Mr Corbett's Ghost

by Leon Garfield

  ‘Thank you, Mr Bartleman,’ he murmured before he dozed off. ‘You are indeed my good angel . . .’

  And when he awoke, his eyes were wet with tears.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HAVING NOTHING OF black in her luggage but half a yard of lace of her mother’s, Miss Warboys slept badly and woke early, still wondering whether to wear it at her throat or on her hair. But her reddened eyes and stained cheeks—though she would never have declared it—had a deeper cause than vanity over a touch of mourning. Her heart ached: gentle Mr Kemp had stolen more than a brooch . . .

  But nothing was ever decided by sighing. The lace became her reddish hair distractingly well—and three pins would hold it if the air proved kind. It all depended on the weather. Anxiously, she rouged the tear stains out of her cheeks and stumbled forth to see how strong the wind blew.

  The morning was palely brilliant. The eastern sea seemed to have washed all the blood out of the sun so that it hung over the poop like a glaring ghost.

  The air was cold but had little motion. Most likely this was on account of all sails being furled—which gave the ship an open aspect, as of a house suddenly unroofed.

  There was no doubt that three pins would secure the black lace quite confidently.

  ‘I must look well for him,’ she murmured, clinging to her pertness though her passions were in disarray. ‘I must look my—Oh God—God! How horrible!’

  From the larboard arm of the mainyard hung a rope that was no part of the rigging.

  ‘Hemp for Kemp, miss,’ said the boatswain harshly, then laid his hands behind his back and stared down at the hatch that covered the thief to die.

  Though the rope appalled her, she could not forbear from looking at it again and again before she returned to her quarters.

  Nor was she alone in this. The merciful captain had seen it with displeasure and even with pain. For he was a merciful man—though cursed with a quick temper and a loose tongue. It was certain he regretted the sudden sentence he’d passed in the night. But his word was law to the boatswain; and laws must be kept else they fall into disrepute and are booted aside.

  If I weaken now, he thought fiercely, them thieving felons will have the gold out of me passengers’ teeth! No! Examples must be made—then we can all rest easy.

  ‘Boatswain!’ he shouted from the quarter-deck—and in the general stillness, his voice ranged high and wide. ‘I want everything done shipshape! Crew on the forecastle head. Convicts in their enclosures. No passengers near ’em. I’ll have no more thievery! They can keep to their cabins or come out with me. Shipshape. D’you understand?’

  ‘Aye, Captain. Shall I read the Service?’

  ‘That’s my office, mister. You can dispatch him, but I’ll address him. Get moving, mister. And do it neat and decent. Remember—there’ll be ladies present.’

  The boatswain moved. Put into motion the captain’s orders. Eased out the crew from every dozy cranny and dicing hole. Crossed and recrossed the staring deck. A hard and vigilant man.

  Sourly the captain watched, then returned to his cabin to ferret out his Bible. On his way, he remembered the paying passengers. He frowned. Had brief hopes of their keeping to the Great Cabin till the . . . unpleasantness was done with.

  His hopes were dashed when he saw them, warmly dressed and full of expectation.

  ‘Gentlemen and ladies,’ he said irritably. ‘I must ask you to keep well aft, poopward, I mean, of the mainmast this morning. An . . . an example is being made. For the convicts. It . . . it really ain’t your business. Begging your pardon! It ain’t interesting. But, of course, if you insists . . . Gentlemen—I’ll trouble you to look to the ladies. Some turns queasy. I recommend aromatic vinegar . . . Miss Warboys! It won’t do no good, y’know—not to him nor to you, miss. It wasn’t your fault . . . and you won’t make it any easier on him. Better for him to think on spiritual matters when . . . Miss Warboys! Bear up, my girl!’

  This last, as Miss Warboys tottered and clutched at the table for support. She recovered herself, attempted one of her smiles (which seemed to pluck at her lips like a child begging), then felt for the piece of black lace that lay atop her head.

  ‘Saucy slut!’ remarked a female passenger, and Miss Warboys’ eyes glittered with a touch of anger.

  ‘Did you see? Did you mark? That went home!’

  The sun was halfway up the mizzen—a blinding eye to stare the world out of countenance. There was no looking backward towards it.

  The masts flung great shadows the length of the deck. These shadows were wide and thick like velvet, and lay most ominously across the hatch that covered up Nicholas Kemp.

  ‘Boatswain!’ shouted the captain.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘All assembled?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Then let up the convicts first. Open up their hatch. Move, man!’

  Came a curious effect. The mainmast’s shadow lay three-quarters across this hatch, so that the captain shouted a second time before he saw the shabby felons spilling over the edge of the blackness and understood the shadow to be hiding them as they emerged.

  Now a slight wind sprang up, coming from the north-west. The flat sea prickled and the Phoenix began, very gently, to dance.

  ‘Get ’em moving, mister! Quicker there!’

  The captain most likely feared the wind would increase and blow his sermon too early to heaven.

  ‘Move, you stinking felons!’ roared the boatswain. ‘Else you’ll all end up with Kemp!’

  But the convicts did not seem to hurry themselves. And, rather than from the angry boatswain, they seemed to take direction from a squat convict who shifted deftly in and out of the mainmast’s shadow so that, one moment he was plainly seen, and the next there was nothing but an invisible presence, somewhere in the dark.

  ‘Are they all come up yet?’

  ‘I’ll go see, sir. I think—ah!’

  The boatswain had gone into the dark, towards the invisible presence.

  ‘What’s amiss, there? What are they doing? Boatswain! Damn you, mister! Answer me or—’

  But if that vigilant man had been damned, it was now by a more powerful Judge than the Phoenix’s captain. He lay in the black shadow, dead of Bartleman’s knife.

  There followed movement and purpose of uncanny speed and skill—which the very brilliance of the day obscured.

  Even as a shoal of black perch in a summer’s stream may twist and dart and vanish utterly in the shadows of overhanging leaves and branches, so the rapid dark figures of the running convicts vanished in the deep, wide shadow of the mainmast. Nothing was seen—but there was heard the terrible sound of their tread, under which the deck trembled.

  Wild confusion had broken out on the forecastle head!’ But the man who might have quelled and commanded it was dead. Muskets were swung and desperately levelled . . . But against what? Valuable moments lost: moments that were now beyond price.

  Already, this dark and pounding army was swarming out of its concealment and overrunning the quarter-deck. Already the captain was overthrown. Muskets shook and trembled, but the damnable sun glared too bright for a certain aim. It was too late—and the ruined captain knew it.

  ‘Don’t shoot! For pity’s sake, don’t shoot, men! Remember—for God’s sake remember, there’s ladies present!’

  The embezzler, profiting as he always did by softer natures than his own, had directed the passengers to be seized and held in the path of any presumptuous musketry. His own squat person he shielded with the unlucky Miss Warboys, holding his stained knife to that trembling side of her that was most in the captain’s view.

  ‘Disarm ’em, friend—or this poor innocent soul dies for it. Come now, friend—would you want her death at your door?’

  He had a way of saying ‘innocent’ (a favourite word of his), so that it seemed bent in the middle and robbed of meaning.

  Wretchedly, the captain stared at the grinning embezzler. There was no mistaking his intent, nor beli
ttling his power to carry it out.

  ‘Throw down them muskets!’ he shouted, but his voice was so unsteady with anger, fear, and grief that he had to shout again and again before the crew on the forecastle heard him plain enough to obey. Then several of the convicts ran forward and gathered up the weapons in a triumph they themselves could scarcely believe in.

  Maybe five minutes had been needed since they’d come out of their hold and into the iron sunlight for them to possess the ship that had been their prison. To the best and worst of their understanding, they were free!

  Five minutes. Each and every one of them had been counted out by Nicholas Kemp. Each sound, each cry, each rumble of feet on the deck had been translated a thousand ways in his eager mind, till there came the shout and roar that Mr Bartleman had promised. They were free! The shadow of death lifted. Any instant now the hatch would be moved and friends would be climbing down.

  Convicts were ransacking the passengers’ quarters. Bartleman had given them leave. (‘Enjoy yourselves, sons!’) Roar upon roar of happy triumph declared their finds . . . while the passengers trembled in the verminous grip of felons whose turn was still to come.

  ‘There weren’t no harshness—no cruelty—’ moaned the captain, more to himself than to the raucous gentry who reeked about his quarter-deck.

  Shrieks of laughter rose suddenly out of the poop. A party of mad propriety came falling out. The convicts had got at the passengers’ baggage: had decked themselves to the eyeballs in genteel attire. Pantaloons and waistcoats being bespoke, they had sorted out hooped gowns and solemn petticoats; bombazeen bodices and hats like birds of prey. Arm in arm, they hopped and capered, kicking up their feet which emerged from under daintiness like huge black insects uncovered at a garden feast.

  In a fatherly fashion, Bartleman watched them, laughed, made jokes, seemed affable, at ease . . . as if with all the time in the world . . .

  In the darkness of his gaol, Nicholas Kemp made excuses for the delay. Much had to be accomplished: the crew shut up, the mutiny secured. First things first—and then they’d come . . .

  On the wild and violent deck, the unlucky captain groaned. ‘Why? Why?’ over and over—as if the certain death he read in the embezzler’s eyes would be eased by knowing the reason for it.

  ‘A good question, friend,’ answered Bartleman obligingly. He was in high good humour over the antics of his men which continually diverted him—as if, underneath all his terrible implacability, he was a mass of merriment that could not help breaking through. ‘You was going to hang a man—Ha! Look at that!’ (Something fresh had amused him. God knew what!) ‘A meek, oppressed young soul. So we rose up on his be’alf. Rose up in our wrath. Rage of the downtrodden, you might call it, friend. The anger of the weak and ’elpless, so to speak. Ha! What a sight! Don’t it tickle the ribs and warm the heart, friend?’ (But the captain’s blood stayed cold as ice.) ‘You might even say—if you’d a mind to—the poor meek has in’erited this small piece of the earth, friend. Take your pick. It’s six of one or half a dozen of the other. It’s all because you was going to hang poor Nick Kemp.’

  All this delivered with an affable air over the shoulder of Miss Warboys. On the mention of Nick Kemp, her deathly face took on some faint colour and she began to moan and struggle till Bartleman pricked her side with his knife and made her cry out.

  ‘Kemp?’ screamed the captain. ‘For Kemp? Then for God’s sake, free him! I give in! He’s pardoned! You’ve won your cause! Take him up! All’s forgiven! Not a word’ll be said hereafter! I promise—on my honour—’

  ‘What was that you said, friend?’

  Abruptly, the captain gave up his pleading. All urgency was pricked; all hope sunk. Bleakly he stared in the embezzler’s face which was gone suddenly bland. He understood too well that Nicholas Kemp was no more than the martyr whose only purpose was to make the fire burn bright. Bitterly he cursed him for the meekness that had fed this monster’s strength.

  ‘Damn you, Kemp! Damn you for unlocking this hell!’

  In the darkness below, Nicholas Kemp fancied he heard—above the roar that went with the convicts’ liberty—his name called out. Cheerfully he shouted back, ‘I’m here, gentlemen! Much thanks for all you’ve done!’ And he stared up to the hatch, with all his amiable young soul fixed on the expectation of its opening any moment now.

  On the quarter-deck, one of the ship’s officers, in mad and valiant mood, fancied his chances with the squat, vulgar little convict before whom his captain shrank.

  ‘Come along, man. Give up this madness. Kemp won’t thank you—’

  Still in chains, Nicholas Kemp waited. Then he heard a scream, and Mr Bartleman shout: ‘For Kemp! That was for Kemp!’

  What was for him? Another man’s life. The scream had a rasp of mortality to it. A sudden and horrible agony invaded the young man, like a blast of winter through his vitals. Into what dark sea had he been led—there to drown? What business had he in the world that men should die for him? He stared up at the hatch, but now with fading hope . . . and even with dread.

  The ship began to rock more violently, for the wind was increasing. Nicholas began to be toppled from side to side, to the extent of his chain. Then, with appalling suddenness, a fresh disaster struck.

  On deck the ship’s motion had brought an almost tipsy gaiety to the convicts. Crazy preparations were afoot for dispatching the passengers—when a frightful sound halted them. Directly, faces grew pale with uneasy questioning, as if the sound was of some supernatural vengeance.

  It came from below. It was loud and regular: a formidable rumbling, like fallen thunder, cut off at each extremity by a loud crash. And then there came up, from the same dark place, a frantic cry: ‘Help me! Help me! The irons have got loose! I’ll be crushed to death!’

  ‘Save him!’ shrieked Miss Warboys, careless of the twice-red knife.

  But Bartleman, the embezzler, grinned in delight, as if the merriment inside of him had finally burst its bounds. He could scarce contain his laughter in the mounting wind.

  ‘Crushed to death! Poor Kemp!’ he roared. ‘Now we’ve sanctified this mutiny in an innocent’s blood! We got the right, sons! Oh yes, we got the right! We dedicate this freedom to the soul of poor Nick Kemp! And don’t no one go down to fish him out and spoil it!’

  Now the wind blew a fierce, malicious blast. But Miss Warboys was long past caring—even though her half yard of lace was whipped from her head and fluttered wildly in the air like a darkened soul taking wing.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE GNAWING OF the gnawing of the rats, the violent shaking caused by the passage across the submarine current and now the sudden springing up of the wind, had together broken a securing rope. Thus some dozen leg-irons flew and crashed from side to side with malignant force.

  The effect of this, in the extreme darkness, was at once extraordinary and terrible.

  If ever a living soul had knowledge of the whirlwinds of hell, then that soul belonged to the young man chained to the mainmast.

  With no liberty but that offered by four feet of chain, and no warning of each onslaught save by terrified listening, Nicholas Kemp must needs crouch and leap—he knew not where—as the invisible irons came rushing past.

  Sometimes these leaps were too vigorous, and then he was brought down, with painful reminder, by his chain. But not to rest. Even as he lay, conceiving his fettered leg to be broken and his head in ruins, he heard the onslaught begin again. Out of each echoing crash it came—a harsh screaming as the iron rasped across the boards, growing louder and louder and infecting him with desperation to escape, if only for seconds more.

  Faintly, from above, he could hear the shouts and sometimes laughter of the convicts who owned the ship. But such sounds no longer moved him. Plainly, from above, he had heard Bartleman shout. He had heard himself contemptuously dedicated to death.

  He leaped sideways and felt the wind of something passing. Then he lay still for seconds while Bartleman’s words t
urned in his brain as if that gentle space so full of springtime love and springtime hope was changed into a crucible.

  He imagined the squat embezzler standing in the dark, hurling the irons at him—

  ‘I’ve come for your soul, sonny!’

  ‘Not this time . . . not this time!’

  ‘I’ve paid for it, sonny, with a pipe!’

  ‘That wasn’t for my soul . . . not my soul!’

  ‘I paid for it with the Marshalsea man’s life, sonny!’

  ‘That wasn’t for my soul—’

  ‘I paid for it with a brooch, sonny, and with a fair face. That was for your soul!’

  Each of these exchanges marked a thundering past of the irons and a desperate escape from them, though each escape grew more hazardous as the young man tired.

  ‘Not for my soul . . .’

  ‘You took the brooch and bought Miss Warboys’ love—’

  ‘I gave—I gave! I bought nothing! I gave her my soul! You can’t have it, Bartleman! It’s not here! It’s not mine! I’ve beaten you, Bartleman—you’ve only embezzled yourself!’

  ‘It’s too late, sonny, too late!’

  Again the irons thundered; again Nicholas leaped—but weariness and deafening confusion caused him to be deceived in the sound. He leaped backward, and it was the mainmast alone that saved him. A most terrific conglomeration of iron struck and lodged against his leg. Though its chief force was spent upon the mast, a stray pendant almost broke his knee.

  ‘Next time your soul, sonny,’ the imaginary Bartleman seemed to say. ‘Next time, eh?’

  Now the ‘next time’ was on its way, rumbling in the darkness . . .

  Nicholas made to move. Demons had been at work on his knee, most likely with something white hot. But there was worse than that, even. His own chain had been entangled, caught up in the iron. From four feet of liberty, he’d scarce a foot remaining.

  He shouted aloud in a rage that was tragic and pitiful; here indeed was the rage of the meek, tricked out of their inheritance and seeking redress in the Court of Heaven. Then the invisible creatures (whose shapes were now, in his mind, grimacing devils and savage beasts) rushed roaring by and met the opposing woodwork with a very doom-laden sound.