Blaggard's Moon

by George Bryan Polivka

  After a block or two, Damrick put a hand on the back of their cheerful patron’s neck. “Try to look a little bit scared to be walking with us, will you?” he whispered.

  “If everyone don’t know who we are by morning,” Hale muttered to Lye, “I’ll lower my opinion of the riffraff in this place.”

  “Don’t know how my own opinion could get lower,” Lye answered, a hand on each of his pistol butts.

  They turned from a dark side street down a darker one. Their boots echoed through deepened shadows. Here the danger seemed to hover over them, to crowd in on them from above.

  “Ah, this is it!” Still cheerful, Windall Frost rapped twice with his cane on a small, heavy oaken door fitted into a brick wall. Both door and wall were badly in need of a new coat of brown paint. The slat of a peephole slid open. Windall Frost spoke, identifying himself, and the slat slid shut. Several clicks and a jangle of chains later, and the door swung inward. They entered.

  The man who closed the door behind them and locked it back up tight wore the gray robes of a priest of Nearing Vast. When he turned back toward them into the lamplight, they saw a thin man of medium height with a thin face, scarred on one side from a bad burn. His head jutted forward, and a prominent Adams apple made his neck appear to have a crook in it. His eyes seemed dim and distant, but his expression was one of great enjoyment. “So, Win, these are the hunters you’ve brought to the lion’s lair.” He opened his arms and embraced his friend.

  “I suppose so,” Frost answered. “But I hope to have your help keeping them from the lion himself.”

  “Until the time is right, I assume.” The priest turned in the direction of the three men. “Carter Dent,” he said, and put out a hand. Damrick reached for it, awkwardly, and shook it.

  “Damrick Fellows.”

  “What, is he blind?” Lye asked bluntly.

  “Yes,” the priest answered easily. “He is blind, but he can still hear quite well. I don’t believe we’ve met.” He extended a hand toward Lye’s voice.

  The Gateman shook it dutifully, but quickly. “Lye Mogene,” he mumbled.

  “Pleased to meet you. Do you go by Lima, or Gene?”

  Lye turned red. “Lye.”

  “I’m Hale Starpus,” the third Gateman offered, putting a long pause between his first and last name. He leaned forward and found Father Dent’s hand.

  “Good to meet you, Hale. Come into my study, and we shall talk.” But he didn’t move.

  “You said you’d have a guest for us…?” Windall asked.

  “Yes. He’s waiting. This way.” Now he walked ahead of them.

  The Gatemen followed, hands on the stocks of their pistols.

  They climbed a narrow stairway and entered a small sitting room. Waiting there was a young gentleman of obvious means. He stood as the priest and his four guests entered.

  For the first time on the trip, Windall Frost seemed out of sorts. “Good Lord! Wentworth Ryland. What are you doing here?”

  The Gatemen drew their guns.

  Wentworth threw his hands in the air. “Steady now, gentlemen. Let’s be cautious with the artillery. I’m a friend.”

  “You can put those away,” Father Dent assured them. “You’ll want to hear his story, of course, but I think you’ll find this young man will be of great service.”

  “That will need to be one whale of a story,” Windall said, when the pistols were holstered again. He did not look any less suspicious. “Gentlemen,” he said to the Gatemen, “this is Wentworth Ryland, son of Runsford Ryland, heir to Ryland Shipping & Freight.”

  Damrick’s eyes blazed, and he kept his palm close to his pistol. “Who knows you’re here?”

  Wentworth showed little concern. “No one. Well, my fiancée. You must be Damrick Fellows.” He put out his hand. Damrick did not shake it. Wentworth lowered his hand, nodded at the other two men. “And you must be Hell’s Gatemen.”

  “There would be no Gatemen, and you would not know my name, if it weren’t for your father’s signature on a letter to Sharkbit Sutter, giving that pirate a license to plunder.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what letter you mean. But I am not here on behalf of my father. Rather I hope to undo some of the wrongs forced upon him by Conch Imbry.”

  “Forced?”

  “Why don’t we sit?” Father Dent suggested when the silence grew too thick. “I believe we all have much in common. Shall we explore our areas of mutual interest?”

  As a result of that nighttime meeting, and through the priests’ complex communication network, often called the Church, a few solid souls began to learn that the Gatemen were more than stories. Then, maintaining a level of secrecy only possible when the alternative is explosively dangerous, the interested began to organize. Regular meetings of church elders suddenly swelled from a half a dozen to two dozen men. Potluck dinners that normally drew a dozen families, mostly women and children, now drew three or four dozen men, almost all of fighting age. One by one, the interested became the intrigued, and then the invited. These found their way to a tribunal of inquiry, and faced interrogation from unnamed men who sat in shadows and alternately prodded and provoked.

  “Can ye shoot?” a voice asked from the darkness.

  “I can. Was in the Forest Brigade for five years, back in Mann.” The respondent sat in a bare room with one lantern for light, its hinged barn-door cover closed in the back. The voices who questioned him sat in the darkness beyond it.

  “Forest Brigade,” the voice said. “Shootin’ what, bears?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Ever shot at a man?” a second voice asked.

  “Once or twice. Criminals that live in the Deep Woods.”

  “Hit any of ’em?”

  “I hit what I aim at.”

  “Do you have family?” asked a third voice.

  Pause. “A wife and a young son.”

  “And are you prepared to leave your wife a widow?”

  “My parents are alive, if that’s what you mean. They’ll take her and the boy should anything happen to me.”

  “Thirty-seven Gatemen died this year. Are you prepared to join that number?”

  Silence. “Didn’t know it was so many. But I honor the memory of every last man.”

  “Rumors say Damrick Fellows ran scared, and that’s what got his men killed at the pub in Mann.”

  “I don’t believe that. He took down Skeel Barris and Sharkbit Sutter. Braid Delacrew and Shipwreck Moro, too. That’s no coward. And I seen how that sent a spike of fear to the hearts of Conch Imbry and his like. They’re gonna send around rumors; it’s how they do.”

  “Four pirates and a spike of fear…is that worth leaving your boy fatherless?”

  A thoughtful pause, a wrinkled chin. “My son is six years old. He’s a good boy. I want him to be a good man one day. If I don’t fight what I know is wrong, and give it all I got to give, what kind of man am I? What kind of man could I ask him to be?”

  “He may well grow up without you around to ask him anything.”

  Another pause. “If I fight against these thugs and die doing it, then at least I’ll have left him a show of what’s right. His mama can point him the way his daddy went, after that.”

  Papers shuffled. A pen scratched on parchment.

  “Here is a folded slip of paper. Do not unfold it.”

  A blind priest walked from the darkness into the lamplight, and handed the paper to the man being questioned. “Don’t open it,” he said. “That paper has on it your calling. A black ‘P’ is your commission to pray for the Gatemen. They need those who will beg God earnestly for protection, and success. A black ‘S’ is your commission to work in the service of the Gatemen, in secret financial and organizational support against all those who would stand in their way. A red ‘G’ will tell you that you are to join with them on the seas, as a Gateman. All three are honorable paths, and any of the three will show your son how to do what is right. Do you understand?”

  “I do u
nderstand that, yes.”

  “Good. Whichever letter you have been given, know that there are many out there, whether you see them or not, who pray and serve and fight. Do not unfold this scrap of parchment until you have thought this through one more time. Put it in your pocket, and go home. Consider your choice. If you feel for any reason you are not ready to take on a life devoted to this cause, whether in the open or in secret, then burn this note. No one will know but you. Continue on with your life as though this meeting never happened. Do you understand?”

  “I guess I do.”

  The priest withdrew.

  Now the third voice spoke from the darkness, the one that had asked about his family. “Understand this. We will never stop, never cease, until every last pirate is dead or in prison, along with every man who supports them. If you are prepared to dedicate yourself to this mission, regardless of what letter is written on that parchment, then, and only then, open it and learn your fate. Once you open that parchment, you are one of us. We expect equal devotion, whether in prayer, service, or as a Gateman on the seas. Do you understand?”

  “I do. But how will I find where to go, should you want me sailing?”

  “We will find you.”

  After a few moments of silence, the man spoke up. “Hello?”

  There was no answer.

  He stood and grasped the single lamp, and turned it around, squinting into the darkness. He walked over to a black sheet hanging from a stretched string, and looked behind it. A table and three empty chairs. He was alone in the room. He let himself out the door.

  On the way home, he walked with his hand in his pocket, clutching that scrap of paper. And as he walked he hoped, and then he prayed, that written on it he would find the red letter that spelled the end of Conch Imbry’s hold on Skaelington, and on the Vast Sea.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” Conch asked, irritated. He didn’t like his evening cigar interrupted by business.

  Mart Mazeley looked down at the scrap of folded parchment he had handed to the Conch, then up at the two serving girls. The captain liked to hire barmaids to work aboard when he was in port, turning his private saloon into something more like a public one. But Mazeley never trusted them.

  “All right,” Conch sighed. “Ladies, step outside.” They set down their drinks and sashayed out. When the door clicked, Conch turned to Mazeley, his ire up. “Make it fast.”

  “It’s a parchment—”

  “I see it’s a parchment. Someone wrote a ‘S’ on it. So what?”

  “That someone was Damrick Fellows.”

  Conch looked at it more carefully. “How do ye know? Where’d it come from?”

  “A citizen came looking for you. He wanted money. He gave me this and told me his story. He says Damrick Fellows is in Skaelington. He’s been here for over a month.”

  “Here? No!”

  “I followed up. There are a number of these parchments floating around town.”

  Conch sat up straight and peered at the paper again. “So. What’s he doin’?”

  “He’s recruiting Gatemen.”

  “He’s what?”

  Mazeley told the story, all he’d been told…the churches, the interrogations, the scraps of paper.

  Conch fed the small paper into the flame of a nearby lamp, then dropped the burning paper into the ashtray next to his cigar. “Find him.”

  “I’ve got men searching now. But he hasn’t left many tracks.”

  “Well, clean some a’ the boys up and send ’em to these priests for volunteers.”

  “We’re trying. But the Gatemen are working through the church, and most of these congregations are very tight. Everyone knows everyone. And they’re suspicious.”

  “They oughta be.” Conch snarled. He thought a moment, and then said, “I always hated church.”

  The footsteps came running down the dock this time. There were a lot of them, maybe twenty or thirty by the sound. The small yacht rocked crazily as the men jumped aboard by twos and threes. There was no debate this time; the butt of a rifle slammed down on the handle. It slammed once more and the handle broke off. The door was flung open, and armed men poured down into the cabin.

  A young couple sat up in the bed, covers to their chins, terrified.

  Pistol hammers cocked back.

  Mart Mazeley walked calmly down the stairs, ducking into the cabin. The men parted.

  “Where’s Windall Frost?” he asked the couple gently.

  “Who?”

  “Windall Frost. He owns this dinghy.”

  “That’s the man sold it to us,” the young woman said to her mate.

  “Sold it to you?” Mazeley asked.

  “We bought her cheap.” The man pointed to his coat. “There’s the papers over there. In the pocket.”

  Rough hands ripped the pocket open, passed the parchment to Mazeley.

  “Was it stolen or something?” the man asked.

  “I told you it was too cheap,” she hissed at her partner.

  Mazeley scowled. “Dated last week.” He looked up. “Where’d he go?”

  The young man shrugged. “Said he was shipping out to Nearing Vast.”

  Mazeley looked at the couple with calm, deadly eyes.

  “We didn’t know nothing, Mister,” the young man pled. “We just bought a boat, that’s all we did.”

  “You still don’t know anything, do you?”

  “No, sir.”

  Mazeley sighed. He turned to his men. “Take the boat and everything in it to Captain Imbry.”

  “What about them?”

  “When you get two hundred yards out, toss them overboard.”

  “But I can’t swim,” the young man said, panicked.

  He studied the two of them. “You should have thought about that before you bought a boat.”

  “I can get you out of Skaelington,” Windall Frost told them. He was seated in Shayla’s parlor, on the edge of his chair, cane in hand. He looked as though he was prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. Which, of course, he was. “I can take you back to Mann. But you have to decide now. It’s going to get very dicey here very soon. Conch’s men are sniffing everywhere. There’s no way our efforts will stay secret for long.”

  “That’s kind of you, Mr. Frost,” Jenta told him, “But I can’t leave Wentworth.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m married to him.”

  His brow furrowed. He studied Jenta’s face. Then he looked to Shayla, saw no denial. He looked back to Jenta. “Dear Lord.”

  After a pause, Shayla spoke. “Runsford has a warrant for our arrest in Mann. It was marriage, or prison.”

  “Prison? On what charge?”

  “Something about swindling rich men.”

  “He’s lying, of course. There could be no such warrant.”

  “I saw the document. He’s a very powerful man.”

  “Yes, but…this can be sorted out. A marriage under such duress, why, there are ways…”

  “None of that matters here,” Shayla answered evenly.

  “Then come back to Mann.”

  She said nothing for a moment. Then she asked, “Did you know, when your Gatemen made their pact with Wentworth, that he was engaged to Jenta?”

  “Engaged, yes. I asked after the two of you, of course, and he told me that much. But I had no idea—”

  “You had no idea about what, Mr. Frost? You came to this city knowing full well it was awash in pirates, knowing your actions would enrage them. You came into the bear’s den to poke the bear with a stick. You made your pact with Wentworth Ryland, knowing he was betrothed to Jenta. You handed him your stick and showed him precisely where to poke. So what was it that evaded you, Mr. Frost? What didn’t you understand?”

  He stiffened. “Madam, I have come to offer you help, in good faith. As I ever have.”

  She returned a cold look. “You have put my daughter in lethal danger, a danger she could hardly imagine, for an errand with no chance of success. No
w you come here to frighten us into fleeing with you from the very danger you’ve created. This is your idea of help, in good faith? Tell me, Mr. Frost, if we flee your nightmare with you, what would we find back in Mann? Prison?”

  “No.”

  “Can you guarantee that?”

  “I will do everything in my power—”

  “Against Ryland? Against Conch? Against the king?”

  He was silent.

  “So we escape prison, then what? What do you have for us then? Endless piles of your dirty laundry?”

  “Mother!”

  Shayla’s eyes went cold. “I shall see if the tea is ready.” And she stood and left the room.

  Windall looked at the rug, then to Jenta. He spoke softly. “Jenta, it has never been my intent to harm you. Neither you nor your mother.”

  “I know that.”

  “When Wentworth agreed to help Damrick Fellows, of course I had misgivings because of the two of you. But he was so earnest, and he could do so much good, so quickly. And you and your mother…”

  “We had already made our choices. I know. And we had already refused your help. Really, sir, this is not your doing.”

  “Had I but known you were married to him…”

  “I’m glad you didn’t know. You did what you came to do, and what you came to do is honorable. Yes, it’s dangerous. But you need not concern yourself with our choices, nor the result of them.”

  He sat back. “But of course I’m concerned.”

  Jenta stood and walked to the window. Outside the night was dark. The path to the road through the manicured lawn was lit for a dozen yards, festooned with flowers, and then it dropped suddenly into darkness. “It was not my desire to marry Wentworth,” she told him. “But marry him I did.” She turned back toward him. “Even so, had you come with this offer any time within those first, bitter weeks…I would have been packed before you finished asking. But things have changed. What we have started here, aligning citizens with the Gatemen, and against the pirates, we have started. It is as much my doing as Wentworth’s. Perhaps more.” She looked at him now with eyes that spoke of tragedies carefully considered. “I do fear it will end badly. But I cannot run. Not now. Wentworth is not a strong man, but he is, or has become, a good man. And I cannot leave him to face alone the consequences of our actions together.”