The peals of Nobody from upstairs roused him to his feet. He tiptoed up the stairwell.
The Lighthouse Officer was hard snoozing again; the scent of much liquor recently imbibed cut through the stench of sleep. Jack made his way across the room to the crate under the window.
But when he creak’d the lid open, there wasn’t even a single parcel of folded cotton inside. There was musty air, the poisonous odor of something gone to rot—
—and a layer of what looked like dirt, but smell’d like the mineral tang of dried blood.
He recognized something about this scent.
Jack’s guts rose into his throat.
There was still screaming coming from inside the crate.
Nobody, nobody, nobody.
And then, without further thought, he grabbed a pile of whatever it was—inhaled some of the grains—in a burning rush—still screaming.
The moment it whizz’d down his nostril, he knew.
It was the Substance that Evans gave him—just before his operation.
His body thrummed and flash’d with the heat of remembering. All of it—all the parts of him—feeling more connected somehow, bound together—the blood in his veins communicating with his Muscles, Organs. It felt as if every bit of him had been just a hair removed from every other—and the substance had sent a Stitch quietly across the Gap.
He coughed at the putrid sour water taste, thrust a handful in his pocket—assessed the weight of it against his thigh—it wasn’t much—looked about the room—spied an empty gin bottle lying near the trunk—began scooping it into the bottle.
He ripped the bill of lading from the inside lid of the Trunk. Held entirely still for a moment, listening for any sound of the Substance anywhere else.
The room was now filled with utter Silence.
—Then a footfall on the stairs. Another Night Officer. Jack’s heart scamper’d like a trapped squirrel. He opened the window—slipp’d his legs over the sill and lowered his feet to the cleat. Just then the sleeping Officer let off a Hoot of fart into his quilts, and Jack leapt a little, his midriff rising into the air and coming down hard on the sharp sill—a quick intake of his Breath as he felt the skin at his chest pop open in a flash of heat and blood. He looked up—
The Watchman’s eyes blinked at him.
And Jack—filled with an unfamiliar confidence—grinned, reached into his pocket and coolly palmed a half-guinea—counterfeit only to the trained eye. This he flipp’d to the bed, whispering, “If they ask where you got it, tell ’em Jack Sheppard gave it to you.”*2
—Then slipp’d down the side of the lighthouse and into the waiting Punt, “borrowed” from a waterman too slipshod drunk to notice Bess launching from the shore under Houghton Bridge.
They rowed away, Bess leaning back in the punt, mooning at the Stars, giving a little laugh under her breath—her relaxed private laugh— We braved down the beast.
“Saw the Plague Ships from up there.”
“Did you.”
“Twelve? I think.” Jack rowed hard against the night currents. The breeze blew open his smish. Bess leaned across the punt, put her hand on his sternum. Kissed it. Wiped her thumb across the Blood oozing from his scar where he had hit the sill. He let the oars drop, and held her head against him—nose in her hair. The punt drifted.
Just then, the Watchman’s head poked out from the tower window, silhouetted in the moonlight—called out across the distance.
“Sheppard, ah…they’re comin’ for you, boy, and the whole town knows it. And now with what ye took.”
“The town can kiss my arse,” he shouted back, craning up.
“Jack!” Bess said.
“What?”
“You can’t be screaming from a punt in the dead of night.”
Jack grinned, ducking his chin to his chest. “He’s a sodden old buck fitch*3. Babbling at the moon.”
“Still.”
Something fell through the air then and hit the water with a plink. Jack turn’d. A knob of something bobbed behind the boat.
He listened hard for something—anything—any sort of muffled commodity-voice.
Quiet. Just the wash of the Thames slapping the side of the boat.
“Bess?” He heard his own voice crack—fear seeped in. “What was that?”
A scent steam’d up. The soft, sparkly quality the river took from up on the Lighthouse had been replaced by a bath of filth and Waste. Sewers emptied at every street-edge, burbling their contents into an already-overstuffed brew. The Thames was a seeping bruise upon the landscape. A gray fog of putrid gas. The white knob bounced in the muck just behind the punt, then sank down as they pulled away.
Bess peer’d around his shoulder. “ ’S a fish,” she said, smiling her warm, forget-about-everything-else smile. Her smile that always work’d amnesia on him. “Some nothing.” She indicated with her chin at the Lighthouse. “What’d you nick?”
“Nothin’ of value.” Jack realized he had been compelled to lie only after he’d actually done it.
Then: a long squeak from down below. Nobody. Reverberating and dissipating in the expanse of river water.
A shiver ran through him, nose to spider-shanks.
For he didn’t know what he saw, but he knew it was no Fish.
*1 Thief who robs lighthouses in the Thames
*2 Quite a few eighteenth-century documents report London thieves using “Sheppard gave it to me” as an alibi.
*3 Lecher
7.
At Bess’s, Jack batted about the room like an agitated moth.*1
“You must’ve heard it.”
“I don’t hear the things you do.”
“But there was Something. He lobb’d something at us.” Jack rose from the daybed to lean against the wall. He threw the window towards the top of the sash for air— Too powerfully— He hadn’t meant to— Shards of plaster flew off the casing onto his hands and the floor.
Bess watched quietly. Jack’s Buzzing to and fro while she rubbed lavender oil the length of her arms.
“If the worst they do is lob things at us…” she said.
Her tone was Light, but something had changed—a Distance had dropped down between them.
Bess slipp’d into bed with the day’s broadside and a Candle on the night table. She had the frowning look of an accountant going over a bad day of receipts. Jack’s Guts were in a tumult, as they were anytime he could see her face—which he watched as attentively as a herdsman scanning the sky for thunderclouds—shift.
Jack pulled off his smish, then arranged himself under the covers beside her, staring at the ceiling in the flickering candlelight. He massag’d a lingering twinge in his arm. Bess tugged the covers closer to her chin, crinkling the pages of the broadside.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally.
“Sorry for what?” she said, turning a page.
“For…”
“Don’t say you’re sorry if you don’t mean you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, foolishly.
“My God.” She put down the broadside.
“I’m sorry you’re angry.”
“You’re sorry I’m angry?”
“It wasn’t an easy scamp and now you’re angry and—”
“You presume everyone’s angry at you all the time. It’s bizarre and tedious. In any case, I’m profoundly sad.”
He sat up.
“I don’t believe you’re telling me ev’rything about the Lighthouse. About what you found there.”
“I am,” he said unconvincingly.
“Spinoza once ask’d himself the question of whether or not ’twas acceptable for a person to lie to save his own life. Do you know what he said?”
Clearly the answer was no.
“He said that it is
immoral for free individuals to limit another person’s power to be free, to act freely, to make free choices. No matter the circumstances.”
“What if the person who lies isn’t, himself, free?”
She squinted. “You’re free. And anyway”—her voice caught, deepen’d—“I’ve seen people much less free than you hold fast to honesty. Even in the face of death.” Tears were beginning to plume at the corners of her eyes. “You’ll sow such distance between us—” She broke off.
Jack’s heart was racing. Was there no way out of having to Confess this now double Obfuscation—one that had begun for no good reason except that he wanted this thing and he felt he’d be punish’d for that wanting. It had occurr’d so quickly it was nearly an instinct. Jack was the arch-bilker, ferreter, sneaker of London, after all. And he was so because he’d sneak’d, bilked, and ferreted his entire life. He was miraculously good at keeping things hidden. And had an ability—he saw now—to turn that hiding into a weapon.
“If I tell you, will you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
He should not continue—
—did anyway. “ ’Bout your nightmares—’bout Popham’s Eau.”
“That’s different.”
“So you won’t tell me.”
“No.” She blink’d. Crinkled her forehead. “But when I can, yes.”
Air ached in his lungs. He didn’t want to admit any of this. He briefly considered fleeing into the night. But he was tired, and then another feeling seiz’d him. One stronger than the desire to flee. A vision, really. He saw himself divulging to Bess exactly what he didn’t want to divulge. Saw them somehow sifting through the mess of veils together. He saw them coming out from under the fog of his panic and Hideyness on the other side, wisps of it blowing off them like clouds breathing off a lake at dawn. He un-held his breath.
He wanted to be known by her more than he needed to hide from her.*2
“I did find something. Something screaming worse than usual. It didn’t have a tale, a History, like the rest of the things that speak to me. I imagine it’s what Evans gave to me before the operation.”
“You didn’t tell me about Evans giving you something Beforehand.” Bess turn’d away. “You didn’t tell me about that either.”
Jack rubb’d at his hair. The distance between them bored a hole in his guts—like he’d swallowed one of those rhubarb and aniseed purges his mum used to give him when she felt he was being “splenetic.”
“But I didn’t know what it was.” This was true—he’d begun to put it all together only now. “A snuff of something right at the beginning of the luxuriating operation.”
“A cathartic elixir? You certainly did shite through your teeth much.”
“Didn’t give it by mouth. The nose. And it smelled something awful. I didn’t recognize it.” He corrected: “Well, it recall’d something. Death. The green scent of a rat left to mildew at the edge of a field. But”—he inhal’d—“I think it’s a kind of magic.”
“Was it coffee?” she said. “That isn’t magic. Coffee’s a bean they steal from the New World, grind up with what tastes like dirty stockings and soot, and sell down by the Royal Exchange.”
“It’s not coffee.” He turned towards her. “This ’s better than coffee.” Jack was gesticulating powerfully—too powerfully for sharing a small bed. “Or—it’s like ten coffees without the starts it gives you.”
Bess put her hand on his arm. “It does give you starts.”
But then again, it didn’t thin him like coffee would—in fact he’d thicken’d a bit after the operation. Had been starving all the time, too. So then it can’t be opium either. “Did it say anything?”
Jack rubb’d his chin. “Jus’ one thing, over and over.”
“What?”
“Nobody.”
Bess’s gaze turned inwards, that scientific look. He rolled towards her, propp’d his hand under his head.
Silence, then. “There’s something else. The count can’t be a coincidence.”
“What count?”
“The ships you saw in the Thames. Twelve unmann’d, abandon’d vessels?”
“Yes. What about them?”
“They’re increasing.”
“So?”
“I don’t think they’re Plague Ships.”
“What does any of that have to do with the Lighthouse Keeper?”
“I don’t know. But when there’s a quantity of strange occurrences, one becomes apt to regard them as somehow related.”
“So then what’s this about the count?”
“I am visited frequently by a Minister of Import/Export, and this Minister occasion’lly lets slip that the number of ships arriving has lessened of late.”
“Is this minister Handsome?”
“What?”
“No matter. Sorry.”
“The ships have lessened, he says, and yet you saw that they’ve increas’d. Somethin’s off.” She shook her head. “No, somethin’,” she continued, “is intriguingly off.”
“How so?”
“I don’t think they’re Plague Ships at all. I think they’re—most of them anyway—familiars.”
Quiet.
“Ghost ships that accompany trading and slaving vessels along their route,” she furthered.
Jack was recognizing that clogg’d, skittery feeling in his throat. It recalled to him the way he’d feel after his mother had several drams of whiskey. Numb and buzzing at his extremities. He was fighting the ball of Anxiety in his throat for breath.
Bess watched him struggle for some beats.
“You know that a ghost ship”—she lean’d towards him; their Body scent was ruffl’d up from under the coverlets—“is not actually a ghost.”
She waited for him to rearrange his face to feign prior knowledge of this fact, then lay against his chest.
“It’s an Abandoned vessel pulled by the deep sea tides along the trade routes,” she continu’d, mercifully pretending to recount facts known to both of them. But when she look’d up and they exchang’d a quick glance, Jack saw how many steps ahead of him she was. She anticipat’d his reactions to her—knew them before he did. She did this, he presumed, because his reactions occupied a spectrum she knew from other pale Anglos. She could anticipate what Nonsense was about to come out of his mouth and when. And for whatever reason, she had now deign’d to clarify to him the extent of his false presumptions. This Conceding to explain things was a kind of mercy. An opening she was offering.
“When sailors mutinied they’d establish outlaw societies in remote islands. The lascars and the Africans knew the best locations. They’d disembark and set their old vessel adrift to haunt—and I mean this as a figure of speech—the seas. Set them to sail free in the currents, disturbing the peace for the Royal Navy and the East India Company.
“All the lascar sailors ran that route. They’re the ones that knew the ghost ships best. And knew not to be afraid of ’em. Not like the British captains who cowered at the sight, scrubb’d references to ’em from the ship logs. Drank drams of whiskey to blur the Sight of ’em poking up at the horizons.
“My father was pressed to labor,” she spoke into his chest. “Sailed that route for the Company. Said he would see them in the shallow waters of Madras Port, banging in the undertows, slushing against the sands. When he ran the China route, he said he’d see a ghost ship tracking to the estuaries of Canton Port. He said the more mutinies there were, the more ghost ships would appear on the open ocean. Sometimes whole fleets of them like a pack of black-beaked dolphins breaking the waves. The lascars were never scared, because they knew when they’d see a ghost ship they were seeing a signal from freed comrades. The Anglo sailors—the ones that refus’d to listen—thought them supernatural emanations and just about piss’d themselves at the sight.” She laugh’
d. “My father always said when the ghost ships came to the Thames, it would mean the South was rising.”
Jack imagined a fleet of ghost ships fording the high gray crags of the ocean, beating back Froth alongside the Trading vessels, salt crusting their masts, plunging bowfirst into the briny glens. Lurching out of the whitecapped pikes like Hounds, mouths full of limp duck, water streaming from their decks.
“I think it’s ghost ships come to flood the Thames, I think the Magistrates and all o’ ’em know what it means—and they’re in a panic about it and usin’ it to clamp down the Town harder.” She exhaled. “If it weren’t for the rogues I’d hate it here.”
The room got colder then. Not between, but around, them. There was an unheldness to them both in the world—and though differently felt, it was a certain shared Aloneness. Some utter Bereftness—of kin, of home—they recogniz’d in each other. It was in the way their bodies clawed towards each other. Diving deep into the solitude, finding each other there. Waiting, open, given over—*3
“I’d hate it here too,” he said. He’d never even thought this before. But the lens of Bess’s hate had shifted something in him.
She pull’d him in for that kiss that was Language between them.
Jack was already unbuttoning his trousers when it began to rain, flicking in the open window and onto the sill. Bess cross’d the room to shut the pane.
Jack began wrestling his trousers to his knees when his hand glanced on an edge of something poking from his pocket, slicing a small Fissure into his finger. He jumped—look’d down. There in his uncurling palm, a roll of raw pickled flax paper.
He’d forgotten about the bill of lading.
He unscroll’d the paper—at least at first glance quite like any other bill of lading he’d nick’d from other trunks and casks. On one side, fees and duties for items. On the other, tho’, something altogether else.
He press’d the note flat into his palm, and was staring down at his hand when she returned.
Payment for whatever quantity of silks had been crossed out with deep, messy scratches, over which were words, carved in dark ink, shaky and rough-edged.
Confessions of the Fox Page 17