by Joan Druett
“William Olliver,” Wiki agreed.
“And when Dr. Olliver shouted out the name William, it was actually Patrick he was calling—the brother who had bludgeoned him?”
“Exactly,” said Wiki.
“But you testified in a court of law that it was your name the dying man was saying.”
“Well…” said Wiki.
“Did you know at that particular moment that Sir Patrick’s name was William?” his father demanded.
“No, of course I didn’t.”
“You lied for me, son.”
“Aye,” said Wiki placidly.
The lizard eye studied him for a long time, its warmth almost lost beneath the half-lowered lid. Then his father remarked in a musing kind of way, “Not long after I carried him into port, someone came into the room and called out my name—and Palgrave automatically turned to see who it was, just the same as I did, but of course I didn’t pay any attention at the time.” His tone became cynical as he added, “It was very handy for him that it was my name, too.”
“It’s only natural that he made errors,” Wiki said. “It’s amazing that he carried it off so well—but then, he was opportunistic by nature.”
His father nodded. “After I rescued him, he might have regained consciousness much sooner than I realized, because when he finally came out of his coma the first thing he asked for was a looking glass. I didn’t want to hand it to him, because his face was scarcely human, but instead of recoiling, he studied his reflection for what seemed a very long time. When I think back, it’s as if he had considered the idea of impersonating Palgrave already.”
Wiki lifted his brows. “I wonder what the real Palgrave looked like?”
“It probably didn’t matter, just as long as they were about the same shape and size. He rose from his sickbed to go to Cambridge and claim the inheritance, as you know, and when I saw him off, his face was bandaged.”
“The scars would have helped, even without the bandage,” Wiki opined. “But if Grimes had met Patrick Palgrave in Rio, he would have known at once that he was an imposter—and it was very likely that he would seek him out, having worked for his father.”
“So Dr. Olliver poisoned Grimes to prevent it?”
“Aye,” said Wiki soberly, yet again hearing Dr. Olliver’s gasped confession in his mind: “I killed for him!” “He gave Grimes a dose of salts in wine, so he would get the gripes, and then, by exaggerating his symptoms, he made sure that Grimes was put under his medical care, so that he could poison him at leisure—first with the strychnine-coated pills, and then with the bismuth, to which he’d added just enough poison to finish him off. In agony,” Wiki added with a grimace, remembering the instrumentmaker’s terrible end.
Captain Coffin shuddered. “We all found Dr. Olliver inconsiderate and arrogant, but I didn’t think he was capable of such callousness. He deserved his awful death, really.”
“They were both cold-blooded,” Wiki said harshly, remembering penning the official notification of his death to Midshipman Fisher’s parents. As Captain Wilkes had dictated the words, tears had run down the long face. “The waste,” he had exclaimed, and had thumped the desk with his fist—“the goddamned waste!”
The desecrated mere pounamu had been returned to its hook, because Wiki was still berthed on the Swallow, even though he was back to serving as Captain Wilkes’s amanuensis. He wondered again if his father had told his friend where the mere was stored, but didn’t want to ask, so said instead, “What are your plans, now that the Osprey is back on her keel?”
The Swallow, like all the other expedition ships in port, was preparing for departure. Longitude, latitude, tides, and the radiation of the sun had all been calculated, and, as far as Wiki could tell, this part of the world had been weighed. The Peacock had been fixed and repainted, and was fit to double Cape Horn, and maybe even venture into the Antarctic, too. The Relief had been restowed and reprovisioned, and had been sent ahead, hopefully to get to Orange Harbor, at the tip of South America, before the rest of the fleet arrived. The Vincennes and the Porpoise had both been successfully smoked free of rats (though the cockroaches, by some insect-miracle, had survived), Enxados Island had been cleared of vermin and venomous snakes, and now it was time to go.
Captain Coffin said, “I’ve sold my freight of tortoiseshell, and bought a cargo of coffee for the New York market.” Judging by his smug expression, both deals had been good ones. Then, however, his face lengthened, and he asked, “Did you make a call on your stepmother before you joined the expedition?”
“I wouldn’t have dared not,” said Wiki dryly. He always paid her a duty visit, carrying a gift from some exotic landfall. After all, she had found him his first berth, on her brother’s Nantucket whaleship, and had even provided a sea chest. As usual, they had drunk tea, and eaten cake, and made stilted conversation—always about herself and domestic Salem affairs, as she wasn’t at all interested in his travels.
“She’s well?”
“Exactly the same as ever.”
Captain Coffin grimaced. “Well, I guess I’ll see her myself before long.”
As Wiki stood up to leave, he stood up, too. With an abrupt movement he reached out and gripped Wiki’s hand, very hard. Then he cleared his throat with an embarrassed sound, and said, “I never raised you to tell lies, son, but I thank you for your belief in me, and I cherish you for it.”
“It was an honor,” said Wiki gently.
* * *
It was January 6, 1839, and the great U.S. Exploring Expedition was about to depart. The weather was bright and clear, with a light breeze from the land, and the atmosphere about the harbor was festive. Boats sailed and tacked over the glittering water, one of them a familiar-looking fallua, which was steering straight for the brig Swallow. As Wiki watched, it hauled about and then aback, seething to a halt under the sheer of the stern.
He leaned inquiringly over the taffrail, to find himself gazing down into Manuela Josefa Ramalho Vieira de Castro de Roquefeuille’s pretty face. She was wearing black, as befitted a woman mourning the loss of a brother-in-law, and the color reminded him of the night he had seen her getting out of the carriage at the Hotel Pharoux—the first time they had made love with their eyes.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he said to Captain Rochester, who was firmly in charge of the quarterdeck for the departure from the harbor. Then, without waiting for permission, Wiki vaulted down into the fallua.
“Hulloa,” she laughed. “Jumping ship?”
“Not this time,” he said with a creased-up grin. “But I am very glad to see you, because I owe you a great big thanks.”
“Thanks for me?”
“When Forsythe finally arrived at the cutter, you were waiting for him.”
“Ah,” she said, and nodded, not needing to ask what he meant. “It is very entertaining to stop by the stairs and watch the drunken sailors while waiting for the fallua to go back to the Praia Grande.”
“And—for some reason—you advised him to follow me.” Which Forsythe had done—first to the brig, where Midshipman Keith had told the southerner where he was going, and then to the convent.
Josefa looked meditative, and said, “You know, I have always thought that perhaps Pierre did not die accidentally in that polo match. I noticed afterward that it gave my brother-in-law great pleasure to be the one in charge of our estates. He enjoyed the money that allowed him to build pretty things—it was as if it were a great novelty for him to be rich.”
Unanticipated sadness washed over Wiki. He remembered the beautiful gardens at Praia Grande and at the fazenda; he thought of the romantic pool that William Olliver had designed. At that moment it seemed a tragic failing of society that William Olliver had been forced to descend to deception and murder before he could realize such potential.
He shook his head to clear off the thought, and said, “How is your sister?”
“Desolate, naturally. She will get over it, but one of us will have to remarry. It is
difficult for two sisters, you know, particularly rich ones, when there is no man of power and influence in the family.” With an elaborate sigh, Madame Manuela Josefa Ramalho Vieira de Castro de Roquefeuille looked musingly around the harbor, and decided aloud, “I suppose it will have to be me. There are plenty of suitable men,” she mused. “The problem is which one to choose.”
Wiki felt a stab of jealousy, combined with some sympathy for whoever the man might be. Josefa would not be nearly as easy to manage as the family estates, he thought, and he wondered, too, if the new caretaker of the fortune would do as good a job as William Olliver had done.
Then he was distracted—by the sight of a short, square man sliding out from under a tarpaulin canvas in the stern of the fallua, and climbing stealthily up the side of the brig.
Involuntarily, he exclaimed, “That’s Robert Festin!”
“Robert Festin?” Josefa echoed, without turning round to look. “It can’t possibly be Robert Festin,” she assured him with wide-eyed innocence. “Didn’t you know he’s getting married on Saturday?”
“No, I didn’t,” confessed Wiki.
“His bride’s family treat him very badly, I hear. They charge a great deal for his services, but he never sees any of the money. And his mother-in-law slaps him about to make him understand better, because he isn’t very bright.”
“I wonder what happened to my invitation?” Wiki wondered aloud, and she laughed. When he looked again, Festin was safely out of sight, so he turned back to Josefa and said, “Here is the present you gave me.”
He gave her the ring he had thrown at William Olliver’s gleaming eyes—a huge emerald, probably worth more money than he would ever make in his lifetime, impossible to wear, impossible to sell, and impossible to give away.
“It saved my life, and I don’t need it anymore,” he said. “Instead, I want to give you something to remember me by.”
Josefa didn’t argue. Instead, she put out her hand. Then her mouth fell open in vast surprise—he had given her a length of his own black hair, neatly braided and tied. He wondered if she would ever understand what a declaration of trust this gift involved.
Instead of thanking him, she ordered, “Turn around!”
He turned his head, grinning at her over his shoulder.
“You cut your hair!”
“Aye.” Though it was actually Sua who had done the cutting.
A voice called down from the deck, politely informing him that they were about to sail, and that Captain Rochester would be vastly obliged if Mr. Coffin would take the helm.
“So we say good-bye?”
“Aye,” said Wiki. “May I kiss you?”
“Certainly not,” she said, sounding scandalized, and he laughed, bowed, and lifted her fingers gallantly to his lips, before scrambling back up to deck. As he climbed over the rail, he heard her distinctive giggle, along with a few derisive cheers from the crew.
The fallua bore away with a last wave of a ring-laden hand. Aloft, the men were unfurling the sails, which fluttered delicately before being tamed and clewed down. The other ships of the fleet were doing likewise—and the brigantine Osprey, too, was putting on her canvas for her journey home. Where, Wiki wondered, would he see his father next?
The vessels at anchor in the bay were flying flags in salute. Whistles sounded, and the crew of the USS Independence gave six hearty hurrahs as the Vincennes sailed grandly by—which, considering the circumstances, Wiki thought, was very gallant of Jovial Jack. Out of the harbor sailed the Vincennes, with Captain Wilkes in charge of the quarterdeck, while the other expedition ships followed in grand formation. Captain Coffin’s Osprey was picking up pace on the larboard tack, and putting on more sail as Wiki watched.
Then all at once yells of utter outrage disturbed the happy scene, along with the sounds of a nasty collision. Sails fluttered on the Vincennes as she hurriedly reduced canvas. Wiki shaded his eyes to see what had happened, and then exclaimed, “My God, I don’t believe it!”
The Vincennes had blundered off her course, and run afoul of the Osprey.
Suggested Reading
Darwin, Charles. Beagle Diary. Edited by Richard Darwin Keynes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Erskine, Charles. Twenty Years Before the Mast: with the more thrilling scenes and incidents while circumnavigating the globe under the command of the late Admiral Charles Wilkes 1838–1842. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1985.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition 1838–1842. New York: Viking, 2003.
Reynolds, William. The Private Journal of William Reynolds: United States Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842. Edited by Nathaniel Philbrick and Thomas Philbrick. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Reynolds, William. Voyage to the Southern Ocean: The Letters of Lieutenant William Reynolds from the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842. Edited by Anne Hoffman Cleaver and E. Jeffrey Stann (and with an excellent introduction and epilogue by Herman J. Viola). Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1988.
Stanton, William. The Great United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1975.
Viola, Herman J., and Carolyn Margolis, eds. Magnificent Voyagers: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1985.
Wilkes, Charles. Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition. 5 vols. 1844. Reprint, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1970.
Read on for a preview of
Deadly Shoals,
coming from St. Martin’s Minotaur
in December 2007
copyright © 2007 by Joan Druett
Off the coast of Patagonia, January 24, 1839
Wiki Coffin was in the saloon of the U.S. brig Swallow when he heard the man at the masthead call out for a sail. The Swallow was flying south on the breast of a favorable nor’west wind, so he assumed the sighting was of a homeward-bound ship passing on the opposite course. However, it was the first sign of company on the seas for the past eight days, and so he ran up the companionway to the deck and then climbed the mainmast to see what it was all about.
It proved to be a whaleship, about five miles away but coming down fast from the east, with all sails set but flying no flags. Her four boats were triced up in davits on the outside of the vessel, ready to be lowered at an instant’s notice if whales were sighted, but her canvas was pristine white, unmarked by tryworks smoke, an indication that she hadn’t done any whaling of late. Even from this distance, Wiki could discern a glint of copper under her foot as she crested the top of a wave, so knew that this was no northbound whaler deeply laden with oil.
Instead, she was racing to come up with them. Looking about the empty sea from his lofty vantage point, Wiki frowned, touched with uneasiness. They were off the Patagonian coast, with the shoal-ridden estuary of the Rio Negro on the western horizon. It was notorious as a hotbed of revolutionaries, having been deliberately impoverished by General de Rosas, the tyrant of Buenos Aires. Wiki also knew that de Rosas was currently waging war with the French over his territorial ambitions in Uruguay—and had heard rumors in Rio that the French were issuing letters of marque to their merchant vessels on this coast, which included a number of whalers. He swung down a backstay, and approached the quarterdeck.
Captain Rochester was standing on the weather side, one fist gripping the starboard shrouds. He was scowling, too. The instant he sighted Wiki he said, “What do you reckon, old chap?”
“Her captain seems determined to intercept us, but he isn’t flying any signals—not even his ensign.”
“Do you recognize her?”
Wiki grimaced. For the past seven years he had drifted from one American whaleship to another, deserting at exotic landfalls whenever he had become heartily tired of whaling, or fed up with the captain and officers, or simply wanted to get back to the Bay of Islands to pay a call on his whanau—his folks in New Zealand. However, th
is made him no authority on the identity of individual whalers.
He said, “It’s infamously hard to tell one whaleship from another, George.”
The trouble was, they were all built for the same purpose, with no variety in the pattern. There had been one captain of his acquaintance who had painted his command in a myriad of colors just to make himself different, but most of his crew had promptly jumped ship, declaring that their garish appearance frightened off the whales. Accordingly, the old spouter master had returned his typically beamy old tub to her former livery of black, interrupted with one white streak painted with black squares to fool innocent savages into thinking she had gunports with cannon behind them. And, with that, she had returned to being indistinguishable from the rest of the whaling fleet.
“So how do we know she’s American?”
Wiki, who’d had the same thought, said flatly, “We don’t. She could be French. If she is, she could be a privateer—which seems likely, as she looks far too clean to be a working whaler.”
“Then let’s make sure that her master knows beyond doubt that we’re a United States Navy brig,” Rochester decided. “Bo’sun,” he hollered. “Get the biggest ensign aloft.”
It took just a moment to comply, and events followed fast. No sooner had the bright flag been run up to flicker from the gaff of the Swallow, than smoke puffed up from the stranger’s foredeck, and a cannonball screamed across the rapidly diminishing gap between the two ships. “He’s fired a shot across our bows!” George exclaimed in shocked disbelief. “Beat to quarters, by God—beat to quarters!”
The stunned silence fore and aft turned into commotion. Sua, the brig’s Samoan drummer, rushed into the forecastle for his drum—a length of log—and set to hammering out a primitive, blood-stirring rhythm even before he arrived back on deck. Rochester’s youthful second-in-command, Midshipman Keith, raced up from below, the off-duty watch tumbling hard on his heels. As usual in any emergency, Wiki, who was the best helmsman in the ship, took over the wheel.