Sea of Lost Dreams: A Dugger/Nello Novel

by Ferenc Máté

  He stumbled along the surf until he could see the ruined pier and the skiff.

  He stuck the bad arm into his shirt, leaving the good one free to lift the bow and shove it into the sea. He was surprised at its weight. With the skiff afloat, he waded in and glanced along the shore. There was no Nello. Through the shouts, music, and explosions now came the sound of horseshoes clattering on stone. Dugger clambered in, grabbed an oar, and turned the bow seaward.

  The horse broke darkly through the illuminated dust, the rider’s elbows flapping like short wings. Dugger plunged the oar off the stern and poled the skiff with one arm, fiercely, through the shoals. The horse charged down the narrow street. Dugger, now on his knees, plunged the oar, but even bent double he could no longer touch bottom. The skiff drifted. The horse neared.

  With his one good arm, he tried wrestling the oars into their locks. He had them. But when he tried to row with one hand, an oar fell into the sea. He cursed and retrieved it when he heard a voice nearby, weak but determined. “I can row.”

  She was on one knee, holding her blouse closed. She got onto the thwart and took an oar, then reached out to him for the other. Wedging the handle of one oar beneath her thigh, she slipped the other smartly into the lock, then braced her feet and pulled with every muscle in her body. She rowed with long hard strokes. “I’m from Inishturk,” she blurted between pulls. “An island. We row before we walk.”

  Through the dark, the sails of the ketch billowed toward them.

  Thank God for Kate, Dugger thought.

  Over the distant blast of fireworks now came gunfire from the shore. The boy bridled his horse but it jittered in agitation and the shots went wild.

  “There’s a man running on the pier,” she said.

  A bent figure ran down the fallen pier, waded through waist-deep water, then climbed up its seaward end.

  “My first mate,” Dugger said, smiling deep inside.

  She began to turn the skiff, but Dugger stopped her. “Not yet.”

  THE HORSE HAD SETTLED and the boy now saw the hopelessness of his shots from that distance, so he holstered his pistol. Better this way, he thought. Now I can kill them all. And he spurred the horse and rode off at full gallop on the long curve of beach that ended at the narrow rock-lined pass.

  Behind the stump of the broken steeple, like an eye in wide amazement, rose the moon.

  NELLO REACHED THE END of the pier and he eased himself down a plank, leaned on a piling, and awaited the coming skiff. He jumped in and, seeing the bare-shouldered woman, lost his balance in surprise.

  “She’s a nun,” Dugger said.

  “Good disguise, Sister . . . ”

  “Agnes,” Darina said.

  Nello looked down at Dugger’s arm.

  “Dislocated,” Dugger said. “But I popped it back in.”

  Nello pulled out the pouch of coins and dropped it in Dugger’s lap, “No more beans and rice,” he said. “Is Kate sailing alone?” Then he added, “I’ll row, Sister.” He took the oars and turned the skiff toward the ketch, which was now sailing parallel to the shore. They edged near. He tried to match the speed of the ketch, but the skiff still bumped hard amidships and Darina had to reach quickly for the gunwales and hold on.

  Kate was bracing the wheel with her knee, pulling hard on the sheet to avoid the pier, and only when Dugger was aboard did she see the woman. She was climbing loose-limbed over the lifelines, her long skirt cumbersome. The moon shone on her pretty face and white flesh under the torn blouse. Kate felt a pang of jealousy like a blow to the stomach. She turned away and waited for it to pass.

  When Dugger neared, she saw his face welted and bloodied and her jealousy turned to fear. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s nothing,” Dugger said. “Shoulder came out, but it’s back in.”

  The pier was near. Kate said, “We have to tack.” As the men tended the sheets, she spun the wheel with one hand and with the other tied her hair.

  The jib slatted and the winch whirred as Nello hauled it to port. The bow swung, the ketch stood upright, then with an easy motion heeled and pointed past the pier. Dugger stood near Kate.

  “She’s a nun.” He nodded toward Darina.

  “I could tell from her habit,” Kate said.

  “They shoot priests and nuns here,” Dugger went on. “She stowed away in the skiff. Then she rowed. Saved my life.”

  “You should pin a medal on her chest. She has it ready for you.” Then she looked down at his limp arm.

  She kissed his face. “I’ll make you a sling.”

  The moon threw long shadows as sharply edged as daylight.

  HOLDING IN HER HANDS a small cotton bag, Darina sat with her shoulders slightly hunched. Kate checked the sails before she looked at her again. She envied her feminine clothes, the lace shawl, the skirt, the lace-up boots, but felt good about them being out of place on the ketch. Then she saw her full mouth and eyes big and dark in the moonlight. Pretty but defenseless, she thought. “You’ll get less spray on the port side,” she said sternly, and was surprised when the woman got up and crossed the deck.

  “Thank you,” Darina said.

  “You stow away often?” Kate queried.

  Darina listened for a hint of humor but heard none. She smiled nervously. “This is my first time,” she said.

  “You climbed aboard like you do it all the time.”

  Darina blushed. “I’m from Inishturk,” she said. “An island. We grow up on boats.”

  Kate turned the wheel a notch, then looked up at the sails. “I can mend that blouse for you,” she said.

  The current was washing the ketch toward the pier. “We need more sail,” Dugger said.

  He took the wheel, Nello hoisted the yankee, and Kate sheeted it in. The ketch heeled more and the bow pointed just past the pier when a tirade of shots rang out from the shore.

  “Get down! Get down!” Dugger yelled.

  At the bottom of the alley, two soldiers—one leaning against a wall, the other sitting on a crate—were firing with little interest toward the land end of the pier. A lanky figure struggled up the fallen pilings, then ran out on the teetering pier toward its end. The bow of the ketch passed the first piling. The soldiers reloaded without haste, then fired again. The runner slipped and stumbled but came on. As the mast pulled abeam the pier, he came in full flight, then, with an enormous leap, landed in the mainsail well above the boom. The sail collapsed and he slid down, spilling onto the deck.

  Dugger grabbed his knife. “This is an infestation,” he muttered.

  “We have to tack,” Kate said.

  The sails shook as the ketch came fast about and then, with everything sheeted tight, headed out of the bay. The lanky man huddled on the side deck to keep out of their way.

  “Capitaine Dugger,” the man said in a heavy French accent. “Je m’excuse d’arriver comme ça . . . not the way for a gentleman to board.”

  “Jesus,” Nello said, surprised. “It’s him!”

  “Who?’

  “The one that bought the rifles.”

  The man dusted off his pants; a faint smile creased his face. “One helps where one can.” Then he added politely, “Robert Guillaume, at your service.”

  “I don’t need service,” Dugger said.

  “I will of course pay for my passage,” Guillaume said.

  “Passage to where?” Dugger said.

  “To Tahiti, naturellement.”

  “We’re full up.” And he put his good hand back on his knife.

  “Please, I am happy to sleep on deck.”

  “It’s over three-thousand miles, a month’s voyage. We haven’t the food. You’ll have to swim back.” Dugger nodded at the shore.

  “I am an expert fisherman. I can catch my own meals.”

  “And when we run out of water, can you make your own rain? Get overboard now or you’ll have to swim too far.”

  Guillaume looked around. “The army will kill me ashore.” Then he flatly said, “I will
pay in gold.” And he drew from his pocket a small handful of coins.

  “Even a pound of gold can’t buy fresh water in the doldrums.”

  Guillaume looked at the ragged crew: Dugger’s slinged arm, Kate in cast-off clothing, the shorn woman holding rags, Nello covered in dust and blood and kneeling from fatigue. “How about fourteen pounds, Capitaine?”

  Dugger looked at Nello, who signaled nothing. He stiffened the grip on his knife.

  “Or if not fourteen pounds,” the Frenchmen softly said, “then how about fourteen . . . tons.”

  Guillaume looked around. No one moved.

  “Fourteen tons of gold, Capitaine. Would that induce you to ration your drinking water?”

  The sails shook. With a nudge of the wheel, Dugger dropped the bow and filled them. Against the dark of night, he could see the boy dismount in the pass.

  Guillaume clutched his small side pack and spoke hurriedly. “Inca gold stolen by the Spaniards and hidden in a church’s catacombs in Pisco, Peru.”

  Dugger saw the boy draw his gun and sit on a rock, waiting.

  “For centuries monks guarded the gold in secret,” Guillaume went on, “until one of them fell in love and ran off with a sailor. Now it’s in a lagoon near Tahiti. Fourteen tons. I have the map.” He held out his bag. “A fair price for a first-class ticket, non, mon capitaine?”

  The bow of the ketch rose over swells that squeezed into the bay. The sea fog came in long plumes from the darkness. Dugger saw the boy settle behind a rock, and rest his forearm across it, his gun glinting in the moonlight. From that distance he couldn’t miss. Not with his hand steadied. Dugger tried to edge farther to the shoals. The ketch rolled wildly in the cross-waves from the point and they all grabbed for something to keep their balance. If only the fog would come, Dugger thought.

  “Everyone below,” he finally said.

  Nobody moved.

  “Now,” he said.

  THE BOY WATCHED THE KETCH sail into the pass. He set the sight of his gun on the helmsman’s chest. Don’t waste a bullet now, he thought, wait until they’re so close you can see fear in their eyes. He saw them walk past the helmsman and go below. Good, he thought. They are scared. Less confusion. I will kill the helmsman with one shot and the ketch will hit the shoals, then, as they come out, I will kill them one by one.

  He watched the ketch roll toward the long tendrils of fog. He aimed at the helmsman just below his hat and slowly squeezed. Then the ketch sailed between him and the rising moon. His finger froze.

  He knelt in the still-warm sand and gazed in childlike wonder as the billowing sails of the ketch slowly filled with moonlight, as if the moonlight itself were pushing it out to sea. He gazed as the helmsman drove the ketch through the glitter toward the open ocean, where the fog closed in like giant wings and hid it in the swirling, silver mist.

  Book Two

  The Voyage

  Chapter 9

  The wind stiffened and they sailed straight out to sea so that by midnight they were well clear of the bank of coastal fog. By four bells, the last mountain had sunk below the east horizon, leaving nothing around them but endless, heaving water.

  Darina had felt seasick trying to sleep down below—hadn’t said so, didn’t complain—but Nello saw her with shoulders hunched forward, staring blankly at the floor, so he told her to go above, where she’d feel better in fresh air. Later, when they were well offshore, out of reach of the heat of land, he came up for his turn at the wheel and without a word put a blanket in her lap. She thanked him with her eyes cast down, and wrapped it around herself.

  Through the two hours of his watch, they sat in silence.

  When Kate came to take the helm, Nello bade good night and turned in, and the two women remained alone under the billowing sails. With the sails balanced, the ketch held course on her own, so Kate touched the wheel only now and then to keep the bow from swinging in the odd cross-swell that pushed against the keel. In the chill dawn she buried her face in Dugger’s sweater and let its sleeves slip down over her hands.

  Darina watched the horizon.

  “Do you feel better out here, Sister?” Kate finally asked.

  “Much. Thank you,” Darina gratefully replied, and felt even better for Kate having asked.

  “Where is this Inish . . . ”

  “. . . turk,” Darina offered. “Inishturk. Just off the Irish coast. A small island. So beautiful. So wild.” Her memories came flooding back and her throat tightened. “We saw the stars only once in a while. Mostly on winter nights.” Then, to avoid being asked more questions, she added, “Where are you from?”

  Kate tried hard to recall her childhood, but there were only fragments, and none that fit together. “Vienna. The river froze around broken reeds . . . there was music in restaurants; violins . . . And a big Ferris wheel that . . .” She couldn’t remember the rest, so she added, “That touched the stars.” To hide her lack of memory, she blurted, “Is your convent on Inishturk?”

  Darina turned back to the sea. Her mouth went tight. “No,” she finally said. “In Galway.”

  “Is that nearby?”

  “You have to cross all Connemara if you go by land. Or sail by Slyne Head and inside Aran if by sea.”

  “I read about a convent. It was peaceful, with big gardens. Is yours like that?”

  Darina made a small sound, sarcastic and sad. Then she took a deep breath. Her eyes drawn hard now, she looked up at Kate. “Do you know the Magdalenes?”

  Kate shook her head.

  “Or the Magdalene Penitents?” When Kate’s face showed no recognition, she said, “Mary Magdalene?”

  Kate clutched the spokes, feeling exposed. The name sounded familiar . . . but she shook her head.

  Darina spoke softly in short phrases with stumbling pauses, as if reciting something she had to memorize for school. “Jesus cleansed her of seven demons. She witnessed his crucifixion and his burial . . . She was first to see his resurrection . . . An apostle to apostles . . . Loved by Jesus more than the others.”

  Kate stared at her, fixated. It all sounded incomprehensible, like a foreign tongue she recognized but couldn’t understand. She had forgotten the wheel. The ketch wandered off course, the sails luffed. When they filled, the booms slammed with a bang. Almost at once, the hatch slipped back and Nello’s tousled head popped out into the night. He squinted sleepily at them. “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “I slipped,” Kate said. “Everything is fine.”

  Nello came up, walked the moonlit decks to the bow, looked up to check the rigging, then came back. “Just call if you need anything,” he said, and dropped below. The hatch slid shut.

  Grateful for the interruption, Darina had drawn back against the cockpit coamings, the blanket pulled up high around her neck.

  They remained silent. At long last Darina said, “Forgive me. I’ve lived the life of Mary Magdalene since I was fifteen.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Seven years.” She paused. “And you? How long have you been at sea? You look awfully young to be such a good sailor.”

  Kate blushed in the darkness. She looked away. What could she say? That she couldn’t remember? That she didn’t even know her own age? When she felt the blush drain off, she leaned down to hold her face in the binnacle’s glow. “How old do you think I am?” she asked.

  Darina moved closer for a better look. Kate’s face looked wiser than she expected, more worldly. “Twenty-seven?” she said. When Kate turned back to the wheel without comment, Darina asked, “Am I close?”

  “You’re dead on,” Kate said. She looked down at Darina. The wind and the damp sea air had mussed up her short hair, and her big round cheeks glowed fresh from the wind. With her face now softened, her mouth had grown wider, full. Her head slowly tilted. She seemed at peace.

  The cross-waves came more frequently now and Kate had to hold the wheel with both hands and brace her feet to keep the ketch on course. I’m being pushed too far west, s
he thought. The ketch is struggling. I wish Dugger were here to ease the sails. “An inch at a time,” she could still hear him say. “Let out an inch of sheet at a time.” She unwound the jib sheet from the cleat but held it tight around the horn; she could feel the power of the sail and had to brace herself against it. “An inch at a time.” But when he first showed me in the dinghy it was easy. There was never much wind in that closed bay, not with those cedars shielding it. Beautiful tall cedars. He kissed me in their shadow for the first time.

  My God! She thought, and held her breath. I remember all that.

  A small rogue wave hit. The ketch lurched. Darina sat up.

  “Was she a saint, this Mary . . . ?” Kate uttered. The moon touched the west horizon and dissolved in the mist.

  “Magdalene,” Darina said. “Yes. But first she was a penitent.” Then she quoted distantly, “Cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulcher, and seeth the stone taken away.” She spoke dryly, as if confessing some often-mentioned shame. “In the house of Simon the Leper, Jesus sat at meat. There came a woman with long hair and an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious, and she broke the box and poured it on his head.” Kate held her breath, because all of a sudden she recognized the words. Darina went on, “And Jesus said, ‘She hath done what she could; she’s come to anoint my body . . .’”

  And Kate heard herself murmur, “‘. . . for the burying.’”

  “You do know Mary Magdalene,” Darina said in surprise.

  “It seems so,” Kate whispered.

  “Jesus cleansed her of her demons and she repented. The Magdalenes were like her: full of demons.” She looked far to the west, where the last of the moon now sank. “Fallen women,” she said.

  The ship’s bell tolled eight times. There was stirring down below. The new watch was coming up the ladder with heavy steps. The hatch slid back.

  Darina whispered, “I’m a Magdalene.”

  Chapter 10

  As if sliced by a knife, the dark dawn split with light. A pink glow poured out of the black clouds and splashed along the curve of the horizon.