Finding Serendipity

by Angelica Banks

There were jeers. And then a quarrel broke out with all manner of terrible accusations and cries of ‘Finger! Phlegm! Gum! Finger! Phlegm! Gum!’

  Meanwhile, moving as stealthily as a shadow, Vivienne Small had entered the brig in the bowels of the ship where prisoners were usually kept; it was empty, except for the large black rats that watched her passing with mute regard. Vivienne remembered these rats only too well. They had been her constant companions when Mothwood had held her captive for a week. She had a certain respect for rats, for it had been a rat that had chewed through her ropes and freed her.

  Next, Vivienne made her way up through the sailors’ quarters and then held her breath as she tiptoed through the stinking, fetid galley where the sailors’ meals were prepared. She heard the pirates arguing on the deck above her as she followed the corridor that led to Mothwood’s cabin. Once inside, she quietly closed the door and looked about her. In the moonlight spearing through the porthole, she could see that the cabin was quite empty. Clearly no prisoner was held captive here. Silently and carefully, she lit Mothwood’s lamp to give herself more light to search by. On the table were charts and a compass, and Vivienne had the eerie impression that Mothwood had stepped from the room just a moment before. To the left was the bed Mothwood had slept in, the sheets untidily crumpled and the pillow bearing a dent where his head had rested only the night before.

  ‘Death is a sudden thing,’ Vivienne thought, still amazed by the idea that her enemy was no longer alive.

  She picked up a book that lay open on the bedside table, and was not surprised to find it was a volume of rhyming poetry. That was his way, she thought, to be clever with words.

  Once, he had called after her:

  ‘If only my words were as sharp as my blade,

  In a watery grave, Vivienne Small, you’d be laid.’

  And another time he’d jeered into her face:

  ‘If all the world’s treasure were offered me,

  still your death my greatest joy would be.’

  She shivered, recalling these haunting rhymes, and as she replaced the book on the table, she thought how glad she was never to have to hear Mothwood’s voice again.

  Up on deck, the argument had come to an abrupt halt. Finger had again drawn the longest straw and this time nobody questioned his right to perform the task. He straightened the captain’s twisted limbs and head as best he could, though this was easier said than done.

  ‘He’s broken to pieces,’ said Liver sorrowfully.

  ‘He is, and no coming back after a fall like that,’ muttered Phlegm, and everyone nodded and grunted their agreement.

  The sailors launched into a song fit for such an occasion, about the perils of the sea and the beauty of an afterlife beneath the waves. Fixing the canvas tight about the body, they swaddled the captain as well as any newborn baby, with only his bleak face visible in the wrap of canvas. Starting at the feet, Finger began sewing the shroud together while the men held the lanterns high.

  The bosun sewed swift and sure, the needle large and sharp, his fingers strong with years of darning sails, mending cloth and plaiting ropes – hence his name, Finger. The rest of the men kept up their singing as the shroud was sewn tight around the corpse.

  Below, in Mothwood’s cabin, Vivienne heard the song begin. She gathered up the maps off the table. She rolled them tightly and slid them into a long leather cylinder, secured the strap over her shoulder, and retreated. She checked the cabins, port and starboard, as she went. All was dark and still. Tuesday’s mother was not here, Vivienne was certain, and there was no evidence she ever had been.

  Back on deck, Vivienne slipped down beside Tuesday, who stood transfixed by the sight of the bosun sewing the dead captain into his shroud.

  ‘No prisoners below,’ Vivienne whispered.

  Tuesday nodded, feeling a mixture of relief and disappointment at this news.

  ‘Got these though,’ said Vivienne, taking the map cylinder off her shoulder and laying it down silently on the deck.

  Vivienne nudged Tuesday and pointed upwards, where Mothwood’s flag fluttered at half-mast.

  ‘Want to come with me?’ she whispered, grinning at Tuesday.

  ‘You go,’ Tuesday said. ‘I’ll stand guard.’

  This sounded brave, but in truth Tuesday had been struck almost dumb with fear ever since she had arrived on The Silverfish. Vivienne, appearing not to notice Tuesday’s terror, nodded in agreement. Tuesday watched as her small black shape flitted down the short flight of stairs onto the deck and then across the deck behind the pirates, who were too consumed with the stitching of their captain into his burial shroud to sense that his greatest enemy was just a few feet away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Without putting on her dressing gown, or even her slippers, Serendipity Smith bolted out of her bedroom and dashed up the stairs to the writing room where Denis had fallen asleep in the red velvet chair near the open window.

  ‘Denis! Denis!’ she said urgently, kneeling beside her husband and shaking him into wakefulness. ‘I know. I know how to do it. I know how to get back!’

  ‘What?’ asked the befuddled Denis, lifting his head stiffly from where it had fallen, his face marked from the plush pattern of the fabric.

  ‘It’s something I’d forgotten. About sailors!’ said Serendipity triumphantly.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘When a sailor is buried at sea, the bosun on the ship stitches the body inside a shroud, but there is a tradition that the very last stitch goes right through the sailor’s nose.You know, the middle bit of your nose, between the nostrils.’

  ‘The septum, Serendipity, my sweet, that super sensitive flesh of the nose is known as the septum,’ said Denis, blinking patiently at his wife. ‘But please tell me what this has to do with Tuesday. Or anything, for that matter.’

  ‘Well, they do it to make sure the sailor is actually dead, that he’s not just unconscious or something. To make sure they’re not going to bury anyone alive.’

  ‘I’m not following,’ said Denis, perplexed.

  ‘Don’t you see? I didn’t end the book. Not entirely. Vivienne Small and the Final Battle is not over yet, because I didn’t put The End at the end. Even though the final battle is over and Mothwood has – apparently – fallen to his death, I didn’t finish the book. I decided to sleep on it. And thank goodness I did, because all I have to do to get back there and find Tuesday is keep the story going. There has to be another chapter!’

  ‘That’s all very well, my love, but I fail to see what it has to do with needling noses.’

  ‘Watch me,’ she said.

  Perching herself on the edge of her chair, Serendipity took from her drawer a new sheet of paper and threaded it into the typewriter.

  ‘Mothwood’s not dead. Not dead after all,’ she muttered to herself as she readied her hands over the keys and began typing.

  Soon she had written about Mothwood’s body being laid out on the deck of The Silverfish, carried there by his men from the rocks where he had fallen. At nightfall the men returned to the shore and lit a great bonfire on the beach, and there they drank and sang and told stories of the fearless and filthy acts of Carsten Mothwood, now deceased. At some time long after midnight, the men rowed back to The Silverfish and gathered together on deck for the ceremony where they would sew the body into the shroud before tossing it overboard into the Restless Sea. From there the body would sink to the sea floor, making food for fish who would surely delight at eating the remains of the great pirate Carsten Mothwood.

  As Serendipity wrote, describing how Mothwood’s men covered a chest on deck with a salt-stained canvas and lifted the broken form of Mothwood onto it, her words began to lift off the page and circle about her. Serendipity continued, trying not to whoop with glee. Next, she described how the sailors drew straws for who would sew the shroud, for it was an honour of the highest order to do this for a captain, and any sailor worth his salt can sew a seam with a neat and even hand. She
wrote about how the pirates cheated and lied and fought over the drawing of straws, and then she stopped, wondering why the words had not scooped her up and floated her out the window. Instead they were hovering in the air above her, not encircling her arms and legs as was usual.

  ‘Denis?’ she said quietly, not wanting to frighten the words. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  ‘There seems to be a shortage of stickiness,’ he said. ‘A lack of levitation.’

  ‘Why?’ Serendipity asked in frustration. ‘Why?’

  The words hung in the air in silvery loops, just above her head. She reached out as if to catch them, but they slipped from her grasp. She turned back to the typewriter, wielding her fingers like bullets against the keys.

  Finger sewed the shroud with perfect stitches while the men watched on, she wrote. Dawn was approaching. Pirate lore was very specific: a burial must take place at dawn to ensure a quiet resting place for the dead, while a burial at dusk would make a ghost of the dead sailor forever. As dawn approached, Finger sped up the sewing and the pirates held the lanterns high so the light of twenty flames illuminated the corpse.

  The final stitch was imminent and all the sailors held their breath as Finger took the great silver needle, slender and sharp as a blade, and grinned at the men about him. With one strong, sure stroke, Finger grasped both the fabric and the flesh beneath it, plunging the needle through the cloth and into the septum of Mothwood’s nose. Before Finger could draw the needle through, a terrible wail erupted from the shroud – a blood-curdling scream of anguish and pain.

  These words rose up to join the others. They were shimmering between Serendipity and Denis, sparkling and drifting. Serendipity stood up from her chair and stepped into them, hoping this would remind the words to wrap themselves around her, but they dispersed and scattered before re-forming near the ceiling. Then, in one single, long thread, they swooped around the room before diving out the open window.

  ‘No!’ Serendipity called. ‘No!’

  She lunged after the end of the silvery tail but the thread slipped thought her fingers as if it was satin. It flew away into the inky depths of the sky.

  ‘Denis!’ cried Serendipity, her face stricken. ‘Denis, Denis, Denis.’

  But Denis could do no more than simply peer at the thread vanishing from view.

  ‘I think I might have made things much, much worse,’ Serendipity gasped. ‘Oh, poor Tuesday. Oh, what have I done?’

  On the deck of The Silverfish, the singing continued. Tuesday peered up the mast and could just make out a black shape climbing below the flag. Then she saw the dark square of flag disappear, replaced by starry sky. The faintest noise of a jingling reached her as Vivienne unscrewed the cleats holding the flag to the mast.

  The pirates’ singing ended on a low, mournful note. Finger cut a length of twine and held aloft a huge, curving needle. As he threaded the twine through the eye of the needle, Tuesday saw something unusual. A long filament of glimmering silver drifted through the darkness and wove itself into Finger’s thread. The pirates, however, did not appear to have noticed. Every man on deck held his breath as they realised the significance of the moment they were about to witness. Finger gripped the canvas and within it the nose of Carsten Mothwood.With a dramatic flourish he lifted the needle high into the air and then plunged the final stitch into the septum of Mothwood’s nose.

  There was a blood-curdling screech loud enough to shake the stars in the heavens. Nobody moved. All were struck dumb. The corpse of Mothwood wriggled and writhed, the needle still protruding from the nose. A muffled voice inside the shroud shrieked: ‘Aaaggghhh! Get me out of here. Get this thing out of my nose!’

  The sailors trembled and backed away.

  ‘That’s not possible!’ said Phlegm.

  ‘It’s not him. Finish the stitch, Finger, finish the stitch!’ said Liver.

  ‘Yes, yes, finish the stitch!’ yelled several more.

  But Finger knew his work. This was why the last stitch was tradition. Only the absolutely dead will lay quiet with a sailor’s needle piercing their nose. Finger reached out and with a flourish similar to the one he had used to insert the needle, he withdrew it from the cloth and what was in between. Dawn was breaking, but nobody noticed, not even Tuesday, who was still crouched beside the wheelhouse looking on in utter terror.

  In a panic, she attempted an owl call to hurry Vivienne back to her side, but it came out rather badly, and not very loudly.

  ‘Who, whooooo,’ she called.

  She tried again, a little louder this time: ‘Who, whooooo.’

  The sailors spun about.

  ‘It’s the bird of death to be sure,’ said Phlegm, his face white with fear.

  ‘The owl is here, Cap’n. Lie down, lie down and rest yourself,’ said Gum, ‘for an owl has come to guide you through the darkness to the afterlife.’

  From within the shroud came another muffled scream: ‘Aaargh! I’ll not be going anywhere until every one of you is carved into little pieces and fed to the sharks by my very own hands. Now get me out of here.’

  The men hesitated, and then one by one they nodded their assent. Daylight was creeping into the darkness like dye seeps into water.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Cap’n. We’ll have you out in no time. You just hold still,’ said Finger gently.

  He admired his fine handiwork one last time, then took a knife and sliced open the shroud. His hands were shaking and indeed every man on deck was mute with fear as the shroud was pulled away and there before them, looking ghastly and broken, with blood oozing from the wound to his nose, lay Carsten Mothwood with the crow Baldwin still dead in the crook of his arm.

  ‘Can he not die?’ Vivienne whispered to herself, as she looked down from above.

  She had stopped at the lowest yardarm, and from here she peeped over the furled sails and stared at the figure laid out below. The captain’s head was fixed sidewards, and his arm was dangling unnaturally. One of his legs was still facing the wrong way but there was no disputing that Mothwood, at least for the moment, was alive. His face was a terrible mix of fury and pain. One eye scanned the shocked faces of the men about him while the other eye, clearly damaged by the fall, rolled around in its socket as if surveying the lightening sky. And then that eye swivelled to the yardarm and focused itself on Vivienne Small perched in the rigging.

  ‘Vivienne Small!’ gurgled Mothwood. ‘There!’

  The men stared at the captain in stunned silence. Surely he was hallucinating.

  ‘There!’ Mothwood shouted, spit flying from his mouth.

  One arm attempted to wrench itself upwards without luck, broken as it was, and Mothwood was forced to lurch his head upon his shoulders, his eyes each going in opposite directions, his mouth leering furiously at his men.

  ‘Above! The mast!’ he bellowed, almost apoplectic with rage.

  His men looked up and scattered, swords and knives at the ready as some made for the mast, some raced across decks and others took up positions port and starboard.

  Though Vivienne made swiftly for the top of the mast, climbing with all the speed she could muster, she found that when she reached the crow’s nest, she was trapped. Her right wing was too badly damaged for her to attempt a flying leap to one of the other masts. Without her wings, she would certainly fall to the deck far below, breaking as many bones as Mothwood himself.

  From beside the wheelhouse, Tuesday watched Vivienne’s plan unravelling. The pirates climbed higher, coming at her hand over hand. One of them grabbed at her legs and another hauled her backwards. Despite her best efforts, she was dragged swiftly down to the deck and tightly trussed. It was there that Vivienne Small, looking like a roast ready for cooking, faced the grim reality of a Mothwood newly awakened from death.

  Finger and Gum helped the broken captain into a sitting position, so that he might see Vivienne helpless on the deck before him. As they did so, the body of Baldwin – tucked into the crook of the captain’s arm – fell from the folds of th
e shroud onto the deck. At this sight, the captain howled.

  ‘What has happened to my bird?’

  ‘He died, Captain, from a broken heart. He laid himself beside you and died,’ said Phlegm quietly, reaching down and picking up the stiff crow and placing him on the captain’s lap.

  Though he tried, Mothwood was unable to touch the bird. His fingers twitched a little at the ends of his useless hands and his face looked more wretched than ever.

  ‘But not before finding the home of this savage,’ Finger sneered, jabbing at Vivienne Small. ‘And allowing us to fell the tree that has sheltered her all these years.’

  ‘Baldwin,’ said Mothwood, clearly distressed by the loss of his companion and not seeming to register Finger’s words. ‘Baldwin.’

  Mothwood’s speech was garbled and his movements erratic. Again his arm tried in vain to swing his hand to touch the bird, but the broken limb simply hung, apparently boneless and quivering. Gum lifted the bird away and set him against the mast, where the captain could see his shabby, black form. Then Mothwood’s head raised itself crookedly and he looked about again.

  One of the crew shouted out that they had spied Vivacious tied alongside, and an instant later Tuesday heard Baxterr snarling and barking down below. Then she heard him whining and yelping.

  ‘No, not Baxterr,’ she said silently to herself, clenching her fists until her nails almost pierced the skin of her palms. She longed to leap out and try to protect him, but what could she do in a fight against these large and vicious men? If she were captured also, then all hope would be lost.

  She heard the winding of a winch, the creak of a rope running through a pulley. Tuesday’s heart was beating so loudly as she pressed herself against the side of the wheelhouse that she was sure someone would hear it, but the men were otherwise engaged. When all had fallen quiet, Tuesday again peeped out across the deck. A terrible sight met her gaze. Bound on the deck was Vivienne, and beside her – bundled up in a fishing net – was Baxterr.