“Come on!” called one of the others. “This time we won’t let them succeed.”
Alek could hear that it was the boatman who had snarled at him.
“How do I know that you’re speaking the truth?” Sigge asked.
“Because someone is living with us who was on the last ship they plundered. I hid her, so they wouldn’t kill her.”
Sigge released him. “There’s no time to fetch more people. But go get Ravnar!”
Alek followed them.
* * *
A ship was coming. It danced across the waves with a tattered sail. The wind ripped the clouds from the moon, and its cold light plunged silver knives into the water.
Carefully Sigge and the other boatmen moved toward the bonfires. Alek and Ravnar hurried after them. The three men on the beach did not yet sense any danger.
“It’s the same ones as last time,” whispered Alek.
One tall and two shorter men armed with boat hooks.
“We have to put out those fires. They still have time to get her back on course if they use their oars,” whispered Sigge.
“Why don’t they use their eyes instead,” growled one of the boatmen.
They divided the three men between them: Sigge and the snarler would take the tall one, Ravnar and the three others the two shorter men. There was no one for Alek.
“You’ll put out the fires,” decided Sigge.
The ship had come closer. Stubbornly it hacked its way toward Last Farewell.
Then the action began. Sigge and his friends stormed out with raised clubs and the rest of the group at their heels. The three men on the beach tried to flee to the end of the point. Wood splintered against wood. The snarler screamed when a boat hook hit him in the chest.
The tall man had fought his way free and came rushing toward Alek, who was on his way to the bonfires. The moon lit up the man’s face and Alek remembered that he had seen him in the harbor. The man did not notice him; he was running madly for a small dinghy pulled up at the water’s edge.
Alek bent down and picked up a rock, heavy and round like a goose egg. He threw it with all his might and the man fell to his knees in front of the closest bonfire. A second later Sigge threw himself on top and forced the man’s face into the stones.
The two young men, hands tied and with dragging feet, and no older than Tink, led the group. The snarler was supported by two other men. Alek picked up an even larger stone and began to choke the fire near him. Ravnar managed to put out the other bonfire.
“Row for your lives,” screamed Sigge toward the ship, but the sail was already down and all oars were in the water.
* * *
When they reached the cabin, Thala stepped out from the corner of the white gable. She stared at the bound men; then she walked over to the tall man and stood in front of him.
Blood slowly dripped from his left temple down onto his shoulder. He clearly had no idea who she was or where she came from. She stood on tiptoes, looked straight into his eyes, and spit in his face; then she turned and walked back into the cabin.
11
The day had dawned by the time the three men were locked in a cellar with high windows. In the morning light, they were recognized as a local skipper and two young boatmen. Sigge arranged for a message to be sent to the magistrate in Eastern Harbor.
“Now she can move out,” said Ravnar.
A cold wind came off the sea, but the sun warmed their backs. Ravnar and Alek sat down on some boxes in the empty harbor. All the boats had gone out at the first daylight, even though the sea was not yet calm. The gulls had followed the fishermen, but the jackdaws walked around in pairs, poking in tufts of grass and piles of seaweed.
“Why don’t you wait until the magistrate has been here!” Alek leaned his whole body left and skipped a stone across the harbor’s calm water.
“Good throw,” said Ravnar.
“Only eight, I’ve done better.”
“I meant last night.”
“Oh, that,” said Alek, and stuck his hands in his pockets.
They got up and the jackdaws rose in pairs, going their own ways.
“She can come with me to the inn. Then you’ll have the cabin to yourself during the day.”
Ravnar didn’t answer, so it must be okay.
* * *
The heat arrived and the cod pulled away from the coast. The dried cod piled up in the small sheds along the water. People began to prepare their small garden plots for the new potatoes.
Thala accompanied Alek every day and Jona welcomed her. The young woman taught them how to cut old peeled potatoes into slices and cook them in fat, so they became crisp and light brown and you forgot all about their spongy past.
To Jona and Alek’s astonishment, she poured wine into the pots, and she sometimes put a sprig of wormwood in the belly of a fish before roasting it over the embers.
In the evening they went home to Ravnar with these new dishes, which he wolfed down without many words. His hand was slowly getting better, and he sometimes spoke about going to sea again.
Thala did not get up in the night anymore, and she never went out onto Last Farewell, but Ravnar had begun to sleep uneasily and would wake up, get dressed, and leave the cabin. He was cold when he returned to lie beside Alek again.
* * *
When the magistrate arrived with his six men, everyone in town gathered at the harbor square. Jona closed the inn and went down with Alek and Thala. Ravnar was there already, and they joined him. Many people looked curiously at Thala.
“He brought her from Eastern Harbor,” Alek heard one old woman whisper to another.
A small platform had been constructed out of wooden planks and boxes, and this was where the magistrate stood, dressed in black. He was wearing a broad-brimmed hat and his cape had been thrown back over his shoulders, so that his arms were free. He stood with his fists on his thighs and looked out over the square as people arrived from all sides. Above the gray beard, his large face glistened in the sun, and the silver buckle in his belt caught the rays and threw off dancing spots of light.
In front of him stood the three wreckers with heads bent and their hands bound behind their backs. The six men guarded them.
Thala caught sight of a face in the crowd and pointed it out to Alek. It was the man that had come down to the cabin and looked in the window.
“Who’s the man with the curly hair?” Alek asked Ravnar.
“He’s the one I asked to give you the message that I had gone to Eastern Harbor. Didn’t he?”
“He tried,” answered Alek.
The magistrate cleared his throat and everyone grew silent.
“Let us get to the point. Who brings these three men in front of the court?”
“I do.”
Sigge stepped forward.
“And what do you believe is their crime?”
“I say the skipper’s is murder and his boatmen’s is complicity.”
“All right. Now tell me what happened!”
Sigge did, and when he was done, the magistrate asked:
“What happened to the ship?”
“It turned around and disappeared.”
“With everyone on board?”
Sigge nodded.
“Why do you call it murder then?”
“It has happened before. And the last time a ship went down, nine bodies drifted to shore. But a young woman who was on board was saved by a boy. It was the same boy who threw the stone that prevented the skipper from getting away.”
“Let me see him!”
Alek’s knees trembled as he made his way toward the platform. The magistrate put out a hand and pulled him up.
“What’s your name, my boy?” he asked.
The skipper lifted his head and looked into his eyes without blinking even once.
“Alek.”
If only his knees would stay still. They shook so that he felt the ripples all the way up in his brain, and all his thoughts were thrown about like drift
wood. The continuous staring made the sweat erupt on his upper lip. He dried it off with the back of his hand.
“Speak!”
At first the words fell out of his mouth in random clumps. Then he caught sight of Ravnar in the crowd and locked his eyes on him.
Gradually the night took shape, the bonfires, the stranded ship. He could feel the dark fear and his fists gripped the stones in his pockets hard.
When he got to the killing blow, he became nauseous and felt like throwing up. His gaze wandered and met the skipper’s, and he couldn’t wrest it loose again. In his thoughts, he threw one of the stones from his pockets, so that it hit the murderer between the eyes. The skipper must have felt something because he lowered his eyes for the brief moment Alek needed to get free.
He found Ravnar and the thread of the story again and continued. When he finished, the magistrate called Thala forward. She positioned herself with her side to the wreckers so she wouldn’t have to look at them.
“Where do you come from?” asked the magistrate. Thala answered.
“This will be difficult,” said the magistrate, but Thala continued to speak and Alek suddenly realized that even though he understood her, the magistrate did not. Her accent was too thick.
“Wait,” he yelled, and jumped down from the platform and ran, as fast as he could, past the inn, over the cliff, out to the cabin, where he tore Thala’s little brown notebook down from the mantel and raced back with it.
Bending over with cramps, he handed the notebook to the magistrate. The big man took the thin book in his large hands and opened it. He looked for a long time at each page and when he got to the one with the blow, he pointed at the drawing of the man holding the oar and asked Thala:
“Who is that?”
She turned and pointed at the skipper. The magistrate closed the notebook and handed it to her, and then she and Alek were allowed to step down.
They hurried back to Ravnar and Jona. Eidi had made her way over to them as well.
“You managed that well,” she said to Alek, and ruffled his hair, “but what was that about dress material for Myna?”
Alek laughed.
The magistrate asked the townspeople to choose a man and a woman who were well respected to conclude the trial with him.
“The innkeeper,” suggested someone.
“No, someone from here,” yelled someone else.
“Why?” Sigge asked. “The skipper is from this town. Does that make him better?”
“The innkeeper,” several others now chimed in.
And Jona allowed herself to be chosen and was proud. An elderly sailmaker was the other representative.
The three withdrew to the inn, while all the others remained standing in the square, waiting under the cloudless sky.
12
“Reffi and Eldrick.”
The two young men stepped forward.
“You are brothers.”
They nodded their heads.
“You come from the small hamlet behind the Gray Mountains called Sheep Grave.”
That was true, too.
“You came here to earn a living as boatmen.”
The magistrate didn’t wait for an answer.
“You found yourselves a skipper who was bad in every way.”
The crowd murmured its agreement.
“Your mistake was not that you followed his orders on board, but that you followed his orders on land.”
An uneasiness spread across the square.
“You must leave town without your possessions, and you may never show yourselves here again. You will be escorted to the main road.”
People began to comment on the judgment. Some were dissatisfied, others surprised; voices rose and fell, making a single note.
“Uwe,” the magistrate said, and everyone grew silent. “You are a skipper with your own boat in Last Harbor.”
No answer.
“You have committed wreckage with the help of a couple of boys; you have lured a crew to their death and killed a man in cold blood. There are witnesses.”
He did not bow his head, nor move a muscle; he continued to stare.
“But what do you know about old Enver’s death?”
Silence.
“Was it you who pushed him from the cliff path, because he had discovered what you were doing?”
“He fell,” came the answer.
“You sound as certain as if you were there yourself.”
The skipper’s gaze began to wander. The magistrate cleared his throat.
“In the sea a bit north of the Hamlet there’s a small island where a hermit once lived. The house is still there. The island is called the Claw. There you must spend a year of your life for each of the people for whose death we know you have been responsible.”
“Nine years,” whispered Alek.
“And all that you own will go to the young woman from whom you have stolen everything.”
“What will she do with a boat?” whispered Ravnar.
“You will be sailed out to the island by one of my men and receive some tools so you can fish from the beach and tend the bit of ground that’s there. Every midsummer a boat will come by so you can receive visitors and have the chance to trade. If anyone tries to help you to get away, they will share your fate.
“Everyone else who has collected driftwood or other goods from the wrecked ship and has done so in good faith may keep it.”
People stuck their heads together, and the volume in the square rose.
It grew silent again when the prisoners were led away. When the magistrate’s broad black back disappeared from sight, the whole square moved. People made their way toward each other and went out to the boats or into town. Many set off in the direction of the inn.
Jona took Thala’s arm and explained to her that the magistrate would come and pick her up at the inn to present her with her belongings. Uwe did not own the house he lived in, but all the furnishings would be hers and also the boat with lines and hooks and other gear.
“I have to go up to the store,” said Eidi to Alek.
She gave him a hug and disappeared. He stood on his toes to see where Ravnar had gone when someone took his arm and he turned around. A pale young woman looked at him pleadingly.
“Here,” she said, and stuck out a closed hand.
A heavy gold ring with a bloodred stone fell onto his open palm.
“I got it from him,” she mumbled, and turned and ran away.
Alek put the ring into the pouch around his neck and hurried after the dark, longish hair he saw farther along in the crowd. Out of breath, he reached Ravnar’s side.
“Well, now it’s easier to understand why he always had to stop in at the Hamlet and Eastern Harbor,” he said without looking at Alek. “And always on market days. But what she needed more was a place to live.”
* * *
Jona lent Thala a shed for all her new things. There was a table and four chairs, a bench with blankets and pillows, and there were boxes and chests with fine porcelain packed in sawdust, silverware and sharp knives, barrels of wine and spices, lots of fabric, everyday clothes, fur, and valuable dresses, pearl necklaces and stolen conch shells.
Thala found the things from her own ship. It was only a small portion, but all the rest she wanted no part of, except for the boat and gear, which might be useful. The magistrate offered to have one of his men sell the rest at auction in the harbor square.
* * *
Eidi had invited Alek, Ravnar, and Thala to visit her after the auction. Everything had been sold, and the magistrate had gone to the inn himself to present Thala with a big sack of money. Jona had said that she and Alek should take the day off and go home, so they could enjoy Eidi’s party.
Thala got out a big black skirt that was embroidered at the hem with a wavy golden design that looked like the one she had painted on the furniture. On top she wore a low-cut white blouse with the same trim in black and around her waist a thick gold scarf. A pair of long gold ear
rings dangled against her long white neck.
Alek and Ravnar walked down to the stream, pulled off their clothes, and scrubbed themselves with soap, rinsing off in the cold water. The sun was low in the sky, sending its last warm light across the shiny sea and giving their winter-pale bodies a tanned glow.
“You can’t catch me!” yelled Alek, and raced across the round stones.
He had his arms spread out like a bird to keep his balance. Ravnar raced after him, grabbed him from behind, and gathered his wings. Alek flapped to get loose and Ravnar laughed and let go.
“You’re it!”
The raven-black hair dangled against his back, so the water sprayed from it and sprinkled Alek in the face. Ravnar’s legs were longer, but Alek’s feet were faster. He threw his arms around his big brother’s waist and held on tight. Ravnar bent down a little and pushed Alek up, so he rode on his back as he had done when he was little.
But Ravnar didn’t carry him anywhere. He remained standing at the water’s edge watching the sun disappear; then he carefully let Alek slide down, and together they returned to the bundles of clothes by the stream.
13
Eidi had invited several people that evening. Sigge was there, and the snarling man and a few more boatmen, the washerwoman’s eldest daughter and her friend. The floor in the large parlor had been cleared, the chairs pulled to the side, and food set out by Eidi’s cook on a long table against the wall. You could take a plate and fill it whenever you wanted.
“I’ve just learned a new musical game,” said Eidi, and clapped her hands. “Sigge, will you play?”
Sigge pulled a small metal flute out of his pocket and played a few notes.
“The boys stand on one side and the girls on the other.”
“There’s not an equal number,” objected the washerwoman’s daughter.
“That doesn’t matter. Not in this game.”
Then Eidi walked over to Alek, took his hand, and pulled him onto the floor. She held his hand while she sang and Sigge accompanied her:
“I went to town to find a sweetheart,
but who it should be,
that was the hard part.
Alek Page 5