “Tell me what it is, and I’ll see that she gets it immediately.”
“He says that he will return before dawn, if all goes well, with the Outremort and President Boyer’s guarantee to support the zambo in their conflict with the mestizos. We have a task to perform, in order to seal the bargain, but he believes that we can do it—but she must keep Patou and Trelawny here, for now, and maintain the situation until he returns.”
“Where is he?” Ned wanted to know.
“Lying on the far side of the western headland, aboard the Cayman,” Jeannot replied. “Now that the Sun has set and the wind has changed, though, he will set sail within the hour. I must return to join him.”
Ned observed that the wind had indeed swung round as the bad weather had moved on, and was now blowing lightly from the south-east rather than the north-west. It would doubtless intensify as the island cooled more rapidly that the sea after dark, and added a land breeze.
“Sawney,” Ned said, on a sudden impulse. “Relay the message to Mademoiselle Laveau—although she hardly needs to hear it, having already taken that initiative herself. I’m going with Mortdieu.”
“To do what?” Sawney asked.
“I have no idea,” Ned admitted, “but whatever it is, that’s where the future is being made—and that’s where a bold and dutiful spy needs to be.” Without asking Jeannot’s permission, he hopped down into the canoe. The zambo made no objection, but simply signaled to his men to turn the little vessel around and head out into the bay again.
By the time the canoe reached the Cayman, the ship was ready to sail again. Ned was surprised to find her lying quietly at anchor on the far side of the headland, with the Belleville and both Republican ships moored alongside her, the whole company surrounded by a fleet of zambo canoes. There was no sign of any mestizo activity on the shore, and Ned concluded that they had retreated westwards, beaten back by the zambo attack and fearful of returning while the ships and canoes were there.
Mortdieu was on the Cayman’s bridge, handing down orders to his zambo crewmen and evidently delighting in his recovered authority. He looked at Ned with more suspicion than surprise. “What do you want, Monsieur Knob?” he asked. “We’re setting sail immediately—we won’t be back until dawn, if we come back at all.”
“What’s your plan?” Ned asked.
Mortdieu studied him briefly, and then said: “Do you intend to come with us?”
“Why not?” Ned retorted. “I’m not such a good marksman as Marie, but I have my uses.”
The Grey Man’s expression did not change. He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re a fool, Monsieur Knob,” was all that he said before he returned to the business in hand, giving further orders to his crew. Ned could not see any of the Cayman’s former sailors, and assumed that they had been transferred to the Republican warships. He observed however, that the Cayman was lying lower in the water than she had been when her master had unwisely sought sanctuary in the bay, and concluded that she had taken on cargo of some sort, either from the ships lying alongside or from the shore.
Ned tried to persist with his questioning, but Mortdieu was too busy to look at him, let alone provide answers, and he had no alternative but to settle meekly into a corner of the bridge, to wait with as much patience as he could muster.
The Cayman’s sails caught the wind without difficulty, and she glided away, setting an eastward course, escorted by 50 of the canoes.
“Where are we going?” Ned asked, when they had been under way for 20 minutes or so, and Mortdieu had finally found an opportunity to pause for rest.
“Tortuga,” Mortdieu told him, curtly.
“The pirates’ lair?”
“That’s right. It’s a difficult harbor to get into, apparently, for ships that aren’t recognized. The fortresses built by the French before the Revolution to defend the entrance to the port are manned by friends of the buccaneers now, with sufficient firepower to make its recapture direly difficult.”
“You hope to find safe haven there?” Ned asked, deeply puzzled.
“By no means,” Mortdieu told him. “But I hope to get in without difficulty, given that the Cayman will be recognized, and its former master has been persuaded to surrender the secret of the appropriate signals—which I trust, for he’ll be hanged if the information turns out to be false, but set free if it proves correct. I hope to get out again alive, if my lucky star is still shining. You’d best stay as clo
se to me as you can, and be ready to fight for your life. Can you swim well?”
“Yes.”
“Good—if you couldn’t, I’d have to put you in one of the canoes, and you’d miss the greater part of the excitement.” And with this cryptic observation, Mortdieu put his telescope to his eye, and began scanning the starlit sea in front of them, presumably searching the expanse for shadows that might be ships.
The journey to Tortuga was not a long one, and the Cayman might have completed it in less than three hours had she not been attended by the fleet of canoes, but Mortdieu saw to it that their progress was moderate and that the convoy remained in formation.
Ned asked him again what his plan was, but the only reply Mortdieu was prepared to offer as he strode back and forth along his bridge, like a grotesque parody of some ghostly admiral, was that he intended to slip past the forts into the harbor, and then escape with his life, if he could.
A full five hours went by, without any incident whatsoever, before the coast of the island loomed up ahead of the ship. The Cayman steered to port in order to skirt the southern coast, headed for the sheltered deep-water harbor where the 17th century pirates of the Caribbean had established a thriving criminal colony, from which the navies of Spain, France and England had had considerable difficulty uprooting them.
As the vessel drew close to the harbor entrance, which was fortified to either side, Mortdieu’s zambo crewmen began clambering over the side and leaping into the accompanying canoes. At least half the ship’s company had abandoned the vessel before the canoes dropped back and peeled away, leaving the Cayman to make her final approach unescorted. Jeannot was at the helm, and the sailors handling the sails had been reduced to a mere handful.
It was only when the ship was hailed from the nearer fort, and the challenge had been successfully answered, that Mortdieu condescended to make a more detailed explanation to Ned, with a certain dry amusement in his voice.
“Desart did not unload all of the Belleville’s cargo in the port,” the Grey Man said. “There was a part of it he took care to keep aboard, and would not leave behind in Tortuga even when he set out to take the Outremort. His miserly attitude got the better of him, you see—his grasping nature, and the fact that he could not trust his fellow buccaneers not to steal his prize if he let it out of sight. Had he even taken on enough men to make up the crews of his little fleet, once he had captured the steamship, he might have fared better against the adverse wind—but he over-reached himself, and came to grief. I seized the Cayman, while Boyer’s men secured the Belleville—intact, mercifully.
“It wasn’t easy persuading Boyer’s captains to agree to my bargain—you might almost have thought that they believed themselves to be making a pact with the Devil himself—but I have a certain reputation in these parts now. They allowed me to transfer the remainder of the Belleville’s cargo to the Cayman’s holds, in order to make use of an opportunity that might not present itself again very soon, and would require more courage and better seamanship than Boyer’s makeshift navy could supply. In the meantime, my zambo warriors raided the abandoned mestizo camps on the shore. There were supplies of palm-oil there, carefully harvested and barreled for trade along the coast.
“The Republicans have the ships the French lost, but not the expert crews to man them, so they’ve never dared risk them in an all-out attack on Tortuga, preferring to suffer the depredations of the pirates—at least until Desart took a step too far in seizing the Belleville. When I explained to them how I might be of service to them, given the unique circumstances, they were prepared to take the risk of making a diabolical pact. So here we are, making war against the resurrected Tortuga, helping to make the Caribbean sea-lanes safe once again for civilized traffic.”
At the dead of night, there was not much to be seen in the harbor that was host to the pirates’ lair; the lights on shore seemed feeble and distant, and the ships moored along the quay were no more than hulking shadows, having no need to obey conventional regulations regarding the lighting of ships in port. Mortdieu called out a few further orders, raising his voice just enough to be clearly heard on deck.
“I don’t understand,” Ned said. “What cargo did Desart feel obliged to keep aboard the Belleville, rather than risk its theft by his own fellows? Wasn’t she carrying agricultural machinery, to enable Boyer to renew the productivity of the plantations that the French abandoned.”
“Yes, she was,” Mortdieu confirmed. “But what Desart’s followers were able to tell us, once they had surrendered the Cayman to me and had been offered a choice between execution and co-operation, was that she was also carrying a considerable quantity of barrels filled with black powder—a fact that they had not noised about, for fear of alarming the so-called first-class passengers. Gunpowder is one of the few substances worth its weight in gold in these parts, at least for the present. You will remember of course, that Mademoiselle Laveau wanted to represent me as a reincarnation of Sir Francis Drake—well, who am I to dispute her judgment in such matters?”
The night was warm—so warm that Mortdieu had forsaken his grey greatcoat—but Ned felt a sudden chill run down his spine. “You’re going to use the Cayman as a fireship?” he said, incredulously. “You’ve promised Boyer’s captains that you’ll destroy the pirate fleet?”
“Even Drake only managed to singe the King of Spain’s beard,” Mortdieu pointed out. “It would be optimistic to think that I could destroy more than half of the buccaneers’ vessels, even with luck on my side—but yes, the zambo have been laboring all day to turn the Cayman into a floating torch, with an explosive heart. You might want to join me in abandoning ship, now. The wheel’s lashed, and it only remains to light the fuse.”
So saying, the Grey Man took out a tinder-box, and struck a flame, which he used to light a trio of oil-lanterns neatly lined up on the rail of the bridge. Then, one by one, he picked them up and threw them down on to the deck, simultaneously shouting an imperious warning—for which the remaining crewmen had obviously been waiting. There was a series of splashes as they jumped into the water.
Ned felt a pang of regret with respect to his claim that he was a good swimmer—which was only half-true. The better option, it seemed to him, would have been to let himself be transferred to the canoes before the Cayman ran the gauntlet of the forts, in order that he might watch events from a safer distance, as a clever and cautious spy ought to have done. He had no choice now though, but to follow the advice he had been given, and stay close to the General.
Without any hesitation, he leapt over the bulwark in the Grey Man’s wake.
By the time the two of them had swum clear of the hull, the Cayman was ablaze, with her carefully-disposed sails still catching the wind and drawing her inexorably toward the ships clustered along the quay.
Mortdieu patiently trod water, watching her progress, even though the sentries on the fortresses to either side of the harbor entrance, who had let Amédée Desart’s ship pass without a second glance, once they had identified her, had opened fire with their muskets. They were not actually firing at anything, Ned realized, but merely wanted to be seen to be doing something, however belated and futile. The bullets plopped harmlessly into the water.
Ned trod water too, still sticking close to Mortdieu—and also to Jeannot, who had come to join his captain. Ned spread out his arms, and contrived to stay afloat as he watched the burning ship move toward its fatal encounter, with a seemingly-supernatural grace. He knew, of course, that the vessel was going to blow up—but knowing it could not prepare him for the violence of the explosion, which deafened him and sent a shock wave through his body that caused him to draw in his arms reflexively. His head dipped below the surface, but he closed his eyes and mouth, and contrived to float back up to the surface again—just in time to catch the violent wave that the explosion had sent forth across the harbor. The wave submerged him again, and caused such chaos in the water that he floundered helplessly for a full minute, holding his breath desper
ately.
By the time he had fought his way back to the surface again, shards of burning wood were still flying in every direction from the place where the sinking remnant of the Cayman was brightly ablaze. The shards were peppering the other vessels, whose huddled silhouettes stood out in the half-light much more clearly than before, but the greater danger to the anchored ships was the pall of burning oil that was spreading out over the quiet water of the harbor, licking at a dozen hulls.
Death is the currency of diplomacy, Ned thought—and remembered Sawney Ross’s nightmare of the future, in which entire armies of the reborn dead might clash in battle, in blind and stupid continuation of that endless dark night of warfare, by which means common humankind still preferred to settle its affairs.
As the water became a little calmer, it became easier to swim, but Ned could feel the numbness of exhaustion creeping into his limbs. He had eaten but poorly of late, and had not slept peacefully in quite some time. He was not sure that he could swim all the way through the harbor-neck in order to rejoin the canoes—especially if the sporadic musket-fire from the forts continued.
Fire was climbing the flanks of a second vessel now, and a third. Watchmen had been left aboard both ships, and they had supplies of water, but they had not been ready for any such eventuality as this. Ned watched them racing around like crazed ants, with little more effect. Military discipline and practice gained in fire-drills might have saved them, but they had neither. The flames took hold of both vessels, and continued to spread as the layer of burning oil was carried further afield.
Frankenstein in London Page 10