“The silver! The silver!” said half a dozen voices together. “They’ll want the silver!”
Smirke said nothing to this, which again allowed Natty to do some imagining. She saw much nodding of heads, and apprehensive rubbing of hands, and squaring of jaws, as the pirates reminded one another that nothing mattered more to them than their treasure.
“So there we have it, shipmates,” Smirke continued eventually. “A question. What we might call a di-lem-ma.” He spoke the word trippingly, as if it were something too hot to swallow. “And this di-lem-ma is: do we need the lad Nat to help us solve our difficulty? Or is he just … in our way?”
Although these last three words were slowly drawn out, they also produced a squall of voices, which showed that, as far as the majority were concerned, the question had already been answered and the dilemma solved. “Show him the sword!” they clamored; “Make him into pork!”; “Hang him with a rope!”; “Squeeze out his eyes!”—and other gleeful cruelties that came with such a wild clattering of feet the whole cabin shook.
When this fusillade had died away there was further pause before Smirke spoke again. “Very well, lads,” he said, with a surprising loftiness, as though to remind them he was their captain. “I’m obliged to you. I’ll take your advice under consideration—indeed I shall. I’ll do my considering, and I’ll digest all these things that you’ve given me to chew upon, and I’ll render you my verdict in my own good time.”
More mumbling followed this, rising into another ragged crescendo when the third voice (the voice Natty did not recognize) asked, “Why not make him a hostage? We’ll have his mates where we want them, if we have their pretty boy to trade.”
There was a pause, then a snigger. “Course, if that’s too much trouble we could just string him up now and be done with him. We’ll deal with his party likewise, when they show—we’ll—”
But there was no chance for Natty to hear what new violence might be proposed, since just as this voice began warming to its theme, Smirke interrupted. There was none of the dignity he had attempted a moment before—only a flash of anger. “I’ve told you, Noser,” he snapped, “I’ll have no mutiny from you. Not from any of you shipmates. I’m your captain, and you’ll do my bidding. And my bidding is: wait while I consider. Understand that?” Natty pictured him glaring around, his wide mouth half-open like a cod.
This outburst seemed to quench the pirates’ appetite for more talk—and to confirm that he reckoned the debate was finished, Smirke now smacked his hands together and gave a decisive “Very well!” A turbulent silence settled inside the cabin—if it can be called silence when men are dragging off to lounge on their beds, and complaining about the temperature, and berating one another, and quarreling about a bottle found beneath a table. In truth this sound-show was commonplace in all its details, yet it gave Natty such an impression of brute stupidity, she began to fear Smirke was more likely to kill her for entertainment than any other reason.
In this respect, the effect of the distillery became a kind of salvation: when the log house was eventually quiet, Natty fell asleep. This might seem surprising, since it suggests she was not sufficiently terrified by the idea of death to stay awake. But in reality our bodies often choose to obey their own laws, rather than the operations of our minds. Many condemned men, when they wake and remember they will be hanged within the hour, take the trouble to eat their breakfast, and show concern for themselves as though they expect to live. Even Jordan Hands bound his thumb before leaping over the side of the Nightingale. To dignify this, I might add that Natty had not slept all the previous night, and was tired.
She woke again to the scrape of her door opening, and a flood of light in her eyes—through which appeared the silhouette of Smirke. Her first thought was: she had a foul taste in her mouth. Her second was: her head thundered, as if she had been drinking. Her third was: regret that she had not been awake to hear Smirke announce her fate. These first two made her sorry for herself. The third made her frightened.
“On your feet, lad,” he ordered. “We must do this man to man, or I’ll be thinking I’ve murdered a baby, and that will hang heavy on me.”
Given the number of Smirke’s other sins, this seemed a strange concern—but Natty was glad to hear it nonetheless, since it suggested a grain of charity still remained in him. How much chance it had to develop was another matter, which Natty realized as her eyes grew accustomed to the brightness, and noticed that behind him stood Stone and the other man whom she had heard in the cabin saying he wanted to cut out her tongue. She assumed this must be Noser; he was the tallest of the three, with a very lean body, and childish goggle-eyes that were separated by the unnaturally large proboscis that gave him his name. This made him look odd enough. Stranger still was his dress, for he was clothed with tatters of canvas and sea cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork was held together by a system of the most various and incongruous fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick and loops of tarry gaskin. About his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the one solid thing in his accoutrement, and squeaked very noisily whenever he moved. He might have been the jester in a medieval court.
Natty felt as certain there was no compassion in this man as she was sure there was none in Stone and Smirke. All the same, she kept staring bravely at each of the pirates in turn, and then around the yard as they led her forward, to give the impression that she was undaunted. Because the sun was two-thirds of its way across the sky, she calculated it must be late in the afternoon. By this time, as she knew, the evening storm would be brewing out to sea, and very soon would dispatch clouds to spew their rain and wind over the island. Whatever the pirates had in mind for her, it was clear they wanted it finished without delay—so they would not get a soaking.
Smirke kept his hand heavily on Natty’s shoulder until they reached the open ground close to the Fo’c’sle Court—where he relaxed his pressure. “Now,” he said, wiping his blubbery face. Natty understood from the new deliberation governing his behavior that for the first time he was genuinely concerned to discover whatever secrets she knew—while still wanting to entertain himself with cruelties. “Damn me if you don’t know something I need to know, lad. Something we all need to know, which you’re going to tell us.”
Because Natty had only just left her prison, she felt it reasonable to say nothing for a moment, but merely rub her arms and wrists until the blood flowed through them more easily. This silence, which in Smirke’s mind was merely a continuation of her stubbornness, very quickly enraged him.
“Don’t you keep playing the fool with me,” he bellowed. There was a flustered look on his face, which told her he had probably intended to lead up to this anger by a more circuitous route. However, having lost his temper immediately he took no steps to gather himself again, but instead plowed on, drawing a gully from his belt. “I’ve had enough of your silences, my boy. Give us the news of how you came here. And who came with you. And where you reckon they might be now—or maybe you think they’ve left you to your fate? Can’t say I’d have done any different, if I’d been them. In any case: it’s your words I want, or I’ll take your tongue if I can’t have them.”
Stone stood impassive as he heard this, but Noser lunged forward and slapped Smirke on the back, as if to say, “Now we’ll see some fun.” Smirke seemed not to feel it, but kept his rheumy eyes fixed on Natty’s face and slowly rolled up one sleeve of his jacket. “Here’s luck” and “Ted Smirke his fancy” were very neatly and clearly tattooed above the wrist, and on his forearm, which was leathery with age and completely hairless, there was a sketch of a gallows with a man hanging from it.
“I cannot tell what you want,” Natty said, looking away in revulsion. She thought her voice sounded light and frail—very like her own true voice, in fact, which she then struggled to disguise in what followed. This was not something she had practiced, but a thought that came to her by instinct.
“Mr. Smirke,” she said, using his name for th
e first time. “You must put yourself in my position. You must ask yourself: would I save myself to betray my friends?”
Natty had expected this to be the start of a much longer speech, in which she would appeal to the spirit of common humanity. But the effect of even these few words was so dramatic, she had no chance to continue.
“Spare me your speeches!” Smirke said, slashing the air in front of her face. “It’s news I want from you, lad, not speeches. News. And facts. Now I’ll ask you again. Will you give them to us, or must we frighten them out of you?”
If any fumes from the distillery still lingered in Natty’s brain, this dispelled them. She knew that she had come to the end of excuses, and could not delay any longer. It was time to speak about the Nightingale, or else suffer and die.
She opened her mouth—and then suddenly closed it again, as the sound of singing rose from the land between the stockade and the sea. At first it was very faint, but quickly came closer and gained strength:
Praise the Lord for the beauty of the field
Alleluia!
Praise the Lord for the seed-time and the yield
Alleluia!
Praise the Lord for earth and grain
Praise the Lord for sun and rain
Praise the Lord that hurts are healed
Alleluia!
There could be no doubt what the song meant; it was the prisoners, returning from their work. And although this was a daily event, and might therefore have been tedious to Smirke and the rest, in fact it seized their attention. Natty thought this must be because it proved their authority, while reminding them of evening pleasures that would soon begin. When she looked again at Smirke, he seemed to have quite forgotten her; like Stone and Noser, he was agog to see the southern gate open, and the procession begin.
Although Natty was glad of the respite, what now appeared to her was very shocking. The prisoners were quite worn down with fatigue, so every head drooped and every foot dragged through the dust—which made their continuing to sing seem all the more remarkable. When she saw Scotland, she quickly closed her eyes. The skin of his shoulders was shiny with blood, and a long wound was open across the top of his head, as if the skin had been cut and deliberately pulled apart.
Jinks strutted at the head of the column, like a general who had marched his men up to the top of a hill and then down again; the other tyrants who had escaped the wreck of the Achilles patrolled on either side, waiting to snap at anyone who strayed. No one had the energy. As their singing stopped, which it did as soon as they came into the compound, the prisoners trudged in sullen weariness and obedience. This, to judge by the smile that now creased Smirke’s wide face, was everything he wanted.
Onward they shuffled, toward the porch outside their log house, where a barrel had been placed, and a wooden trough such as might be used to feed pigs. It was filled with water, which each prisoner knelt to drink before delving into the barrel and retrieving a wedge of black bread. With this in their hand, they then sank into the same darkness that had disgorged them a few hours before. It was not the end of their day’s hardship, however—merely a pause before the beginning of its second and more terrible part.
Natty did not expect to see any of these later cruelties, because she did not expect to be alive—as Smirke soon reminded her. Watching the last few prisoners disappear, he lost interest in them as abruptly as he had found it, and remembered what they had interrupted.
“One final time,” he barked, turning toward Natty and tapping the blade of his dagger against the open palm of his hand. “Tell us where your mates have got to. Have they left you, or are they coming for you?”
“I have told you as much as I can,” Natty replied, tearing her gaze away from the prisoners. To give an impression of indifference, she did not look at Smirke directly, but into the sky behind him. Smirke did not seem in the least impressed by this, but Natty could not have expected such a simple gesture would lead to the strangest exchange of their encounter. For as she continued watching the clouds traveling across the sky above the Anchorage, trying to distract her mind with their shifting grays and whites, she heard Smirke say, “God’s teeth but you’re a stubborn piece of work, Nat. Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know how I’ve lived? I’ve sailed with Captain Flint! I’ve been the friend of old Barbecue Silver!”
To hear her father mentioned like this, as if he were the devil himself, struck Natty a painful blow.
“And what of Mr. Silver?” she whispered.
“What of Silver?” he ranted on. “The coldest heart I ever knew. Silver’s a dog, and he taught me my own dog’s ways. Woof! Woof!”
Smirke threw himself against Natty as he made these noises, so that she felt his buckles and buttons pressing through her clothes. But he was not quite finished with her father yet.
“The last I saw of that rogue was his miserable face leering over the side of the Hispaniola and my musket ball parting the hair on his head. Another inch to the south and I’d have blown him to the flames he deserved! Not a day passes …”
Here Smirke seemed ready to continue swimming for some while in the current of his hatred, and might well have done so if Stone had not stepped forward and tapped him on the arm.
“Yes?” he snapped, whirling around.
“The prisoner, Captain sir,” said Stone, speaking very properly like a good sailor but at the same time grinning. “You are forgetting the prisoner.”
The effect of this interruption was startling. Smirke stood still, frowning at the ground as though he had forgotten where on earth he was, grinding his teeth and cursing. It was a terrifying glimpse of hatred, but Natty told herself she must take advantage of it. To hear her father condemned with such violence should have been outrageous—the man she knew bore no resemblance to anything Smirke had described. Yet in fact it invigorated her; by conjuring up her father, Smirke had given her an example of ingenuity, when she felt her own resources were about to run dry.
Her new resolve was tested immediately, for no sooner had Smirke composed himself than he became purposeful again, as Stone had encouraged him to be.
“You there,” he called across the yard, to a brace of guards who had recently returned the prisoners to their quarters. “Robinson. Rawson.”
“Yes, Captain,” grunted one man, and the other, “Aye-aye, Captain,” as they trotted toward him.
“You know your duties,” Smirke told them, thrusting his gully back into his belt, and suddenly smiling at Natty to show how much he was enjoying this new display of his power. “Light the fire and make everything ready for my return. Noser!”
The goggle-eyed man lurched forward obediently. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
“Kill us a doo-dah, and that will be our dinner. I expect to be hungry when I’m done with Master Nat here.”
“Gladly Captain,” said Noser, rubbing his proboscis and stamping off toward the farm pen. As he leaned over its low wall, the creatures beyond it began a most pathetic gabble, appearing to understand that he bestrode their world like Death himself.
“An excellent executioner,” Smirke told Natty, still smiling. “We all say that about Noser. A very excellent and delicate butcher.” Then he turned to face Stone and continued in the same complacent voice. “As you are yourself, of course, my friend; as you are yourself. So favor me with your company if you will, and walk with me so that we can attend to our prisoner here.”
By way of giving an answer, Stone ran one hand across his throat. As he did so, the sun disappeared behind clouds and the wind strengthened off the sea, flapping his trousers around his legs until he leaned backward a little to resist the pressure. This tilt of his body, slight as it was, gave Natty the fanciful idea that even wild Nature had finally turned against her, since it supported her enemy, and now she would be taken to the Fo’c’sle Court, where—
But she did not have to complete the thought. For instead of heading in that direction, Smirke began goading her toward the northern gate of the stockade. She not
iced that Stone seemed to understand what must follow; he gave a high-pitched chuckle as he fell in step with them.
The ground at this end of the yard was lumpy with old tree roots, so Natty sometimes stumbled as she went, and once even staggered to keep her footing, as a person might do if they were weak with fear. She regretted giving this impression, since her spirits were now suddenly higher—she insists—than at any time since her captivity began. I have often questioned her about this, finding such optimism hard to credit. Her answer is always the same: that what she felt was not optimism, but rather the impossibility of her own death. She did not think the foliage would suddenly part and reveal her rescuers—the captain and myself. She did not imagine Smirke would change his mind and show mercy, or decide to keep her as a hostage after all; he was too foolish and too vain. She very simply could not believe that she had reached her limit in the world. It was the mention of her father that made this possible; he seemed to have survived everything—why should not she?
Natty remained steadfast, or perhaps I should say innocent, even when the climb uphill from the camp began in earnest, along a track that wound between many large rhododendron bushes. Here, rather than contemplating Last Things, she says she began thinking that courage might not be an exalted state, but a natural and primitive thing that derives from our desire to die as we want to live—with dignity. Her life had not been a long one, but she had assembled it carefully. She felt that to vandalize it now with some sort of collapse would have been worse than giving Smirke a victory; it would have licensed her to become a little like him.
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