In The Wreckage: A Tale of Two Brothers

by Simon J. Townley

  He woke as the door was flung open. “Out,” said a sailor. “Leave the dog. Captain doesn’t want him roaming the ship.”

  Conall stumbled to his feet, still half asleep, following the sailer as he led them to the midpoint of the ship and up steps to the main deck. He emerged into fresh air and daylight, the sun on his face for the first time in days.

  He’d spent most of his life outdoors and the ship felt oppressive inside, away from the endless horizon and the wind on his face. He stopped to stare across the ocean. It was calm now. A light wind filled the sails and the ship glided through the water. A push in the back and a grunt from a sailor told him to keep moving.

  They were led to the back of the boat, through a door into the living quarters on the main deck. Conall glanced up at the raised poop deck where two row-boats hung from davits. Jonah Argent stood leaning over the rail, looking down at them. “Captain’s stateroom with ‘em,” he growled at the sailor.

  They entered a companionway, passed rows of doors, some open, and Conall glanced inside to see cabins and living quarters.

  The sailor led them to the end of the ship and stopped outside a wooden door. “Captain’s waiting,” he said. “In.”

  Faro and Conall exchanged a glance and stepped into the captain’s room, their faces tense, lips drawn, white and thin, ready to plead their case, or learn their fate, or beg for mercy.

  ≈≈≈≈

  The captain sat in a straight-backed chair behind a table. He wore no uniform, just a plain white shirt, the arms loose, the collar unbuttoned. Something about the man looked tired, as if he’d spent a lifetime working and worrying but still wasn’t satisfied with the results.

  The room was cramped, the table not much bigger than the chart book that lay open on it. Light streamed into the room through portholes to the side and rear of the ship, with sunlight glinting off the ocean.

  The captain didn’t look up, staring intently at his maps. Conall and Faro stood in front of the table, saying nothing.

  They’d had little schooling. A few years at Lerwick primary, with only one teacher. She’d been strict and severe and whenever a child misbehaved they were taken to an office away from the other children, made to stand in silence while an adult ignored them, to feel guilty and ashamed. This was no different. Conall recognised the tactic, caught Faro’s eye and smiled.

  “Think it’s funny?” The captain looked up and stared at Conall, unrelenting. Behind them the door opened. Conall heard the tap-tap of Jonah’s cane as he entered the room and stood behind them. No chance now for Faro to accuse the first mate, unless he did it to his face.

  “I saw you both at Lerwick,” the captain said. “Your parents know you stowed away with us?”

  “We don’t have any,” Faro said.

  Conall shot a sideways glance at his brother. “We lost them. Or they lost us.”

  “How careless,” the captain said, gruffly.

  Behind them Jonah sniggered.

  “They left us on Shetland.” Conall shuffled from foot to foot. “We were travelling to Svalbard, to find a new home. But something went wrong, we don’t know what. One day they were gone. That was ten years ago. We want to find them. If they’re still alive.”

  The captain kept up his stare. “Why? If they abandoned you?”

  “They didn’t mean to. I’m sure of that. There’s a chance they got to Svalbard, couldn’t get back to us.”

  “It’s a tragic tale,” Jonah said, his voice mocking.

  Conall glanced once more at Faro, waiting for some support, but his brother stood stone-faced.

  “I understand you’ve met my daughter,” the captain said. “Took advantage of her compassionate nature. She told me about bringing food to you. And no, she didn’t give you away. It was Jonah’s men that discovered you.”

  “She was very kind,” Faro said, his voice flat, purged of emotion, as if he feared to give something away. “She took pity on us, when we were in need. You should be proud of her.”

  The captain glared at Faro, sizing him up. “Is that right? Well I’m glad I’ve got you here to set me right on that point.”

  Deflect his anger. Change the subject. Conall looked back over his shoulder towards Jonah. “We only want passage to Svalbard, to search for our parents. We’re willing to work.”

  “And why should we trust you, when you come sneaking aboard? You don’t know much about sailing a ship, I’ll be bound,” Jonah said. “What use are you?”

  “We can learn.”

  “Oh, I’ve got to teach you now, have I?” Jonah tapped his cane on the floor.

  Conall turned back to face the captain. “We can cook, clean, pull on ropes as well as anyone.”

  “And you brought a dog aboard?” The captain closed his book of charts with a thump.

  “Couldn’t leave him. Don’t hurt him.”

  “Do I look like a man who’s cruel to animals?” The captain’s voice was softer. “People maybe, they’re less deserving, in my experience. More likely to cause trouble for no good reason.” He glared at the boys once more. “Mr Argent has a point. How do we know we can trust you?”

  “Our word.” Faro stood straight, staring ahead, not meeting the captain’s eye.

  Conall took half a step forward. His legs were almost pressed against the captain’s table. “Your first mate can tell you, I was working at the inn on Lerwick. They trusted me. I’ve worked there before. They know me.”

  “He tells the truth,” Jonah said.

  “Yet you sneak aboard my ship. Steal eggs from my chickens, lead my daughter astray.”

  The room fell silent. Conall could tell the discussion was done. It all came down to the captain’s decision. In the corner of the room, a clock ticked. Sails flapped in the wind. The wooden deck creaked as Jonah shifted his weight, scraping the cane across the polished planks. Still Faro stared at the wall above the captain’s head.

  Conall bit his cheek. Did he dare ask? “She never told us her name.”

  “Never mind her name. You’re not to speak to my daughter, either of you, understand?” The captain fumbled with paperwork. He paused. Frowned. “Her name is Heather. You will call her Miss Hudson. But you’re not to speak to her. Unless it’s essential. Ship’s business. Or she speaks to you, which she won’t after I’ve finished having a word with her. Jonah, can you put these boys to work?”

  “You’ll take us to Svalbard?”

  “Quiet.” Jonah clipped Conall’s ear. “You’ll speak when you’re allowed if you’re part of my crew. Yes sir, I can make use of them, if I must. No time to train them up proper, not worth it if they’re only going that far. But you never know sir, if they’ve the skill, a few weeks at sea and they might get a taste for it.”

  “Indeed,” said the captain. “Keep them out of trouble. And yes.” He stared at Conall, “We’ll take you to Svalbard, provided you behave, work hard, you’re honest, and you don’t go near my daughter.”

  Jonah pushed the two boys towards the door. “Thank you sir, you won’t regret this,” Faro said.

  “See that I don’t.”

  Conall paused at the door. “My binoculars? Can I have them?”

  The captain opened a drawer and took out the glasses. He inspected them, pursing his lips in approval. “I’ll use them, if I may. And return them to you, safe and sound, when we reach Svalbard, providing your behaviour is acceptable. One more way you’ll pay for your passage. Agreed?”

  Conall nodded. He couldn’t argue. Jonah pushed him through the door. “You boys need to learn when to keep your mouths shut,” he muttered. “Come on, let’s put you to work.”

  Chapter Five

  BERGEN

  Jonah Argent was good as his word. He put them to work, had them scrubbing decks and hauling on rope alongside the regular sailors, treated as part of the crew. They scrambled up ropes, and Conall learnt to cope with the height and movement of the ship, the wind and swells of the sea, how to make himself safe a hundred feet above deck, an
d how to look tough even when terrified, knowing the sailors were watching and would mark any weakness.

  He and Faro battled to outdo each other: to be tougher and leaner and more daring. They carried stores and fetched supplies, tied ropes and retied them and did the job again, and again, until Jonah was happy they’d got it right. He made them work at a task until it became second nature. Conall understood what the man was about, making the tasks so ingrained he could trust them to do it right even in the highest winds or the fiercest storms. Because on a ship such as this even the smallest thing done wrong could make the difference between life and death.

  Conall got plenty of things wrong at first, but kept going, kept learning. After six hours of work they were led to the crew room on the middle deck, sat down among a group of the sailors, and told to eat. They wolfed the food down, grabbing at chunks of bread, potatoes and stew as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks.

  “They’re starved dogs,” the cook said as he came round with his pot.

  Only then did Conall remember Rufus, still shut in the brig, with no water or food. He leapt up to go but Jonah’s hand on his shoulder held him down.

  “Your terrier’s in good hands. Captain’s daughter’s looking after him. She’s got a way with animals. He’ll be spoiled rotten, I reckon, living better than the rest of us. Soon as you’ve finished, back on duty.”

  Argent made them wash the deck by hand while he stood over them, giving a lesson in finding their way around a sailing ship. He reeled off names of sails and lines and stays. He talked of mizzen and fore masts, shrouds and backstays, topgallants and bowsprits, ladders and jibs and booms. Deadeyes and lanyards, bottle-screws and turnbuckles, belaying pins and ratlines. He tied knots, made them copy, made them remember the names. Then he tested them on the names and cursed every time they got one wrong. They went over and over, and soon he was cursing if they so much as paused.

  “Need to know this, every bit of it,” Argent said. “You offered to work your passage. Well this is work.”

  Staggering with tiredness, muscles aching and howling for rest, Conall and Faro kept going. They mucked out the animals on the middle deck while the captain’s wife stood in the doorway watching. She was a handsome woman, with brown hair tied up, wearing long cotton pants and a shirt with sleeves to her wrists. She carried a hat in her hands, to keep the sun off her face while on deck. On her feet she wore leather boots that clomped on the wooden boards and didn’t seem right for a ship. Conall guessed she was most at home in the fields with her animals, growing plants and tending to trees.

  He paused as he passed her in the doorway carrying a bucket of cow dung to throw over the side. “What are the animals for? Are you starting a farm?”

  “We hope to. We need more animals, but it was all we could bring, on the first trip.” Her voice was soft, round and gentle.

  “Are you from the south? From England?”

  “That’s an easy guess.”

  “I’ve never been there. Never met anyone.”

  “We sailed from Liverpool, three weeks ago,” she said. It had taken longer than expected, she told him, the winds unpredictable, the storms severe and when they made for any port they found people to be hostile or afraid. Or both.

  When they finished with the animals, Jonah took them back on deck and tested them again. First the sails. Then the stays. He’d name a thing, and they had to find it on the ship, point it out. Then he went through the rigging and the masts and the buntlines.

  The sun had gone down hours before, the stars were out around a quarter moon. The ship rocked, Faro was reeling off answers, but Conall felt his head nodding onto his chest.

  “Get you forward then,” Jonah said at last. “There’s hammocks in the crew cabin under the forecastle. You’ll live with the men. Work with them. Eat with them. Die with ‘em if it comes to that, but not if seamanship can save us, you’ve my word on that.”

  The brothers fell into their hammocks and Conall tucked up tight. He missed Rufus. How would the dog get by without him? But he didn’t get chance to worry about it for long, because his eyes closed and he sunk deep into sleep, dreaming of ropes and knots and sails and seeing the wood of the deck he was washing, the cloth moving back and forth, relentless as the sea itself.

  ≈≈≈≈

  It was still dark when Conall woke with Faro shaking his shoulder. He grumbled and curled up in his hammock. Faro pushed and rolled him out onto the floor.

  “Shift’s starting,” he said. “I’m going to the washroom.”

  Still half asleep, Conall stumbled after his brother down the ladder to the middle deck. The water was cold and stale, but washed off the sweat. He splashed his face, shook his hair and glanced at the mirror. He is eyes were bleary and tired. He needed more sleep. But his time was not his own, not any more. It belonged to Jonah Argent.

  When they got back on deck, the first light of dawn coloured the sky to the east. The sun was rising behind the black outline of land. A dark shape loomed to starboard. From the front of the ship one of the sailors shouted instructions, calling out what he could see to the steersman at the back of the poop deck.

  “Norway,” Faro said. “We’re passing the outer islands, heading for the mainland.”

  The second mate was on duty, a thin, bony man by the name of Tyler Bagatt. ‘Bones’ Bagatt the crew called him. He caught the boys standing on the forecastle, staring open-mouthed, and clipped them both around the head. “Keep working and get off the forecastle unless you have business being here,” Bagatt said.

  The boys were sent up the shrouds to help stow the mainsails. Within the hour the boat was running on engine power alone, as she glided towards the mainland.

  Conall had seen photographs of mountains in the old books, but they didn’t capture half of it. Cliffs of stone rose from the sea, hundreds of feet of sheer rock. The land kept rising, with impossibly high mountain tops within half a mile of the seashore.

  “It’s all rock,” Conall said to Faro. The boys were arranging ropes and stays, helping get the boat ready for arrival in port. “Mountains and rock.”

  “Not much land for farms,” Faro said. “There’s nothing flat.”

  By mid-morning the ship was heading into port, a sheltered fjord and a town ten times the size of Lerwick.

  “One of the old cities,” Captain Hudson said, as he watched from the side of the ship. Conall was a few feet away, scrubbing the deck for the second time that morning. “Bergen, one of the great trading ports of the world. Home to half a million, in the old days.”

  Ruins stretched for miles. Remains of homes and roads, shops and schools, scattered across hillsides around the fjord. “A lot of it’s overgrown,” Hudson said. “There’s tunnels, see boy, cut through the mountains. The work it must have taken to do that. You can’t fathom it. All that power. And it all went wrong.”

  A scattering of houses rose up one hillside where smoke from the chimneys drifted into the morning air. It seemed to be the only part of the town still inhabited. A crowd had gathered around the houses and harbour, waving at the ship. As the ship drew closer, the entire crew came on deck. Heather clutched Rufus in her arms. The dog howled when he saw Conall, scrabbling at the girl’s clothes to get free. Conall rushed to help her, taking hold of the terrier in a firm grip. The dog lashed his face with its tongue and Heather laughed. The girl’s mother appeared at her side, an arm around her shoulder.

  His time with Rufus was cut short by Jonah, who arrived with orders, tasks and duty rosters. Faro was to go with the first mate, to help with supplies. Conall was to help the captain and his wife, to fetch and carry and do whatever was needed.

  “Watch yourselves ashore, both of you,” Jonah said. “They’re decent enough folk in this town, good as you’ll find these days, but that’s not saying much. Eyes open, and don’t go wandering, understand?”

  ≈≈≈≈

  Bergen’s harbour-master rowed out to the ship, spoke with Captain Hudson, and guided The Arkady into
port. The harbour had been rebuilt and reshaped as the waters rose, but could still take a ship the size of The Arkady, moored alongside the main dock.

  Conall watched Hudson and Jonah Argent, heads together, debating what to do. The ship would be vulnerable, tied to the dockside. Anyone could board her, by force if they chose. But they could bring more supplies on board, save time and effort, and give the whole crew a break on land. In the end, they decided to take the risk, though Conall heard Jonah muttering to the sailors, urging them to stay alert.

  A crowd of people gathered on shore, wanting to look around the boat, offering to trade. A group of young women with fresh-faces and blonde hair waited for the sailors to disembark, loitering on the dockside, well away from the other townsfolk. Their skirts were short and blouses low enough that there was no mistaking what they’d brought to sell.

  Captain Hudson stood on the poop deck and announced the ship would stay in Bergen until the following morning. But no one was to stay in the town overnight, he warned. They sailed with the dawn light, and anyone missing would be left behind. “No one goes ashore alone,” he said. “In groups of three at least. And always an able-bodied man among them. The crew will take watches on board The Arkady, make sure the ship is secure at all times. You have your orders, enjoy your time.” He waved as if to dismiss them. “But don’t bring back any diseases,” he added, half under his breath.

  The houses of Bergen were built from a mix of stone and wood, cut from the conifers that covered the mountains. More trees than Conall had seen in a lifetime on Shetland. Around the water’s edge, many of the buildings rotted away or stood silent and brooding, overtaken by the rising waters and long since abandoned.