Blaggard's Moon

by George Bryan Polivka

She did.

  “I know it’s a hard choice, and I don’t want any confusion. Give me the spade, that’s yer mama, or give me the heart, which is yerself.”

  There was a request in it. Almost a plea. She shook her head. Here he was, promising to murder her husband and sell her mother, and yet in his mind, he was showing mercy.

  “Discard me, Jenta,” Shayla said suddenly. “I’ll kill myself, and you’ll be free.”

  “Mother!”

  Furious, Conch snatched up the pistol. “Shut it!” he yelled. But he couldn’t figure out at whom he should aim the weapon. “I’ll kill the room of ye, and forget the game!” He calmed himself again, seeing that Shayla would speak no more. “What I’m tryin’ to tell ye is, ma’am, that it’s yer daughter’s choice and not yers.” Conch’s voice was still ragged but now under better control.

  “Don’t worry, Captain,” Jenta said, feeling a rush of cold strength from within. “I’ll play your game.”

  She laid down a card.

  A look of respect grew in Conch. “Well, good fer you. A card player.”

  When Mazeley swept the discard to Conch, the pirate left it on the table, facedown, and stared at the back of it for a long time. Then turned it over. He smiled. “The queen a’ my heart.” He stood, rubbing his hands together vigorously. “Well, our game’s done! Mrs. Stillmithers, I had a game all set fer you, but we won’t be needin’ to play it now. Yer carriage awaits. I apologize fer gettin’ ye outta bed fer nothin’. Jenta, on the outside chance ye’d make just the choice ye did make, I got a stateroom all decked out, right next to mine. I took the liberty to order ye up some widow’s weeds. I think ye’ll look fine in black. After ye cry yer eyes out a while, fer which I won’t hold a thing against ye, then I think ye’ll find yer quarters quite comfy. I’ll take ye there now, if yer ready.”

  Conch stood. “Wentworth,” he said with a sideways glance, “ye always were a wretched little puke. But I do feel a might sorry fer ye, losin’ a woman like this to the likes a’ me.” He slid his pistol over one place. “Clean my pistol when yer done wif the boy, will ye, Mr. Mazeley?”

  “Don’t I always?”

  “That ye do, Mr. Mazeley. That ye do.”

  Wentworth hung his head.

  “Well, let’s jus’ skip over the sad goodbyes, shall we…?” He held out a hand to Jenta.

  Jenta did not stand. She watched Wentworth for a moment, then looked at Conch. Her eyes were calm defiance. “One more hand,” she said evenly.

  “What?” Conch asked.

  “I want to play one more hand.”

  “No, missy, my game’s done.”

  “But mine’s not.” There was no anger, no animosity in her voice. In fact, she said it with perfect poise.

  He stood in silence, looking around the room.

  “Not a risk-taker then?” she asked. Her tone was light and there was a glint in her eye, as though he had done no more than to refuse to dance.

  Shayla looked at her daughter in confusion.

  “Well, what’s the game?” Conch asked, amused.

  “A cut of the cards.”

  “What’s the stakes?”

  “If I win, Wentworth lives.” Wentworth’s head came up.

  “Yer a soft heart. But I cain’t do it. He survives, and people will think I’m the soft one, and then they’ll try to take me down. Makes fer all sorts a’ trouble. Asides, if he lives, yer still married.”

  “My dear Captain,” she said, pleased and surprised, “that matters to you?” Her look now was almost coy.

  And now Shayla’s confusion melted into recognition. Jenta had made a choice, but not the choice Conch gave her. She had decided to play a different game, one she’d been learning to play all her life. While Jenta didn’t bat her eyes at him, a lady with less sophistication might have.

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Well, no, to be frank. But it matters to you, I reckon. And asides, I’m a society man in this town. What would people say?”

  Mazeley smirked.

  “My marriage can be annulled,” Jenta told him, her eyes not leaving his.

  He blanched. “Not if ye’ve ever—”

  “The marriage can be annulled,” she repeated easily.

  “Even once—”

  “Captain. My marriage—can be—annulled.”

  Conch looked at Wentworth and laughed, a low rumble. “I called ye a weasel. That was overgenerous. Yer naught but a mouse.”

  Wentworth closed his eyes. His chin sank to his chest again.

  “And what if I win?” Conch asked. “Ye save the mouse if you win. What do I get if ye lose?”

  “Then you take his life.”

  “I already got that. Give me somethin’ I don’t have.” He watched her for a moment in silence, then said low, “And don’t be sayin’ it’s you, ’cause I already won that game, girl.”

  Shayla closed her eyes, lowered her head.

  Jenta paused a moment, but she didn’t falter. She raised her chin. Her nostrils flared. And in a voice smooth as silk she said, “I’ll bring you Damrick Fellows.”

  “Whoa! She’ll trade Damrick for Wentworth?” Sleeve asked.

  “Naw, bad choice, Jenta!” shouted another.

  “See, Conch’s already won her, and that’s how he beat the Gatemen!”

  Ham waited. “She’s a woman of secrets, as I been telling you. You want to hear how it goes, or not?”

  “Tell it!” and “Aye, we’re shuttin’ up!”

  Conch leaned in toward her. “Yer sayin’ you can give me Damrick Fellows. And how do ye propose to do that?”

  She folded her hands on the table, and stared at him. “I will tell you, if you win.”

  The silence in the room was heavy. Mazeley began shuffling the cards. Wentworth looked at Jenta, his head shaking back and forth. Shayla watched in something close to awe, her mask in tatters. Jenta refused to look away from Conch.

  Conch pondered. “You don’t even know ’im,” he said to her at last, watching her eyes.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Are you playing, or not?”

  “I’m thinkin’.” He remained standing, studying her.

  She watched his eyes as he watched hers.

  Then he said, “Yer bluffin’.”

  Alarm went through her, but she just smiled. “Am I?” She knew he needed something more. So she gave it to him. “Damrick is in love with me.”

  Now Conch’s head cocked to one side. “Ye knew him from before. In Mann.”

  She stared at Conch, raised one corner of her mouth just slightly. She felt the pained eyes of Wentworth, the emptiness of her mother. Neither of them, she realized, could know for certain if she was lying or telling the truth, any more than Conch could. Somehow, that fact gave her more confidence. “Are you in or are you out, Captain?”

  Now his mind started turning. The possibilities clicked through his eyes where she could fairly see them. A beautiful woman…not highborn, she would have had many admirers. Damrick could easily have been among them. He might have been in love with her for years. He could have come to Skaelington just to find her. Jenta watched as the bitter sting of jealousy took root. She did not know what he would do with it, however, until he said, “Mr. Mazeley, cut the cards.”

  “No,” Jenta said easily. “This is my game. My deal.” She held out her hand to Mazeley. “Unless you don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t trust you,” Mazeley offered easily, continuing to shuffle.

  “Give her the cards,” Conch ordered. He watched Jenta, but now she wouldn’t meet his gaze. He looked at her differently; she could feel it. She was no longer the sweet young prize, but a crafty doe in a dense, craggy forest. Worthy prey. Maybe even dangerous prey. Maybe a lioness, and not a doe at all.

  Mazeley gave the cards one last sorting, and handed the deck to Jenta. She fanned them in her hand, turned them over, examined them. Then she began to shuffle. She had some skill.

  “Where’d you learn that?” Conch asked.

  �
��From my mother.”

  “You learned a lot from her.”

  “I learned everything from her. Are you in?” she asked.

  “I’m in. Mr. Mazeley, pick a good card for me.”

  She put her hand on top of the deck to prevent Mazeley from touching it. She looked at Conch. “Am I your woman, or am I his?” Her question mingled the pleasure of ownership with the sting of jealousy, and she knew it.

  He put both hands on the red felt and leaned across the table toward her. “You cut for me,” he said to her.

  She picked up the top third of the deck. The card was the jack of hearts.

  “Nice cut.”

  She shuffled the cards, laid the deck down again. When she cut the deck this time, she showed him the king of clubs. The corner of her lip rose.

  “I win!” Conch barked, standing up straight.

  “But Captain!” Jenta rose quickly now. “I believe your card was the jack. The king is mine.”

  “No, he ain’t!” His blood rose to a boil. “Nothin’ on board this ship is yers, missy! Nothin’ unless I give it.”

  “But you did give it.”

  “Did I? Well I’m takin’ it back. I don’t like yer game. Mazeley, shoot the mouse. Hell, shoot the mother, too, I’m tired of ’em both.” He held out a hand. “Now. Ye can come with me, or ye can die with them.”

  She paused for a moment, on the edge of a precipice. She had gambled big and thought she’d won, but suddenly she had lost everything. She had angered the Conch, and now he would do whatever he wanted. And what he wanted was to kill. Mazeley already had the pistol in his hand. His finger was on the trigger. His thumb was on the hammer. In a moment it would be over; her mother and her husband would be dead.

  She could not let this happen. She walked straight to the Conch.

  She wasn’t sure what she would do when she reached him, but she knew she must stop him. And in those few steps, it came to her. By the time she reached him, by the end of the four quick steps it took her to round the table, it was over and done, her future settled. Another woman might have gone at him with fists flying or nails scratching, but Jenta was not that woman. All her schooling, all her graces, all her charm came to her now in a single moment, as a single whole. She felt in control. And so in those few steps, with Wentworth reaching out to stop her, with Shayla pulling back, withdrawing yet further into herself, with Conch watching, waiting, eyes cold, right arm outstretched and waiting for her to take his hand…she stood tall, squared her shoulders, met his gaze, and walked past his open hand, inside his arm, and stopped before him. “I didn’t mean to anger you. You always win, of course. That game was just my foolish way of telling you that I dearly love my mother, and I’ve grown so fond of Wentworth. He’s like a brother to me.”

  He dropped his hand. She put hers into it.

  “Brother, is it?” Conch pondered the idea, eyeing Wentworth over her shoulder. “Black sheep a’ the family, ye ask me.”

  She nodded her agreement.

  His eyes narrowed. Hers were disarming, but he was not disarmed. “What’s all this about Damrick Fellows? That all a bluff, was it?”

  “Oh, no. That was no bluff at all. I can give you Damrick Fellows.” She swallowed, but her poise remained.

  “Ye can. But will ye?”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  Conch sniffed, assessing his options. Then he raised her hand and kissed the back of it. He winked at her. “Look, ye want a real man to take care a’ ye, I get that. It’s what a real woman needs. And ye want yer mama and the mouse alive, I get that, too.” He looked around the room again, as though considering the possible consequences of a moment of mercy. “All right then. As a gift to ye, I won’t be killin’ ’em. But ye gotta make me some promises now. Ye got a bad and rocky past, sidin’ with the likes a’ the Gatemen. Ye got to leave that all behind.”

  “I will.”

  “Swear it?”

  “I do—I swear it.”

  “And no secrets from me. Not about Damrick Fellows, or the Gatemen, nor nothin’. Understand?”

  “No secrets.”

  “Ever. I need yer word on that, too. Do ye swear it on yer life, and the life of yer mama and yer…?” He hooked a thumb toward Wentworth, but couldn’t find the word that would finish the question.

  “I do.”

  Conch watched her eyes for a long while, and then he sighed, content. He looked down at Mazeley, still seated with the pistol in his hand. “Ye won’t be needin’ that after all.” Mazeley eased the hammer back down, handed over the gun. Conch tucked it into his belt. “Get Mrs. Stillmithers back to her carriage, Mr. Mazeley. Send her on home. Then find a suitable spot fer Mr. Wentworth Ryland, somewhere no one’ll ever know that he lives on. Especially not his daddy. And then, fetch me a priest, or a judge, or whoever can undo the joke that this pair been callin’ a marriage.” He looked at Jenta, saw her gratitude. “On second thought,” Conch added, “do that last little job first.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jenta would not look at her mother, nor at Wentworth. She had shamed herself, she knew, but she had already fled from that shame. She simply left it behind. She looked only at the Conch, willing him to believe that he was all she thought about, all she would ever think about again; he was the sun in her day and the moon in her night. She willed herself to believe it, too. Everything depended on that now.

  And underneath that mask, in the deepest pocket of her heart, she tucked herself away. She secluded herself, shrouded herself, buried herself in a place where she wouldn’t feel the sting of conscience or the burn of humiliation, a place where she could await some moment far in the future when she might perhaps come out again, and determine just how much damage she had done.

  “I knew the Conch’d get ’er!” Sleeve crowed. “Now she’s seen reason.”

  “I don’t know, Sleeve,” another sailor countered slowly. “Ham said she hid herself away. That don’t sound like seein’ reason.”

  “Oh, come on. That’s just her talkin’ herself outta her old ways. Ain’t it, Ham?”

  Ham puffed his pipe.

  “See, boys,” Sleeve explained, “all that nonsense about religion and doin’ good, and listenin’ to conscience and all, like there’s some kinda God lookin’ down on everyone and shakin’ His finger, all that does is, it just keeps ye from doin’ what ye got to do to get by in this world. It gets deep under the skin, and it’s hard to shed it all, even once ye have a mind to do it. But Jenta did it. See, now she can do what’s necessary to make her way in the world. She jus’ grew up, there at the table, that’s all.”

  “But she hid herself away fer a time,” the other sailor countered.

  “Aw, that’s just the way ye get shed of it. After a few months, years maybe, why, she’ll forget she’s hidin’ anything. She’ll realize one day, hey, I’m free of it, I don’t feel no guilt about anythin’ at all. I don’t need never to go back. Conscience is gone, and I can do what I want without it draggin’ on me. Trust me, boys, I know. That’s how I done it.”

  There was silence in the room.

  “Me, too,” a voice said.

  “Yeah, and me. Sorta,” said another.

  Delaney had to admit that was his path, too. He’d made a lot of little choices to run from conscience and all such things. But then when he swore to follow the Conch, both to kill and die, he told himself it was just because he had to, not forever, and later he could go back on it if he wanted. But he never did. And the longer he went, the less he ever wanted to.

  “There’s other ways,” Sleeve continued, encouraged by the agreement in the room. “Some people, they just get real mad at God, or at the Church, and so whenever they feel that old stab a’ guilt, they just get mad all over again. And pretty soon, after they been cussin’ God long enough, the mad jus’ sorta goes away, and so does the conscience, and then, why, one day they find they’re shed of it and don’t care a whit no more.”

  “That’s me,” another voice announced.r />
  “I done it that way,” yet another confessed.

  “There ye go,” Sleeve continued. “And there’s other people who find other ways, like I heard an ol’ boy said he was readin’ and studyin’ all sorts of arguments, like how it makes no sense for there to be a God, how it’s all made up in people’s minds and not real at all. He got to thinkin’ that only the stupidest folk on the face a’ the earth could ever think it was so. He jus’ laughed at all the poor idiots runnin’ around tryin’ to make some invisible nothin’ happy, and that took away its power, see, and pretty soon there was no way he could ever think a’ bein’ religious again, on account of it bein’ so far beneath ’im.”

  Silence.

  “No one here never did that?”

  More silence.

  “Well, I suppose that’s fer a crowd with more schoolin’ than us lot. But anyways, it don’t matter which way ye choose so long as ye get it done somehow, and then live a fine old life doin’ just as ye please, and not ever worryin’ about it, whatever ye do. And so that’s how I know Jenta’s on the right path, havin’ let all that go. Now she’s picked out a real man, like Conch says, one with power and money, lots a’ gold…so she’ll get his power and his money, or at least all she needs of it. And after a while she’ll forget all about her little hideaway self, and there’s yer happy endin’.”

  After a silence, Dallis Trum said, “Don’t seem like she got power. Seemed…like a bad thing, somehow.”

  “Ah, what do you know, ye little scrub? Ballast is all ye are, and all ye’ll be if that’s the way ye look at things. Take it from me, son. You give one a’ those ways a try; ye’ll see how it works.”

  “So which is it, Ham?” Dallis asked. “Did she do right? Or not?”

  Ham sighed. “That’s all for tonight, lads…”

  There was another rustle in the reeds, this time to Delaney’s left. The light was dimming on the pond now, and the shadows deepening, but that same something lurked again. Or perhaps, a different something.

  “Surroundin’ me, are ye?” Delaney asked. There was no answer, and he expected none. “Probably just gettin’ a good seat for the show,” he muttered.

  The air seemed cooler now, though it was far from cool. He looked up at the sky again, and tried to guess how much time he had before dark. How much time he had left. A couple of hours, anyway. Then he’d be going on to the next life, and he’d find out if there was something over there on the other side, like Avery and the priests said, or if there was nothing but a big nothing out there, like Sleeve said. Delaney sure didn’t know, and he didn’t know how anyone could find out, other than going on ahead and dying.