by Gabriel King
He bobbed his head up and down excitedly.
‘So, I’m in the turbulence at the top of the cliff – rooks call it ‘the roller,’ and no one flies like a rook – and I look out to sea. I’m upside down at the time.’ He paused to judge the effect of this on his audience. Pertelot, at least, looked impressed. ‘And there! This boat!’ He laughed. ‘Boat – ?’ he asked himself. ‘A leaf in a weir. I’m upside down, two hundred feet up in the roller on this heap of chalk, waiting for the hammer to fall – and I’m thinking, ‘I bet that’s them.’ Intuition, or what?’
‘Or what,’ Sealink responded with wry amusement. ‘It couldn’t be, hon, that you lost your way—’
‘How did you escape from the roller?’ interrupted Pertelot excitedly.
‘—and got caught by the storm and fell onto the boat by accident. Could it?’
The magpie regarded her sorrowfully for a moment or two. For a moment or two more he stared across the cabin, avoiding eye contact. Then he buried his head under his left wing.
‘Eat me, then,’ he said in a muffled voice. ‘I fly a hundred miles this afternoon alone and that’s all the thanks I get.’
‘Have you seen Ragnar Gustaffson?’ Pertelot asked shyly.
‘Go and look for him yourself.’
Fatigue had finally gotten the better of him. His head bobbed once or twice. Then he toppled backward into Sealink’s luxuriant fur and fell asleep. With his blind-looking eyes, his feathers pasted to his chest, and all his self-assurance gone, he looked tiny and vulnerable against her warm, mammalian bulk.
*
He slept. He slept through the tempest, which showed no signs of easing. He slept through a visit from Old Smoky, who had come down to feed the cats on beef and kidney casserole. They had pushed the magpie under the bunk. He was still asleep when the new day broke, barely brighter than the night. He slept for seven hours, and then he slept again. Sealink slept on the bunk above him, her head tucked under her tail. Pertelot, filled with a sudden optimism, went around licking all the empty bowls.
Pengelly, though, sat sourly on the worktop, peering suspiciously down at shadows.
‘Why would the calico save a byasen?’ he kept asking himself.
‘Pardon me?’ said Pertelot.
‘Byasen! Byasen!’ said Pengelly irritably. ‘Byasen’s a bird of ill omen: a black stain on a white feather. Never trust a spotted bird nor a spotted dog nor a spotted cow.’
‘Cow?’ said the Queen.
‘Never mind that,’ the old cat said. ‘Byasen’s the thing to get in your head.’
Pertelot frowned.
‘But we know One for Sorrow,’ she said. She was silent for a moment. Then she reminded him, ‘Sealink has black patches, too.’
Pengelly regarded her darkly.
‘You’m right there,’ he said.
At the sound of her name, Sealink stretched languorously and yawned. From where she sat on the floor of the cabin, Pertelot could see directly into her friend’s open jaws. A great, dark blemish marred the pink roof of the calico’s mouth.
‘Something wrong, hon? ‘Cause if there ain’t, do you mind not staring? When you stare so, it unsettles me.’ Then she said, ‘Stop that, you old Cornish fool!’
From under the berth, a long, curved black beak had emerged, followed by a tilted head and a beady black eye, which blinked once, twice in the gloomy light.
This was enough for Pengelly. Eyes narrowed, legs bunched up under him, belly slung low, backbone straight and parallel to the worktop, and a curious bubbling snarl issuing from his mouth, he was preparing to spring.
The magpie caught sight of him and ducked back under the bunk.
‘If you kill me,’ he said somberly, ‘you will never learn what message I carry.’
Pertelot Fitzwilliam positioned herself between Pengelly and the bird.
‘A message!’ she said. ‘Who is it from?’
One for Sorrow looked thoughtful. ‘There isn’t one. The reason I always say that,’ he explained, eyeing Pengelly with malice, ‘is that it slows them down for a second. Gives you a chance to get airborne.’
Pengelly gave him a disgusted look and trotted off to join the fisherman in the wheelhouse.
Sealink peered over the edge of the bunk.
‘You gonna tell me about Mousebreath, babe?’ she inquired.
The bird dipped and bobbed.
‘Not before I eat,’ he said.
They found him something Pertelot had missed, and watched in fascination his eating style, which was to eye and stab, eye and stab, as if he were in a field. It looked odd, but it was efficient, and he soon finished. He stropped his beak once or twice on the floor, then cheekily flew up onto the worktop the old sea cat had so recently vacated. There, he got to work on his feathers, his feet, and his endoparasites, while the two female cats waited expectantly.
‘Well?’ urged Sealink.
The magpie regarded her coolly, decided he was unlikely to come by further nourishment until he had unburdened himself of what he knew, and said, ‘What would you like to hear then? Speak up, speak clearly, and don’t confuse the bearer with the bad news.’
‘Hon,’ promised Sealink, ‘much more of this, and you are pie. We ain’t heard nothing about nothing since Piper’s Quay. It was fighting and rushing and falling in the canal for us. It was dark. So you tell us what happened after, and how Ragnar and especially Mousebreath are doing now. And you tell us nice, ‘Cause we ain’t got hearts of stone.’
So the magpie told them.
He told them how their friends had escaped from the wreck of the cat catchers’ van. How Majicou had rescued them in the snowy night, and taken Tag, Cy, and Mousebreath to the barn on the Old Changing Way. How Tag had returned to look for Ragnar Gustaffson and fallen prey to the vagus.
He told them how Mousebreath had been – as he put it – alive and well and as full of bad temper as ever, the last time he saw him.
Sealink closed her eyes, and the tension went out of her like a breath.
‘Well, thank heavens for that,’ she said.
There was a long pause, as Pertelot Fitzwilliam stared at the magpie and summoned her courage. ‘And where is Ragnar Gustaffson now?’ she whispered.
He bobbed and dipped and looked away. He couldn’t meet her eyes.
I’m only a messenger, he was thinking. He was thinking he had never seen such need and fever. I’m only a bird.
He looked down at his feet. They were big and black and scaly, the claws long and gleaming. He found that if he dipped and tilted his head so that the gaslight was behind him, he could see his beak reflected dimly in the curve of an outstretched talon. I’m only a bird, he was thinking. I shouldn’t have to do this.
He said, ‘I don’t know.’
Then louder, ‘No one saw him leave. They think he got shut in the van again. They didn’t see him again. Maybe I’ll track him down somewhere,’ he added softly. ‘After all, I found you.’
Pertelot was distraught. ‘But I’m having his kittens!’ she wailed.
The magpie looked startled. ‘Kittens?’ he said. ‘Kittens?’
Possibilities were cascading through his narrow head: images of disaster impossible to bind. Words; hieratic, formal. Prophecy and the warnings of his one-eyed master.
‘This is the worst thing that could have happened,’ he declared. ‘Is Majicou aware of this? He must be told. I must fly at once—’
Sealink was preparing to tell him. You’ll do no such thing! when there came a loud cry from the deck above, followed by a splash and the sound of scurrying paws. Then Pengelly’s voice, raised in distress.
‘Oh my,’ breathed Sealink. ‘It’s all drama today. You,’ she ordered the magpie, ‘stay here. And you,’ she advised Pertelot Fitzwilliam, ‘stop howling. It don’t mend nothing.’ And she thudded off up the stairs.
There she found the wind still blowing fiercely across the deck. Pengelly was running up and down in an agitated fashion, leaning over the side
and dabbing at the water with one paw, while he made the strange clicking and wailing noises of a hungry kitten separated from its mother.
Everyone’s mad today, she thought. Then she thought, Uh-oh.
Off to the wheelhouse.
It was empty. No boots to rub against, no oilskin in sight. Out of the wheelhouse she ran and around onto the bow. Nothing. She quartered the deck in panic, quartered it again. All she found was a discarded cigarette end still glowing wanly in the yellow-gray afternoon light.
Of the fisherman there was no sign.
‘Where is he, old cat?’
Pengelly stood dejectedly at the starboard gunwale, staring down into the water. He was unable to speak.
‘Oh, surely not, hon—’
A hundred yards away across the churning water, slaty cliffs dipped slantwise onto a broad shingle beach where breakers crashed and roared. Toward the horizon lay an endless repetition of swells and troughs, topped with lacy foam. There was nothing amid the rolling waves that remotely resembled the old fisherman’s yellow oilskin.
Pengelly said suddenly, ‘My fault. All my fault. Oh, oh, oh.’
He stared desperately at Sealink.
‘My fault,’ he said. ‘My fault.’
When she couldn’t think what to say, he looked away and recommenced pacing the rail – ears low, whiskers drooping, eyes fixed on the water in a frenzy of despair. At each end of the boat, he would switch to the opposite rail and repeat the search there, murmuring all the while, ‘My fault. Oh, oh, oh.’
Sealink had soon had enough of this. She planted herself in front of him. The wind filled her tail like a pennant. Scatters of rain dashed against the wheelhouse.
‘What do you mean, ‘It’s my fault’?’ she demanded.
For all the attention he paid her, she might have been a figment of his own anguish. When he spoke, it was only to Pengelly, whose tragedy had become Pengelly. ‘How can I ever forgive myself? Oh, if only I hadn’t been in the way. My fault! Oh, oh, oh.’
He stared dully along the rail, calling, ‘Old Smoky? Old Smoky?’
He considered the murky depths.
‘The boat lurched just as he tripped over me. My fault, all mine. He saved my life, and now I’ve took his. He can’t swim.’
‘This is no good,’ said Sealink to herself. ‘Who’s sailing the boat?’ She gave Pengelly a sharp nip. ‘You stop this now, hon,’ she said. ‘I can’t think.’
But she could, and before she knew it she was down the cabin steps, hot-foot and high-tailed.
‘Come with me,’ she said briskly.
The magpie regarded her with alarm.
‘If you eat me,’ he began, ‘you’ll never—’
‘You come, or you’re chicken supreme,’ said Sealink. ‘Make your choice.’
He opened his beak to protest.
She grabbed him between her teeth. His convulsive grip fetched the blanket off the bunk. It trailed behind them for a step or two, then fell away.
‘Raaark!’
Pertelot watched this exchange in bewilderment, but it took her out of herself.
In two bounds, Sealink was on deck beside Pengelly. She dropped the magpie at his feet. One for Sorrow sprang up and shook himself, chattering with rage.
‘No call for that! No call for that!’
‘This bird will help us find Old Smoky,’ Sealink declared. ‘He’ll fly up, look down from the sky!’
But Pengelly was filled with rage.
‘It were him brought us to this in the first place!’ he said.
He spat. ‘Byasen! Byasen!’
‘You see?’ said the magpie to Pertelot, who had followed them up on deck. ‘This is what I have to put up with.’ He stuck out his thin chest. ‘No favors from me,’ he told Pengelly, ‘until you stop the bird-of-ill-omen stuff.’
He gave Sealink a look.
‘It’s medieval,’ he complained. ‘Surely you can see that?’
Pertelot, meanwhile, stood up on her hind legs and, with her paws placed on the rail, studied the situation of the ship.
‘One for Sorrow,’ she said, ‘forgive the rudeness of these two cats. Will you search for the fisherman for my sake and the sake of the kittens? The wind is strong and the rocks are close, and I fear for us all if Old Smoky cannot be saved.’
The magpie was pleased.
‘You see?’ he told Sealink. ‘A bit of politeness is all it takes. I’d go anywhere for her now.’
He turned on Pengelly. ‘I’m not doing this for you,’ he said.
He extended his wings. They were shot through with an oily purple-green iridescence. The fierce wind riffled through his main coverts. He only laughed approvingly when it pushed him back a pace or two; then, without moving a muscle, allowed the solid air to lift him from the deck. He had learnt that from a crow.
Once aloft, he rode the wind, wingtips flared to bank and glide. He soared and circled. He swaggered a little. He had learned loops from the same crow, but he was keeping them in reserve. Then he stalled out, folded the aerofoil surfaces, and went down like a thousand feet of bad air. A pass over the deck of the Guillemot took him a foot above Sealink’s head.
‘What do you think?’ he called.
‘I think you still got to land somewhere!’ she warned him.
‘Raaaark!’
In moments he had become a small black speck veering toward the cliffs.
‘Last we shall see of he,’ Pengelly said grimly. ‘And good riddance. Bleddy maggot pie.’
He resumed his pacing around the boat, as if by now the ritual was as important as its purpose, while Sealink and Pertelot watched the skies.
Time passed. The Guillemot drifted with the tide, pitching broadside into the waves so that water gurgled and slapped noisily in her bilges. Details of the land became clearer by the minute: seabirds roosting on ledges in the cliffs; whitewashed cottages dotted among the gorse and furze; stands of low, sessile oak and leafless thorn; little tumbles of scree and reddish earth; tiny footpaths snaking down to sheltered coves. They passed a village, sheltered in its steeply wooded valley – slate roofs that shone with rain, lights on in the gloom of the afternoon, colorful boats bobbing at anchor in the safe confines of a walled harbor, and not a soul to be seen. Further along the coast, an expanse of sand dunes rolled down to the stormy water, marram grass blown horizontal by the gales. They passed dark, narrow zawns dripping with water, rocky headlands jutting into the restless sea. All the while, Pengelly’s plaintive cries gave back an eerie echo to the sound of the herring gulls wheeling above the nearby cliffs.
The rain stopped.
The old sea cat gave up his vigil and without a word collapsed beside his friends, trembling with exhaustion and despair.
The three of them sat silently on the rolling deck, fluffing out their drenched fur in the dull afternoon light. There was nothing else to do. The sun appeared briefly between gold-rimmed clouds. The ocean sparkled, deceptive friend, dispassionate foe. The storm seemed to have played itself out. But fitful gusts still made the sea choppy, and they were driving the Guillemot inexorably landward.
Here, the cliffs had become low-lying and haphazard: a tumble of rock and earth and grass, dotted with the black and white of kittiwakes and gannets. The waves roared farther and farther up the shingle beach, so that strands of black seaweed deposited by the previous tide were sucked back into the foam, to be cast up again ever closer to the cliffs. Jagged reefs lined the edges of the bays, gray and crisscrossed with veins of quartz, as if spatters of the sea foam leaping around them had become crystallized within the rock itself. Water sucked and boiled around the base of these boulders, creating miniature whirlpools down which the driftwood and flotsam disappeared, never to rise again.
Sealink shivered. The sea looked cold, the currents inimical; but, if the worst came to the worst, maybe she would be able to battle her way through to the shore.
I’m fit, she thought, and strong, and maybe anything’s better than sitting here doing noth
ing at all as the ship goes down.
She wasn’t worried about Pengelly. He had been a ship’s cat all his life.
But the Mau?
‘Think again, hon,’ Sealink told herself. ‘That’s one pregnant mother.’
She searched the skies again. No sign of the bird. And where was Old Smoky by now? What chance did he have?
Ahead and to the west, the sun, now free of cloud, had started to dip to the horizon, streaking the sky with pale pastel colors that soon deepened to opulent carmine, coral, and gold. Sealink was inexplicably saddened by this.
‘I like a journey,’ she said aloud, ‘but I hate this drifting life.’
‘Look!’
Pertelot was gazing into the dusky air behind them. A distant black mote had resolved itself suddenly into the shape of a bird, its mouth already opening and shutting on words as yet unintelligible.
‘One for Sorrow!’
The magpie landed in an inelegant flurry of wings. He bounced across the deck.
‘You aren’t going to believe this,’ he said, ‘because I don’t believe it myself!’
‘What?’ said Pertelot. ‘What is it?’
But Pengelly said, ‘Have you found un yet?’ And then, ‘Till then, bad luck’s all I’ll believe.’
The magpie shrugged. ‘So wait and see,’ he said.
‘Bird,’ said Sealink threateningly, ‘you tell us what you know.’
The magpie glinted at her. He said, ‘You can wait too.
‘They’ll be along soon,’ he promised.
And before she could move, he had flapped up into the crosstree, where he preened gleefully. Nothing would persuade him to say more.
The coast drew near.
Pengelly returned to his obsessive patrol of the deck, stopping only to turn tight little figure eights and call the old man’s name into the growing gloom.
Pink with the sun’s last light, surf boomed in over the reefs. Sealink made out a tideline of limpets and barnacles, and above them clustered circles of orange lichen. She could hear the water boiling and sucking and crashing, and see how the swags of weed were lifted and then dashed down by each succession of waves.
‘Man,’ she said, ‘that’s us, we don’t do something.’