Go Saddle the Sea

by Joan Aiken

  His smile flashed again – his big handsome teeth were yellow as amber – and he said,

  ‘Don’t trouble your head about that, hijo – your friend is down in my shop at this moment, making himself so useful that I don’t know how I shall be able to part with him.’

  ‘My friend – ?’

  A flood of warm gladness passed through me. Although I had not realised it, as I lay in bed slowly regaining my wits, all the time a kind of troubled anxiety had lain below my fevered stupor; I had felt a pain of loss which I could not understand; this, I now perceived, was because I feared that the singer on the quay must long since have departed from Llanes and gone his way. Who he was, what he was, what land he came from, I had no idea, not having exchanged two words with him; but the very instant I laid eyes on him he had aroused in me such a great warmth of liking that – strange and fanciful as it may seem – the belief that he had gone, that I would never see him again, had thrown me into the grip of a most sorrowful dismay, as if my own brother had left me without saying goodbye.

  And yet I had never had a brother!

  ‘Why yes – your friend the singer,’ said the smith. ‘He is as skilful with a hammer as if he had been bred up in a forge! And indeed he tells me that he learned blacksmith’s work when he was a sailor in the British navy.’

  ‘Is he English? What is his name?’ I asked. I was becoming tired, now; my tongue seemed to thicken and clog; my words came slowly.

  ‘English, yes; his name is Sam – Sam Pollard,’ said the smith, giving it the Spanish l-sound, Polyard.

  ‘Twelve o’clock!’ proclaimed Assistenta from the canopy of my bed – which was a massive oaken fourposter – and little Conchita gave a shriek of laughter, dancing about the floor.

  ‘Oh, that bird!’ exclaimed Juana. ‘She has frightened me out of my wits, times without number! Run along, Father, and take Conchita with you; it is time to give our guest a merienda.’

  Suddenly I realised that I was hungry; after days when the very thought of food filled me with disgust, I longed for something savoury. Juana, as if guessing this, brought me a basin brimming with the most appetising fish broth, the best I ever tasted, and a big crusty piece of fresh bread. After eating, I slept, and when I woke again, I discovered with great delight that the English singer, Sam Pollard, was sitting on a stool by my bed.

  ‘Well, lad!’ he said, and a smile broke out like a lighthouse ray from his ugly, cheerful face, ‘Eh, lad, you surely did me a good turn there! I thought at first that we were like to be cast in jail for causing a disturbance on the quay – but Senor Colomas, our friend downstairs, is a great man in the town, it seems, and thanks to his gratitude for your saving his little Conchita, you and I are in clover. I’m treated like royalty wherever I go!’ He chuckled comfortably. ‘Which I little deserve! You’d best hurry up and get better so that you can come down and claim your own glory.’

  ‘Senor Colomas – is that the smith’s name? – said that you are working in his forge?’

  ‘Why yes – seeing him so well-disposed – I made bold to ask if he needed help. And it turned out he did. I’d picked up a knowledge of smith’s work – ’

  ‘And you are English?’ I said in that language.

  He burst into a roar of cheerful laughter. ‘I might a’ guessed, wi’ that yaller crop, that you weren’t a Dago!’ he replied in the same tongue. ‘I’ fact I did think it, when you joined in my songs so nimble! But what’s an English lad o’ your age doing wandering about Asturias, speaking the lingo like a native?’

  ‘My father was an English captain – he died in General Moore’s army. I myself have never been to England – but it is my wish to go there, to find his family.’

  ‘Well, lord ‘a mercy! Who’d ‘a thought it? Where do your kinsfolk live, then?’

  ‘I believe … in the town of Bath.’

  ‘Bath – aye, aye,’ he nodded. ‘I know of it. A fine town, ‘tis. That’s in the West Country – not too far from my parts.’

  ‘Where do you come from, then, Senor Pollard?’

  ‘Sam, Sam, lad – or Sammy. No ceremony betwixt shipmates! I comes from Cornwall – Fowey town. ‘Tis but a little place. Ye’ll not have heard of it. ‘Tis proper pretty, though.’ he sighed.

  ‘Why are you in Spain, Sam?’

  He sighed again. ‘Well, lad – that’s a long tale.’

  ‘I should greatly enjoy to hear it,’ I said.

  ‘Would ’ee truly? Well, if it ’ud pass the time for ’ee, while ’ee be obliged to lie abed – I’ll tell it.’

  So Sam told me his tale.

  And as I lay in Senor Colomas’s comfortable bed, listening to what had happened to Sam Pollard in the course of his twenty years, I discovered that my life, lonely and dreary as I had thought it, had been all sunshine, cakes, and kisses compared with what had befallen this cheerful, ugly fellow.

  He had lived with his mother and father and elder brother on a little farm near the port of Fowey in Cornwall. But the brother when he was sixteen, had been taken off by the Press Gang, to go to sea and fight against the French.

  (Bob had told me about the Press Gang, who went ashore from Navy ships and seized by force any strong, likely-looking man they saw, unless he was rich enough to buy himself off; I thought it sounded a most wicked practice.)

  Then, when he was thirteen, Sam himself, who was a stout, well-grown boy, had been taken likewise.

  ‘That were the trouble of living nigh to the port, ye see,’ he explained. ‘The lads as lived inland didn’t fare so badly. O’ course, by the time they took me, Boney was nigh beat, but still they wanted lads for the transport ships to Spain and to France … There warn’t the danger to me, though, that there had been for my poor brother Jarge; he were killed at Trafalgar.’

  ‘But wasn’t it dreadful – being dragged away from your home like that?’

  ‘We-ell,’ he said slowly. ‘Aye, I did cry for a night or two. But I learned a rare lot at sea – tales and songs beyond belief. And the chaplain, he learned me to read and scribe. And I had some good messmates. But my poor owd Mam and Dad, ‘twas hard for them. They couldn’t work the farm too well on their own, see, and then Dad stuck a pitchfork through his foot and lamed hisself. And the price o’ food went cruel high. Ah, I reckon they both died of want. An’, when the peace came, an’ I got my discharge – that was two years later – I got home to find the reason why I hadn’t had no news of ‘em was acos they was both dead an’ gone, an’ the farm all to rack and ruin.’

  ‘Oh, Sam – ’

  Take heart, messmate, their troubles is all over now,’ he said, smiling at me kindly, as if it had been I who had come home to that empty, ruined place.

  ‘So what did you do then?’

  ‘Ah, then,’ he said, ‘I got wed to my cousin Lily. She’d alius had an eye to me, an’ I’d alius had an eye to her, ever since we was liddle ‘uns. A proper pretty mawther she were – so white and tall as a white foxglove in a wood.’

  He paused, and a clouded, thoughtful expression came over his face.

  I was greatly surprised to learn that he had been married – he looked so young – and, from his silence, feared to ask what happened next. But he went on of his own accord, in a quiet voice,

  ‘And we got us a smallholding near Falmouth – for my dad’s place was more than I could tackle. And then we had a liddle ‘un – our liddle Katie – and then she and her ma took sick of the-croup in the winter three years agone – the place was so damp, ye see, not being in good shape – and things was gone amiss on the farm while I tried to tend them, the cow poorly wi’ the colic and the hay were all rained away that year; and Lily had another babe an’ the birth went contrary – an’ I’d not enough money to buy food and doctor’s medicine. My uncle Ebenezer Pinchplum – that was Lily’s dad – had loaned me a bit o’ money at a cruel high rate of interest – but when Lily and little Katie – died – he took the farm offa me to pay the debt. And he took the liddle lad to rear him – l
iddle Mark – but then word came he’d died too. He’d had too bad a start, reckon. And when I was – when I went to see my uncle he said he’d have me flung in jail.’

  ‘What?’ I exclaimed. ‘But why?’

  ‘For debt.’

  ‘But he’d taken the farm!’

  ”Twarn’t but a small place, ye see,’ said Sam apologetically. ‘He said the debt were more than the place were worth – wi’ the interest an’ all. I reckoned to get a job as a smith in Falmouth, to pay it off, but they’d a smith there a’ready, no need for another. And, to tell truth, I hadn’t much heart to stay nigh the place when my dearies was gone. So, to ‘scape being thrown in jail for debt, I shipped to sea again.’

  ‘I think your uncle sounds like the worst monster, in the world!’

  ‘Ah well, he were main grieved when Lily died. That soured him. He said I done wrong to a-marry her. But we had those happy years … I reckon we were as happy as any in the land. And the three of them are in Paradise now. I take comfort from that.’

  He fell silent, gazing at his big bony hands stretched out on his long bony knees.

  ‘What happened then?’ said I. ‘After you went back to sea?’

  He smiled widely.

  ‘A-well, you’ll think I be the unluckiest chap in creation – or else the clumsiest. For a stay snapped under me when I were in the rigging – reefing for a blow in the Bay o’ Biscay – and I got me a broken leg. That’s why I weren’t so quick, like you, to rescue the liddle maid when she took her tumble. A sailorman with a busted leg is no use, so they put me ashore at Santander, to find my own way home. Only I couldn’t do that, ye see, I munna go back to England or they’d throw me into debtors’ jail. So I tried to work as longshoreman in Santander, an’ I did for a bit; but the takings weren’t so good – the Basques along there are clannish, like, they stick by their own; so I reckoned to come along the coast playing my music and see how I fared. And I’ve fared none too badly.’

  ‘But it’s terrible that you cannot go home!’ I burst out.

  ‘Nay, nay,’ he said, smiling his cheerful, easy smile. ‘This land of Spain’s none so bad. I like it well enow. They say every Cornishman has a drop of Spanish blood in his veins. And I can speak the lingo, for a Spanish shipmate learned it me when I were on board the Thrush. I play my bits o’ songs and I get by right well – the Dagoes’ll do anything in the world for a bit o’ music. Soon’s I begin playing, often enough, they’re all around like wasps crying out ‘Musica, musica!’ – But still I’d be main glad to settle down and get a chance for some steady work. ‘Tis not so chancy. And travelling on all the time do come hard on my leg. If Senor Colomas would keep me on, I’d stay here willingly.’

  Sam then proposed that I tell him my history, in return for his. Before launching into it, I said that I wished to get out of bed; I had lain there long enough; so he kindly helped me, and I saw for the first time that he did indeed have a bad limp, though he moved with it nimbly enough.

  He established a seat for me in the big dormer window. All the houses in that region have these, I discovered later. The window was double – a roofed-in, glassed-in gallery ran across the front of the house, and inside this there was another separate window for each room, going down to the floor. Thus, in summer, both outer and inner windows could be thrown open, and in winter the glass gallery, with outer windows closed, made a promenade, protected from the wind, which blows very fierce along that Atlantic coast. In this gallery Sam now settled me.

  I could look down on to the harbour, and beyond its stone arms I could see a yellow strand of sandy shore, and waves breaking in showers of white upon grey rocks. To my right were the red roofs of the town, and, behind them, green mountains. I thought the family of Senor Colomas were fortunate to live in such a beautiful spot, and that, if Sam Pollard went to work for the smith, he would be lucky too. And if anybody deserved luck, poor Sam did, after a lifetime of such wickedly undeserved misfortune, borne so uncomplainingly.

  ‘Come, tell us your tale, then, young ’un,’ said he, after he had settled me in a chair, with a cloak round my shoulders.

  And so I told my story, beginning with the death of Bob. I told it as plainly and simply as I could.

  Sam listened with the greatest interest. Sometimes he put questions; sometimes he laughed aloud, as I related some of my escapades; sometimes, when I told of some unjust punishment, he exclaimed, ‘Nay, that were hard, then!’ in a tone full of sympathy; but mostly he just sat with his chin on his fists, and his eyes upon my face.

  Since I had grown old enough to reflect upon my lot, nobody in the world had ever paid such close attention to my affairs – not even for so much as ten minutes; and now here I was, uninterruptedly relating every chapter of my entire life! It gave me a strange feeling, as if the Felix I described were somehow a different person from the one I had become accustomed to thinking myself.

  When I had finished – rather scurrying through the history of the fearsome happenings in the mountain village – Sam drew a long breath of wonder.

  ‘Well, by gob! And here you are, right as a ram’s horn, arter passing through all that! It do fair take the biscuit! You’re a right plucked young ‘un, law love you! I’ve heard tell o’ places up i’ the mountains where the folk is just about savages – cannibals, even, some say – I’ll lay it was one o’ those you struck on.

  ‘And that duel, and the poor chap as died! And the flaysome chap wi’ the pigs! Let alone the jail – that were a right bit o’ luck you fared out o’ there.’

  He fell silent, reflecting for a few moments, and then said,

  ‘Did you ever think o’ scribing a note to your granddad, to say you was alive and bobbish, and farin’ to seek for your other kin across the sea?’

  ‘I – I suppose I could.’ His question took me by surprise. ‘I had not thought of it.’ I pondered and then said, ‘Do you think I should, Sam?’

  ‘The way I see it – ‘ Sam looked at me rather shyly – ‘but ‘tis none o’ my business, rightly – ’

  ‘Please say what you think, Sam?’

  ‘A-well, some o’ your kinsfolk, back where you come from, sound a right nasty crew. That old Dona Isadora for one – she’m a fair Tartar, by all accounts – and false-hearted too – telling all those untrue tales about you – ’

  ‘That she is!’ I agreed with vigour.

  ‘Do she have an interest in the place, by any chance?’ Sam inquired reflectively.

  ‘An interest? How do you mean?’

  ‘She a spinster, or a married lady? Or a widder woman?’

  ‘Oh, I see. She is a widow. She was married – not like the rest of them – to a Marques – but the French took his lands – and she has a daughter who’s a widow too – and a grandson who goes to college in Madrid. My cousin Manuel.’

  ‘Aha!’ cried Sam with an expression of triumphant cunning which looked comically out of place on his open, simple countenance. ‘That’s it then, see? Acos you are the Heir! But if you was disgraced – or gone – then her grandson ‘ud likely get the property – your granddad’s estate – seeing as how you telled me all your uncles was killed in the wars, and none on ‘em had any children!’

  ‘Yes … I suppose that might be true,’ I said, pondering. ‘But then, no one at Villaverde believes that I really am the heir – because my parents were not married – only Bob did, and he’s dead. I cannot think my great-aunt Isadora would be as cunning as that; I think she just dislikes me for myself.’

  ‘Just the same, I’ll lay Dona Isadora ‘ull be main glad you’ve slipped your cable!’

  ‘Yes, I daresay she’ll be in high twig now I’m gone. Nobody to put crickets in her bed. And Father Tomas will not be sorry, either.’

  ‘But your granfer, now,’ Sam ruminated. ‘I don’t get the notion, from what you told, that he’m a maliceful one, like that? Stern, you said, but someway fair with it? Not spiteful? Not mean-minded?’

  ‘No, that is true …’

 
‘And he’ve had a grievous time, poor soul, wi’ all his boys a-killed in the wars – ’

  ‘Yes, it did make him very sad.’

  ‘And,’ said Sam, bursting out laughing, ‘by all account ye’ve been a fair young limb of Satan, times without number, setting fire to hayricks – an’ putting a toad in your grandma’s penella – and hiding a rooster in the chapel – and setting the maize to pop in the brazier when the Cardinal came to visit – oh laws! – it fair makes my ribs crack, just to think on the life you must a’ led those old folks!’

  I laughed too. It was a great delight, at last, to have somebody who appreciated my jokes.

  ‘But,’ he said, the laughter still creasing his ugly face, ‘maybe if you hadn’t played all those pranks – maybe – ‘ He paused. ‘My meaning is, maybe your granddad might love ye better than ye knew – if ye’d ever given him a chance to show it?’

  ‘He is such a stern, silent man. I don’t know – I think he dislikes all boys … ’

  I thought about my grandfather, Don Francisco: his heavy grey face, set in seams the colour of pewter; walking heavily with his stick; then confined to his wheelchair, carrying his sword beside him as if he could not bear to part with it … And yet when he was young, I knew, he had enjoyed riding; had a fiery Andalusian mare; had gone, every year, Bernie said, up into the mountains with the shepherds to fetch down the sheep at autumn time and had slept out with them on the mountainside. I had known him only when his life was near its end. What a great deal must have happened to him long before I was even born.

  ‘I will write to him – if you think it would be a good thing to do,’ I said slowly, at last. ‘I will send the letter from Santander, just before I go on the boat. Then it will be too late for him to prevent me.’

  ‘Aha, yon’s a capital notion. Right sprack! See what the book-larning does for ye!’

  I then bethought me to show Sam my father’s belongings – the sad little plume and buttons, the book, and the written papers. He puzzled and pored over the letter for many minutes, but was obliged to acknowledge that he could make neither head nor tail of the writing.