by Joan Aiken
I felt so full of shame and rage with myself that I would gladly have thrust my hands into old Luc’s turf fire, if that would have made any difference. Here was Sam, who had had a secure future and a comfortable home waiting for him in Llanes, by my stupid fault aboard this horrible little ship, threatened with perils both at sea and on land.
‘Ah, they’ll run to Falmouth a’right,’ he whispered. ‘My mate told me he’d heard as they’ve a cargo of brandy they are carrying for a lord in those parts.’
‘But what will they do – ’
‘Hush!’
The door flew open, and the tall captain strode into the caboose again, followed by old Luc, who returned to stirring his pot, muttering anxiously to himself. The captain approached us, and in the most peremptory manner now demanded our passage money.
‘How much, senor?’ demanded Sammy politely. I pulled out my bit of rag. But the captain said,
‘Thirty dollars apiece!’
‘Why, the man who brought me on board said it was but fifteen,’ I objected.
‘That was for one. For two, we demand a higher price. It is not convenient to carry so many!’
He was evidently very angry. I was about to try and haggle the price down, but Sam said,
‘At that rate, we pay the money on arrival, not before! And I do not wish to go to Falmouth. You can take me on to Achill Head in Ireland, where the lighthouse keeper is my uncle.’
I wondered if this were true, but could not tell from Sam’s countenance. He was looking calmly at the captain, who seemed taken aback by this announcement and glared at us both. – I have not described the captain. His long tanned face had something Eastern about it – the one eye visible tilted up at the corner. The other eye was covered by a black patch. Under his boat-cloak he wore a belted canvas blouse over sailor’s breeches, and a long knife tucked into his belt. He looked a stern and formidable man. Strangely enough, he reminded me of my grandfather – I could not have said why.
Sam remarked to me softly, in English, ‘I do not have enough money on me to pay the fee. But my uncle will pay it. His name is Fergus O’Faolin, and he is the richest miser in Achill.’
Now I was sure the tale was invented, but I saw the captain give him a careful look; it seemed he understood English, or enough to make out the meaning of what Sam had said. He growled at us.
‘The fare to Ireland is thirty-five dollars. And if you wish to eat, you must pay for your own victuals.’
Then he quitted the caboose abruptly, slamming the door.
Sam watched the old cook blowing on the broth and tasting it, then said to me in a low voice, still in English,
‘Don’t touch any food that you have not seen somebody else taste first.’
I shuddered, thinking of the Chinese drug. And I wondered if Aunt Isadora had paid these men to dispose of me in their own dreadful way. What would have happened to me, had Sam not come on board? In what state would I have arrived at Falmouth?
By now the ship was pitching more and more wildly, and old Luc, going to the door and putting his head out, called,
‘Anyone who wants a bowl of potaje had best come and get it now, before it is all over the floor!’
Three men then took it in turns to come and drink a bowl of soup, eat a crust of bread, and leave again. Sam greeted them all politely, and they gave him a brief word in return. One was an Arab, one a Gael from the isle of Inishturk, who spoke partly in a strange language of his own, which the cook seemed to understand. The third was a Basque, like the cook and the captain. He, before eating, took bowls of broth outside: apparently the other two passengers preferred to remain on deck.
Sam and I paid the cook some pennies and received bowls of broth, which, since they were ladled from the common pot, must be harmless enough. Indeed, the soup was very good.
Now that we were at sea, we were allowed to step outside the caboose. Darkness lay all around; there were very few stars to be seen in the cloudy night; the lights of Santander gleamed very faint in the distance behind us.
I saw the other two passengers, shrouded in boat-cloaks, seated at the foot of the mast. Passing near them I saw one was a small, pale, grave man, with soft white hair and round, colourless eyes like those of an owl. He gave me a strange, measuring look as I passed, and I trembled, imagining his knife carving my flesh and bones into new shapes, but he said nothing, only sat thinking his own thoughts. The crew all addressed him as ‘Doctor’ and he was treated with great respect, I noticed. During the voyage I heard the captain once or twice ask his advice on points of navigation. Beside him, cross-legged and silent, sat the small man who had guided me on board. He had now lost all his vivacity and sat mute; when I passed he looked at me as if he had never laid eyes on me in his life.
I heard the Doctor say quietly to one of the sailors:
‘I can see the Three Magi – that is a bad sign.’
Sam told me that by this he referred to the three stars in the constellation of Orion which are known as Orion’s belt.
It was very cold on deck. A bitter wind came scouring from the right hand, or starboard, side; it sang in the hemp rigging and caused the little Guipuzcoa to bounce over the waves, which were already as large as whales. A light at the end of the bowsprit faintly illuminated the sea, and showed the ship’s boat, suspended below.
Even now that the cargo and stores had all been stowed in the hold, there was very little deck-space. We had to pick our way carefully between coils of rope and various pieces of gear. Sam tried to explain the sails to me – there were two mainsails as well as topsails – but his explanation was so complicated that I could not follow. The rigging seemed all a mysterious tangle. I began to feel a fool in every possible way – a self-willed, unthinking dolt, to have cast Sam into this dangerous predicament – and besides that, a thick-skulled dunderhead who could not even grasp the principles of seamanship. Sammy patiently went on to point out other features of the ship: the helm, at present being manned by the tall captain, who gave us a cold glance as we came near him, but said nothing; and the compass, set in a square case and balanced on two copper frames.
Two of the sailors were busy making fast the sheets and seeing that all the rigging was in good trim; they, likewise, spoke to each other but not to us.
‘Reckon they wish we wasn’t on board,’ Sammy murmured to me.
They could not have wished it any more heartily than I did myself.
If only there were somewhere on board where we could be private! But on such a small ship there did not seem to be a single space where we would not be overheard. Sam suggested that we ask the captain if we might go down to the hold to sleep among the stores, but by this time the ship was rolling and pitching with such a violent motion, as it breasted the waves, that my stomach felt likely to heave its way through my teeth at any moment. I could not bear even the smoky, fishy atmosphere of the caboose, let alone the idea of some dark, cramped enclosed den, where we might perhaps be shut in if we fell asleep.
‘No,’ I said urgently, gulping, partly from nausea, partly from dejection at our plight and my stupidity in bringing it about. ‘Let us not go below. I’d sooner stay in the open.’
‘Cheer up, lad!’ said Sammy, laughing at me, but not unkindly; he never was that. ‘By tomorrow you’ll ha’ got your sea-legs an’ be ready to give the cap’n a hand wi’ the steering. Maybe there’s sense in your choice though; ‘sides, a night on deck is as good to me as a month’s wages; takes me back to old times. We’ll make us a nest up for’ard.’
Which he did, with his cloak, and a piece of canvas which he found in a sail-locker, first asking the captain’s permission to use it (which was granted by one surly, silent nod).
Here, huddled together, we were somewhat protected from the icy wind by a part of the ship which Sam, with a yawn, told me was the cutwater. He then fell peacefully asleep, his head pillowed on a coil of rope, and soon began snoring as if he had not a care in the world. I marvelled that he could take his plight
with such calm. Suppose the crew, who seemed so hostile to us, knew that Sam had an enemy in England who would be glad to have him thrown into jail? Might they not, out of sheer revengefulness, hand him over to the authorities when we reached Falmouth? True, it seemed unlikely they would know about Sam’s history – unless they were acquainted with any of his previous shipmates.
Then, my thoughts switching in another direction, I thought: Perhaps, after all, these men have no wicked designs on me. Perhaps it is merely chance that I was offered a berth on their boat. Perhaps Sam need not have risked his liberty to come and warn me.
But this hope was short-lived. Not long after, as I lay wakeful, listening to Sam’s snores, I was alerted by the sound of voices.
It was those of the captain and the Doctor.
‘Where are they?’ said the captain. He spoke in French.
‘Yonder, asleep, as you may hear,’ replied the Doctor in the same language.
Thinking, I suppose, that even if we were awake we would not understand them, they did not particularly trouble themselves to whisper, but spoke in low tones which I could hear clearly enough.
‘What shall we do about the Englishman?’ the captain asked. ‘We dare not kill him – he has too many friends in Santander, and it is known that he is aboard the Guipuzcoa. We should be putting our necks in a noose. Besides, I do not like to kill.’
‘Eh bien – do as he asks, then,’ said the Doctor indifferently. ‘Deliver him to Ireland. Make your passage to Ireland first, before you go to Falmouth. Then, after he has landed at Achill, I can do my work, on the boy.’
At his words, my skin crept, and my blood ran like ice.
‘Suppose he wishes the boy to land with him?’
‘My good friend! You are paid to use your head as well as your ship! Some accident may be contrived – a swinging boom, a dropped block – or a drop of my liquor in his podrida; then the young man may be carried ashore, unharmed but senseless, and handed over to his friends; after that we may anchor in some quiet creek and deal with the boy. And if the man later makes inquiries, what is our tale? We landed the boy at Falmouth, as he asked us, and know nothing more.’
My breath seemed caught in my chest, cold as snow-flakes.
‘Oh; very well,’ the captain said at last in a surly tone. ‘I shall be losing money though; I had planned to drop my cargo at Falmouth first and take on elixir of honey there to carry to Black Harbour; this way I lose trade; also my customer in Falmouth will be angry, for I shall be a week later than I promised.’
‘Do not disturb yourself,’ said the Doctor calmly. ‘I am sure our patron will see that you are reimbursed if necessary.’
He used the French word patronne in the female gender, and I thought, Saints save me! That must be Dona Isadora. For what other woman in the world wishes evil to me?
The two men moved away, and I lay shivering, remembering the various pranks I had played on Dona Isadora: sprinkling snuff in the folds of her fan, or grit in the toes of her slippers, hiding her missal, slipping a pinch of salt into her chocolate before Bernie took it in. These tricks seemed very childish now, and I could hardly blame her for being angry at the time – but still! For such stupid pranks, what a dark and terrible revenge she seemed to have planned! Ay de mi, thought I, if ever I live in a civilised household again, I vow that I will never put salt in any old lady’s chocolate – not so much as a single grain!
Then I bethought me to have a discussion with God on the subject.
‘Please listen to me, Father in heaven, for this is important!
‘I know it was very bad of me to play jokes on Aunt Isadora – and it was stupid and headstrong not to take Sam’s advice in Santander. And, if you think this danger I am in is a just punishment for these faults, bueno!’ (I always talked to God in Spanish) ‘ – Though I, for my part, consider it decidedly harsh of You, and it is more than I would do to someone who had behaved in such a way. Besides which, You have involved Sam in my punishment, and that is wholly unfair, for I don’t believe he ever committed a wrong action in his life.’
Then I felt I was wandering from the point. I said,
‘All this, Father, is beginning to upset the better notion of You that I have had since leaving Villaverde. Can Father Tomas have been right about you after all?
‘Now listen, Father. I don’t want to think worse of you again. For it had seemed to me that You must be better than anybody – better than the best person I know – which is Sammy – and he certainly would not do such a thing to You.
‘So I do hope and pray that You will graciously suggest some means to get us – or at least Sammy – out of this pickle.’
Then I considered for a while and wondered if I was being unfair to God – in a way, almost obliging Him to help us; so I added,
‘Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done,’ to show Him that all the teachings of Father Tomas had not been entirely thrown away upon me. And then I lay in the dark waiting for His answer.
It took a long time coming. Meanwhile the Guipuzcoa rushed onwards like a thing pursued – up the huge sides of waves, up, up, and up, until we seemed about to topple off the edge of the world; then down, down, even deeper down, boring, as it seemed, to the utter depths of the ocean, until I was holding my breath for terror, since it looked as if some great curving weight of water from over our heads would crash upon us, and we should never be able to climb out of the trough.
Also, with the wind battering her starboard quarter as it came hissing out of France, the ship leaned so far to port as she fled away that sometimes it seemed as if her mast must dip right into the waves and she turn upside down. But this did not happen, and we sped on, on, through the darkness, while Sammy slept peacefully beside me on the slanting deck.
And then God put a notion into my head.
Wriggling out from under the coverings, without disturbing Sam, I quietly made my way back to the caboose, clinging to every rope and stay on my perilous course. The Doctor and his assistant were still murmuring together at the foot of the mast; I went softly by on the other side without their observing me; indeed, this was not difficult for the sound of the wind in the shrouds drowned all other noise. The captain was once more at the helm, and he was directing two sailors to trim the ship by reefing some of the sails; he did not appear to notice me.
I slipped into the caboose, where the turf fire was all but out, damped down to a smouldering glow. The third sailor and the old cook both lay asleep, huddled between some of the stores and the angle of the wall. The iron soup-pot,^ covered with a heavy lid, had been set aside, slung in a wooden cradle so that the motion of the ship should not cause it to spill.
The lantern-flame burned dimly behind its talc screen.
And there, just as I had remembered it in my mind’s eye, hung the wicker-covered flask, from a nail in the wall.
‘Give the young gentleman a bit of bread and a mouthful of spirit,’ the captain had said, nodding at it.
And old Luc had said – what had he said? – ‘That liquor is not good for the young lordship,’ and had given me some from his own flask. Because he was afraid of me and thought I might be related to the spirits of drowned sailors.
Moving slowly and deliberately, as if I had a perfect right to do it, I took the wicker-covered flask, uncorked it, lifted the lid from the soup-pot, and poured in most of the contents of the flask, which I then recorked and hung up on its nail again.
The two sleepers did not stir, and I left the caboose without being noticed. Then, even more carefully than I had come – for the ship was now pitching with a motion like that of my bad-tempered mule – I edged along to where Sam lay and settled down once more.
I felt quite calm.
Perhaps the liquor in the flask was no more than brandy – in which case it would have little effect on those who drank the soup. There was nothing to do now but wait; and with this resolved in my mind, I soon fell asleep.
9
The battle on the ship; the s
nowstorm; what became of the Comprachicos; our arrival in Falmouth
I was awakened by the sound of a wild yell. As I lifted myself confusedly on my elbow – having come abruptly out of a heavy, dream-filled slumber, in which Dona Isadora was chasing me with one of Bernie’s frying-pans, and I was dodging to avoid the drops of boiling fat and hissing fishes from it – I saw that some considerable time must have passed, for the sky was much lighter – a pale, leaden grey – and could readily be distinguished from the sea, which now looked as if it were covered by a dark, oily skin, seamed by a thousand wrinkles.
Beside me, Sam shot upright, his keen sailor’s nose having detected an odour that I, unaccustomed to the sea, had not yet taken for a menace. Smoke!
‘Hey! Are we afire?’ Sam was on his feet in a second, tottering as his weight came on to his weak leg. I sprang up and took his arm to balance him. We both looked aft along the cluttered deck. My first thought was the caboose – the fire in its clay box – could my interference with the soup have somehow caused the fire to burn up – ? But neither flame nor smoke came from the doorway.
Then we heard more yells, and beheld the most amazing sight.
A man appeared from behind the mainsail; he was dancing on the caboose roof. He seemed to be waving a banner of live flame. – Then I saw that he held a great fragment of tarred canvas, which was alight; it burned furiously, with tongues of fire leaping away from it, breaking off and taking flight on the wind. And he danced up and down, singing some mad song, in Basque and French and his own language. It was the bearded Irishman, and so far as I could make out, he sang that he was Coullain, the Hound of the North, and that he would slit the gullets of all Queen Maeve’s enemies.
‘I learned my swordsmanship in the Land of Shadows!’ he bawled, ‘I received my weapons from Scath, Queen of the Witches, and I can hurl a spear farther than any man in the West. Where is Queen Maeve’s champion, where is Ferdia? Let him come hither, for Coullain is waiting to give battle!’