Captain Nemo

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Verne could sneak him food and clothes for a time, and Nemo would certainly find his own solution before long. Verne just hoped he himself could be part of it. Together, they had dreamed and imagined so much . . . yet now prison doors were slamming shut around them.

  It was the dark edge of twilight, and Paul hadn’t come upstairs to bed yet. Verne threw himself on the blankets and lay wide awake, smelling the river fog, listening to the ship bells and groaning timbers and creaking ropes. The water and the ships called to him like a distant siren song.

  From the fourth-story window, his view of the masts was unobscured. Any one of those vessels could guarantee him passage away from this sedentary place. In his imagination, many times he had climbed into their riggings, raised himself to their crows’ nests, gripped the yardarms to hear the tug and flap of wind-stretched sails. Did he have the nerve to make those dreams real?

  Ships came and went at all times, departing for far-off lands and returning with exotic treasures. But Verne had to stay in Nantes, confined in his little room in his family’s narrow house in a tiny provincial town.

  Didn’t he?

  Miserable, Verne managed to fall asleep before his brother came up to join him.

  V

  Nemo needed her help, more than ever in his life. Caroline Aronnax vowed to do everything in her power to assist the young man who had so inflamed her imagination and unleashed her own dreams. She had to keep his precious imagination alive.

  Before she’d met André Nemo and Jules Verne, Caroline had never considered spending time with two young men of such different social stations. But from the first moment they had talked together in the market, she’d been captivated by both of them.

  Two months ago, all three had bumped into each other in front of a silversmith’s shop, listening to the shrunken old man dicker with a sailor for coral pieces to use in new jewelry. Her maidservant Marie had been dealing with a pottery seller for a new vase, and Caroline had heard Nemo and Verne discussing far-flung ports and island chains, eyeing the sailor’s coral as if it were splinters of the true cross.

  Thanks to her father’s merchant fleet, Caroline knew all about the Canary Islands and ports in India, Madagascar, Ceylon. She corrected the boys’ breathless misconceptions, surprising both of them. They had talked together for a full hour while Marie flirted with the pottery seller.

  Nemo had sensed a kindred spirit in the strawberry-blond young woman and boldly invited her to join them in a night-time escapade, exploring back streets and quays where no one else could see. He whispered that they might even creep aboard an empty ship on the Loire docks. Caroline had promised to join them at the appointed time, giving a daring glance to her maidservant. . . .

  Marie, skeptical but bright-eyed to assist her mistress in this little intrigue (after Caroline reminded Marie of her own secret activities), had helped her slip out of the row house owned by M. Aronnax. At the appointed time, Caroline hurried through the streets, strange byways that took on an entirely different character with nightfall. She was anxious to find Verne and Nemo, concerned they might think she had gone back on her word.

  They were to meet in a darkened back street behind the smelly fishcleaner’s stalls. Anticipation of scampering about in the dark alleyways near the docks, even to go aboard one of the tall ships, sped her footsteps.

  Forcing from her mind the unthinkable ramifications of being found out, she turned a corner and caught her breath. This was no playground, no garden party. Offending smells struck her hard, as did the presence of a drunken dockhand sprawled across her path. What am I doing here?

  As her courage was about to fail her, Nemo and Verne approached from the opposite alley. Caroline’s unease melted in an instant, and she spun around with a swish of her watered silk gown. Nemo grasped her right hand and smiled that broad white grin. “A world of adventure is waiting,” he said, while Verne hurried to take her other hand. Delighted and filled with wonder, they dashed together toward the creaking ships tied up to the docks. Grinning but determined not to be left behind, Verne panted to keep up with them. . . .

  As the stars wheeled toward midnight, they spent hours play-acting scenes of pirates and swagmen. Nemo fell into the role of brave hero, proud to rescue the fair maiden from the clutches of Jules Verne, who relished being the villain—though, whenever Nemo came at him with even a mock sword, Verne fled, laughing.

  Caroline’s heart fluttered as Nemo swept her into his arms and protected her from the imagined cutthroat. Earlier, she had dismissed tales of damsels in distress as mere feminine nonsense, but the swashbuckling young man made it seem so real. What was it about him?

  That night, months ago, had been all she’d hoped for, and more. Caroline clung to the memory of climbing, laughing, jumping, even swinging from a real sailor’s rope. Far from sitting still with proper manners, they had danced in the alleyways of Nantes. Later, they had spun tales of adventure, casting themselves in the most outrageous of roles.

  In the deepest night, as they paused to catch their breath, Verne had grown nervous and agitated. “I need to get back into my home.” He pulled out a thick brass key for his front door. “My little brother Paul sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night. What if he finds me gone?”

  Sad that their adventures must end, Caroline was also aware of how terrible it would be if she were caught out. Nemo stood beside her. “I will see that Caroline arrives home safely, Jules. Run back to your house, and step quietly up your stairs.”

  With a fumbled goodbye, a confused gesture that seemed to be an attempt to kiss her goodnight but was withdrawn at the last instant, Verne ran down the streets with long legs and clomping feet.

  As Nemo walked beside her, though, Caroline’s sense of urgency faded. “I would never let anything happen to you,” he said, and she believed him completely. Caroline did not concern herself with fears of highwaymen or cutpurses or kidnappers—after all, had she not just seen how the swashbuckling André Nemo could deal with any foe?

  When they arrived back at the merchant’s house, Caroline slipped around to the servants’ entrance—astonished to find the door locked. “Marie was supposed to leave it open for me! She knew I was coming in late.” Caroline bunched her small fists.

  “Perhaps you are out too late, even for her forgiveness,” Nemo said in a rich, understanding voice.

  Caroline shook her head. “No. She’s gone out on a rendezvous of her own, probably with that pottery seller.”

  With good grace, Nemo took her arm. “Then we’ll just have to find a comfortable place to wait. She will be back before dawn, won’t she?”

  Staring at the locked door, Caroline tried to open it with sheer force of will, but then gave up. “After all the times I turned a blind eye to her secret meetings, why should she have to ruin mine?”

  With a smile, Nemo had led her toward the Church of St. Martin. “I wouldn’t say she’s entirely ruined it.” They sat together in the deserted courtyard of the old church, resting under the sweet-smelling magnolias.

  She talked about her own dreams—and he listened, without once suggesting that, because she was a woman, she could not achieve her goals. Nemo had shared some of his hopes, too, brash enough to believe he would succeed in everything. “I want to see the world, beat the odds, become something I choose, Caroline.” He stared up at the endless sky between the fluttering, dark-green leaves of the magnolia. “And I will.”

  He surprised her by stealing a kiss. It was the first time she had ever been kissed by a man, and she responded awkwardly—but insisted on practicing until she got it right. . . .

  There in the churchyard, all alone except for God and the midnight stars, they promised each other they would do the impossible, beat the odds. Though still young, Caroline understood the importance of her words when she said, “My heart will always be yours, André.”

  “My heart belonged to you from the moment I saw you in front of the silversmith’s shop.” Somehow, they both understood they wou
ld keep this moment between themselves, would not even tell Jules Verne about it.

  The pastel colors of dawn came much too soon, and Nemo escorted her back to her house, where a frantic Marie waited for Caroline beside the half-open servant’s entrance. “My lady! I thought you’d been murdered, or kidnapped! You could have been robbed, killed—”

  Caroline had given Nemo a warm glance. “I have never felt safer than tonight, being with André.” Then she chided her maidservant, “And you should pay more attention to the time and keep the door unlocked, as you promised.” Marie ushered her inside in a flurry of clothes, ready to hurry Caroline into bed before anyone noticed.

  Before the door closed, Caroline had flashed a last glance at Nemo, already eager to see him again. . . .

  But that was all before the disaster of the Cynthia. Now, penniless and fatherless, André Nemo and his enthusiastic future had been cut off at the root. Unless Caroline could talk with her father and secure for him an alternative.

  VI

  The landlord waited several days, giving him time to grieve—but Nemo knew the squint-eyed man would soon come to insist on payment.

  All morning long Nemo ransacked the two rooms his father had rented, gathering scrimshaw combs and snuffboxes, colorful seashells, and exotic trinkets Jacques Nemo had collected as a sailor. Unfortunately, with the death of his wife and the raising of his son, Jacques had already sold the most valuable items, keeping only sentimental ones.

  Dry-eyed but sick at heart, Nemo stared at the worn deck of playing cards he and his father had used on long candlelit evenings. On a shelf sat a wooden ship model the two of them had made together. Building the model had taught him the basic structure of the vessels tied to the docks of Ile Feydeau. But the model was worthless, other than the memories it held.

  On the day after the Cynthia disaster, Nemo had awakened at dawn to find a small basket wedged against his doorstep, a package that contained hard bread, cheese, boiled eggs, and flowers. Even without smelling the faint trace of her perfume, he knew that Caroline Aronnax had stolen these items from her family’s kitchen and sent her maidservant Marie out through the midnight streets to deliver it, unseen.

  “I will talk to my father, André,” she had written in a note tucked into the basket. “Perhaps I can help.”

  Nemo felt a lump in his throat. She had kept secret her friendship with the streetwise young man, much as she had hidden her own musical compositions. Nemo could not ask M. Aronnax for work in his shipping offices, or even at one of the local docks, unloading and inventorying cargoes arrived from far-off lands. He had to find some other way to pay his living expenses.

  Breathing hard with resentment, he used a rock and a long chisel to smash away the padlock that secured his father’s sea trunk. He didn’t know where the key might be, since he hadn’t seen his father open the chest in years.

  Nemo rummaged through the documents and keepsakes, found an old engraving of his mysterious, dusky-skinned mother. The chest also contained dried flowers, a book written in a language he couldn’t read, a set of cups, a dusty bottle of wine that Jacques must have kept for some anticipated celebration he would now never witness. Perhaps his son’s marriage? Nemo couldn’t venture a guess. And hidden behind the false back of one divider in the trunk, he discovered a handful of coins. . . .

  The next day, by selling some of the trinkets to a vendor of eccentric items, Nemo scraped together enough money to have a funeral Mass read for his father at the Church of St. Martin, along with those of the others who had lost their lives aboard the Cynthia. Hearing the priest speak Jacques’ name aloud, though, Nemo felt no particular honor, no special consolation.

  Neither he nor his father was a devout Catholic, but sometimes, when a teary-eyed Jacques had had too much wine or just seemed sad with life, he would recall the promise he’d made to Nemo’s mother on her deathbed, that he would give her boy a proper upbringing. . . .

  Alone in the empty room, Nemo slept on a straw-stuffed tick that served as a mattress. He continued, one day at a time, not looking beyond the following morning . . . until he realized he had to plan for his future. Nemo always had plans, but they were too many and too unrealistic. Now he didn’t know what he would do.

  Four days after the disaster, the squint-eyed landlord and a pair of burly companions burst through the door without knocking. Nemo sat at the rickety table on which he ate and where he had learned his letters and arithmetic. The two hirelings stood together, a barricade of muscle and flesh.

  The landlord stepped forward, a small-statured man with one eye larger than the other. His seamed face displayed a heartfelt sorrow, belied by his stern voice. “You’ll have to move out, boy. Got no choice. Sorry.” The landlord frowned at the two toughs, as if dismayed by the necessity of bringing them along. “And I’ll take any possessions as part of the payment for which your father was in arrears.”

  Nemo, though, would not be bluffed. “How could my father be in arrears? You’re lying.” He stood up from the table, arms loose at his sides, ready to throw himself on the thugs if they harassed him. “He had a job. He paid you every month.”

  “No, he promised to pay me every month. He was two months behind.” The landlord’s drooping eye squinted, and he shook his head sadly. “I gave him credit because I knew he’d get a bonus when the Cynthia was christened.”

  “And dead men don’t get paid,” one of the hirelings said.

  The landlord nodded. “Even as his son, you have no claim on his back wages. Sorry, boy.”

  “I’ll find some way to pay you.” Nemo gripped the side of the chair with a white-knuckled hand. He felt hot, angry at this second wild joke Fate had played upon him. “Let me stay here until I can come up with a job, a plan.”

  “A job?” One of the henchmen laughed.

  Nemo bristled. “Never underestimate me.” His voice carried such a low threat that the thug flinched.

  The landlord tugged at his waistcoat to straighten it, uncomfortable. “Be realistic, boy. Are you going to work fifteen hours a day in one of the garment factories? That’ll only bring you thirty sous a week. You’ll never have enough to pay me what your father owed. I’ve already done the arithmetic.”

  Nemo took deep, heavy breaths, trying to calm the rising anger in his gut. “Then I’ll sell some of my father’s artifacts.” This brought another round of laughter from the henchmen.

  “He’ll rob the citizens of Nantes, more like,” one of the big men said.

  “I’ll not have a thief in my house,” the landlord said with increasing sternness. His smaller eye twitched with a nervous tic.

  “I am not a thief.” Nemo’s dark eyes flashed, and he stepped forward. Though he was much younger than the other man, his look of furious determination drove the landlord back a pace. The two muscular men closed in, ready to pound him—but Nemo looked as if he just might best both of them, then go after the landlord. He would be in jail before the day was done.

  “It’s only a matter of time, boy. You’ve no prospects, and there are good families in need of a dwelling like this,” the landlord said from behind the broad shoulders of his two companions. “If you’re not gone tomorrow, I’ll have my friends carry you into the streets.”

  “They can try,” Nemo said in low fury.

  The landlord squinted once more. The men looked as if they wanted to break something, but the landlord marched them out. In an unexpected show of courtesy, the small-statured man closed the door behind himself.

  Some time later, Nemo went to the doorway. He looked between buildings down toward the river and the shipyards where the masts stood tall. He could hear the sounds of workers on the docks as vessels prepared to set sail with the outgoing tide. He recalled the tales his father had told of his days at sea.

  VII

  Caroline Aronnax arranged to meet him at the rue Kervegan flower market, where she often went with Marie to gather fresh bouquets. The Aronnax household was well known for its sweet scents and colo
rful blossoms.

  Nemo watched the intelligent and independent Caroline, but he could no longer allow himself to dream of a future with her. He remembered their night under the magnolia trees, when they had spoken foolish promises. Now an invisible chasm separated him from the young woman he loved. . . .

  Rather than let the landlord take his father’s belongings, Nemo had sold every scrap and trinket that might bring him a few sous, even the sea chest. He had kept only the engraving of his long-dead mother. With her dark and mysterious features, her large black eyes, and a smile that seemed just for him, Nemo had always gauged feminine beauty by her standard. Caroline Aronnax, though, established a standard all her own.

  He had lost his mother before he’d ever gotten a chance to know her. Now it looked as if he would lose any hope of Caroline before their love could grow. Perhaps that was for the best, though his heart would ache for the rest of his life.

  In the afternoon sunshine, Caroline moved with flowing grace, despite the frilly clothes she wore and the high-society airs her mother urged her to imitate. Although Mme. Aronnax made her daughter cater to fashion, Caroline’s burnished hair and blue eyes announced to anyone that she was her own young woman. The delicate freckles on her face would probably fade with age, or with a deeper tan, if—to her mother’s chagrin—Caroline continued to spend time out in the sun. She would never grow up to be a quiet, gossiping socialite; no doubt she would be quite a challenge for her future husband.

  Nemo thought she was magnificent.

  Caroline drifted through the flower market, humming the melody of one of her secret compositions. Nemo recognized it, since he ofttimes lingered in the street outside her home, just listening to her play the pianoforte as the town sounds dwindled with the gathering dusk.