The Evangeline

by D. W. Buffa

  Trevelyn’s haggard face grew tense, his gaze turned rigid. He looked at the jury.‘But it didn’t get better. The winds got stronger and the sea got rougher and the sky turned grey. It didn’t matter. The Evangeline could sail through anything. We all knew what weather was like.’

  Trevelyn fell into a silence that became a kind of permanent fact, a condition of existence, the only true expression of what lies at the heart of things.

  ‘But the weather got worse,’ said Roberts, prompting him gently.

  ‘Yes, it got worse. And it kept getting worse.’

  ‘But didn’t you have warning that it would? Wasn’t the Evangeline equipped with all the latest technology? Surely you could track the weather by satellite.’

  ‘It didn’t work, that’s what I was told; some of the equipment had broken down. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. Before we knew it we were in the weather, in the middle of the storm. There was nothing we could do but ride it out.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘It kept getting worse, and we kept thinking that it was as bad as it could get. And then it happened, sudden like, hit by a wave fifty, sixty feet high. It just ripped her apart.We were taking water, tons of it coming through the companionways. She was getting heavier and heavier, lying deeper and deeper in the water. She was sinking so fast, it was as if the bottom had broken out of her as well. It was the middle of the night, about two, two-thirty in the morning. The passengers—some of them were caught below.’

  ‘And the rest? How many of the twenty-seven passengers and crew managed to get to the lifeboats, and how many of the lifeboats got away?’

  ‘One of the Zodiacs … I got to it first; managed to tear away the tarpaulin—it was filled with boxes; there wasn’t time to get them out.’

  ‘Boxes? In a lifeboat?’

  ‘The lifeboats were never going to be used. It was a pleasure cruise,’ said Trevelyn, tossing his head in derision.‘A cruise down the coast of Africa for a few of Whitfield’s rich and famous friends. The boxes were crates of champagne, caviar, all the fine things people like that expect. There was not room for all they needed in the galley, so why not use the lifeboats? What other use could they have?’

  ‘Lifeboats? Were more than one of them used like this?’

  Trevelyn shrugged.‘All I know is about the one, the one I tore my hands up trying to get ready before I found out what it had inside.’

  ‘What did you do next, after you discovered that the lifeboat—the Zodiac—was not usable?’

  Trevelyn gave Roberts a mocking glance. ‘I wasn’t on some careful search, some examination of what was fit to use and what wasn’t. People were screaming, falling all over each other, things were flying everywhere. Every wave that hit her sunk her lower. All you could think about was how you were going to get off the Evangeline before she finally sank. When I saw what was in that lifeboat, I thought I’d never get off, that I was as good as drowned.’

  ‘But somehow you got to the other lifeboat, the one where Marlowe and the others were?’

  ‘I must have.’

  ‘You must have? That’s the lifeboat you were in, the one in which you and the others were eventually found.’

  ‘I don’t remember how I got there. The Evangeline was heaving up, breaking apart. All you could do was hang on, try to get away. When I was looking inside that lifeboat, the one all filled up—it went straight up in the air. I was hanging on with my hands, my feet below me, those boxes banging all around.Whether I crawled my way to the other boat or was thrown there, I couldn’t really say. There is a lot I don’t remember about what happened—then or later,’ he added with a dark, ominous look.

  Roberts pushed his head forward, returning Trevelyn’s look with a warning of his own. ‘There is a difference between not being able to remember and not wanting to.’

  ‘I can’t remember that much about what happened then. There was so much going on; it’s all a blur. Somehow I got off. Maybe I hit my head or something, because I can’t remember anything until some time later, when the storm was nearly over. I was in the lifeboat, with all the others, and Marlowe was there, giving orders.’

  From the counsel table, Roberts picked up a list of the passengers and crew and began to read the names, asking after each one whether that person had been in the lifeboat. Beyond the five other survivors, Trevelyn identified seven others. Roberts gave him a puzzled look.

  ‘That makes only thirteen. If I’m not mistaken, there were fourteen people in the lifeboat at the beginning.’

  ‘He wasn’t on the list.’

  ‘Who wasn’t on the list?’

  ‘The boy—the cabin boy. He wasn’t old enough to be a regular member of the crew. He worked, though, he did his part— I’ll give him that.’

  ‘And do you know this boy’s name?’ asked Roberts.

  ‘Billy. That was the only name I knew. No one told me his last name.’

  ‘What happened to him…?’ Roberts started to ask, then changed his mind. ‘No, tell us first, if you would, how you survived; how fourteen people survived in a lifeboat, lost at sea. In the beginning at least, there was food and water?’

  Trevelyn bent forward, scratched his head, looked around and then stared at the floor—concentrating, as it seemed, on remembering correctly and in the right order the things that had happened.

  ‘A little water, very little food. Maybe a gallon of water to start; three or four cans of food. That was all we had.’

  ‘For fourteen people?’

  ‘We managed to collect some water from the rain, and we had a line we rigged, with a hook to catch a few fish. Then there was the seaweed—we ate that as well.We lived like that for more than a week, all packed together, no room to move.We were going to die out there. No one was going to find us.We knew that.’

  ‘Why do you say that? Why didn’t you think you would be found?’

  ‘No one knew the Evangeline had sunk. No distress signal had been sent. It happened too fast; and even if there had been time, nothing worked.We made a sail, followed the wind, but we were thousands of miles from anywhere, and we were going to starve to death before we had gone two hundred. And besides, luck wasn’t with us.’

  ‘Because the Evangeline had sunk? Because the storm had become so violent so suddenly?’ asked Roberts in a solemn, sympathetic voice.

  ‘No luck because we could have been found three different times in those first few days and we weren’t. Three times freighters passed us.We could see them just a few miles off, riding high on the horizon, but twice they did not see us.’

  ‘Twice? But you said three times you saw…?’

  ‘That ship was less than a mile away, and there isn’t any chance they didn’t see us. Maybe they were carrying some cargo they didn’t want discovered—or maybe it was a ghost ship come to taunt us. That was when we gave up all hope of rescue, when we watched that black and red freighter pass right by us as we shouted after her—those of us who still had voices.We watched that bastard ship disappear over the horizon, that long wisp of smoke trailing behind it, dissolving with our hopes.’

  Trevelyn paused, a bleak expression in his haunted, hollow eyes.

  ‘That was when it happened: when the first one died. Wilson…’

  ‘Arnold Wilson?’ asked Roberts, checking the name against his list.

  ‘He jumped into the water, started swimming. Thought he could catch her, I suppose; did not last but a few minutes.’

  ‘Did anyone try to stop him, to go after him?’

  Trevelyn looked at him like he was a fool.‘There was nothing anyone could do, we were all so weak with hunger and thirst. No one cared that he was gone.We were all going to die. Some were already sick.’

  Roberts remembered the boy. ‘Billy.What happened to him?’

  ‘What happened to him? He was sicker than the others. It was only a matter of time. That’s why he was chosen.’

  ‘Chosen?’

  ‘Chosen to die, so the rest o
f them could live, even if it was for only a little while longer. Chosen to die, Mr Roberts, so they could eat him.’

  Chapter Ten

  LAWYERS TELL OTHER LAWYERS THAT YOU TAKE your witnesses as they come. Like most things lawyers tell each other, it gives a kind of comfort to the evils of the trade.Witnesses are not chosen because they are good and honest people; they are called to testify because of what they know. Michael Roberts did not call Aaron Trevelyn as a witness for the prosecution because he thought a jury would like him; he called him because Trevelyn was the only one of the survivors of the Evangeline who would talk.

  The jury despised Aaron Trevelyn. Part of it was the twitching insincerity in his eyes, the way he never looked at anything or anyone for very long. What might have been interpreted as nervousness or fear at the beginning of his testimony yielded to a judgment far less forgiving once they detected the caustic resentment in his voice. Others had died, but he had lost a foot. The others had no meaning to him. They were abstractions, names of the sort we read in the papers; names of people we never knew. Why would he think about them when a part of him was missing? Why would he grieve over anyone else when, for the rest of his life, he would bear the pain and the curse of his own disfigurement?

  Roberts had been visibly stunned by Trevelyn’s brusque indifference. A boy had been chosen to die, and it was as simple as that? No emotion, no regret, not so much as a passing thought for the tragedy of a life lost at such an early age? The only clear feeling, glaring and almost obscene, vindictiveness about what others had done? Whether Roberts, with his eyes fixed on the witness, had seen the horrified looks that spread over jurors’ faces, he could sense the change of mood. He tried to rescue what he could.

  ‘It must have been awful, what you went through. But the jury was not there; they only know what you tell them.’

  ‘And perhaps not even that much!’ exclaimed William Darnell in a loud voice from his chair at the other side of the courtroom.

  Roberts shot him an angry look. ‘Your Honour, I…’

  ‘My apologies, your Honour,’ said Darnell, rising part way up from his chair.‘Sometimes I hear myself talking when I thought I was only thinking something to myself.’

  With a single glance, Homer Maitland cut dead the laughter that rippled through the courtroom. He peered over his glasses and, with a certain suppressed admiration at Darnell’s incorrigible smile, shook his head. ‘Don’t depend too much on the tolerance of the court, Mr Darnell. You might find the consequences somewhat disagreeable should I find it necessary to give voice to what at moments like this I might be thinking. Are we clear?’

  ‘Yes, your Honour,’ said Darnell, the smile stretching further across his face. ‘Crystal clear.’

  ‘Good.’ Maitland looked at Roberts. ‘You may continue. But, please, Mr Roberts—ask a question.’

  Roberts moved to within an arm’s length of the witness. ‘You said the boy was chosen—chosen to die.Who made that decision?’

  Trevelyn pointed at Marlowe.‘Him. He did. It was his decision.’

  Grim-faced, impassive, Marlowe had been staring straight ahead. At Trevelyn’s answer, his eyes flashed open and his head turned sharply. He seemed to be challenging him to repeat it. Trevelyn lowered his eyes and sank back in the witness chair.

  ‘Mr Trevelyn?’

  Trevelyn looked up, his eyes hostile and suspicious. He cast a defiant glance at Marlowe to show that he had not been defeated, but Marlowe had already looked away.

  ‘It was his decision,’ repeated Trevelyn. ‘His decision how the decision should be made.’

  ‘Explain that, please,’ said Roberts quickly.

  ‘We had been out there ten days, two weeks … I don’t know for sure. That last ship passed us, and—what was his name? Wilson?—went in after it. We knew it was all over. We were thousands of miles from land. We could catch a little water—not much, a few drops—but we were out of food.’

  ‘You had a hook and line—you could catch fish. Isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘We did, for a while; but it wasn’t much good and then we lost even that. Someone was supposed to watch it, have their hand on it all the time, but in one of the storms…’

  ‘Mr Trevelyn?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Trevelyn, coming back to himself. ‘What was the question? Yes, I remember,’ he said, forcing himself to sit straight. ‘We were out of food, and there were eleven of us left.We…’

  ‘Eleven?’ asked Roberts. ‘There were fourteen, then Wilson drowned…’

  Trevelyn shrugged. ‘Ten days, two weeks—things happened. You would nod off—crowded like we were—wake up an hour later and someone next to you might be gone. Fell in, or went of their own accord rather than face another day of it, I couldn’t say. After that ship we saw, after what we saw Wilson do, it was like I said: we were all dead, the only question how we wanted to die.’

  Pausing, Trevelyn looked around the courtroom, a hard shrewdness in his hollow eyes.‘It isn’t like going hungry for a few days, knowing at the end of it you’ll be all nice and safe with lots to eat. After a while you start to feel your body start eating itself. We would have died out there, if we hadn’t done what we did. It wasn’t what they did was wrong, but the way they did it. None of it was fair.’

  ‘Before you tell us what you think was or was not fair,’ Roberts interjected, unable to hide a certain irritation,‘tell us first what was done.’

  Trevelyn turned away from the courtroom crowd, scowling at the interruption.

  ‘What was done? I’ll tell you what was done! There were ten of us left—’

  ‘Ten?’ cried Roberts in frustration. ‘You just said there were eleven!’

  ‘Did I call the witness, your Honour?’ asked Darnell, perplexed.‘ Because if I did, when the prosecution is finished with its cross-examination, I should like to have the chance to ask a few questions on redirect.’

  Roberts had lost all patience with the courtroom theatrics of the legendary William Darnell. He waved off the remark. ‘Ten, eleven—which is it?’ he demanded.

  ‘Ten, eleven—how would I know?’ Trevelyn fired back. ‘I was as good as dead; so were all the others.What difference did it make who was left? Another day, maybe two, and we all would have died!’

  Trevelyn’s eyes moved down to the foot that was no longer there. A scornful look passed over his face. ‘Might have been better if we had,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘Tell us what was done,’ repeated Roberts with stern insistence.

  Trevelyn raised his eyes, but this time he looked at Roberts without animosity. ‘The boy was dying. There was no mistake about that. He might have lasted a few more days, but that was all. And those few days—none of us would have lasted any longer. That’s when Marlowe decided. That’s when he decided the boy had to die, and that it could not wait. And that’s what Marlowe did. He took his knife—the boy was still alive—and he got behind him, held his hand across his mouth, and tore open his shirt. He plunged the knife straight into his heart. That’s how he killed him.’

  ‘Stabbed him in the heart! Why?’

  ‘Why? I’ll tell you why. So the others—some of the others— could drink the boy’s blood, that’s why! It was nourishment, that’s what Marlowe said. It would keep you alive, that’s what he said. And you had to do it that way, while the heart was still beating, because if you waited, if you waited until it stopped, if you tried to do it after someone was dead, the blood coagulated, dried up. It would be useless then. We had to do it—that’s what Marlowe said.We had to drink it, or we would die.’

  ‘We had to do it?’ said Roberts sharply. ‘You also…?’

  ‘I was out of my mind with hunger and thirst! But I hated myself for doing it. I swear that’s true!’

  Roberts turned away, perhaps to hide his revulsion. He went to the counsel table and glanced through a file. ‘And then, I take it, the body of the boy was used as well?’ he asked, looking up.

  ‘Yes. The head wa
s removed, and the feet and hands. The same way with all the others.’

  A tremor ran through the courtroom, a great collective sigh of dismay and disapproval. Some of the jurors looked at Marlowe as if he had been revealed as something not quite human; others refused to look at him at all.

  ‘“All the others?” Do you mean to say that this is how the rest of them died? Ten, eleven—whatever the number left—there were only six survivors. First the boy, then the others? Four, maybe five people died this way?’ asked Roberts with a look of incredulity.‘All those other people died the same way? Stabbed in the heart while their hearts were still beating?’

  ‘No, one of them was stabbed in the throat.’ Trevelyn nodded towards Marlowe, sitting rigid in his chair. ‘He shoved the knife into her jugular while someone caught the blood that spurted out in one of the empty cans.’

  ‘Her jugular? The victim was a woman?’

  ‘The second one, after the boy.’

  ‘Was she sick as well? Did she also have only a few days left?’

  ‘That’s not so easy to answer. None of us had more than a few days left. We were all dying. The only question was whether we would all die together or one at a time so the ones left could live a little longer. There was one or two who said we shouldn’t do it, that it was better to die than live like that, but most didn’t see it that way. They wanted to live. Nothing else mattered. Not that it was ever put to a vote, or anything like that. Marlowe made all the decisions. He was in charge.’

  ‘Do you know who this woman was? Do you know her name?’

  Hunched forward, Trevelyn raised his head. He looked at Roberts as if he was not sure he should answer.

  ‘The name, Mr Trevelyn.Who was she?’

  Trevelyn’s closed mouth pulled back to the side as he bit his lip. Roberts kept staring at him, hard, unrelenting.

  ‘She was the famous one, the movie star—the wife of that fool DeSantos.’