Sea Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  They were drifting in the night. They didn’t know it, but they were drifting towards Les Trois Grunes. I’d only seen those rocks once in my life, and then from a safe distance, but I well remembered the broken and turbulent water surrounding them.

  I clung on to Mist-Spinner, shivering and weakening, waiting to add to their panic.

  “It’s the shaft,” Garrard’s voice sounded very close above me, and I guessed he must have been leaning over the engine. “Go and take a look,” he said at last.

  “I don’t know about engines.”

  “I’m not talking about the engine, you fool! The engine works, doesn’t it? I’m talking about the bloody propeller.” Garrard had at last worked out what might be wrong. “Lean over the back, and tell me what you can see.”

  “He might be there!” Peel, at least, had not forgotten the mystery of my absence.

  Garrard swore. I pulled myself round Mist-Spinner’s counter so that I would be hidden when Peel leaned over the stern. I held on to a rubbing strake and prayed that the cold would not sap my last reserves of strength.

  Then, despite the cold, I almost screamed in fear.

  A gun fired. The flash of it was blinding and the sound of it deafening. Garrard had gone to the stern and blasted a shotgun into the water. If I had not moved round the counter, I would have taken that cartridge clean in the skull. Garrard fired again. “He’s not there now, Peel.” I heard the heavy gun drop on to the deck. “So bloody look while I try again.”

  I was shivering with fear and cold, but made myself edge to the very corner of the stern. Peel was very close to me, but he wouldn’t have seen me if I’d been waving at him; his eyes were so light-blinded. “Give it a go!” he shouted.

  Garrard started the engine, put it in gear, and it stopped. I shivered and said a small prayer of thanks that the crankshaft had not broken. “Well?” Garrard asked. I don’t know what they expected to see; they were just groping in the frightening dark searching for any straw to clutch.

  “I can’t see nothing!” Peel shouted.

  “Then lean over properly, you bastard!”

  Peel leaned over. There was a single lifting derrick at Mist-Spinner’s stern, put there for hauling pots, and he held on to it as he craned far out over the transom. “Go on, then!”

  Garrard started the engine again, Peel leaned out to look down into the blackness, and I pulled myself up on the outboard bracket. As I pulled, Mist-Spinner’s hull dropped on a wave so that I shot up from the black sea, shedding water, like a drowned man coming to life. Peel could not even call out before my cold hands had gripped the collar of his coat. I fell back, pulling. He was a huge man, far heavier than I, but terror and shock were on my side. He was already leaning outwards, and now I dragged him down. He lost his grip on the derrick, opened his mouth to shout, then hit the water. The motor roared, surrounding us with noise and smoke, then abruptly died as Garrard pushed it into gear. I let go of Peel and twisted desperately away so that he could not grab hold of me.

  Garrard, looking from the lit wheelhouse into the foggy darkness, did not know what had happened. He shouted for Peel, who was splashing and spluttering two yards from Mist-Spinner’s stern. “Help!” Peel finally shouted, then spluttered as he went under again. I was working my way forward along the hull. I was cold and weak, but desperation was giving me a last surge of warming adrenalin.

  “You fucking idiot!” Garrard twisted off the helmsman’s chair and ran aft.

  “It was him!” Peel shouted; then, more urgently and pathetically, “I can’t swim!”

  Garrard seized a lifebelt and hurled it towards his partner. I grabbed the gunwale, said a prayer, and pulled.

  I had worked my way forward so that I was close to the open after-end of the wheelhouse. The freeboard was low here to give men room to work crab pots or long-lines. I grabbed and heaved, trusting that Garrard would still be confused by the panic.

  He saw me as I rolled my right leg up to the gunwale. For a second he didn’t quite believe what he saw, then he ran towards me to kick me off the gunwale. He would have finished me there and then, but Les Trois Grunes saved me. We had been taken to where the sea bed rose to undercut the waves. The swell was breaking and lurching and Mist-Spinner suddenly heaved up to one such broken sea. Garrard staggered desperately away and almost went overboard, only steadying himself at the last moment with a despairing lunge for the derrick. The delay let me roll over the gunwale on to the deck. I needed a weapon, any weapon, and I saw an old rope fender by my hand so I picked it up and threw it blindly towards him.

  Garrard ducked out of its way. The searchlight mounted on the wheelhouse roof was still pointing forward and I could see, in the pearly fog, where Marianne was rolling in water broken white about the shoals. I hadn’t been looking for that danger, but for another weapon. The only thing I could find was an empty plastic fish-box, the kind that are packed with ice and newly caught fish. I snatched it up, turned back, and saw that Garrard had drawn his long-bladed knife. He ignored the discarded shotgun; clearly it was empty and he had no cartridges in the pockets of his tweed jacket.

  “Very clever, my lord.” He smiled at me. His confidence, so abraded by the night and the sea, was returning, for now he was in a situation he could master: one man against one man, with death as the finale.

  “Very clever,” he said again, then he let go of the derrick and came towards me. I raised the heavy fish-box as a shield. Mist-Spinner heaved up, then thumped down. Garrard lost his balance, and I charged him. I was still cold and weak, but I was used to a pitching deck and he was not. I whirled the heavy box like a club, hoping to slam him overboard, but he dropped to one knee, under my wild swing, and lunged the knife like a poniard. I stepped back just in time, tried to crush him with the box, but a heave of the sea threw him back from my blow. I could hear Peel splashing at the stern. He had the lifebelt now, and it could only be a matter of time before he was back on board. All around us the sea was fretting white, while beneath us the sea bed was rising to shatter the waves into churning chaos.

  “Now!” Garrard shouted, at the same time glancing over my shoulder towards the companionway that led to the forward cuddy. I fell for the trick, because I had still not convinced myself that Elizabeth would trust Garrard, and that she might therefore have been sheltering in the tiny cabin. I glanced back for a half-second, realised I’d been fooled, but by the time I looked back Garrard was already moving. He threw himself forward, knife reaching. I swung the fish-box, but he was past my defence and I felt a dull punch on my right side. The boat rocked to port, Garrard staggered, and I hit him hard in the face with the plastic box. The blow jarred him sideways so that he fell on to the open engine hatch. I was hurt. Blood was streaming down my wet shorts and dripping on to the deck. Garrard had fallen heavily across the engine. It was the moment for me to finish him off, but I was too weakened by the cold. All I could do was clumsily swing the plastic box at him. The blow achieved nothing. Garrard rolled off the engine towards the stern and picked himself up. Mist-Spinner was broaching to the waves, jerking and rolling.

  Garrard braced himself against the stern gunwale, waiting for a wave to pass. When it did, and Mist-Spinner was momentarily stable, he came forward with short dancing steps, like a boxer approaching cautiously for a final attack. I was only just realising how much the cold sea had weakened me. I was shivering, bleeding, gasping for breath, and I think Garrard knew I was finished. He smiled. “Had enough?”

  “Fuck off.” It was a feeble defiance.

  He was still braced against the stern, one hand on the derrick, the other holding the knife. He gave the sea rapid glances, waiting for a calm trough of the waves to give himself a moment’s peace during which he could kill me. Peel was clinging to the stern, unable to haul his huge weight over the transom.

  “You didn’t kill me before,” I tried to goad Garrard, “and you won’t now.”

  He laughed. “We weren’t meant to kill you the first time, just scare
the shit out of you.” He edged forward, but a surge of sea water made him stagger back to the derrick’s security.

  I wondered if he’d been telling the truth, and that the attempt on my life in Cullen’s yard had been nothing but a scare tactic. “So why kill me now?”

  “Why ever not?” He was amusing himself.

  “Whatever Elizabeth’s paying you,” I said, “I’ll double.” I was not planning to make any deals, just to kill him, but I wanted to distract him for a few seconds.

  Instead I had amused him. “Your sister’s paying me nothing. We’re partners!” He was mocking my ignorance, but behind the mockery I detected an odd tenderness.

  “You’re lovers!” I said in astonishment, and understood at last why she trusted him with the money.

  “And partners. It was I, after all, who discovered the picture, and it was I who graciously allowed your sister to invest in that discovery.” He glanced astern and I saw a smooth trough approaching behind a steep crest, and I knew that when that smooth water settled the pitching hull he would come for me.

  “What do you mean,” I asked, “discovered it? Elizabeth and you stole it!”

  He laughed. “Proclaim your innocence to the end, my lord, and much good may it do you.” He looked behind again, judging the wave’s approach, and, while he was looking away from me, I charged. He must have sensed the attack for he looked back quickly, saw me stagger as the wave heaved Mist-Spinner high, then, as her bows dropped, he let go of the derrick and came at me.

  He lunged with the knife. I swung the fish-box, but his lunge had been a feint. He danced away, but I had released the box so that it hit him a glancing blow on the hip. Mist-Spinner tilted backwards on the wave’s crest and the violent motion together with my small blow gave me just enough time to twist away and scramble on to the narrow walkway beside the wheelhouse. Garrard followed me, but he wasn’t so nimble about a boat, and his desperate slash at my right thigh missed.

  I was defeated and fleeing. I wanted to reach the foredeck from where I would dive overboard and swim after the drifting Marianne which I’d last seen off Mist-Spinner’s bows. I was too cold and weak to defeat Garrard, but I could leave him here, stranded and helpless, while I sailed away to fetch reinforcements. It wasn’t brave, but it was sensible.

  Garrard clambered desperately after me. I limped forward. The searchlight was still switched on, aimed blindly forward to where the waves shattered about Les Trois Grunes. Marianne was thirty yards off the port bow and rolling violently in the shoal water. It would be a tough swim, perhaps a killing swim, but better to die in the sea’s cold cleanness than from Garrard’s knife. I took a breath, then, in the fogged beam of the searchlight, I saw the second shotgun. It was Peel’s shotgun; the weapon he must have discarded on the foredeck when he had first boarded Marianne. The gun now lay in Mist-Spinner’s bow scuppers, trapped there by the pulpit bars.

  I threw myself at the weapon. A lurch of the sea made me trip on the forehatch rim; I fell, but the boat’s motion slid me on my blood-slicked belly to where the gun waited. A steel cleat ripped at my thigh. Garrard saw the weapon and jumped desperately from the small platform beside the wheelhouse. His knife was raised. Mist-Spinner corkscrewed in a sudden upsurge of the sea, then thumped down into a trough. My cold hands could not grip the weapon and, when the boat lurched to starboard, I almost let the gun fall into the water. I half slid off the deck after it, only saving myself by grabbing the pulpit rail with my left hand. White water seethed and broke under me. Garrard shouted as the deck heaved back up and I imagined his voice was shouting in triumph and I almost screamed because my imagination felt his blade’s deep slash. The gun was precarious in my nerveless right hand. The knife still didn’t strike. The shout had been Garrard’s protest as a roll of the deck jarred him back against the wheelhouse.

  I twisted on to my back. Life was counted in fractions of seconds now. If Garrard could reach me, then I would be dead, but if the boat’s violence in the shoals made him clumsy and gave me time, then I would live. I turned to face him and could see nothing except the blinding white brilliance of the searchlight beam. I was still half overboard, clinging to the pulpit with my left hand. I tried to sit up, but an upward surge of the bows drove me down. I could not see Garrard. I was blinded by light, paralysed by weakness, and terrified. Mist-Spinner hammered off the wave crest and a spout of breaking water exploded up beside me.

  I was tempted to let myself fall and to strike out for the drifting Marianne. I did not even know if this gun was loaded, let alone cocked, but then a slice of silver light dazzled from the great white blinding flood of the searchlight. It was the knife blade, raised to strike, and beside it was a ghost of a face, mouth open, teeth showing, shouting, then the light was blotted out by Garrard’s body as he hurled himself towards me.

  My thumb groped for the gun’s hammers. No time. I was screaming defiance and fear. I barely had time to pull the triggers. My right hand was round the narrow part of the stock, the gun’s butt was against my ribs, and the barrels were pointing somewhere at the shadow above me.

  I pulled both triggers. I was still screaming, now in anticipation of the knife’s strike.

  The gun had been cocked. The butt drove into my ribs like a kicking horse. Noise filled the chaotic air.

  Garrard’s head simply disappeared. Blood fountained in a halo about the searchlight beam. I watched, appalled, the first strong colour of this black night. His knife clattered down to the deck and lodged against my right ankle while his body twitched back as if plucked by strings. It slammed against the sloping wheelhouse windows, then slid down on to the foredeck.

  I closed my eyes. I was still half overboard. My ribs hurt. I was cold and shaking. I pulled with my left hand and, slowly, very slowly, I inched myself aboard. White water broke at Mist-Spinner’s stem and drenched the foredeck and, when I opened my eyes, I saw Garrard’s diluted blood flooding the shallow scuppers. I rolled on to my side, safe now inside the pulpit rails and slowly, very slowly, knelt upright. I still clutched the gun.

  Garrard’s expensive tweed jacket was soaked in blood. The cloth of the jacket had snagged on a cleat and the motion of the boat was twitching him from side to side in a sick parody of life, but he was dead. I’d blown away his knowing, confident face. All that was left of his head was a butcher’s mess of blood, brains and bone.

  I just stared at him as if I expected the headless corpse somehow to stand and come back to the attack. I was shaking. I’d never killed a man before. I’d promised Jennifer to kill this one, but making the promise was one thing, fulfilling it was quite another. Blood gurgled in the scuppers and drained overboard.

  “Help!” Peel shouted from the stern.

  Very slowly, very stiffly, I picked myself up. I felt weak and sick and cold. Mist-Spinner heaved and fell. I took a huge breath, realised I wasn’t going to vomit, so picked a careful path through the offal on the deck. I edged past the wheelhouse to see Peel clinging to the stern. He’d used the lifebelt’s rope to reach the transom but he was too cold to pull himself aboard. I swivelled the searchlight to dazzle him.

  His eyes became huge as I walked down the aft deck. I put the double barrels close to his left eye. “What was the signal you were supposed to send when you’d got the money?”

  “Don’t shoot! For Christ’s sake, don’t shoot!” His teeth were chattering.

  “What was the signal you were supposed to send when you’d got the money?” My voice was toneless. There had to be such a signal, I knew.

  “Fingers,” he said.

  I stared at him. Such a banal word. “Fingers?” I said incredulously.

  “Honest! Don’t shoot, please!”

  “And where were you taking the money?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I jerked the barrels to cut one of his eyebrows. “Where, Peel, where?”

  “It’s on the little box. I can’t work it. I don’t know, mate.” He was sobbing with terror and cold now. “I don’
t know. Mr Garrard worked the box, not me.”

  The Decca, of course. I pulled the gun’s triggers, and the hammers fell on to the dead chambers. “Get in the boat if you can,” I said, “and if you can’t, drown.”

  The boat slammed down into white water. So far as I could remember the rocks at Les Trois Grunes only dried out at the lowest tides, yet that was small consolation. A dip in the long swell could easily drop us on to one of the rock pinnacles and rip the bottom out of Mist-Spinner, so my first task was to clear Mist-Spinner away from the hazard, and only then look for the clever mind that had spun me through this electronic maze. The night wasn’t over yet, and maybe the killing wasn’t done, but at least I had evened the game.

  If Garrard had known boats, he would still have been alive and I would have been dead, for Mist-Spinner had a prop plate. Most working boats have such a plate, put there against the eventuality of drifting across their towed lines. Because no fisherman wants to go overboard to clear a fouled prop, just aft of the stern-box they put a bolted plate which, lifted, gives access to the propeller.

  I found some tools in the wheelhouse. It needed all my strength on the big wrench to shift the bolts. One of the old rusted bolts sheared, but the others came free and I swung the plate aside to reveal the small black well of cold water. I could have fetched Garrard’s knife from the foredeck, but I didn’t fancy the sight of his corpse, so instead I rummaged through the wheelhouse cave-lockers and found an old gutting knife. I reached down into the cold water and cut the rope free from the propeller blades. It took less than five minutes.

  Peel whimpered at the stern, alternately calling for help and cursing. Once or twice he tried to climb aboard, but the cold had sapped his huge strength. I ignored him as I bolted the prop plate home and laid the deck planks back into place. Then I picked up Garrard’s discarded shotgun and tossed it overboard.