Banners

by Diane Carey

  “And you so enjoy a good hate.”

  “You know,” Gordon warned, “I’ve had you flogged. I can have you hanged.”

  “Hang me.” The American kept dishing out the fare with a surprisingly delicate touch. “Doesn’t make you my better. I can be here four months or four thousand and my captain will still be Tom Boyle. Kill me if you want. Roast and eat me if you want. I’ll serve your table and sail your ship for the sakes of the men around me, as most of them were seized same as I and they deserve a right-hearted shipmate who tows his load, but you’ll get my respect when you earn it, if you ever do. You want beans, or are you above them too?”

  The two had engaged in similar flares for nearly a month, since the day Tarkio had been assigned to bringing breakfast to Gordon’s cabin, until last week always under guard of one of the Marines. Such a precaution was ironic, because Gordon didn’t trust the Marines any more than he trusted Tarkio. There wasn’t room in the cabin for three men anyway, so there had been no point but useless protocol to continuing the Marine guard.

  Tarkio and the other impressed men would spend years out of contact with anyone they cherished, away from the splendor of New England’s forests and fresh water, and all things of life they had known. They stood a strong chance of never returning, of dying at sea from illness, accident, or enemies. If they ever returned at all, it would be with broken bodies and sick souls. Yet Victor Tarkio had sacrificed himself for his shipmate and three helpless children, to guarantee that pay and fatherhood would continue at another man’s house.

  Stricken with envy all over again, James Gordon remembered the shrouds of the American schooner and compared the memory to his own command, a tub of rot and leaks, of frayed line spliced and re-spliced, cut and spliced again, of unpainted planks plugging holes in her sides. A sailor’s keen eye would note the frays, the sagging sails, yards sawn back to their shortest, the chipped hull-paint and exposed wood, the tattered robands and patched sails. And rot … red, swollen flakes of dissolving wood poured out of the scuppers like blood every time the deck was washed. He knew the American captain had noticed every deficiency, and Gordon hated him for it. Was this madness? To toil his mind over a man he would never see again?

  Gordon had taken the pressed American men aboard his ship without knowing much more than they knew themselves about whether the Helen would even survive to return to England for repairs and replenishment. He still didn’t know. A Royal Navy vessel had few places to find respite in these western waters. Only the port of Halifax, the Bermuda islands, and these vile Caribbean bedpans were under Crown rule. He had chosen this place in hopes that the stink and the sights of brutality would discourage his crew from wanting to mutiny here or jump ship.

  And at sea, of course, he could only pretend that he was in command. In truth, there was no rule. He commanded only through the stubborn will of Moycroft, who harbored no particular loyalties. Neither him nor Gordon nor God nor anyone could be completely in charge. Even the weather had to forgive a great deal day-by-day, and the seas— the ungovernable Atlantic.

  Tarkio was not a tall man, yet still stood an inch or two taller than most of the Helen’s crew. Unlike them, he was enviably muscled and healthy after a life of corn and venison, bread and potatoes, and an encyclopedia of vegetables which couldn’t be stored on a ship, but which poured in an orange and green waterfall from the farms of North America. Americans had so many cabbages, pumpkins, turnips, and squash, and so much fruit, that scurvy was nearly unknown to American sailors. They even had sugar. Wild game flowed from their forests, and cattle farms gave them butter, cheese and beef. Fresh water erupted from every hole punched in the earth. And trees—they had trees by the millions. In England, so many trees had been taken to make ships that there were almost none of any girth left.

  “You know why you’re bringing my meals?” Gordon asked tonelessly, because that’s what was on his mind. He always ate alone. Not even the officers and midshipmen wanted his company, nor he theirs.

  “I do,” Tarkio answered.

  “My steward died of scurvy.” Gordon went on despite Tarkio’s answer. The sound of his own voice kept him talking. “He died while you were recovering from your first flogging.”

  “I know.”

  “Moycroft assigned you to bring my meals because you were healthy and not so inclined to steal food from my tray.”

  “Yeh.”

  “The crew is a pack of wild dogs.”

  “A stout heart here and there. Mr. Moycroft’s just taking care of you.”

  “Moycroft? Moycroft has no heart. He has a bilge pump.”

  “That’s every chief mate.”

  “Oh?” Gordon looked at him. “What would be your evaluation of ‘every chief mate’?”

  “A sadistic drone with no personality, no sense of humor, and no concept of time.”

  “What gave you this opinion?”

  “I worked for the Carrere merchant fleet.”

  Gordon sat back. “A chief mate?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Fighting a smile because he’d been caught, Gordon leaned forward again and buried his reaction in a spoonful of beans. “One with a heart, I suppose.”

  “My shipmates are my family, if that’s what you mean.”

  Gordon snorted a response, pretending he had no idea what Tarkio could possibly be talking about, or at least that Tarkio was lying. “I was never a chief mate. My command comes from my birthright.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means my grandmother purchased it.”

  “A bribe, like?”

  “A benefit of peerage.”

  “You a lord?”

  “What?”

  “Are you a lord?”

  “An earl.”

  Tarkio gave that a moment of thought before going on. “Pa’s a coppersmith. He makes kettles and shortbread molds. Ma designs the molds. And stills, we make stills.”

  “How did you then become a sailor instead of a coppersmith?”

  “We make cobblers’ nails for sailing shoes, and hoops and rivets for barrels. I did all the deliveries. Made friends at the shipyards. So one day—”

  Gordon snapped his fingers. “You see? You Americans pretend to be innocent, but you’re making copper nails and hoops! Copper-hooped casks to carry gunpowder, shoes that won’t spark! Articles of war! Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

  Tarkio shook his head a little and made a sort of smile that should’ve been insulting. “Copper-nailed shoes and copper-hooped barrels are used in black powder mills,” he said. “Powder’s used for clearing way for roads and mines. And anybody who works around explosives or sawdust, or even a wheat mill, needs copperwares to keep the sparks down. Don’t you know that?”

  “You should be a storyteller. Or a mountain climber. Yes, I can see you climbing a mountain.”

  “Never seen a mountain. Not a real big one, anyway.” The American poured a dollop of goat’s milk into the cup of tea, milk just brought on board within this hour.

  As Tarkio spread the captain’s meal on the tiny desktop, Gordon moved the ship’s log out of the way to keep it dry. “I’ve always wanted to climb a mountain. The Alps … Himalayas… Vesuvius …”

  “Don’t know where those be.”

  “You’re uneducated,” Gordon snorted.

  Tarkio nodded passively.

  Irritated, Gordon responded, “I just insulted you. Don’t you care? If you don’t care about being called ignorant, what could you possibly care about?”

  The other man shrugged a shoulder. “I was thinking of marrying. Care about that.”

  A revelation. Gordon took his teacup and blew across the steaming liquid. “You have a woman?”

  “Girl. Too young yet, but in a season or two, might happen. If I stay attractive long enough for her to grow up, that is.”

  “Oh? How does a man at sea stay attractive with all God’s weather and strife constantly upon him?”

  Tarkio smiled. “Captain
Boyle has a formula.”

  “Captain Boyle again.”

  “He’s a man of the bigger world, y’see. Never met a man before like him. He keeps us all grinning.”

  “That’s not the role of a captain. What’s his formula? Perhaps I shall want to be attractive to a lady some day.”

  “No reason you can’t be.”

  “Well?”

  “Well,” Tarkio echoed, “according to Tom, ‘An attractive man should smell of bay rum, pipe smoke and freshly sharpened pencils.’”

  Then he smiled, remembering better things.

  The air in the cabin changed a bit, pushed out by a bit of breeze that carried new scents of nuts, vinegar, and overripe fruit, of sweaty bodies and women rubbed with exotic oils. There was more noise now, new noise, the cries of leashed monkeys and caged birds. New commotion on the docks and in the streets out there reminded Gordon of the dangers in this place, with its habit of too much bonhomie and arms too open for deserters.

  “Where is this girl?” he asked.

  “Baltimore.”

  “What sort of girl worth marrying comes from that hive?”

  “Flag maker’s daughter. Young, but fair and sparky. I rent a room in the house, upstairs.”

  “Rented. Past tense. You’re in the Royal Navy now.”

  “I’ll never be in the Royal Navy. I’m a prisoner of war.”

  “War?”

  “Your war with Napoleon.”

  “But you’re an American. You’re neutral.”

  As Tarkio reached around to spread a napkin on Gordon’s lap, he had that insulting little non-smile going again.

  “If I’m an American,” he asked, “what am I doing on this ship?”

  “Being impertinent. You’re on this ship because you are a British subject who ran to the Americas with the plot to escape your obligation to king and country. Or at least you’re replacing a man who did that, something I’ll never say outside of this cabin. Britain does not recognize a sailor’s right to jump ship and emigrate.”

  “These are family men,” Tarkio pointed out, careful of his tone.

  “A quarter of America’s sailors are British, and you know it.”

  “Some were brought to the United States when they were just children.”

  “Do you think that will keep them safe? Right now the Royal Navy is holding Bonaparte off. Eventually, our army will be smashed and that blood blister will move to the sea. Eventually he will gather enough forces and ordinance that the Navy will no longer be able to stop him and he’ll invade England. How long after that do you think it’ll take before his gunships darken your harbors?”

  Tarkio folded his arms, but not in a hostile way. “Think about this day and night, do you?”

  “Look over here.” Pleased to be ready with an answer, though accidentally, Gordon motioned him to the chart table and the charts and maps upon it. He pointed at the map directly on top, obviously of Europe and part of Russia, and swept his finger around a large portion. “Do you see this? This is the land Bonaparte seized last month. It’s twice the size of your entire nation.”

  He came back to his desk and once again sat, but did so in a clumsy way that caused his knee to upset the desk, and the desk to upset the tray, which upset the teapot.

  Gordon jolted when Tarkio suddenly grasped his elbow. “Get your hand off me!”

  Moving with unexpected grace, Tarkio scooped up the teapot and made an arc that magically avoided Gordon’s jerking elbow. “You want to be scalded?”

  “Please just put it down and shove off!”

  Tarkio backed away, taking the steaming teapot with him, but his gaze lingered on the captain of this Royal Navy ship as if he were looking at a lost dog.

  He paused a moment. “How old are you?”

  Gordon stared back at him. The question hung between them.

  There would be no answer, not today, for a blast of sound shocked them both and struck away any thoughts—a bellowing blare, ear-splitting, uninvited, foreign. Gordon had never heard anything like it and from his expression neither had Tarkio.

  Gordon bolted from his chair. “What now!”

  But Tarkio was already gone, up the companionway into the daylight. Gordon broke out of the darkness into blinding sun, out onto the weather deck. That awful sound came again, along with a ridiculous jangling of sleigh bells.

  Sleigh bells? In Jamaica?

  On the shore, just a jump away, a mass of color and savagery rose before him, higher than the high sides of the ship. Like a figment of fantasy, the brightly decorated form rolled a giant pink eye and shook a peacock-feathered head-dress. Painted gaudy yolk-yellow with trompe l’oeil mosaics, the beast could barely be recognized for what it was. But it knew its own size and pumped its tree-sized legs and rattled its chains. Wooden cages on the dock dissolved, freeing wild tropical birds to fly into the rigging in a panic of colors. The giant shook its face-shield made of layered silver fringe. A long painted trunk twisted in the air before Gordon’s face, not four feet away.

  One of the terrified marines ended up straddling the ship’s rail, his musket flailing uselessly as he tried to balance. Gordon grabbed him by the arm and hauled him back on board.

  Two puppeteers, a man with a monkey on a leash, and hucksters cooking in the open streets abandoned their twig shops and scrambled out of the way. Terrified women, with ropy hair tied by strips of bright fabric and big earrings made of salvaged metal, tripped over the wares they had brought to sell.

  The Helen’s crew panicked. Some tried to climb the shrouds when again the painted monster reared, shook its headdress, rang its bells, rolled its huge pink eye and brayed that abominable noise. On the dock a frantic East Indian man waved a bamboo pole, whacking at the devil and shouting in Hindi. Over the monster’s back a calico drapery waved like a flag, and this was where the sleigh bells were, turning an otherwise whimsical sound into something foul.

  “Compose yourselves!” Moycroft bellowed. The crew had never seen an elephant before. Even Gordon, a privileged child of the aristocracy, had only seen drawings.

  The phantom thudded down to its four feet again, rattling the whole dock. With startling flexibility it turned in the crowded place. The Indian man tried to steer it with the bamboo pole, but the animal flicked its head, caught the man on a tusk and flung him a good twelve feet through the air. He landed on birdcages full of parrots and pelicans. The birds erupted into a wall of wings, then rushed toward the interior of the island. Now the elephant was not only panicked but enraged. It took on a tucked posture and went after its handler.

  Dressed in its harlequin decorations, the mad thing went down on its fore knees and crushed the Indian handler under its bent-up trunk. The man tried to cry out, but his ribs and lungs collapsed like paper. The beast was pitiless. Had it had enough of life in chains? Was it somehow humiliated by the farcical costume of feathers and bells? Did it know?

  The slaughter of the Indian refreshed the chaos. People screamed and ran. The man with the monkey fell off the dock into the water, leaving his monkey to its own resources. Then the elephant saw the monkey.

  And the monkey saw the ship’s rigging.

  Gordon’s eyes widened. He saw the elephant’s huge pink eye and knew what it was thinking.

  “No, no!” he shouted and broke toward the gangway, a massive raft of planks and beams ironically meant for boarding the brig’s guns and heavy ordnance. He was about to yell stop, but the sound caught in his throat. He might as well have cast a pebble before a landslide. The monster was on him.

  The gangway groaned under the four-ton animal, then began to crack. Gordon fell backward and dropped to his rump. Before him the elephant rumbled, snorted, pulled its trunk into that S-formation to begin another murderous attack. All Gordon saw was the silver-fringed face-shield and the peacock headdress. He reached up and received the green painted trunk into his two hands and felt as if he were trying to fend off a mountain. The skin, crusty with dried paint, quivered between his pal
ms, and behind it was the massive skull that would crush him.

  An explosion went off above him. He was suddenly covered with blood and bone, flesh, fringe and bells. A peacock feather landed on the back of his right hand.

  The elephant’s body dropped to the gangway in a solid lump. The gangway cracked, but didn’t break. The blocky head landed on the deck between Gordon’s knees. He felt suddenly ridiculous. All the noise of moments ago abruptly stopped.

  Blood streamed from under the animal’s face decoration. It had been shot in the skull. He stared stupidly at the blood that ran down the huge face onto his hands.

  Two of the men pulled him out from where he sat cradling the mammoth’s head. Before he understood what was happening, he was back on his feet. Around his face a cloud of musket smoke stung his eyes and nostrils.

  In a group of marines was Victor Tarkio, holding a smoking weapon. The foolish man had shot the elephant instead of killing Gordon when he had the chance. What a silly … wasteful fool.

  Gordon stared at Tarkio, then at the carcass still shuddering as death overtook it. A heady and offensive stench roused him. The animal’s bowels had released their contents all over the gangway and into the already fetid water.

  Greasy sweat and the residue of black powder streaked his cheeks. This was no way for a nobleman to look. For a commanding officer …

  Handing the musket back to one of the Marines, Tarkio stepped toward him.

  Gordon saw the motion in his periphery and instantly drew away before Tarkio could touch him. Don’t.

  Tarkio paused, one hand partly out.

  Gordon reached for his voice, determined that he would make the crew think of Jamaica not as a fertile Utopia, but as hell’s butcher-shop.

  “Cut it up,” he rasped. “Salt and hang the meat. Give the offal to those people out there. I’ll take the ivory and one of the feet. Wash this blood away.”

  How did he sound to them? Commanding? Madcap? Were they trying not to laugh at him?

  On thready legs he tried to move toward the stern, back toward his cabin. He would shut the door. Remain alone.

  As he was about to step into the companionway, he heard a chittering noise and looked up. There was a monkey sitting on a ratline halfway up the lower shrouds. From its neck hung a blue silk leash, like some kind of perverse neckerchief. Like the neckerchief on that American captain. Fluttering in the breeze, laughing at him.