Journey of the Pale Bear

by Susan Fletcher

  “He takes . . .” The doctor frowned. “Who? You mean Hauk?”

  I shrugged.

  “So, what have you been eating?”

  “He leaves the biscuit sometimes,” I said. “And there’s the bear’s fish—”

  “The bear’s raw fish? You’re eating that?”

  I shrugged again.

  “Arthur, those fish aren’t fit to eat! God only knows how old they are by now. Listen, I’ll have words with Hauk, put a spoke in his wheel—”

  “No! Don’t do that!”

  “I need you strong and well, Arthur. You have important work to do.”

  And his own neck, I recalled, was on the line.

  “Don’t talk to Hauk,” I said. “Please.”

  “But you can’t . . .” The doctor sighed, settled back down on the stool, and, leaning toward me, laid a hand on my shoulder.

  Beyond the little room, I could hear the churning of the sea and the whuff of the wind in the sail. I could hear the creak of the tiller and the clunk of the helmsman’s footsteps just outside, and the companionable grunts and calls of men working together. And now, to my horror, I felt the burn of tears welling up behind my eyes and the heave of a silent sob deep in my chest. I hadn’t wept—not once—not when Hauk was pummeling me, nor when the doctor was prodding at my wounds and dosing them with stinging potions. But the weight of sympathy in the doctor’s hand on my shoulder unmanned me.

  I wiped my eyes and nose on my sleeve. I drew in a shaky breath. The doctor abruptly withdrew his hand. He stood and then crossed to the door, picking his way through the heaps of sleeping rolls, seabags, and wooden chests.

  If I were home, I knew what I would do. I would run, run, run up into the fells. I would stay there until the sun sank low in the sky, or maybe forever. But now there was nowhere to run to. I was trapped on this ship, with Hauk and the bear, until we came to London.

  The doctor opened the door; sunlight flooded in. I rose to my feet and followed him outside, past the helmsman.

  “How much longer till we come to port?” I asked.

  “Where? In London?”

  I nodded.

  “A week, maybe two. It depends upon wind and tides. And the captain has dealings in a couple of ports along the way.”

  “So, we’ll keep on to the south, along the Danish shore . . .”

  “And from there we turn west and sail hard by the coast of the Low Countries. And then it’s across the channel to London.”

  “How far is Wales from Lon—?” I began.

  “At the far, savage rim of the civilized world,” boomed a voice. The captain, striding astern, came to an abrupt halt when he saw my face. “Good Lord, Garth, what’s fallen out with your boy? Did the bear—?”

  “Not the bear,” the doctor said mildly, “but another kind of beast—the human kind.”

  The captain dismissed my injuries with a wave of his hand. “Wales!” he snorted. “A backwater trading post—not worth the time nor the trouble.”

  I wanted to protest, for I misliked hearing my native land spoken of in that way, but the captain marched to his quarters beneath the sterncastle and shut the door firmly behind.

  CHAPTER 16

  A Rent in the Mist

  THAT NIGHT, SOMETHING roused me. I opened my eyes and found myself shrouded in a chill, clammy mist that eddied about the dim lanterns like spilt milk swirling in water. The stars had vanished, as had the mast, the sail, and all but the men sleeping nearest beside me. I could hear the creak of ropes, and the murmuring of men’s voices, and the swish of water against the hull. And something else—more felt than heard—the thud, thud, thud of the bear pacing in her cage.

  Though she often paced, even at night, something about the sound of her footfalls now troubled me. They did not have the steady back-and-forth cadence I had become accustomed to, but started and stopped, started and stopped, in a choppy, uneasy rhythm. She was chuffing, letting out those coughing, snorting breaths that told me she was unsettled.

  I rubbed my bruised eye, which felt a little better than before, and the aching in my head had abated. But now I heard a deep rumbling sound, a growl.

  I rose to my feet, gooseflesh prickling my arms.

  Why would she be growling . . . now?

  Movement caught my eye; I looked up. Through a high rent in the mist, I beheld a vision from a dream: a tall mast reaching for the gibbous moon, too near to belong to another ship, but in the wrong place altogether to be our own. It hung there, impossibly, coming closer. . . .

  Crash!

  The ship lurched; I was knocked down, cracking an elbow on the boards. The night exploded around me—wood splintering, men shouting, the bear roaring. Something shifted: a thunder of footfalls surged in a wave across the deck.

  Thuds. Cries. The singing clash of steel against steel.

  I felt a hard thump against my side; I heard a bellow of surprise; a body toppled heavily across my legs and then rolled off me, cursing. I scrambled to my feet, but straightaway another man rammed into me and knocked me flat. This time I made for the bear cage, which would at least give me something to hang on to. Mist eddied before me, allowing veiled glimpses of the mayhem and then swaddling all in thick, white darkness. At last the bars appeared from out of the mist. I grabbed on to one, relieved . . . but something was amiss.

  Creak.

  Clang.

  Creak.

  Clang.

  Through a thin patch in the fog, I saw the cage door swing open. Slam shut. Swing ajar again.

  The bear stood just within the open doorway, peering out.

  CHAPTER 17

  Treasure

  THE DOOR CLANKED shut. Creaked open again.

  I should move right now. I should shut that door, and quick.

  But my feet seemed to be stuck to the deck. What if the bear saw me coming? What if I didn’t get to the door in time?

  Would she attack me?

  The bear leaned forward, her great long snout reaching and quivering, as if the air were a solid thing that she could touch, as if she could feel out its secret promises of danger and opportunity.

  Just move, I told myself. I forced myself to set one foot after the other in the direction of the cage door.

  Clank.

  Creak.

  Clank.

  A man loomed suddenly before me. He clutched my arm—clutched it hard—and put his face down right in front of mine. Bulbous nose. A ragged scar across one cheek. Nobody I’d seen before. “Where’s the treasure?” he rasped.

  “What . . . treasure?”

  “The king’s treasure, what else? Don’t play the fool with me, boy, or I’ll—” He gave me a shake, so hard my head snapped back and my teeth rattled in my head.

  Something moved behind him. Something large and white.

  The man turned to see what had caught my eye. The bear growled—a low, throbbing rumble that entered the base of my spine and sent waves of prickling gooseflesh all across my back.

  The man let me go and stumbled backward. A flash of steel—and then the bear was upon him. The man spat out a curse; there was a spray of blood; and then his body rose into the air and seemed to hang there in the thinning fog before it plummeted to the boards and bounced with a sickening thud.

  The bear was swaying back and forth. She let out a chuffing grunt that sounded part angry and part bewildered, and then she struck out across the deck. Two men rushed at her with drawn swords, but then a slash of the bear’s great claws had both of them on their backs and one of them spurting blood. A swarm of arrows came buzzing through the air at her. She let out a roar; she rose up on her hind legs; she swatted at her nose. Another man attacked; a swipe of the claws laid him out flat.

  All about me men hurtled across the deck away from her; I heard splashes as they hit the water.

  “Arthur!”

  The doctor’s voice. I turned to look for him, but though the fog was surely lifting, I couldn’t make him out in the throng.

  “A
rthur, here!”

  There—not too far away, near the hatch to the hold—there he was, waving.

  I ran through the din and pandemonium, dodging unsheathed cutlasses and thrusting elbows, stepping over bodies that lay buckled and broken. The bear was growling, pacing, shaking her head, sending a fine mist of blood into the air. I heard more splashes as men leaped overboard; whether pirates or our own crew, I neither knew nor cared. I reached the hatch, shinnied a little way down the ladder, and stopped at a rung just above the doctor.

  “Shut the hatch, Arthur,” he said.

  I did.

  Overhead—dim shouts and the thunder of running footsteps. Below—an ominous gurgling sound, and a powerful reek of fish and stagnant water. A lantern bloomed to life somewhere beneath my feet, and then another.

  “How did she escape?” the doctor asked.

  “The cage door was open. Maybe that hinge . . .”

  The doctor swore. “They never did mend that right.”

  Presently, it grew quieter above. I climbed up a couple of rungs, opened the hatch a crack, and looked out.

  The fog had thinned a bit, and in the faint moonlight I could see that the stretch of deck before me was empty.

  “Pirates?” the doctor asked.

  “I don’t see them, sir.”

  “The bear?”

  I lifted the hatch higher. Still no pirates—at least, none standing. There were some lumps and smears on deck, too dim to make out clearly. Nor could I find the pirate ship. Someone had reefed our sail, and a few seamen sat on the yard beam, above. The bear I saw pacing astern, staggering a little and weaving from side to side. She stopped now to swipe at the arrow that pierced her snout. Two more arrows bristled from her leg and shoulder, and one ear seemed to have been torn, and blood soaked her head and neck and chest. Slippery red tracks followed her across the deck.

  “She’s hurt,” I said.

  “How badly?”

  “Three arrows. A lot of blood. But maybe not all of it’s hers.”

  The doctor swore again.

  The bear lurched toward the sterncastle, on top of which, I now saw, many of our crewmen had fled to safety. She rose to stand on her hind legs and snuffled at the parapet. The men shifted back, away from her. The bear groaned, then thumped down on all fours and turned away.

  I scooted down a few rungs and pulled the hatch cover tight. My heart, beating fast, felt oddly swollen and tender in my chest.

  “The pirate said ‘treasure,’ ” I murmured.

  “What?”

  “That’s what the pirate said to me,” I said.

  “Which pirate?”

  “The one near the bear cage. The one the bear . . .” Well. I didn’t know, exactly, what the bear had done to him. Maimed him, certainly. Maybe killed him.

  “ ‘Treasure’?”

  “ ‘King’s treasure.’ He asked me where it was. He . . . shook me.”

  It sounded childish when I said it. With all the blood, and the bear wounded, and some men likely dead . . . He shook me.

  “The captain was right,” the doctor said. “Those pirates must have heard something in port and thought we had king’s treasure aboard.”

  “Do you think they know?” I asked. “That the bear is the treasure?”

  “The bear . . . ?” By the dim lantern light, I could see the doctor’s gaze sharpen. He laughed dryly, gave me a grim little smile. “I hope they do now,” he said.

  I heard the bear’s footsteps on the deck, drawing near. I heard her halt just above. I held my breath. Could she smell me? Would she try to pry open the hatch?

  Some small part of me yearned to go up there and hum to her, maybe scratch behind her ears. But the greater part wanted to stay down here, in the dark, where it was safe.

  The bear’s footsteps thumped again, moving away.

  I sighed out a deep breath. Below, I heard the swish of water. Above, only the bear.

  I would have asked the doctor What happens now? except that I feared what his answer would be.

  CHAPTER 18

  Footfalls

  IT WAS QUIET, save for the pacing of the bear on deck and the gurgle of water below. I looked down and saw by the swaying lantern light that water was rising in the hold. The pirate ship must have breached us. From time to time, I heard voices from the sterncastle, and, once, I heard a man’s footsteps running on the deck above. My fingers began to feel cramped from clinging to the ladder, and I longed to climb up on deck and give them a rest. But whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the slash of claws and the spray of blood and the thump and bounce of the pirate’s body on the boards.

  Just as I was beginning to wonder if we would be forced to stay like this all night, or maybe forever, the captain’s voice bellowed from above:

  “Doctor!”

  “Scoot down, Arthur,” the doctor said. He crawled over me, cracked open the hatch, and looked about, no doubt checking for the whereabouts of the bear.

  “Doctor!” the captain shouted again. Sounding vexed now.

  The doctor lifted the hatch wider and turned to face the sterncastle. “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t say I didn’t tell you!”

  “No, sir.”

  “I warned you about pirates.”

  “You were right, sir,” the doctor admitted.

  “Where is that rapscallion of yours, that Arthur?”

  “He’s here, sir. What do you want with him?”

  “You know bloody well what I want with him! Why else is he taking up precious space on my ship and laying waste to my working men’s rations?”

  There it was. The captain cared nothing for my life, but only for his commission with the bear.

  The doctor shifted his weight on the ladder and looked down at me. “Arthur, can you persuade the bear to go quietly back into her cage?”

  How in heaven’s name did he think I could do that?

  “You want me to go up there with her?” I asked. “Alone?”

  The doctor held my gaze for a moment, then turned back to the captain. “We’re . . . devising a plan,” he called.

  To me, again, he said, “Listen. Remember how you hummed to the bear that time?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “For God’s sake, Garth, we’re breached! We don’t have all bloody night!” the captain roared. “Have that do-nothing layabout of yours hitch a couple of ropes to the bear’s harness, and my men will drag the blasted beast into its cage.”

  “She won’t sit still for me to tie the ropes,” I told the doctor. “She’s hurt, and riled.”

  “Rest easy, sir, I’ve got a plan!” the doctor shouted. I heard him sigh, and then in a low voice he muttered to me, “I think we’ll have to come at this from a couple of directions at once.”

  The doctor called down orders to the hold below, and presently, he and I were standing calf-deep in the frigid water at the base of the ladder. Close by stood three seamen wielding pots and spoons, another man with two red kerchiefs, and a fifth man with a string of metal pails tied together. They did not look happy.

  The plan was this: The five of them would go on deck and move astern, putting the bear between them and the cage. They would shout and set up a din with their implements. One man would wave the red handkerchiefs, and together, they would drive the bear toward the cage.

  “What if it won’t go?” one of the men asked.

  “She doesn’t like loud noise—we’ve seen that,” the doctor said. “While you’re distracting her, I’ll dump some fish into her cage. She’ll smell it. Likely, she’ll just head for her supper and you won’t have to do a thing.”

  “But what if it doesn’t?” the same man asked. “What if it comes for us?”

  “And what about him?” another sailor demanded, pointing at me. “What’s he eating up our rations for if we’re the ones risking our necks?”

  “Never mind him,” the doctor said. “If the bear attacks, just make for the sterncastle. Run.”

  The five sailors ey
ed me in a way I knew well—the way my stepbrothers looked at me when my mother took me under her wing. The thought of going up on deck with the bear drained all the lifeblood out of me and left me shaking, but some stubborn knot within me rebelled at being protected because I was too weak to stand on my own. “But what . . .” My voice quavered. I cleared my throat. “What do you want me to do?”

  “If this fails,” the doctor said grimly, “there’ll be plenty for you to do, believe me. But I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

  This plan of the doctor’s seemed frail and unpromising, but it was all I had to cling to. Why would the bear give up her freedom on account of a few pots and pans?

  I could hear her pacing, above. She seemed to be ranging across the entire deck.

  The five sailors mounted the ladder and, with some urging by the doctor, clambered up on deck. The doctor handed me a pail full of fish, took one for himself, and told me to scale the ladder behind him. “Wait here,” he said. “Shut the hatch behind me, but open it fast when you hear me call.” He thrust aside the hatch and climbed outside.

  In the hold, no one spoke. Above, I could hear footsteps on deck, but I couldn’t tell who was who, or what they were doing.

  Clank.

  My heart jumped.

  Clank-clank.

  That must be a pot, or a pail. I waited to hear more clanks, and shouting, but there was nothing.

  Nothing but the swish of water.

  But now . . .

  Footsteps. Someone was running. And now, heavier thumps, coming fast.

  “Arthur!”

  I flung open the hatch; the doctor jumped down, slamming into me. I dropped my pail and nearly toppled off the ladder entirely, but managed to hang on with fingers and a toe. The hatch banged down just as heavy footsteps came galumphing across it.

  The bear.

  Above, a shout.

  The doctor waited a cautious moment, then cracked the hatch open and peeked out. “Come on, don’t give up yet,” he muttered. “Don’t—”

  A scream. Many voices, shouting. A great ringing clash of metal hitting the deck.